I've tried the new version, and find the lack of treasure cards very disappointing. For me, that was one of the best parts of the game. You had to find the treasure to win, and get cooler stuff. Now it just seems boring without the treasure cards waiting for me in each dungeon. I want to combine the two games and put the treasure cards back in. Any thoughts on this?

You could use the store cards for treasure. Of course not all of them, you would still want to get items from the store. It's just a thought.

i do understand how you feel, but if you get the treasure all the time, ended up the hero will be way too over power, don't you think?

I think there's a search card or two that lets you randomly get store treasure. Plus, it would be a little bananas if you got too much. personally i enjoy the challenge. Nothing wrong with the OL winning.

I don't know; I just don't think it's as much fun without the treasure cards. It's one of my favorite parts of the game. Now there's really nothing to drive you forward, no reward for completing the task. And you can't really beef up your guys without playing through a ton of quests with nothing to motivate you. Getting a random treasure card every once in a while, and mostly no times at all is dissapointing. I have the 1st edition with all the expansions, so I guess I'll just play that instead of buying anymore of this edition. It sucks because I was really looking forward to collecting expansions for this new edition if it was fun to play.

This. I never played Descent 1, but the OL wouldnt have a chance in a blue moon if the players would get more items than they already can!

In the first edition, you only get a small amount of gold to buy equiptment to start. So you start off the game really weak. In the first part of the dungeon, there were bronze treasure chests, in the second part of the dungeon, silver treasure chests, and in the third part, gold. Each level of treasure chest had a deck that you would draw from, and that was further randomized by having face down colored treasure chests that were all different when the dungeon was set up. As you progressed through the game, you actually had to get to the treasure chests in order to win, since the monsters would become stronger as you went. Also, it was really cool to have great treasure cards waiting for you so you could equip them and be able to face the challenge. Often times you would not be able to win if you didn't get to the treasure chests, or if your random treasure wasn't something you could use. Now there's really nothing to draw you towards winning other than just acheiving what ever task you're sent to do. You don't have all these great treasure cards, and you hardly ever get to have treasure or buy cool stuff. The store deck is really lame when it come to equiptment compared to all the really cool treasure cards that you used to be able to get. After each dungeon, you would have to discard all the treasure you collected unless you were playing a campaign, in which case the OL would also have better cards that increased the monsters strengths.

I love both games, they're great in their own ways. Here's a thought though. With the release of info from Gencon about our 1st expansion with this game, they're adding more shop card items. I'm sure we'll be seeing more and more items that help balance out the "lacking" in the shop decks that it currently has.

I wouldn't suggest adding treasure cards/tokens back in. I suggest getting a thief with appraisal to dig to the treasure card in the search deck, lol.

You could try giving the heroes a free item draw from the store at the end of each encounter, and see how that works out for you.

Getting more gear more quickly will top out that aspect of their growth really quickly, but I get the impression that most of the real power advancement comes from skills in 2e, so hopefully it won't be TOO unbalanced.

you still need the gear, some skills wane in power in the second act and those that dont are expensive to get and use lots of fatigue. and of course the lack of coinage is not good for the uber spendy gear in act two making heroes suddenly weak against monsters that doubled in strength.

Steve-O said:

And BOY should he get some love. Upgrades for the overlord are duuuulllllllllllllll.

I guess my problem with the new edition would be that when I played the first two dungeons there was nothing to gather. The 'search' option was painfully lacking and generated random stuff that wasn't exciting. When I looked through the search deck, there wasn't anything in there that was cool. Plus, the first two dungeons were more of the fetch and carry type. The first edition gives you something to shoot for in that you can get good treasure cards; this one I found to be a bit boring. It's really the only thing holding me back from buying it. When I played the first edition, it was amazing and immediately made me get excited to play. I wanted to go out and buy all the expansions as soon as possible. I don't feel any of that with this edition. Why even play if you can't get cool stuff? Even in all the other games I like, you get cool stuff. Mansions of Madness; seaching the rooms gets you cool stuff. Arkham Horror; drawing cards or purchasing them gets you cool stuff. Talisman; drawing cards or purchasing them gets you cool stuff. This game; no cool stuff. Even the purchase deck in the first edition gives you better items. I could rant about this all day, but I guess my best bet is to wait and see if this gets fixed or not in the following expansions before wasting money on buying it.

I personally don't care about getting cool stuff.

I am more interested in tactical challenges.

Of what I read about first edition, it seems that objectives were about killing all enemies with not a lot of variations - thus repetitive.

At least, in 2nd edition, the quests are varied and the heroes and OL pursue different objectives.

nathrotep said:

Why is it okay to have to purchase things to get cool stuff in Arkham Horror and Talisman, but having to wait until between quests to purchase shop items and skills to get cool stuff in Descent isn't okay?

