Let's talk about: Game Difficulty!

Sounds about right to me.

 

Hopefully not too much but i do understand the need to make it more of a slow start than a cliff drop early.

 

I really hope they'd remove enemies (extra copies in minion groups) or weaken the cards, but not remove entire maps. Remember the tutorial level with the War Pig? Because that whole battle is gone, there are now tragically few War Pigs in the game. We need more War Pigs!

 

Hillarious and accurate!

 

Challenge is good in the beginning. Frustration? Not so much. Now, frustration once you're in the game and invested...?

 

Isn't something challengeing and something frustrating the same thing except your mindset?

 

The difference in my mind is on how much control one has to overcome it.

For example: I encounter a certain creature very early in the game.
A Challenge is discovering it is invulnerable to certain types of damage and equipping my guys accordingly so there is a fighting chance to defeat it.
Frustration is dicovering that there is basically no other gear to choose from at this stage due to weapon drops thus far have only been of the particular type that mob is immune to. Having to wait til tomorrow for earlier adventures to reset to have another go at drops / gold.

 

Yeah, pretty much.

 

I'm running a party of level 7 dwarves and having a really hard time on the last level of Beneath the Frozen, the ice bridge, the Trogs totally turn into a phalanx on a bridge, and my only option I can see is filling my deck with Waivering Faiths or praying I'm lucky with Mazes, both of these cards seem really bad in every other circumstance, so I sold all of them by this point. but I just feel like the armor they have is over the curve for the level really hard, I swung for 12 damage once and it was completely blocked! Getting behind the guys just asks for your units to be killed, and the hard line of it is I have yet to not lose a character by the second turn, and I'm playing an all dwarf party for the HP (okay I'm playing them two dwarves and elf had a weird dynamic, and dwarves are awesome).

The armor just rolls to good at 3 and up, means they have a good shot of blocking 8, which is higher then i can normally get off, and they are swinging for 6 at range. The knockback effect of the armor just helps keep them bunched up so if I do move in they are getting a solid set of attacks on me, and my cleric can't keep up that damage rate when I have to deal with 3 vs 1. And the cone fire spells, don't get through cause armor blocks the on the turn damage from them too.

There isn't enough room with the bridge to outmaneuver them, and cause they wield spears they don't need to move off the bridge enough to let you get a good flanking position. IDK, I'm just stuck on the level and can't seem to crack through them, perhaps there is something useful here I've not seen, but the level keeps slaughtering me. I like me some difficulty but the armor these guys have is getting annoying. I think uping the die roll need for them by one would be sufficent, as it is now, I feel like every one of the last few missions requires me to go get a completely different set of gear.

I would just grind my level up and hope for better gear, but I can only play levels once a day, which makes me so so sad, why do you limit how much time I can play you game?

 

Yes, the different adventures require different gear. After training you to handle all the individual types of challenges the game provides, you will then have the items and know-how to face crazy combinations of said challenges. Like the tutorial-to-main-game progression elsewhere.

For this case: yeah, if you're doing exactly what the enemies want you to do, you need to change your items and strategy. How did you do in The Wizard's Workshop? Similar strategy applies: instead of jumping behind a Clumsy enemy, it's one with specialty Armor; anything that ignores Armor is your friend; as is anything that causes enemy discards.

Basically, what Pengw1n said. I just wanted to remind you that you totally trounced a similar challenge once already, and tell you "knock 'em dead."

 

Yeah I don't have access to that, I've been trying to get some more piercing as I haven't gone out of may way for it earily because the damage was low, and I was taking the movement attacks to help increase dwarf mobility. As far as getting behind them on the bridge, its just not an option they are clustered together before I can make that move. I've gone and unlocked the undead level and got the knife from there and I'm going to go grind a bit and try to get some more armor bypass or removal stuff before I tackle them again. Yeah I know I've been walking into what they want, but I haven't had any other options, that layout is really an uphill battle. Also Zombies don't get injured and I can make skeletons discard their weapon immunity cards, >.< seems silly, but as long as the game is consistent in how things work I'm good, I like that I cannot just go into every fight and trounce it, overall I like the difficulty, its uphill but not insurmountable. I don't like leveling up, gaining a new slot and until I find gear for it getting filler cards, omg it wrecks you til you get the gear in there.

 

I'm glad you came back to talk more: a lot of people like to get angry and storm off as soon as things turn difficult.

And as you can see, yes, that board right there is where things turn difficult. After you learn to handle everything else, including getting behind the enemy, they reduce your methods of getting behind the enemy. Pengw1n's suggestion is one way; another is to stay near the bottommost edges, maybe even spread out, and let the enemies follow you down.

But really, you do want to get anti-Armor gear, not just for this level. While trying that, be sure not to underestimate your tools: even the 2 damage from Penetrating Zap is useful, because it's still better than 0 damage, and you can hit those darn range-2 Troglodytes from range 3.

And you asked this:

Because they want to encourage people to play other adventures, and minimize "the grind." If this module still defeats you, move on. Seriously, move on! Unless it's a "story gate," you don't need to beat it now.

 

Whelp I got a little more penetrating gear and got past the level, though I would say it was largely luck, they only had one set of armor, and i got ride of it and dropped two of the heavies first round, I however almost lost my dwarf wizard in the affair. I won some legendary boots for my efforts plowing through this mess so I'm happy, but I think it was more luck then anything on the fight. I still think that the armor should activate on rolls 4 and above instead of 3, when they get 2 and occasionaly 3 sets of armor piercing is the only thing that gets through them, and they take a whole handful of hits to go down, though I'm a big fan of the card All Out Attack, as it lets me get some real solid damage in against these resilient foes. On that note, will piercing attacks work against a skeletons slashing piercing resistance?

 

I, on the other hand, did have to replay adventures a number of times.

I love the difficulty, but I think it should be made very clear to the players that you are expected to have to replay adventures, and the way that the economy and talent system contribute to making that a meaningful thing to do.

In almost any game but this one, level 1 loot is useless within 15 minutes, but in cardhunter, I've got a level 1 rare equipped on my PvP group, and wish I had 2 more copies of it, and the level 1 "vendor trash" is worth as worth the same as the level 20 vendor trash. Both of those need highlighting along with the replaying expectation.

It wouldn't hurt to suggest leveling up a second party, either - it made the experience a lot more fun for me.

 

Thus does "Armor defeat you." Before they lowered difficulty, the first levels were basically a sequence of "range-2 Attacks defeat you," "Armor defeats you," "Blocks defeat you," and so on, until you learned the counters. Penetrating Attacks are the counter to Armor (or just one of them!), and making you suffer if you don't have a counter (or making the enemy suffer when you DO) is the only way to make you care. Same with any interwoven strategic system, really.

But speaking of that:

The Penetrating keyword will not save you: these Armor cards break the normal rules (they don't even have a dice roll), and so when they say they "always trigger" and "prevent all damage" they really mean it. The same applies to other such cards. Time for more counters!

 

Acid spray has always been one of my favorite cards. AoE Damage, AoE terrain mods and armor removal if used well...all in one spell!