Hello, everyone. I have a question about threat. Whenever I play, locations keep flooding the staging area. Is there anyway of clearing the locations out of the staging area or do I basically lose if I can't ever get my willpower to overcome the threat?

Step 1. Don't play mono-Tactics.

Step 2. Travel to the locations. Then their threat doesn't add to the staging area and you can explore and discard them.

There are a few cards that place progress tokens on locations even if they are not the active location. Locations get discarded when they have enough progress tokens on them, whether they are the active location or not.

Snowbourn Scout (leadership ally, core set) places 1 progress token on any location when he enters play.

Northern Tracker (spirit ally, core set) places 1 progress token on every location in the staging area when he commits to a quest. This is a really powerful effect.

Asfaloth (lore attachment in Foundations of Stone AP) lets you put 1 progress token on any location in play -- 2 if attached to Glorfindel. The attachment has to go on an elf hero. Also a really strong effect (even if not on Glorfindel).

Ride to Ruin (spirit event in the Hills of Emyn Muil AP) allows you to discard a Rohan ally to put 3 progress tokens on one location.

The Riddermark's Finest (spirit ally, also in the Hills AP) has an ability to lets you exhaust and discard him to put 2 progress tokens on one location.

There are also some other ways to deal with "location lock." Cards like Strider's Path (lore event, lets you instantly travel to a location that was just revealed) or Secret Paths (lore event, ignore the threat of 1 location during questing for that phase) can help in questing when threat has built up. Or counter by beefing up your own questing prowess with attachments like Celebrian's Stone (leadership attachment, +2 willpower) or Faramir (exhaust to choose a player and give all of that player's characters +1willpower for that phase).

One thing I find helpful if to go to a card database like Hall of Beorn or the Card Game Database deckbuilder . Type "location" in the search field and then set it to only show "Lore" cards or something like that. You will get any card that uses the word "location" in its text, a good way to see most of the cards that are meant to help deal with locations.