thats a good point titan…..expanding on that - certain encounter sets are brutal, some arent- the wilderness ones with the trolls in is brutal as it has nasty locations/ treachery/ enemies

Agreed - though Wilderlands also features in some of the easy quests such as Carrock and Dead Marshes, so I don't think this is the whole story.

I feel that one of the key factors that distinguishes the hard quests from the easy ones is this: the staging cards you are confronted with at set up. The "norm" is one staging card per player. Those quests that give you more cards than this (or specifically dangerous cards) are generally the tough ones. Those that give you less are often the easy ones.

Examples: Anduin (Hill Troll), Massing (multiple enemies who will attack you), Dol Guldur (three cards in staging plus other crippling restrictions)

Examples of easier quests: Carrock and Rhosgobel confront you with just one innocuous location in set up. This is also another reason why TLD is weak for more than one player, as it gives (no of players)-1 staging cards.

1) We need more enemies set up in the staging area. It doesn't have to be a deadly one like Hill Troll, but something that prevents a player from questing like hell. Like those goblins in KD that will kill you, if they're undefended.

2) One thing I liked about Redhorn is that some of the nasty cards are only shuffled into the encounter deck suring the second stage. Why not creating an adventure that includes different encounter sets for each stage (=level)? First stage includes rather easy cards, second one cards more deadly and so on.

3) I love cards that have a printed value of X, in which X is the number of allies.

leptokurt said:

yes i agree- they seem to interact with the game experience better

leptokurt said:

I agree with all three of these points. Also, I like cards such as Cave Torch which present the player with tricky choices, and also provide mechanisms which add additional cards to the staging area.

Indeed Cave Torch is a very interesting addition. However, I feel it is one of the primary reasons why the Long Dark is not that difficult. The probability that you get an easy wat out of trouble is there plus even if you get another enemy, it is usually a much better option. Sometimes with Legolas I was actually wishing for an enemy to show up.

lleimmoen said:

Yes, I think the Torch works better (in terms of providing difficulty and challenge) in Into the Pit where there are a greater number of problems to deal with.

leptokurt said:

yes that i always try to say wnen i mean more Difficult and interesting. Cose most of the quest very monotony. If there is no many cards with surge once when you clear the staging area finish game get boring cose 90% you win the game. And if is happen on the first quest card is really stupid feeling. Cose you still whole adventure to play with feeling nothing can destroy you. IS is not Boring??? But when quest is build up like RHG or MIO or KD quests ( lot of surge cards and with second and third quest card is going to be more dangerous) is really interesting to play cose you cannot predict what happen and every time game can change same like pvp against reall opponent.

Aslo i sure we need some encounter cards who should to react on current status of felowship and make more damage if felowship more strong( lot of allies Atachments and so on). Also i really like KD encounter cards idea if encounter card effect do nothing ( in the case like: remove all progress tokens but there no any) cards get surge. Why they stop it for DW?

lleimmoen said:

I noticed this very quickly. What has happened to me is that I"ve used the Torch to get rid of a location that has come up in set up. This is a large encounter deck which means that the likelihood of enemies coming up due to the Torch's effect is minimized. Of the 60 cards, 21 are enemies. That's roughly a 33% chance that one will come up due to the effect. If this happens, you will have nothing in the staging area on the first turn, prior to the encounter deck revealing a card. Compare this to The Watcher having two cards in staging and then revealing a third one, and you can see the difference.

Just tried the following experiment against TLD: play with three heroes (Glorfindel, Eowyn, Core Aragorn), and a deck of fifty blank cards (i.e. I only used the cards to discard for Eowyn and for locate tests - did not play any attachments, events or allies). Still won two times out of six. You really shouldn't be able to do this.

The scenario lacks a third stage. Therefore my suggestion:

Add a third adventure card with the text

"Far away you can see a first glimpse of the Eastern Gate. Just as you think that this was probably just a bit too easy, you hear a mighty roar in front of you.

Search your deck for a Cave Troll and bring him - engaged with the starting player - into the game. The players cannot win as long as a Cave Troll is in play."

Progress: 1

leptokurt said:

Good idea. Sometimes i think: what designers think when they create quests like this? maybe need to play 3 or 4 players to really get what they create in this quest.

Also i dont understand idea of Goblin sneak!? : Discard top card, if treachery move to the next player?! For what ??? What is the point of that??

Actually when i play this adventure solo i remove this stupid armor, Mountain roof and change Stray goblin for Goblin spearman. Cose Stray goblin And mountain Roof make sense only in 3 + players game.

Glaurung said:

I tried my variation and (of course ) I still won the game. Ok, I am running a lore/tactics deck right now (Glorfindel, Denethor and Legolas) which won every single game against TLD so far, but with results between 80 and 110 only. Tne tactics part of my deck made it rather easy to defat the troll: Legolas + Vassall of the Windlord + Glorfindel gave me 9 ATT alone. I didn't even need to use Feint or Rivendell Blade. Would be interested how a spirit based deck fares against a boss enemy like Cave Troll.

