Further into the game, the Good, the Bad, and the ones I avoid like a plague.

I can without a doubt say that my early lucky drops, that gave my wizard approximately 6 Fire Storms is single handedly the only reason I am as far into the game I am.

Strategy and placement are good aspects of this game, but there are literally several missions that require days of past mission grinding to hopefully get some attack cards you can use to beat the mission. Several missions, that I had lost to repeatedly, were later beaten, not only with the same set up, but simply because the enemies got unlucky draws versus my lucky draws.

Days of past mission grinding are actually not an issue... EXCEPT you can only do missions once a day.

The sheer annoyance of waiting a full day to do another mission when you literally need some new equipment to progress the story is painstakingly annoying in areas.

However I am impressed with the unlockable content, and the sheer amount of quests that can and will unlock later on in the game giving you options for different places to go.

I am at a point where I have the equipment to win (Yes I know each area is a puzzle and requires different setups enough with that already) Considering however that each area is a puzzle, as well as a turn based strategy game, I offer one potential improvement that can help with some of the frustration in some areas. The icons of the enemies that will appear in the next adventure, and an option to switch your equipment up at that point before you enter the adventure.

A hard game is good, a game that is hard because it has not yet given you the tools to "win" and you need to grind missions that you need to wait 24 hours to grind again, makes things a bit more irritating.

I advise the ability to allow a player to complete any given mission three times a day. This makes it so people can't "bot" and grind the easy missions infinitely, but gives the player who wishes to advance more chances to earn the loot necessary to advance the game. This will probably help more in the late game of the advancing level 50 characters when the full game comes about.

Another thing that I find slightly annoying, I hear the maximum adventure level is 18 in the current campaign. At level 14, I have yet to gain a yellow/gold power token, which is required for several pieces of my gear that would greatly help my advancement of the campaign module. But I still don't have one. A single one at level 14 would help my PvE situation so much, and yet I still lack a single yellow power token. I have had this gear for ages and at this point it feels like the game is intentionally taunting me. I think, oh the next level I can finally use a blue yellow gear. Nope. Ok the next level. Nope. Ok I hit 14, surely now I can use it. Ha Ha NOPE!

Is level 15 the first time I get a yellow token? If so I have to ask this question. Why? No seriously, WHY?! You gave me this gear at level 10 if I recall, during one of the basic missions, as one of the basic rewards, not even a club member reward. Why is it nearly 14 hours of gameplay later, am I still unable to use any of this yellow token gear. This isn't just frustrating, it's borderline infuriating. I think to myself, gee this mission would be so much easier, if I could use this gear I got 5 levels ago, but no, you've told me no, and 5 levels later, I'm still told no.

I understand the reason for restricting too powerful gear, I don't understand the reason for the sheer length of time you have to wait to use gear you got a long time ago.

At least with the blue token gear, I didn't wait nearly as long after getting it, but the ability to use yellow token gear has taken way too long by comparison.

Now this particular issue feels more punishing then it does to make the game feel hard. One yellow token at 13 would be a god send for so many players that are struggling with some missions. I know, I'm staring those pieces in the face right now.

Another issue, farming older campaigns. I can't be the only player who feels irritated that I need to entirely regear my character because my current build is "too powerful" and then I am reset to my original HP. I am fairly certain that this is to prevent particularly powerful cards from later campaigns being used, such as 19 damage cards or the like. Fair enough. Could we at least have those pieces of gear unequipped as we enter the mission to save us that hassle? It might be difficult with the engine being used, but if it's possible that would be nice.

A warning maybe, this mission does not allow you to use the gear currently equipped. Pieces of gear that do not meet the current campaign requirements will be unequipped.

Now these complaints aren't to say the game is bad, but there are some missions that feel particularly punishing. The missions with a ton of enemies, I can't see myself having been victorious without some of my incredible early drops. The crude plate using enemy areas, specifically frozen earth feels punishing as opposed to legitimately hard. There are a lot of area in the game I look at as "unfair" Tree forts of the goblin King suffers a similar problem in mission two, but not nearly to the extent of beneath the frozen earth. You could say I have not gotten the equipment I need yet, which comes to the problem of you need to allow me some more grinding time, instead of waiting a full day to grind for more. The ability to do 3 full missions a day would help with this some.

