Thoughts on reordering adventures (for difficulty, learning, etc.)

I've been putting together summaries of what monsters have what powers in what adventures. It's gotten me thinking about adventure difficulty.

On one hand, testers are concerned about Adventure X being "way too hard"; on the other, we're learning strategies to deal with armored enemies, or ranged enemies, or blocking enemies, or what-have-you. The important thing is to give players an adventure sequence that offers logical difficulty progression AND teaches new players the skills.

Do folks have suggestions? Here are mine for the very start of the game. We have:

Level 1 - The Tutorial Sequence (Raid on Ommlet, Kobold Encampment, Tunnels into Darkness, White Skull Canyon)

Level 2 - Cavern of the Troglodytes (misspelled to Trogolodytes, or not)
Level 2 - Lair of the Trog Wizard

Level 3 - The Wizard's Workshop
Level 3 - Ruby Demon Portal

I propose swapping the level 2's and 3's, and probably making Ruby Demon Portal a little easier. I believe this would introduce new challenges more slowly and manageably, plus interest the players more in the game. Reasoning:

In the level 1 tutorials you learn about a number of things, including an easy "enemies have armor" challenge.

In the level 2 sequence, you learn about enemies keeping you at arm's reach (using range 2 Stabs), AND about enemies having an easier time doing so thanks to terrain (using Scuttle). See, that's a new challenge (learning about range), AND an enhanced version of the challenge (learning about range while you can't move as much). Meanwhile, some of these jerks have armor, so technically you're ALSO facing an enhanced armor challenge (learning how to penetrate armor on ranged enemies).

For new players, I'd say shorten that learning list. Specifically, since they just learned about armor, consider:

In level 3 - The Wizard's Workshop, you face an enhanced armor challenge. Also, importantly, it's obvious to the player that this will be an armor challenge ("mechanical creations" in the description); the troglodyte/range/terrain/armor thing is not obvious. And, as a plus, this adventure also presents an easy maneuvering challenge: getting behind the Bronze Golem.

In level 3 - Ruby Demon Portal, you face a maneuvering challenge. As a logical part of maneuvering, it also gives an introduction to victory squares. And, as a plus, this level's look and feel is different from the others discussed above: this means the level 3 adventures present a wide and interesting variety to new players.

So, if you swap the 2's and 3's, new players would get more education (armor -> enhanced armor -> maneuvering -> enhanced maneuvering) and more variety ("Troglodytes again?" vs. "Ooh, robots! Ooh, demons!") And, of course, players would have earned more items before they faced the troglodytes and be better able to adapt.

I hope you enjoyed this massive essay. This is the risk you take when you let me do your testing.

 

I'm pretty sure i agree at least 95% but I'm not going to read it 3 times to make sure ;P

 

I found Wizard's Workshop significantly harder than the Trog adventures--beat the trog adventures on my first try. I then found the two level 4s (the prison break and the goblin highway robbery) really, really hard.

 

Cool, but can you explain why? The devs can look at success statistics across all the testers, and those would be really handy here; but as we're the individuals inside that, we've got to talk strategy, psychology . . .

 

The wizard tower normal aka not the challenge mode seams almost impossible to fail to me even when i lost both my other guys my wizard could kite around until he won.

 

I don't really know. Wizard's Workshop had a lot of armor, and when I first tried it, I had almost no penetrating attacks, and very few really high damage attacks. So I was mostly walking the brass golem with attacks that did 4 damage, and hoping that neither of its armor cards triggered. Part of this may have been that I equipped cards with Minor Heal/Misguided Heal as soon as I had a priest. That meant that I didn't have any Wavering Faiths, or indeed any other way to get rid of armor cards from my opponents hands. With very few penetrating attacks and no way to eliminate armor, I got crunched a time or two.

 

I had the same thing but as i said you can just kite the golems around with a wizard mine was even a dwarf and i still managed a elf would be practically untouchable. The priest starts with armor removal cards in one of his slots so its not like you even have to find it you just need to consider your build for that problem.

 

Okay. That makes a lot of sense, Cerebral Paladin.

And part of my point was that you knew you'd need armor penetration: the tutorial adventures told you this, the fight with the troglodytes repeated it, and then the Workshop told you it was going to be full of machines. Thus, you could understand why you lost (and maybe even went "right, of course, I knew going into it that I needed armor penetration").

Now, with my proposed change, there's still the risk that you couldn't get more armor penetration before starting the Workshop. Which is why you'd have the alternative of going to the Ruby Demon Portal (perhaps a slightly easier version than it is now), where your intuition would tell you you'll be up against magic, not armor.

(And, for the record, I can't remember where I lost games. I might have lost in the Workshop, or my first lost game might have been all the way over in Shieldhaven. So, assuming I remember correctly, it is possible for a new player to do any of this stuff first time; thus that's not what we're really discussing here.)

 

Since a lot of these areas are obviously designed to introduce you to card variety (some are all armor, others are all blocking, some are all ranged enemies with magic, some are ranged stabbing enemies) i think its only fair that the beginning shop contains many of the useful cards required to properly deal with all of these if you are unfortunate to not have found the tools.

 

prefferably for 1 g each since you wont have a lot of gold by then

 

I don't necessarily disagree here, but... the Trog adventures are entirely beatable with the gear you will have earned by level 2; that is, after beating the first four level 1 adventures. The two Trog modules are tough but they aren't particularly taxing on gear requirements. RDP and WW are absolutely brutal without more equipment. Equipment you just don't find in that first string of adventures, no matter how many times you run it.

And I'm not sure I agree that you should separate learning maneuvering and learning about being "kept at arms' reach." It's all just maneuvering; pushing your enemies into positions they can't retreat from, dealing with depleting movement cards before going in for the kill, planning around difficult terrain... it's all right there. They fact that they can attack you from range merely enhances the tutorial. You have to think harder about it, learn faster, but it's all still just maneuvering. The Trogs are just a warmup for proper magic-using enemies later on.

That said, I could definitely support a third Level 2 adventure. One more module to learn from, get equipment from, and level from before being thrown into the lion's den (Trog's den?).

 

Sure. So are all the adventures discussed in this thread. Hence that's not my point: I'm talking about giving the player a good learning experience and (of sometimes overlooked importance) a varied and fun experience.

Yes, your suggestion of one more module for learning could be good. I was wondering whether something completely unrelated, elsewhere in the game, could be dropped in difficulty and brought over here.

And a quick thing:

That "just maneuvering" thing . . . is exactly what I said, and I did not "separate" anything. Or, if I didn't say it clearly enough, it's what I meant. So you learn to maneuver around golems, then later you learn to move around troglodytes (if the swap in order were implemented).

 

Knock yourself out. We shall call our guild the Loquacious Screeds.

 

Loquacious
adjective 1. talking or tending to talk much or freely

screed
1. A long monotonous speech or piece of writing.

Basically you both write too much!

 

Nobody ever wants to join "The M-Team".
I can't imagine why.

 

It might just depend on which characters you choose and what items you happened to get. I found the Trog caves extremely hard and actually beat a couple Level 4 ones before I could complete them. The 2 range attacks meant that I was rarely ever able to hit the Trogs and usually taking fire from multiple at once, and 2 hits would kill my Wizard, who also only had range 2 attacks.