Back to the discussion: 1) I think that fighting enemies should be the key part of this game. 2) Making progress in a quest should not be limited to the sheer amount of WP, but linked with other factors. A good example is Abandoned Tools in FfM, which you had to have to make any progress at all during the last stage. Dwalin is another good example of how fighting your enemies (instead of avoiding them) can give you a benefit. 3) Carrock - this is not a very difficult scenario, but I as a player still feel satisfied when clearing the stage from all these trolls. Booored already opened another thread in which he complained about the fact that it's possible to win the game with all/most enemies still alive. And he was right to do so. What we need is more Carrock! 4) Enemies should have high threat values, like that Cave Spider in TLD, so that a player has a reason to fight them. Right now it is to easy to keep your threat low enough so that enemies won't engage you, while you can bring out more WP than there is (additional) threat in the staging area. Glaurung is completely right that once the staging area is empty it's not very difficult to keep it clean. The Nameless Fear was a very clever designed card to prevent that from happening. 5) As a side note: Am I the only one who thinks that Fast Hitch is overpowered and should have been made unique?

leptokurt said:

Hmmm….. about Fast Hitch……. Card is cool, powerful sure. Too powerful? Maybe but…… I r think we already have a lot pf players cards in the game too powerful!

And Fast Hitch is not top in this list in my opinion. You talking about Fast Hitch is to powerful? Must to be unique? Ok but what about Beravur ability : is worse once per turn errata…… U courage also why not unique?

Yes i think you right should be unique……..

As i say before: situation can change the real tournament system with new rules and Restricted cards list. There is already a community playing this game more then 1 year. And we need optimal challenge we already past the beginners level right?

My main point if we get cool, powerful player cards give us really cool difficult quest and powerful encounter cards. Otherwise is boring.

Sure they could have made a different card (theme and name) to make it unique but with cards like Unexpected Courage or Fast Hitch it would go against all logic to make them unique because how could a knot or an emotion be so?

What they easily could have done was to limit Beravor's ability to one per round. Well, they still may if they use that errata, like with the Nazgul of Dol Guldur, for instance.

lleimmoen said:

Now After new Glorifindel release talk about errata is pointless. People who create card like new Glor. will never do Errata on Beravur.

Glaurung said:

I really agree here. And to be honest, Beravor is not really even close to how powerful this new Glorf is.

I'm currently 8-0 against TLD, two more games tomorrow, but I've already relegated this quest to join Carrock as joke DL7. And this is with at best, mediocre decks (and that is probably more than a tad polite). Got only my second turn 3 win today as well.

Dwarven Forge in play after setup, not too bad. Things get better when Snowbourn Scout shows up, slapping a progress on it. Burning Low adds another 3 threat, but thanks to Cave Torch, it is cleared, although a Goblin Follower is discarded. Good thing though, since now it can be engaged at will, so Scout blocks it and dies, allowing Imrahil to ready and hack the Follower down with Legolas. Quested for 7, got 4 progress (Goblin Sneak also showed up), then Legolas's kill for a total of 6/13.

Turn two, Escort from Edoras joins the fray, as does Erestor, quest for quite a lot more, Abandoned Mine shows up, along with another Goblin Sneak. Cave Torch clears Mine, then Shadow of the Past used to put it to the top the Encounter deck, so only one card needed to pass the locate test for 2B. Legolas kills one of the Goblin Sneaks, 2/17 progress, empty staging area.

Turn three, Escort returns via Stand and Fight, Theodred gets Celebrian's Stone, parties quest. Goblin Follower (haha) revealed, engages, so no threat added, then The Mountains' Roots. Pathetic 2 threat in the staging area vs 17 willpower, didn't even need to use Eowyn or Protector of Lorien to boost questing to complete the stage.

I think the most I've spent on stage 2B is three turns, one-turned it quite a few times. Maybe, like in the second game today, where I got 14/17 progress on 2B the first turn there, if you get Vast and Intricate and fail the locate test, wiping out all your progress, it could buy the Encounter deck enough time to get you. Then again, in that second game, I got back to back Massing in the Deep during 2B and still breezed through.

For long time i didn play coop games cose my partner was away for a while. So now we start to play coop game again with my friend. We gather now every week once and play all day from morning to evening (2 players games). And if we play some really good decks sinergy good together there is almost no chance for us to lose any game. Doesn matter difficult level. We can win any quest with out any problem. And we get boring again. Thanks MIO this one is really cool!!!

This quest is so briliant is only 1 quest which keep interesting to gather cose we never know we lose or win until the end. I think if MIO was not there is no point to gather for us to play this game in coop mode.

there is another opition how to make game more difficult: each player can use each sphere only once. This also make game more hard and then you can play quests difficult 7. FFM and RTM. They are quite cool then!

And last cool think in my opinion Nightmare mode: RHG and RTR without Beravur, Will of the west. Really cool then!!!

But other quests is pointless to play to easy and to predictive game play. Really boring.

About TLD: it can be realy nasty for solo game. Can switch sometimes very fast and in 1 turn change light to dark. Its happen rare but when happen i like it.

Like ambush , Location test i good idea but quite low execution.

Finished 10-0, last game almost got me. After clearing stage 1 in two turns (shocking mostly because Leadership/Tactics puts out massive 3 WP with Imra + Theo), failed the When Revealed on 2B despite burning most of my hand. Lightless Passage + Twisting Passage didn't make for a nice pair to see in the staging area, seven threat, was constantly needing Cave Torch for other locations so took a while to travel to LP, with 0-1 cards in hand for both parties, there was no way I was travelling to TP. Vast and Intricate wiped out my progress during 2B and threat hit high enough that on the last turn, couldn't even Cave Torch + Action on Zigil Mineshaft as the Dwarf deck would've been eliminated. Squeeked out a win in the end, Legolas really shining once again.

On a related note, Legolas had Steward of Gondor and even after paying for Beorn and Eagles of the Misty Mountains, ended up with 15 resources unspent, while Imrahil and Theodred had about 4 a piece as well.