But now I will talk about the missions with a ton of enemies, I literally feel like the game blessed me with the amount of fire storm equipment it gave me, because I can't see myself having beaten many of these missions without this equipment. Two of the pieces are in fact Legendary equipment. Now does this mean that they are unbeatable without? I doubt it. I think it does however make them unnecessarily punishing. I honestly have not seen this equipment more then once... So, you can in fact say this stuff has become a crutch. I need it. I honestly could not progress without it.

I feel many of the problems could be done away with, by simply allowing a player to repeat the missions at least more then once a day. Not unlimited, but at least more then once. We are supposed to grind for gear, so let us grind, just don't make us wait so long to do so.

 

Are you sure about that? You get items with golden tokens from the multi-player starter pack and cannot use them for quite some time, but i don't remember ever getting one of them before the time.
Maybe you can report the dungeon that gave it to you?

I don't think you are required to grind for gear, you have to adjust your tactics to what is available to you. And if you manage to win a single MP each day (for example by getting Gary) you get quite some extra loot without much effort.

 

I think this is some really valuable feedback. Good eyes sir, good eyes.

I got through most of the game with only 2 AOE cards, both acid sprays. I understand your concern on the difficulty though. I actually started a new team once I hit lvl 10 because I was rather stuck -- on a side note I was happy to do so and somewhat refreshed that I felt I needed to.

As far as the items go, I can see that I have a lvl 13 common item with a yellow power token, Sturdy Rapier. I hadn't noticed this during the course of the adventures and likely got it after, but the rarity and level suggests that it would be possible and perhaps even probable to get it a few levels before you could use it. I don't think I'd mind having to look forward one level, but two seems pretty far out of reach, especially when you are struggling through the campaign.

Perhaps creating a suggestion thread about only giving out items at more appropriate levels (whatever you feel is appropriate) would be beneficial.

 

I am 90% certain that the gear I obtained was not from my starter pack. Which isn't to say I was not aware of that gear when I got it either, but I am relatively sure I obtained the gear after receiving the starter deck gear. I will make certain. When able.

As for not being required to grind for gear, you and I are either playing entirely different games or you are getting extraordinarily lucky with your drops. Even my mighty legendary fire storm giving cards were received after repeating several missions from level 3 to 6 over and over again. And I literally use these in tandem with my wizards resilliant hide and my clerics shimmering mail shoes to sometimes dish out 12 damage in a single turn to every enemy on the screen and none to myself.as well as four burning damage often not even hitting my own team. This isn't to say there are not alternative methods within my growing collection, but I can easily see my alternatives requiring a lot more luck to have been victorious.

Now this is not to say luck should not be a factor, but it is annoying for the player that literally lacks the gear through poor luck of drops, to not have a few more chances to go back for more gear in a day instead of waiting upwards of 20 hours. There needs to some more reasonable ways for a player to continue the journey without having to wait a full day because they simply lack gear.

As for getting through with two aoe cards, I can see how, especially since the acid sprays make the enemy maneuver to avoid them as opposed to being more strategic with it.

I don't feel it is bad to get items with gold tokens early on. I feel that the sheer amount of time you are made to wait for a gold token is the much larger problem. I think a single gold token at 12 followed by 3 more blue tokens then another gold token at 16 would make it more reasonable and less frustrating to the player who is having attacks being used on them that,are attached to some of the gear they have that they can't use yet.

 

Electrum staff. Axe of the dark soul. Simple axe. These things are all level 14 or below but require gold tokens.

Seems to me that if you don't get any gold tokens by level 14, there shouldn't be any weapons of level 14 or lower that require gold tokens. I realize there's no actual logic behind that, but it definitely feels wrong.

 

That is definitely an issue and may be worth reporting in the bugs forum. As for requiring days of replaying past content that's not something I've encountered. Maybe the OP should reassess their strategies, I've found more than one adventure suddenly got ten times easier when I approached group of monsters X first instead of group of monsters Y for example.

