Actually this one is really strange quest. Difficult level 7. But almost every time i play i win. And i win quite easy. Quest almost didn have cards with surge effect so nothing really dangerous there. Ok trolls id really powerful but most of the time i can win the game before my threat reach 38. Cose i always manage to get tools and brake the wall in 4 rounds. Maybe with more players is more difficult??? Some one play it in co-op???

And after couple of session i realize this quest actually is quite boring and annoying for solo. Any ideas from you fellows????

I also found this a strange one that could be really easy or really drawn out depending on the quest card flip. I've only tried it twice with a bilbo/birur/dwalin deck and got killed the first time by revelaing a treachery on 'blocked by shadow' and completed it the next time by getting the tools and breaking out in two turns thanks to some unexpected courage and the sacrifice of a west road traveller. Am I right in thinking that it is possible to complete this quest in a single turn? If you give someone protector of lorien, quest with everyone, hit 'blocked by shadow', draw a non treachery, reveal next card to the staging area then discard the rest of your hand for extra willpower to bring you over the 9 progress required you win. Is this correct or did I miss something?

Ninjawa said:

Yes sure you can do this. But i try it once and get Treachery card...... Ups lose the game.

I have another question. If i Have tools on my hero and use it in refresh phase to put progress token on the quest card but there is a active location?

I should put token on active location or on the quest card??? I think i can skip the active location but im not sure 100%.......

Abandoned Tools will bypass the active location since it actually names the quest card explicitly.

radiskull said:

So this rule make this quest even more easy then before........ quite strange......

I solo'd it with relative ease but 4 player it's a *****. When you're revealing 4 encounter cards a turn it gets much much more difficult. And the 2b quest card to draw a treachery on the 4 player games has so far removed 75% of the players over 4 attempts at the quest. On one occasion taking out all of them in one go on the very first draw. One player is much much easier.

OK i have chance to try it today with my friend. Yes is much more harder and interesting for 2 players. True more players you have more harder this quest.

I check a rule book and according by rules Progress tokens will be placed on active location in the case of Tools. I dont agree with you here Radiskull. Check the rules again i think you wrong.

Ninjawa said:

This is impossible. The only progress you can put on the 'tools' quest card ( I forget the name) is exhausting the character with the tools, but that's limit once per turn. It's a 4 progress card, so I'm not really sure how you beat it in 2 turns...

He use Uc to ready his hero with a tool in refresh phase.....

One thing I find interesting about the Abandoned tools is that, if I'm reading it right, you take the action only during the Refresh phase. The only opportunity you have for player actions in this phase is after you have unexhausted all of your cards. Net result: you can alway put one progress (since your hero will unexhausted at the start of the phase), but your hero will start the next turn exhausted (barring other cards being used).

I really like this thematically - the hero is spending an entire turn using the tools to create a way out!

ricedwlit said:

Yes is like this too. I use Bilbo with Fast hitch attached so is not a big problem.

But you know what is really nasty??? When you already put 3 tokens by Tools and then come Treachery :New Devilery. Then you shuffle quest card back to quest deck and lose all tokens as well! Really bad!I get it twice in 1 game!

I play 2 session 2 player. Results: 1 win 1 lose. Not bad. I cannot force my partner stop to use Beravur with 3 Uc but even with that we lose 1 game!

Glaurung said:

My mistake, I thought the Refresh Action had limit once per turn. Well this makes it even easier with Boromir....

conykchameleon said:

Good spot about Boromir. So you can finish this stage in 1 round just adding 4 threat if you give Tools to Boromir.Wow! Sounds like 1 more mistake of designers.

Sure we will get some errata about this again.......

I don't think we will get an errata concerning Boromir, UC or Record Keeper on this as those are viable options to speed up the refreshing of characters.

Anyway, we played FfM yesterday (2 People) and were surprised that it was not as hard as you might anticipate for a difficulty 7 quest. The trick is not to kill any of the Trolls and keep your threat low (they Trolls increase the threat/damage of the Balrog when killed) and to cycle fast and find the Escape from Darkness quest card and stick to it, waiting for the Abandoned Tools to show up manually. We saved our counter cards for New Dewilry. Of course you need to be lucky that the tools are not get discarded as shadow cards. I don't say FfM is easy but it's not terrible difficult either if you know the quest.

Maybe they should have added to Escape from Darkness quest card: "Forced: If you don't have put at least one progress token on this quest card this turn you have to bypass it" in order to make it impossible to sit out on it.

This is the first quest that does get more difficult the longer you play as you can't help BUT add victory points so the nameless fear just sits therre getting more powerful but 4 player is where this quest really is MUCH more difficult.

Yep. That quest that forces you to reveal an extra encounter card per player is deadly... especially if you hit the treachery that reshuffles the quest cards and you end up again on the one that forces you to reveal encounter cards...