I wanted to give some love north and say how much I'm enjoying co-op mode. First of all, running loot fairy with established players is heaps of fun anyway. It doesn't all go to plan - we took three fire mages into the Black Forest and had to restart on the monkey level. But that's fun. By now we all do the loot runs on autopilot, and it's fun actually having to think and then communicate to win a level. But the real kick I'm getting out of co-op is by helping newbies to get past levels they're struggling with. It's even better taking a character I rarely use into the early levels, like an elf mage. And when I take my dwarf vamp in, the newbies react like I'm doing magic tricks or something. It's really breathed life into a game I loved, but probably felt over-familiar with.
Amen, brother. Just finished Against the Cockroaches with two newish players, one of whom, not realizing the roaches had Resistant Hide, brought a spark wizard. (To be fair, he was also packing some armor removal and TK, so it all worked out.) It was a little frustrating, but made our ultimate triumph all the sweeter. And the appreciative reaction when I busted out Inspiring Presence at just the right moment in the last battle was quite gratifying. Playing co-op affects my perceptions of certain cards, too. It doesn't really come out in single player, when you control all of the characters all the time, but it really struck me in co-op that when somebody plays Sprint, Team!, they get to push you where they want. I know the percentage of players who come into chat is probably a tiny fraction of the overall playerbase, but it sure seems like most of the more extroverted new players show up looking for co-op groups as soon as they finish the tutorial. It makes sense, since forming parties is a fundamental feature of most RPGs. The adversarial, pvp focus of CH up until this week was always slightly jarring in that regard. I'm a little jealous of new players for whom playing co-op is the default mode of playing SP. It's probably good for the longevity of the game, too. Playing one character will let you really focus on what a given race/class combo can do. And it will take longer to bring a full stable of characters up to max level playing mostly co-op, so the SP content will stay fresher a lot longer.
I managed to get two friends to start playing the game (we're doing the campaign in 3-player coop now), which also has the advantage of letting me see all the low-level missions again. I played through the campaign all the way back before the first expansion and never dared to do so again (due to how horribly difficult or even broken most adventures were - they basically REQUIRED the abuse of infinite-range firestorm spam), but now that I'm playing them again they seem way easier than I remember (many cases of 'oh, wasn't there supposed to be 4 more guys on the map?').
Some maps actually have changed, some more than others (looking at you Lord Stafford), but it is really surprising how much improved tactics can make what was once a difficult adventure easy with no changes other than yourself.
Yeah, I'm going with Scarp on this. I remember some stages giving me infinite grief as a newbie -- levels 4 and 6 of Batford's are a perfect example -- but I can sleepwalk most of the modules now. It's much more fun with new players who want to use their elven mages as battering rams.
I want to add that Loot Fairy Coop is so good. Adding those 2 extra items was a great idea, Loot Fairy needs nothing more. It really encourages players to play together. I'm really enjoying it Big PLUS from me.
I mostly play co-op 'cause I just find it more fun to do so, but having the chance at a co-op Hidden Bandit is surprisingly compelling, despite how low the odds of getting it in a night's handful of runs with my BF is. I definitely like being able to co-op manticores [Read: Force someone else to run them for me], and apparently certain older players are psyched about being able to rerun Quests I haven't done yet, so I've got some people to play with there as well. I think, co-op right now does a good job of not forcing you to play co-op [other than the Fairy, that's a definitive bonus for it], while still doing a good job of encouraging participation in it for people who aren't immediately "co-op > single player" like I am. It's pretty great
I've hit Hidden Bandit twice in about 6 adventures levelling up newbies so far. Last one had a 1500gp return
Lucky. So far I've only hit Bandit once during this half-completed month of club membership, and it only gave 3x rares (140 gold total) :X (Obviously that wasn't in co-op; just noting I've been playing rather intently of late and haven't gotten as many pulls as you on it, nevermind your co-op boost. You lucky monkey, you.).
I have yet to try co-op, but I'm going to have to. Only issue is it can be tough to find a group without spamming the chat.
Nobody mentioned the most important part of doing the bandit or the fairy in coop mode: MORE LOOT! I guess you also get more loot if you play normal adventures in coop, but for that the time investment is too high, especially if you pick a random team.