 

I can address the power token thing. It has to do with how items with two power token slots are compared to all the others:

As to saying there's a PROBLEM with getting higher-power-token things "early," that's a different matter. Some people complain "I just unlocked such-and-such but I don't have anything to equip for it!" These people like to have something ready and waiting in their inventory.

 

If you tell a player they need to reassess their strategy, especially one as late into the campaign as I am, what exactly are you accomplishing.

No actually, if it was so easy for you by just changing your overall strategy and not needing to go back and grind for more gear tell me if these areas sound familiar.

The frozen Earth followed by the throne of stench.

The order of the core, Descent into the core.

Goblins in the woods, Tree forts of the goblin King.

These are just some particularly hard ones I picked out. Give us some examples of the cards you are using for these areas that didn't require much grinding, and simply a change of strategy. For that matter give us multiple examples. Because you know, not everyone will have the same cards as you did, or do. Luckily though if you mention key attack cards, or even types of attacks, the players here should be able to use the advice you apparently are able to give, and apply it to their own game.

And if it requires specific placement, try throwing in some examples of where the player should move early on to give themselves the edge they need.

After all, we don't need to grind for more gear for several days. Just a change of approach. So share with me, and thus the community, this change of approach that get's the job done with such ease. Ten times easier in fact!

 

It's not so much bad to get an powerful item earlier, it's the extent to how long it takes to get your upper token after having that gear sit there for so long. Having something ready and waiting in their inventory I get, but I've had it sitting their for 4 levels, some pieces would make certain missions worlds easier, or at least potentially.

My issue is more of a mix on when we get it, and how long it takes after for us to get use out of it.

 

Took me less than a day of regrinding for gear, not the days you claim are required. If I'd kept at it I might have been able to beat them without that.

Have not played those, only played the first two treasure hunts as I'm short on spare cash to buy pizza.

Did not require me to regrind for gear.

I'll try to keep track of what I do when I hit them again on the test server, right now I barely remember how I changed my strategy. I can tell you I beat the troggs in the Frozen Earth with a combination of high damage attacks and piercing attacks to overcome their armor when my wizard didn't draw enough armor destruction spells. On the second map of Beneath the Frozen Earth I put my warrior and my priest in the choke point where the bore they brunt of the damage and just hacked the troggs apart while my wizard blasted them from safety. My warrior and priest both died but my wizard took out the last two heavily wounded troggs taking minimal damage themselves because I had them use their mobility (elf wizard, all elf party actually. My warrior and priest might have outlasted the troggs had they been dwarves or even humans) to stay out of reach and around corners.

 

The wiki says you get a bronze token at level 15.

I don't think the problem is with the power tokens. I think it's with being given level 12-18 items when the player is only level 3-5.

I think this happens in two places:
- When Gary introduces the "Chest and Barrel" around level 3, and suggests a Magnificent Chest.
- When Gary introduces multiplayer, around level 4.

I suggest the items given in these cases are waaay ahead of what the player needs. They should be toned down.

 

I think 1 early token would ease a bit of pain iin the campaign instead of only letting us play with it in multiplayer.

 

Short hints for the levels you mentioned:

Any cards with penetrating. Any cards that help remove armor. Hot Spot. Team moves (Shuffle, Team etc. ) Resistant Hide against the trog wizards, often found on robes.

Team moves. Resistant Hide. Hover.
Just make sure to save moves until all foes have attacked, that way it's usually easy to stay of lava yourself.

The block cards won't help against terrain spells, so use them. Chops. Any ranged attacks work well against the harder hitting foes.

 

Re: Goblins in the woods

Also, when you see more than one goblin berserker at least one of them is usually holding a Raging Strike figure out which and hit him fast and hard before he can use it and you'll probably kill him before he damages your characters.

 

Well it appears you are capable of giving better advice then simply changing strategies. However none of your advice indicates a factor of ten in difficulty change, nor is it strategies I myself did not use.

The kicker. For the trogs I had to regrind past modules for gear for about 3 days. I have 11 level 7 characters and higher to show for it to. Now granted I am shooting to have 3 of each race and class to test out various builds in the module, but the point isn't my long term goal here. The point is I did that grinding because I didn't have the gear for the frozen battles until that point. I stopped doing it when I had the gear that could get me what I perceived to be the win, and I was using three dwarves at the time.

