So in quest #2 in JitD (Brothers Durnog), do you get any conquest for killing one of the giants before you find it's heart? It was my understanding that you get four once you permanently kill one of them, yes?

LordPasty said:

Allow me to clarify... if you kill one of the giants before you find it's heart, I assume that you get no conquest tokens. I know that if you kill them permanently (once you have the heart), you get four conquest tokens. There were some in my group that felt that one should always get some conquest for killing any named, but in the quest it doesn't list any value for killing one of the giants before you get it's heart. (Four conquest for killing one of the brothers permanently ). The first giant (and a couple of rounds of spawns) caused enough pain and blocked the glyph long enough that it won the game for the OL.

As far as I know, nothing in Descent gives you any benefit for killing it unless it stays dead.

This quest is designed to teach the heroes a specific strategy. They shouldn't have any trouble once they figure out what to do.

Could somebody explain what is the best strategy to win this game for the players, please? I've now been the Overlord three times and everytime I've beaten their behinds sorely (4 PCs). Not that I'm complaining but I'm just a bit shocked how difficult the second quest seems. A suicide assault to the first room to get the silver chest before the corridor gets blocked seems to be the only viable tactic... Even if the players have superior mobility compared to the first giant it's easy for the Overlord to flood the corridor with spawns who eat players' resources slowly but surely and just keep the giant on the back row blocking the entrance to the room.

Open the first door. Rush the corridoor, forget killing anything. Grab the chest, key & glyph. Fall back to the centre, hold off waves of monsters until you kill the Giant. Assault past the rune-locked door, grab the chest & kill the guardian. Repeat.

Yep, that's what I referred to with the only viable tactic. One player actually tried this in our last game but the giant and the two sorcerers killed him before he could get to the chest. Soon after this the corridor became flooded. I guess the key is to rush the corridor with every PC so that there are good chances that at least somebody can get the chest and activate the glyph. Thanks!

Sounds like you may be doing a few things wrong.

Mainly, you should have no problem grabbing the key and activating the glyph, at minimum, before any of the monsters in the room even get a turn. Run action, spend fatigue to move further, drink a vitality potion for more fatigue. Even the slowest hero in the game should be able to get the key in one turn; a moderately fast hero should be able to get the chest; a really fast hero can do everything and escape to town. If the giant even gets to take a swing at you before you've accomplished your mission, you're probably doing it wrong.

There's probably no reason to event fight the giant until you've got its heart. It's slow, and once you've activated the glyph, you can bypass the corridor by going through town, so it probably can't trap anyone. Grab chest and rune key, go to town, come back to the dungeon in the center, and open the rune door. Use the same tactic for the gold chest and the next glyph if you want. Then you're up a bunch of conquest and you have gold weapons, so the game should pretty much be over.

Also, I'm concerned that you're "flooding the corridor with spawns." The heroes should at least have no problem keeping LoS to the entire corridor (remember that monsters don't block LoS for purposes of spawning), which means no spawning there. If you're spawning them in unseen corners of the room and then moving them into position in front of the giant, that's probably legal, I just want to emphasize that there are important restrictions on spawning--that's one of the things that new players often seem to have trouble with.

Most beginners miss the uses of Fatigue, especially if they've played Runebound ever.

The JotD Quests are designed to teach players how to overcome various types of chalenge and actually play Descent, rather than them treating it as a standerd dungeon-bash.

In one game of this we had Runewitch Astarra with Sharr the Brightwing, which worked out as I placed a Sundered Glyph in the first room.

I Killed the heroes 4 times before they mananged the 5th time playing the dungeon to actually pass it. They all thanked me for crushing them...as soon they saw, the point I had no mercy was for them to learn to use theire heroes...now I got an extra 4 chalanging Heroes who want me to be theire OL. (imagine the happines on theire faces when they actually killed the first giant, not to mention, win the game).

Our group played descent for the first time today, and this scenario is realy tricky. The first two times they instadied, until we figured out that monsters do not block line of sight in the purpose of spawning monsters. Seemed a bit wierd that the gigant was pooping beastmen. We are currently in the middle of the 3rd time, and they are doing better. With only 2 heroes they lack alot of basic tactics that can be used with 3 or more, like shieldwalls blocking corridors etc.