The free content is great and the purchase content is worth every cent. Great work and keep it up, FFG.

I have not completed the Cthulhu campaign yet... On my sixth try.

I still have not seen any issues on my iPad 2.

Cthulhu defeated with 2 doom counters to spare. That was brutal. Some tips I can provide :

* Make the most of the early stage investigations, the first phase seems to be the only one that gives any hope of "remove doom counter" missions, particularly 'The Elder Sign'. Keeping Cthulhu down to 1-3 doom tokens here helps a great deal. Use the first 'phase' to build up equipment, tap other world locations and rack up the trophies. Push forward the moment Cthu hits 3 doom, you'll need 8 or so for the second stage of the campaign.

* Wilson Richards and Amanda Sharpe are both exceptionally helpful in this particular campaign (there's a prevalence of sequenced adventures, and she can get around R'lyeh's nutty requirements). Richards' ability to "Wild" yellow dice can be pivotal. Whereas Gloria Goldberg becomes dead weight later on.

* Once in the second phase, don't start rushing until Cthu hits 6-7 doom counters, for every day the track doesn't move, that's more time to keep cycling tasks and trying to get the all important gems (having two of the three is mandatory). Depending on your group makeup, generally the order of worth is Red > Yellow > Spells/Clues, your mileage may vary (example - Richards gets more from yellows). If you've got a task sewn up, use any spare deduction dice to reduce the remaining pool (by dragging them over the magnifying glass with the sheath of paper). For a low risk task, it's perfectly possible to drain 8-12 pool in one go.

* At the beginning of the R'lyeh phase, pick one of your investigators and arm him / her for bear. Make sure she has access to red, yellow and a minimum of 2-3 clues, lock spells too are useful for this stage. You'll only generally get one or two "clean" attempts at R'lyeh, so it's critical you make them count and that you have as many gems as feasible.

Hilariously, the char you unlock is extremely well suited to longer campaigns by virtue of his special. I won't spoil more than that, but he's definitely the sort of investigator that'll stand you in good stead if FFG put out more multiphase adventures.

Hobbesian said:

Actually, I think Marie is one of the strongest. In the original game (before relics), the Voice of Ra was one of the most powerful items, up there with the Sword of Glory and the Tommy Gun. The reason is because most of the time when I fail an adventure, I'm only missing one glyph. If I were likely to fail by more, I wouldn't have tried the adventure in the first place. Voice of Ra essentially hands you that last glyph on a silver platter. What's better is that, unlike the Sword of Glory which must be used at the start of the adventure to be useful, there's a good chance that you can take Voice of Ra into an adventure and not even have to use it. So it enables you take on riskier or more difficult adventures than you would have attempted otherwise, and potentially it gives you that advantage multiple times.

Marie's special ability essentially lets her buy a Voice of Ra on demand for three trophies, without the opportunity cost of spending her entire turn at the Entrance. Three trophies means she can't actually use the Voice of Ra every turn, since the good adventures only reward two trophies with no monster present, but again one of the great things about it is that it doesn't need to be used every turn to derive benefit from it. It just needs to be an option. So as long as you can keep her at three trophies or above, Marie is a real powerhouse, in my opinion right up there with Jenny Barnes.

My main beef is that Marie requires 3 trophies (which can be spent on other things) to wild a green. Richards by default wilds a yellow from the offset. It's useful I guess, but so far I find that particularly when on approach to R'lyeh, I'd rather have an auto wild and a potential wild under richards (yellow and red) with clues to make up any needed re-rolls.

Marie can wild any die, not just green. Wilson's ability has a couple of weaknesses of its own:

* In order to wild a yellow, he must actually have a yellow die, so you have to keep him well-stocked with common items.

* The yellow die has no terror side, so his ability can never be used to get a missing terror glyph.

The 3-trophy cost does mean that Marie won't be the investigator saving up to buy an elder sign or a relic, but that doesn't really bother me much. If I've used the ability three times (9 trophies), I've probably gotten quite a bit more than just one elder sign out of it. And with the occasional exception of the scrounging characters, I don't really buy much anyway apart from elder signs and relics. If an investigator needs more gear, I'd rather do an easy adventure and gain some trophies in the process than spend them.