To you this is an anomaly, to other players when you tell them they have the gear, and they just need to reassess their strategies. You are essentially tossing them an insult. They literally don't have the cards to do that strategy, just as I didn't have the cards and I ended up carrying out some of the strategies you advised after I had the cards to make it happen.

I don't need to reassess my strategies. I am using similar strategies. You telling me I should reassess my strategies was a direct jab. I truly lacked the gear, and you're telling me that such a thing was just me needing some re evaluation.

Neither a help nor accurate.

The game is hard and we shouldn't be trivializing the challenge when offering advice making a player feel stupid.

 

Well, I'm still saying it's not that much about the specific gear. Of course you can get really unlucky and just fail to get any useful items as a reward but you don't really need anything that special to beat the trogs.

In fact, I just did a little test. I played through Beneath the Frozen Earth using nothing but level 4 or below items, all but two of them Common. I didn't happen to have level 7 heroes ready so I used my normal group which meant the game reduced them to level 9 for the adventure. So while they did have a little more health than a level 7 group, I kept careful check of their health and in none of the fights would the extra hp have changed anything.

Here's the items I used:

Velvetblade
Level 18 Human Warrior

Heirloom Assegai​

Thin Poignard​

Bulky Club​

Reinforced Hide Armor​

Battered Shield​

Defensive Helm​

Hidebound Boots​

Unskilled Human​

Untrained Gouging​

​

Mizana
Level 18 Human Wizard

Relentless Staff​

Citrine Staff​

Zapping Headband​

Perplexing Mirror​

Glowing Bangle​

Penetrating Chain​

Red Robes​

Hidebound Boots​

Unskilled Human​

Unskilled Arcane​

​

Silvershield
Level 18 Dwarf Priest

Copper Mace​

Novice's Hatchet​

Armor Of Doubt​

Chipped Shield​

Tough Fencer's Boots​

Wooden Token​

Tarnished Prayer Beads​

Medallion Of St. Beldar​

Unskilled Dwarf​

Untrained Cleansing​

​

First fight:

Gougers close in, fighter slips behind one and all three gang up on it, alternating hits so the gouger keeps facing the wrong way.
First gouger falls at start of second turn. Used attack cards: Lunging Strike, Simple Strike, Stab, Penetrating Cut, Penetrating Zap, Wavering Faith.

Wizard uses Force Bolt to keep one trog at distance, all heroes gang up on another trog. Trog falls on third round.
Used attack cards: Penetrating Zap, 2x Simple Strike, Simple Bash.

Wizard backs away, uses Acid Blast against next trog. All heroes gang up on weakened trog who soon falls.
Used attack cards:
Force Bolt, Acid Blast, Wavering Faith, Stab (with Righteous Frenzy), Demonic Miasma.

Three weakened heroes against one gouger who soon falls as heroes attack from all sides.
Used attack cards: Big Zap and Long Spark (only used to push the foe back while everyone maneuvered to better spots), Penetrating Zap, Bludgeon (from behind), Chop (from behind).

Second fight:

Used Force Bolt and Long Spark to push back one gouger, then everyone gangs up on second one. (fighter took heavy damage as the trogs happened to draw extra moves)
Used cards: Stab and Strong Stab (both with Righteous Frenzy), Penetrating Zap.

Boosted fighter continues to attack weaker scuttler, kills it.
Used attacks: Shifty Stab, Penetrating Cut (both with Righteous Frenzy).

Heroes target second gouger next, fighter finally falls. Gouger falls to heroes attacks.
Used attacks: 3x Penetrating Zap, 2x Zap

Next scuttler moves to attack, gets beaten down (although both heroes are running low on health)
Used attacks: Simple Bash, Bludgeon.

Only trog wizard left, falls to Big Zap once heroes close in. (it had taken damage from its own Bungled Bolt earlier)

Both heroes had low hp at the end though.

Third fight:

Wizard and fighter move to surround some of the wizards in the lower corner, first foe falls to Lunging Strike boosted with Righteous Frenzy as it fails to escape far enough.
Second trog falls to three Penetrating Zaps.