Because the purchase deck in Descent doesn't have any cool stuff; it's all regular, boring level one type stuff. And in both of those other games, you actually also get to find cool stuff as you play; the search option in the new descent gives you only a small chance. And then it's only stuff from the same deck, which seems boring to me. In the first edition, there was a ton of great treasure that you were trying to get. Now there really nothing that's worth looking forward to buying. Maybe they'll fix this in the expansions by adding back in better gear, but for now I'm going to wait until they do. Even in all the video games I like, a main part of the fun is raiding the treasure chests for loot. First edition had that type of feel while this edition doesn't. Not yet anyway.

Yes, but 'fetch and carry' quests are boring. The first edition may have had you try to fight your way through, but it was way more fun. And way more challenging. And it had better story lines.

I would suggest you stick to first edition, which seems to correspond more to your taste, rather than try to transform D2 into D1.

They are two different beasts, and as for me, I would not like D2 to become the "booty hunt" and 4 hours session game that D1 is - not speaking of the heavy ruleset.

D2 is fast, with simple rules. Heroes progress more slowly, get less goodies, so they have to make the best with what they have. That is what I like (but my playing background is wargaming rather than rpging).

That makes sense. I'm not a war gamer. But the first edition isn't just all about the fighting. There is a lot of stategy involved. It kind of reminds me of battle chess. Move and counter move. Try and outwit your opponent. Build your strength, lay your plans, then go in for the kill. If you dare. This new one just doesn't have that kind of feel to it. I don't want to sit around trying to fetch and carry while not being able to find anything to make my guys stronger. Plus no goodies. Too boring for my tastes.

Plus, I gotta say this; what's the incentive to even play this game without the treasure cards? You don't win anything, you don't find anything, you don't get piles of gold. You can't even buy anything cool. What are you playing for? The satisfaction of a job well done? That's lame.

nathrotep said:

Robin said:

****, you mean all the chess games I've played over the years were a complete waste of time because I didn't get any cardboard loot? Bummer!

Robin, I just want to say that I totally agree with you. I think that the slower, incremental buildup of gear in Descent 2nd Edition makes each upgrade seem all the more "precious" and "special". It's all relative. Each to their own. But count me among those who think the new edition is working just fine, thank you. I'm pretty sure that new equipment "shop cards" will be added to the mix with each new expansion as well.

nathrotep said:

What's the incentive to play ANY board game by that logic? It's all cardboard and plastic at the end of the day.

nathrotep said:

You win (or lose) the scenario. You find lots of potions and gold in the search cards (you just don't have cardboard tokens for them.) You can buy all the gear you want in between quests with the gold you have found previously, it just isn't as much gold as 1E had you rolling around in.

You say you aren't a wargamer, but you can't be much of an RPGer either, if the constant influx of new "loot cards" and cardboard money tokens is this important to you. Most RPGs don't have any physical components beyond dice and a pencil (and minis and map tiles for some of the more recent game lines, but D2E has those in spades anyway.) Money and XP being tracked on paper shouldn't be too much of a system shock for someone with a background in RPGs.

At any rate, I don't think this discussion is going to get much further in terms of constructive dialogue. There've been a few solid suggestions for how to up the phat lewts in 2E in past posts. If none of those work for you, then I would humbly agree with previous posters who have suggested D2E is not the game for you.

It's not about the cardboard tokens at all. It's about upgrading your characters. Even in D&D you find or buy stuff that you upgrade your characters with. My main point after receiving the suggestions was just to point out that the new game doesn't give anything exciting to upgrade with. In chess, it's a battle of wits that you play with strategy. People who play chess have to think several moves ahead to out match their opponent. Winning at chess is it's own reward. But we're talking about a game that has art work involved, with lots of things going on, a lot of it mixed with RPG elements. I suppose you could say that playing it just for the challenge is good enough. But when you've played the first edition, it pales in comparison. I think I may have figured out a way to mix the two in any event; change the search function to treasure chests and up the OL's creatures and cards with the cards that do that from the first edition campaign. I highly recommend that those of you who haven't played the first edition try it. You'll immediately see the difference. I hope that in the future the expansions will fix this problem with the second edition. For now I'm sticking to the first edition. And, of course, Mansion of Madness, Arkham Horror, and Talisman. All of these games are great and offer the type of game play that I'm describing. All of them allow you to upgrade and get cool loot as you play. Enough said.

I actually understand and agree with you, to a point. The search deck has one, ONE card in it that can cause you to find new, useful equipment. Players like new equipment, just like they dig new powers too. It's perfectly possible to play for many hours and not get anything beyond your starting gear (certainly in a four player game where money is spread thin). Is this really what people want from a dungeon crawl game? Especially when you compare that to the first edition that had gear thrown at you constantly. I think it's gone slightly too far the other way now.

Hell, you can't even keep potions from one quest to the other… Wow…