Ok so I recently started fiddling with LOTR:LCG again and picked up Khazad-dum and tried playing Into the Pit, and have had to abort it 3 times in a row, apparently if you can't get rid of the East-Gate location in the first 2 turns you're not ever going to get rid of it as the cards in the staging area build up to quickly and the will power isn't there to overcome the threat, or am i missing something? The first game I tried I got the Zigil Mine on the first and second turn (10 threat total). The second game I lost a hero to the sudden pitfall and had the location that added +1 threat to Dark locations on the second turn. Or am I missing something that would not seem to make the game impossible?

You can take 5 threat to explore the Zigil Mineshaft. Yes, clearing both for 10 threat is nasty (hello Loragorn), but better than leaving them in the staging area. Also, you have th Cave Torch, could use it for 3 progress on both (separate turns) and only need to raise threat by 4.

It was my understanding you could only explore the active location (i.e. East-Gate), the ones in the staging area remained there until they became the active location.

Zigil Mineshaft has a special action on it where each player raises their threat by 1 to place one progress token on Zigil Mineshaft.

So it looks like the first shock when entering Moria is a tough one! Over the last two days I aborted my two-player game about 15 times. Too many and too dangerous treacheries and shadow effects! These goblins have started to piss me off with +3axes they are constantly getting! I am thinking of trying to put in play as many allies as possible,one for questing and one for defending each turn because I am tired of instant kills versus my heroes. And I hear things get a little more difficult in the quests yet to come…

But do you think its difficulty level is really only 5? I found it pretty easy to beat missions with 5 in the past…

This is one of those quests that is easier solo than 2-player. My brother and I got slaughtered the first few times we tried to play it. Then I tried the quest solo with my dwarf deck, and blew through it in 6 turns or so.

I just started to play it. The east gate as part of setup is landing straight as an active location so that threat 7 doesn't bother. I found going till Khazad really fast, but then in 3 games I played so far you should rush in the sec main location as in last one you can't play cards so if you don't have a strong team lined up you will be smashed. I had a team of heros ( with Stuart of Gondor) heaps of resources and cards to play , but it was to late and yeah it's tough with those nasty threachery cards and goblins...

It was my understanding you could only explore the active location (i.e. East-Gate), the ones in the staging area remained there until they became the active location.

Toadkiller,

Every location is imediatly considered explored when it has the number of progress tokens equal to its quest points, independently where it is (staging area or active location).

From CoreSet page 6:

From CoreSet page 15:

From FAQ: