Let's talk about: Game Difficulty!

Same here. 1 movement card + 1 attack card + 1 something else(between armor/blocks/buffs/etc.) each round makes more sense to me instead of just random. I believe you draw more than 3 sometimes? Those cards could be the random cards.

 

I don't think I've encountered any adventures where you only had one way to complete it. For example, I beat the troggs with a combination of high damage attacks and piercing attacks rather than armor destruction.

 

I like the campaign. Sure it's hard, but never (so far) to the point of making me want to quit; instead I get a strong feeling of achievement when I finally beat a module (which is the whole reason I play games).

MP, on the other hand, is both boring (due to random choice of map and having to wait for my opponent to move) and way too hard for me. Sure I can beat Gary easily (even though he's a couple hundred points above me), but I lose to humans ranked hundreds of points below me; I think I've only once beaten a human opponent. And now there are so many people in beta that the lobby is full of players my level, so I just do the campaign instead.

 

Very true but I didn't say there was only ONE way just that it's apparent BM has a specific way in mind that they want you do use.

It's conceivable that you could beat trogs with just high damage cards or piercing damage but it's improbable to beat them with low damage and no pierce or discards/armor destruction.

It's all about having the right tools for the right job. MY issue is that it's difficult at lower levels to have those correct tools.

 

You can use their free moves to your advantage.

Never ever use your attacks against a monkey that's still facing you. Once they use their free moves to slip behind you, they'll also conveniently turn their backs. THAT is the point where you can attack.

You can also spread your units around. That way you can often use a ranged spell to make the enemy turn around so you can whack them in the back with another guy.

And lava also works great. All the Ducks and Acrobatic Flips do nothing against Hot Spot / Wall Of Fire.

 

"Lava works great" is an advice that works for almost every enemy or map, actually

 

I've attempted that strategy. Often enough, when monkeys expose their back, if I turn around to attack, I'll simply be exposing my character's back to another group of monkeys. There's just no winning against primates.

I'll use Warcry to remove all their block cards before I attack. Unfortunately, if they have their racial card, this allows them to draw another card which, of course, turns out to be a block. And they have tons of blocks. Duck and Acrobatic Flip are infuriating. That's not even counting the fact they get Monkey armor as well, plus a ton of free move, plus attacks that do massive damage when backstabbing and enough health to survive an alpha strike.

 

Yeah, you'll often get hit in the back at least once during the fight. Still, the monkeys don't really have strong attacks apart from Cowardly Attack so you can usually outdamage them if you make sure not waste your attacks when they can block.
And once you manage to thin their numbers a little, they'll often draw very few actual attacks, thanks to all those blocks and free moves in their decks...

 

The last map of Temple of Terror and The Dragon Lair have been the most difficult levels for me. Up to this point, I've found the levels challenging and fun. I really like designing a strategy with my party's gear in mind.

Zaius is really hard. I've tried to use stone wall and other cards to cut the bridge off and isolate a smaller number of monkeys to defeat. Path of knives seems like it would be effective too but I just don't have enough of them to make it a sound strategy. With monkeys I generally just try to surround my characters with as much blocking terrain as possible and flood their adjacent squares with lava. Once the monkeys surround you, they generally have enough movement to get away though.

The dragon has me stumped. I find myself just praying for Nimbus every round. I've loaded my dwarf with a series of step attacks to get him in range but this dilutes damage output. Because of the shimmering armor, I've loaded my caster with spells to block line of sight and TK people around. THe only time I've been close to defeating the dragon was a series of incredibly lucky draws including multiple nimbus and a really early on path of knives. Anyway, no luck yet and I'm stuck on these two levels. I hesitate to suggest how they could be improved because I've heard some brilliant strategies in this forum that I hadn't considered. For now, back to the drawing board.

 

It looks like most of the latter part of the game (gnomes onwards) is being rebalanced for the next build. One thing in particular that may bring heart to many people is this, from Rudolpho - Card Hunter's twitter mule:

 

Long time player (~2 months or so) first time feedback. I'm a pretty dedicated gamer, so maybe not the intended audience for the thread but oh well.

I have had a similar experience of the difficulty curve getting nasty around level 8 or so, but nothing impossible. I'm not huge in the "customize your deck to the module" school of thought, because you could end up 3 stages deep before you realize that you should have included specific gear/abilities. I mostly geared my party out with a balanced deck build and tried to include a little of everything. 8/10 times movement and positioning killed more encounters than getting the right cards (though drawing 2 firestorms in the first round always helps XD)

I did take a break from the campaign for about a week and do some multiplayer, which was really fun vs people and pretty easy against the AI. I still had fun when I was losing fights. This did help get some gearing options rounded out and I'd recommend people try this before throwing their hands up.

However I am stuck about level 12 or so on the massive cleaving goblin level. I can sometimes get him to kill about 6-7 goblins before I kite and kill the rest and then him. I will probably go back soon and gear out another party just to have more options. Right now my warrior is more of a fighter and not a tank, so having a more tanky character will help heaps for that particular module.

All in all the game feels good and not too grindy, or pay to winny. I did buy pizza in the beta because Time > Money friend, and I didnt feel like grinding a ton. I'll probably come back once the game goes gold.

 

I just started a couple of weeks ago and I love this game. So much, that I plan to buy some pizza. I'm currently at lvl 10 and am feeling the difficulty spike. I have to grind on the lvl 8 modules to get items and xp. I still haven't been able to beat the first fight in Lord Staffords Teasure yet. I've actually just started playing a new party, in hopes that maybe two fighters in my party might make it easier.

 

It's winnable with the 'standard' party, but it should be winnable with a wide variety too. In truth, you WILL get reasonable if not great gear, and with the right tactics I think it's unlikely that anyone will face a brick wall. If you are close, then sometimes the draws and dice will work in your favour and take you that last mile.

 

Weirdly enough, I didn't have much issues with the monkeys or the dragon. On my first playthrough of everything level 13+, High Mountain Pass was the most difficult, especially the levels with loads of goblins and loads of ogres. Everything else I managed on first try, or maybe I lost one combat in total.

I used a human warrior, dwarf warrior, elven priest party. I didn't have much high-level gear yet since this was my first try and I didn't play much MP.

For the monkeys, mostly I'd just huddle my party in a corner to reduce the available squares for attackers. Normally monkeys come in groups, so the maximum attacks they get per turn is one per monkey. With two warriors, you just make sure to have enough armor and parries so that you can take that one hit. Just attack despite Simian Reflexes - after a monkey has attacked you, he can't use that card this turn, and he'll have to discard it at the end of the turn. It's more important that the monkeys don't get in your back, so you don't get Pickpocketed.

For first Zaius, stay back and let the two monkeys come. Kill them quickly. Then focus fire on the hydra, then kill him.

With the dragon I was just dumb lucky - I sent my human warrior in first, and he got killed almost immediately. My dwarf was late but he was decked out with Powerful Swords. The dragon doesn't have much in the way of defenses so a barrage of frenzied Powerful Hacks made minced meat out of him.

 

I think they have the difficulty of the campaign just about right ... there were only 2 adventures that sent me scurrying to the forums for help (Temple of scales and Dungeon of the swamp king) and it was only one particular battle in each that had me stumped ... there were others that took me several tries but generally a few deck adjustments saw me making it through ... and deck building is a good slice of the fun in this game IMHO

 

Monkeys were very hard for me during the beta, but much easier this time around. They did detune a couple of levels (one only slightly) but the difference was mostly knowing how to beat them.