This one is feedback, rather than a specific suggestion. I understand that when AotA was released, it provided endgame material and was balanced thusly. As in; bleedin' difficult. Punishing bolts, punishing strikes, punishing adventures. However these aren't really the endgame any more. By contrast, in EttSC, I've wandered through and finished it without too many problems. Well, sure, I've head to redo specific levels here and there as I met new mechanics/foes, and I actually had to pay some gold on Throne of the Mechanical Men as I completely and utterly messed up my first couple of attempts at the quickdraw scenario, but overall, I wouldn't put it as specifically harder than the adventures in the base game, just different, and entertainingly so. Or at least not harder than the hardest adventures in the base game. I'm aiming on replaying sometime soon with the aim of trying to refine my builds and head to a situation where I can farm these levels, something I absolutely cannot do with the late 3 AotA modules. So at this point, the last three AotA adventures seem (to me) to be significantly more difficult than the current endgame adventures. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Maybe it's desirable to keep it that way, maybe something should be tweaked somewhere. I wouldn't care to say what though; I have way too little experience.
AotA's level 18 adventures were designed specifically to be a challenge to even experienced SP players, hence why they're much harder than the rest of the campaign, requiring very tight and wildly varying decks across every module and even across different maps. EttSC meanwhile was indeed designed to be more in line with the rest of the campaign in terms of difficulty, since it was more of a vertical than a horizontal expansion what with the increased level cap for adventurers, items and wildly different cards from the base set and AotA. I do think it's for the better that EttSC wasn't as unrelenting as the level 18 modules, I personally enjoyed playing them more and replay them frequently, I'm never touching the Lair of Blitzenkripper ever again.
Do note, AotA is based around careful building and positioning considerations. It is going to be extremely challenging at first, but once you get used to it, and improve your available pool of items, you'll be able to complete it without too much hassle at all [in my personal experience]. Note also that High Mountain Pass is just as challenging, and was, as far as I know, never 'end content'. Some side-adventures are just more demanding, which is good, in my opinion. Flip side, while EttSC is generally considered easier, a lot of people have difficulty predicting and adapting to the various complex elements contained within it. Each chain of modules has their own set of challenges to overcome, and everyone will have their own preferences regarding them. As soon as you start reducing the challenge of content in a tactical or traditionally-minded RPG game, rather than providing a good variety of challenge overall, you start diluting the experience and losing part of the player base. Meanwhile, if you personally feel strong discontent toward the AotA2 chain and its design, you can simply not play them as much, as they're not core to the game. I'm not trying to put down any frustrations you may have, but simply note that everyone has their own preferences and difficulties, and there doesn't seem to be any benefit to changing the content at this time. Also keep in mind that EttSC is NOT end-game content. It just happens to be the most recent content, that's all. The game doesn't seem to be designed at ALL with a 'newer is harder' mentality, which many games do have, and may be confusing your expectations. Rather, CH seems to favor a traditional (especially in pen and paper) variety of difficulties, and a general outlook towards level 50 as being the end-game, and overall basic difficulty gradually increasing over time. In other words, new content isn't build to be 'the most challenging on its release', but to provide more depth and variety to the overall content. With that in mind, certain challenging side missions are provided, which will remain challenging as the game continues. Of course, there's one final expectation that you have, that's also confusing things: That higher level IS end-game. Given that party level scales to module, there will never be that sort of association. Content cannot simply keep statically increasing in difficulty [due to party power being locked to level], or low level modules will be easy enough that you can naked-solo it in a second, and high level content will be literally impossible. In other words, modules need to be evenly challenging for their specific level range, not solely more/less challenging relative to other modules of lower/higher level. Does any of that help give you a different outlook? In any case, I'm definitely personally against changing the content.
Err, you're making quite a few assumptions about my expectations and beliefs. Perhaps I should stick in a few "current"s and "previous"s in my previous post wherever I mention endgame content to make it clear that I'm not viewing anything currently available as absolute-endgame. But I'd have to say whether it's designed that way or no, right now EttSC *is* the current endgame content. About to be superceded in a matter of a few hours, but the point's still valid. I'm also aware that the curve of difficulty to module level should be roughly linear after the initial shallow intro curve for the lower levels; that's good game design for this style of game. Still, AotA seems to lie above the curve for difficulty to module level. On the other hand, your comment that High Mountain Pass is just as difficult makes me wonder just how much the difficulty depends on the player. High Mountain Pass is not difficult to me in solo (co-op is harder as people charge first and then wonder why they're surrounded and getting slaughtered later). I still hate the Citrine Demon Portal with a vengeance though.
My phrasing could have been better. I tend to lean toward phrasing that is more emphatic than I actually intend, without realizing it. I just clarified why that is actually not the case :X Difference in perspective, at the very least. Mountain Pass has a similar structure, in some ways. But yes, difficulty is pretty relative. Most people, I think, find Citrine Demon Portal quite easy, for example A lot of people find Melvelous challenging, I find it easy; I found Black Oaken Hard a challenge the first time through, I don't think many other people did. In any case, there's no actual reason why AotA shouldn't be challenging. So there's that
That's two of us with the improved-phrasing-thing, no worries there. People find the Citine Demon Portal easy? People find Melvelous challenging?!? No, really?!? The orc taunts can be annoying, but... no, really!?! In any case, the reason I'm posting about it this way as opposed to asking for advice is that I've been playing co-op a lot since I returned, and I've tried The Troll Tyrant about half a dozen times now in co-op, with good people working together and we've never managed it, as well as another handful of times solo. I'm not frustrated; it's been enjoyable because it's been co-op with good people, and the solo attempts have been me taking the things I learnt from the co-op attempts and trying to put them into practice, so an exercise as much as a genuine attempt, but the fact that I've tried so many times, with a variety of people, and never succeeded would strongly imply that it's not just me that finds it above the difficulty curve; no other module I've played co-op has had a failure rate anything like that. And Flaxative, don't worry, I'm counting the hours, too.
As the devs has clarified the level 18 AotA adventures are supposed to be harder than regular adventures.
With the Citrine Demon Portal, consider bringing two wizards w/ Resistant Hides. Third might be a priest or another wizard. Wizards can bring considerable firepower that doesn't need line of sight -- firestorm, volcano, ember burst, arcane burst -- and the resistant hide will last unless you start a turn on acid terrain w/o Dimensional Traveller or the like. Troll Tyrant throws enough types of threats at you (monsters that can strip away your armor and attacks, resilient hard-hitting enemies that tend to regenerate, swarms of flying life-draining monsters, a flying not-quite-glass-cannon that magically zaps you for heavy damage) that there's much greater need to change gear and tactics between maps than there is in most adventures.
My point is that while they were the highest available level adventures, this made sense, but the first point is no longer true, so I'm not hugely convinced that the second point remains true. I'm not suggesting that they be made easy, just that bringing them down to roughly the same 'power curve' as the other adventures makes... good sense? I'm all for adventures that require a respec between maps. That's interesting and encourages thought from the player. Both good things.
Perhaps keeping them as-is, but being very upfront about the difficulty before any pizza is spent would be appropriate. That would reduce the risk of anybody feeling that they wasted pizza because the steep difficulty of the final few adventures is very un-fun to them, while preserving them as an unusually steep single-player challenge for those that look forwards to such things. Also, maybe some nudging towards having people play not-yet-unlocked adventures in co-op would provide similar help.
