First off, love the game. I bought it a couple days ago on my iPhone then when it came out on iPad, I bought it again, lol.

But, I'm frustrated. I can't win the game at all.

Does anyone have some strategies to help me get better? I never played the original board game, but I watched a "How to Play" on youtube and it seems to be exactly the same.

But it seems that I need an exact dice roll to beat the adventures and some are impossible for me to beat at all, lol.

Any help?

What are some good characters to use?

When should I use the spells, items, etc to be efficient?

When should I use a turn to go to the entrance and get things?

What type of adventures should I defeat first and which should I leave for later?

Thanks muchly!

I'm speaking out of turn here as I have only played once all the way through and thoroughly got eaten. But I did see a few strategies develop....

1) There are easier/less difficult adventures. Sure, you are still at the whim of the dice, but target some of the easier ones - specifically with the investigation tokens. These are easier to roll and succeed at and in turn provide you additional items and rewards that can be used to overcome some of the more difficult adventures down the turn.

2) Don't write off an investigator. My two guys were slouchs at first but when I started picking my adventures a bit wiser they ended up coming on strong.

3) the footprint token that allows you to reroll glyphs is priceless. Added dice is nice but the reroll is fabulous.

4) Target adventures that don't have sequential phases with investigators that don't have reroll abilities. This allows you to use the dice that are available when you have them and not in the order the adventure dictates.

5) Remember the odds of the dice. Each green dice has the following sides - Investigation x1, Investigation x2, Investigation x3, Lore, Peril, Terror. Be sure to Focus according to the odds and the needs of the adventure. Yellow dice replaces Terror with an Investigation x4. Red dice is like the Yellow dice but replaces Investigation x1 with the Wild token - lovely, lovely wild.

6) Cashing in trophies tokens at the Entrance seems to be a waste if you are using four investigators - especially if you have the adventure that is hitting you for 2 trophies every midnight. With four investigators, you only get two turns per investigator per day. I'm going to try with less than four to see if that dynamic will change.

7) Assist is a great feature that works if you fail an adventure and then have a second investigator come in. Instead of focusing one dice, you'll be able to focus two. A nice synergy in the game and makes getting past some of those tough adventures a little bit easier.

Like I said, I'm new at this game myself, but during the butt whooping I got during the first play, these are the things I figure to work on. Hope they help me through on the next game.

Good Luck!

Matt Jensen

Thanks for the tips, Matt.

I am not the greatest at this game and these tips seem to be spot on.

Just an update.... I worked through two games trying to use the strategies tips I posted. Played through with two investigators on each game. First game I lost one investigator pretty quick (KIA) but won the game with the other one. Cashing in Trophies became very valuable as you had more turns during the day. I cashed in for three Elder Signs during that game with the last winning it for me. The second time through the dice weren't as kind and I got toasted. Still, very enjoyable.

This game has a lot of potential and I feel it's going to have some awesome replayability even with just the one GOO.

My not guaranteed advice having won a few times and lost many (hi score 4315).

Make a priority of Elder Sign adventures, avoid ones with Doom track advances as failure conditions etc. unless you're really buffed (items and clue tokens).

Hunt monsters to earn points, in the race of elder signs and doom track, I have won only in games I cashed in "trophies" for an elder sign or two.

Align investigators with merits (e.g., Bob for common item rewards, Jack for exotic).

Remember to use healing items to stop character degradation and avoid having to spend turns at Entrance.

Be careful of adventures with San or Health costs on tasks and same on failure (you complete all but one task and so lose some, the fail and lose more) - make sure you can take the worst outcome.

Pile on adventures to get the benefit of saving dice rolls on buddy.

In the early game, you'll want to look for adventures that give good item rewards. Elder signs are nice, but they don't help you complete adventures later on. Mid to late game, if an investigator is low on items, have them do adventures that give item rewards. If an investigator has a ton of items, focus on tasks that give elder signs.

Related to the above, an investigator with no items will have a hard time completing any tasks at all. Don't be afraid to spend a turn at the shop gearing up if there's nothing easy enough for only green dice. If that investigator has no trophies and no items, Lost and Found is better than nothing.

Your top priority should be adventures or monsters that lock important dice. Green dice especially, but also the yellow and red dice if you've got a lot of items stocked up. Second priority is midnight effects. Both are pretty rare, thankfully. Those are the only two types of adventures that make other tasks harder, so once they're clear, you can focus on what gives the best rewards or is easy to complete for that investigator.

If you have a choice of what tasks to complete after a roll, do the hardest task. A lore and a peril task is harder than a single peril, and a two lore task is harder than either of them. Don't waste a lot of dice on investigation rolls, however; if you need 3 dice to complete a 5 investigation task, try to do one of the other tasks instead if you can. However, unless a monster is easy to kill, they should take priority over other tasks in a mission, as they stay dead if you don't finish the whole mission.