Wizard fights with one foe with Bungled Bolt and pins it against the wall with a Run as it fails to move far enough.
Priest and fighter manage to trap another one and it falls to Bludgeon and Penetrating Cut.

(At this point there's four foes left, only my fighter is heavily damaged)

Two rounds more and one more trog falls to Penetrating Zaps.
Priest and my wizard fight another one, weakening it with a Chop, Simple Bash and Zap.
Fighter kills a trog with a Penetrating Cut boosted with Righteous Frenzy.

(Two trogs left, my wizard is almost dead, fighter has one third left and priest is at almost full health)

Next turn wizard catches up with weaker trog and catches it with an Acid Blast, the foe dies and discards both Tough Hides in hand.

Last foe falls to Bludgeon and Shifty Stab.

Victory.

Having penetrating attacks did help, but I could have probably won without them as well. As it was, I was able to surround three out of four gougers and could have used pretty much any kind of attacks against them. The second gouger in the second fight was the only one where I really benefited from penetrating.

 

Comes back to, to even remotely have the gear you described took me a number of days of regrinding the areas I had already done. Admittedly I had sold some of my penetrating gear (Not much) but I was unable to procure the equipment that you described. As an example. The only relentless staff I have, is one, and I have repeated the beginning area missions more times then I can count.

Again my point is more the strategies being offered mixed with the snideness of "you have the gear, you're just not doing it right." Is above and beyond in these forums. There are people who literally got so unlucky with their drops they are incapable of beating the missions you thought you had no problems with.

That isn't to say you didn't go above and beyond of what I was actually requesting, I was more talking about referring to specific cards used for the fight or types.

I have literally only been playing this game for a week (Skipped some days, busy with other things.) And have already progressed to level 14, unlocked the later areas, and have enjoyed replaying a number of the missions. In these missions I can see where players would start becoming frustrated. Especially because a number of them do in fact require specific gear for victory.

And I have been reading these forums and seen a ton of non useful advice. Because there seems to be this belief that the players already have the gear they need and this is not strictly true.

There also seems to be a similar view that because "Everyone has complained about every level, that the people complaining can't possibly be right in all instances because that means the entire game is too hard and that can't be true." You are correct, but that mindset also diminishes the legitimate complaints in regards to difficulty and the simple lacking in gear to complete some areas. There are areas that are very much a higher level of difficulty, and especially in a game with luck based drops, and a need for certain gear, that becomes more then a little frustrating for a player.

I'm asking for a little less "You already have the gear you need. You need to change strategies." And a little more "These are the types of cards I used, if you don't have some similar cards you might need to go back and shoot for more gear because this mission is hard without some of these cards."

 

Well, I'll be happy to try my test again if somebody posts a list of the kind of items they do have at that point.
(You can use the F1 console and type partybbcode to export your currently equipped items to clipboard and then just paste them here).

I do agree that the trog fights are nowhere easy and having good gear can certainly make a big difference. I'm just saying it's not THAT hard

 

As a test I just went and replayed every mission up to the dreaded bridge, and past that using a gear selection of what I viewed as my best gear without power tokens... And literally breezed through every single fight up to the throne of stench, and as I was capable of equipping more items the fights simply got easier and easier up until I hit treeforts of the goblin king where it stopped being "easy" for me anymore. Just to see how much of a difference having lacking equipment can be, versus having a lot of the good stuff.

Baring in mind my equipment comes from over a thousand gold worth of purchases on gear I thought may have some uses later and replaying repeated modules more then once.

This isn't to say the game should be made painstakingly easy, but I think that having a player be stumped because they lack the gear is a bad move. Perhaps as I saw earlier, a shop being opened that contains some useful gear for certain modules, at a discounted price, that does not have as good of cards as a found drop to avoid players becoming too frustrated.

I can see why you say it is not hard, but then, when we have the kind of gear we have, it really isn't supposed to be. The missions have become easily farmable at that point. We have practically all we need for each puzzle.

 

Another thread reminded me that Woodhome's Wound was a large factor in my beating the Troggs. Gary gives you free pizza to buy a treasure hunt, and when he does IIRC defense of Woodhome is the only one available. So buy it and use Woodhome's Wound to fight the Troggs.