Yesterday I played Island of Dread expansion for the first time, after getting familiar with the base game. I was somewhat disappointed by it, because it looked too easy for most part of the game. Those are the points I noticed:

- In game setup, you draw an awesome amount of Item cards. Two Cards for each market stack, except Tarianor which gets 6 cards... plus you draw one Captain per city... way too much cards there!

- Green and Yellow quest are easy, much easier than the base game; there's no treacherous green card like the Assassin on the Loose or the Carnivorous Flora, and many Yellow cards have 2 Lives... easy!

- Gold rewards are huge. After 5 Green Challenges I was able to buy the Frost Axe and the Immolation Rune. Needless to say that I was almost unbeatable for every Green or Yellow Card in the deck

- Red Cards are finely themed and give good challenges, but it's pretty easy to achieve Items/Allies in IoD so they are no problem

- Sea Deck cards are randomly difficult, but generally lame; this is made to encourage travelling from one island/continent to the other, while moving on the landside has never been so difficult. It happened many times that I cannot move even with a 5 dice roll.

- Island of Dread has dreadful Challenges. If you don't find Assif Shib-Sa early you'll have serious trouble facing those enemies one after the other.

Basically I found the game to be less challenging, less tense and less entertaining than Rise of the Dragonlords (base game). You travel around pretty safe till you decide to go to the Island of Dread, which you must face with a good number of Legendary Items. But the path to the island is not that funny; it's easy to increase stats and to buy objects. Does anyone think it's way too simple?

I'd rather change that weird rule of drawing 2 market Cards instead of 1 at setup, with the only exception of Tarianor. But I can't make anything else, except increasing the experience you need to improve stats. Quests will still be lame and easy, though. Do you have the same feeling about Island of Dread and perhaps could suggest some nice house rules? The only thing I really enjoyed was the final showdown at the Island. That's really tough.

It looks like nobody has anything to say about IoD. Everyone enjoys this expansion as it is?

well we use the optional rule so we throw a dice

1 no cards

2 t/m 5 1 card

6 t/m 9 2 cards

10 3 cards

in general i like the expansion only i do agree on the easy green and yellow part.

island of the dread is ok to do because some monsters give bonuses so i do not agree on that part with you

I have an excel spreadsheet comparing the stats from IoD with base Runebound and everything you say about rewards is true...you do get more in IoD. I also think the challenges are slightly easier, but I cannot remember the actual stats.

I've never had a problem with there being too many items available. I even adopted the two card per market stack to the base game (but not 6!)

I don't think that IoD is any easier, if only because those darned silver challenges are so tough. You do need to buff up your character more than in the base game, which is why, perhaps, the rewards are a little greater and the other challenges not AS tough. Anything that speeds up character development is therefore welcome in this expansion. I love Runebound, but after a certain amount of time (say 2 hours) it gets a bit...tedious.