It may be obvious, but take note that the red and yellow die don't have terror results. The red die does have a wild card result however, which can be used for terror. Similarly, both the red and yellow dice have a lot of investigations, so try not to waste them on other symbols if there's a large investigation task that still needs to be done.

In relation to the above two points, don't give up on a task if you can complete it, even if you're using non-optimal dice to do so.

Don't forget about spells. If you've got a roll that can complete one task and go part way towards another, spells can help save that roll. Similarly, they can help you save more dice for another attempt if you fail the task.

LinkN said:

I've only lost twice so far after about 15 games, and I'll vouch for all of the advice quoted above (and much of the rest in the thread).

Also, generally speaking I would say not to skimp on using your items and spells... I tend to use 'em when I've got 'em, even if it seems like the adventure has easy tasks. Better safe than sorry, so I'll pretty much always add the yellow and red dice if I can. A lot of times, you'll gain something back, anyway. Same thing with Clues. But that being said, use things wisely... for example, if you have an item that lets you change a die into a Lore result, and that's the last thing you need to get with a few dice remaining, go ahead and try to get it with a dice roll and only use the item if the last roll fails.

As mentioned already, note that the yellow die does not provide a Terror result. It's worth repeating, because I've caught myself a few times adding a yellow die to an adventure, only to realize that it was pointless because I was going for Terror. Along those lines, when discarding a die after failing a task, discard the yellow one if it is no longer useful (i.e., you only need terror). If you've focused a die or used a spell, use that die first to complete something, even if you rolled the same result on a new die that was rolled... you'll want to keep the others available as you re-roll to complete later tasks.

Sometimes you'll want to go to an adventure just to kill the monster there, to get it out of the way and get its trophy. You may take a hit for failing the adventure, but sometimes that's okay. But be careful to note the potential penalties of all adventures (including what Sanity/Stamina hits you may take from tasks) and whether your investigator can handle them, before starting them. But once in a while, you may need to sacrifice someone to finish an adventure (or to try to). Unless it's your last investigator, don't worry too much about that... In this version (as opposed to the dice game) a doom token is not added when that happens (I wish it was, though, as it seems like there should be more of a penalty for that). It can suck to lose the special ability (and items and trophies) of that person, but it's not necessarily that big of a deal in the big picture, especially if they accomplished something important on their last turn.

The adventures that capture dice are usually top priority for me, but also watch out for the "at midnight" adventures, in particular the one that adds doom tokens. Also, the one that takes 2 trophies from everyone ("The Curator") is particularly annoying to me and can be difficult to complete. If you get that one and don't think you can complete it, you may want to go buy something with your trophies before the Curator takes some of them. Sometimes you'll need to be patient and build up the right items from easier adventures or from the Souvenirs to succeed on the harder adventures, so weigh what's most important at the moment and what damage you can afford to take in the meantime. It can be better to be patient and take a midnight hit once or twice until you're ready to defeat that adventure, rather than unsuccessfully trying to defeat it a few times and wasting that time.

Take note of the invesitigator's abilities as far as what adventures they should focus on... Put Darrell on ones that require investigation rolls, Monterey on ones that give Unique Items as rewards, Michael on ones that require Peril results, Kate on ones where a monster is part of the reward or that have Terror effects, Joe on ones that give Clues as a reward, etc. Speaking of Michael's ability, remember that even if you don't need the Peril result, it can be used to get rid of a Terror result (if the adventure has a Terror effect). That being said, of course there will be times when a particular investigator will be needed on a certain adventure that's not their "ideal" type, but by and large, try to match them up to their best effect.

I've lost games and I have won games... and I normally win more than I loose.. but you can not really strategize, as luck is such a factor. You just need to play for a while to start getting a feel for what is a long shot on a roll and what is achievable. I also normally just random my team but if you want to just win I would suggest using.

Kate Winthrop (no terror effects bother her, and no monsters are spawned on her turn) - So use her to take out terror rooms or rooms that have monster spawns in the win or loss.

Gloria Goldberg - (Any Other World zone she gets a yellow and red dice for free) - so the strat is to just get as many other worlds to spawn as possible and then she can just complete them

Joe Diamond - Each time you use a clue token, he gets to do it again for free, so 1 clue token is in fact 2. This means that he is very very good at completing quests. A good idea is to use him to win cards that have clue rewards. 4 clues is 8 rolls... use them early so your rolling

Jenny Barnes - (Discard cards to get a red and yellow dice) Again, a great solver, every time she wins a card she is basicly getting a red and yellow die for next quest... so she is a great winner.

I think they are the best "team" for super easy wins... though I just play random

Still some general rules are...

1 - If you see the moon on the map (meaning there is a midnight affect) get rid of that quest asap.
2 - Same for locked dice. Remeber lost of locked dice are monsters, so you can kill the monster even if you fail the quest the monster is still dead and the die unlocked.
3 - IMPORTANT - use your spells and coloured die.. every time you win you get more cards, there is no point in hording.. use them and use them all the frickn time.