I think I thumped R'Lyeh on my about sixth try (random investigators; Mary, Lambeau, Simmons, Sharpe, last of whom was driven insane during phase two). Of course, when I sent Simmons to assail R'Lyeh...well, he got rather lucky with his die rolls, and I'd managed to have a good time margin to get all three amulet nodes.

Now, if the next update is going to have more Great Old Ones and worse...Given that the main milieu is a museum, where, exactly, is Chaugnar Faugn?! Although I suppose Rhan-Tegoth is also ideal bait under such a conceit.

Although, from what I've heard about "The Horror from the Hills"...perhaps the last phase of a Chaugnar campaign would be not sealing it, but actually hunting it down and destroying it...

Ah, my bad. That does make Marie significantly more useful. I assumed her wild was strictly greens only. Whilst he can't pick up terrors, Wilding a yellow for free on the basis of having a yellow is still highly useful, and it's pretty hard to wind up in a situation where you lack such as long as you're careful. I'll give Marie a whirl later though.

Hobbesian said:

Don't pick an investigator. Your chief R'lyeh-basher will be decided for you when someone gets the Cabala of Sabaoth, unless that investigator has less than 5 Sanity. It's also worth killing off a couple of your other investigators so your superstar can take a shot at R'lyeh every day, healing Sanity and buying gear between each one.

Meanwhile, I'm ready to confirm the game cheats if you do too well. I took Jenny into R'lyeh with the Cabala and got stage 1 complete on the second conjure, using yellow and two greens. I then rolled 27 dice without getting a single Terror for stage 2. Hilariously, I won that game at 10 Doom with my last investigator who had no yellow glyph, no clues and only one lock, and would go mad if I failed. Even more hilariously, the investigator you unlock for beating Cthulhu is the weakest in the entire game.

This is a woeful update to a fun game. I have the card game and everyone I've played it with loves it. Some elements of the card game were missing from Omens, such as allies and a final battle mechanic (which is why Azathoth was the only ancient one), but it was still surprisingly faithful to the card game and very enjoyable. The update and the new Cthulhu "campaign" have ruined what was a fun game. Instead of adding the missing elements of the card game they went in a completely different and poorly advised direction.

• Too many "+3 Doom" mythos events at midnight (I've seen 3 in a row)
• "On entry" costs on adventure cards serve no purpose other than to make the game more difficult; they should at the very least be limited to part of the Cthulhu campaign, not present from the beginning of every game.
• New adventures are so difficult that they essentially require all glyphs be used to complete them with average luck
• Too many adventures lock glyphs - new adventures lock both the red and yellow glyphs; some games start with 3 glyphs locked
• After reaching the Cthulhu campaign, discovering R'lyeh and getting all gems for the amulet, the game will lock up on a load screen, unable to proceed

Fixing the bugs is one thing, and I expect FFG will do that, but they've made this game so maddeningly difficult that it's no longer fun. The card game can get difficult if it gets away from you. That's to be expected if you've ever played Arkham Horror. But after the update, this game is incredibly difficult from the very start due to the preponderance of new, super-hard adventures and mythos events that punish, penalize or hamper any progress the investigators make. If I could roll back to the previous version, I would. Avoid this game in its current state.

Kastagir said:

What incredibly bad advice.

It's difficult, yes, but the new content alone makes it a no-brainer purchase for any fan of the game. And the difficulty itself is only found in certain areas: the Yig campaign is laughably easy, and Azathoth is still very winnable. It's really only the two-parter that ramps up the difficulty level. I've also yet to encounter a single bug in 20-plus games. Not one.

So it's pretty irresponsible of you to throw out "avoid!" as a piece of advice just because it's a tough game in places. I could just as easily say "Play better!"

Kastagir said:

You know, there are certain strategies to the game. LEarn what investigators to use on what Adventures, when to use your items, what adventure to tackle and so forth.. Learn that, and it gets easier.

As the previous poster said. "Play Better"