So, I've been playing through the Base scenario in WotR. I was looking forward to running through the adventure card path, because I truly enjoy the background material, but the cards are crushing my will to play.
I've already failed two scenarios, both due to running out of turns on the blessings deck. I've had 1 character die, and others down to their last cards at the final encounter. I like that the scenarios are challenging -- its satisfying to get through victorious.
But, each game is such an attrition grind that I'm finding it less and less enjoyable, and not really motivated to continue (even though I have all the decks 1-5 now). So many encounters are just punishing... arboreal blight and demonic horde are known issues, but monsters like the mongrel wizard and ranger and several others that do automatic damage before *and* after the encounter... most monsters are 10+ difficulty, requiring a blessing/weapon/spell just to succeed. It seems like I'm just discarding constantly. I don't dare "waste" a blessing on trying to win a decent spell or weapon. Kinda sad when encountering "temptation" barriers are a relief because I can pretty much ignore them.
I don't remember anything this painful when playing through S&S scenarios... they were challenging, and we hit some tough spots, but it didn't feel like a gauntlet every game.
I want to continue, but the game so far is sucking away my motivation. Am I doing it wrong?
What Eric said.. do AD1 first & get a bit stronger..
Wrath is really difficult at the start. Have to really know the mechanics, optimize team abilities & location placement.. etc.. Blight/horde will ruin your day.. (hilarious when we first encountered them... WTF!!) really really help each other out.. teamwork ftw!
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Thanks... I guess we'll give AP1 a try first then. Feels a bit odd skipping the intro to do an "easier" first chapter. In the past, we found the intro scenarios a nice way to learn your characters and try out what works and what didn't before moving into the real challenges.
This makes me curious about what the devs are planning for MM. If its going to be another set of continuous nutsack kicks, then I'm leaning towards cancelling my sub.
I've been an advocate of skipping the base set scenarios since my second party on Wrath. They can be incredibly frustrating, even for experience players. You will have much more fun jumping right into the AP.
If your still finding things hard, make sure you include Andowyn in your party. Her combination of hitting power, scouting, recursion, and the ability to dodge summoned foes make her, from start to finish, the most powerful character in the AP, and help mitigate the horrible barriers.
Thus is really discouraging to hear. My gaming group LOVED Rise of the Runelords. We have found Skulls and Shackles increased difficulty to not be near as good(we are in Adventure Deck 5 now). And now Wrath sounds even worse. I wish there was a way to set the difficulty like it was on Rise. I love the Egyptian themes so I hope Mummy's Mask gets back more like Rise.
I wish they made the difficulty level so it could be scaled to personal preference. Our gaming group is thinking of starting Wrath by checking a card feat to try and scale things back towards Rise level difficulty. I found Rise plenty difficult. At lot of times we wouldn't win until the very last turn (last blessing).
Maybe it's team composition or the way we played. My group played through rise three times and found it too easy each time. Only the last runelord scenario gave us pause due to the 'do or die' condition.. but we passed it with room to spare each time.
|
You are doing nothing wrong; and you are certainly not the only one who feels this way about this set. I ploughed through the grind / slog / chore / death-march of the base set and AD2 (which felt similarly unbalanced and perhaps un-tested).
I will say that this set does play differently when everyone at the table is well-versed in the game (viz., has their own copy at home and is intimately familiar with all cards in the set), which is somewhat unfortunate. I like to take this game and play with other people who don't necessarily own it themselves. I really don't believe I'll be doing anything of the sort with Wrath of the Righteous, especially if Mummy's Mask has already been released.
This is the first set that was released with less development time, now that they're churning these things out every six to eight months rather than an entire year. I sincerely hope that this lack of polish, as one might call it, doesn't portend what we're in for in future sets. Whatever could be said about Runelords and S&S, they at least managed to make it incrementally challenging and pretty well balanced as one went along.
That's good to hear, that they are aware of the issue. If WotR was meant to be "expert" level, then a little head's up on the advertising would be appropriate. I felt S&S was a pretty good challenge, tough in spots but not a chore. I don't want to play games that are a chore.
I'd like to hear some encouraging words regarding MM.
Regarding MM, the only thing we know about it is the name and storyline. Any other info about the set is not public (playtesters can't share any playtest info, and I don't see any developer posts about it after a cursory glance).
I anticipate that MM will be easier than Wrath for a couple of reasons:
1) Wrath is the highest-power-level AP on the RPG side of things, where the characters are facing the worst that the Abyss has to offer. The players end the campaign at level 20 with 10 mythic ranks (aka the level cap in Pathfinder RPG). Compare to other APs where the challenge is much more modest and the characters typically end up level 16-17 or so by the end of it without any mythic ranks at all. That means difficulty in the RPG ramps up way faster in Wrath than it does in any other AP, and that effect can be noted in the ACG version as well.
2) The developers are reading feedback from Wrath and seeing a lot of complaints on the difficulty; as such, I expect that they'll take that feedback into account and adjust things for MM. They're pretty good about such things.
I wish they made the difficulty level so it could be scaled to personal preference. Our gaming group is thinking of starting Wrath by checking a card feat to try and scale things back towards Rise level difficulty. I found Rise plenty difficult. At lot of times we wouldn't win until the very last turn (last blessing).
But you never lost?
I think it may be a matter of expectations here. Are you expecting to grab the loot and walk all over the monsters? Do you try to grab as much loot as possible? Do you not expect to repeat any scenario at all?
Also the difficulty tuning gets off at 5-6 players I find - if you play above 4 players it can explain the last turn thing.
My wife and I struggled early on as well. We repeated a few scenarios and Harsk bit the big one. Since hitting the fourth adventure however, we've started to steamroll most encounters. We're only playing two up, which I hear makes it harder than 3-4 but easier than 5-6. She is playing Seelah and I am playing Kyra who replaced my dead dwarf. Kyra has definitely made things easier. Healing is clutch.
Out of curiosity, how many players do you have and what characters are you playing?
I wish they made the difficulty level so it could be scaled to personal preference. Our gaming group is thinking of starting Wrath by checking a card feat to try and scale things back towards Rise level difficulty. I found Rise plenty difficult. At lot of times we wouldn't win until the very last turn (last blessing).But you never lost?
I think it may be a matter of expectations here. Are you expecting to grab the loot and walk all over the monsters? Do you try to grab as much loot as possible? Do you not expect to repeat any scenario at all?
Also the difficulty tuning gets off at 5-6 players I find - if you play above 4 players it can explain the last turn thing.
We lost some too. My group doesnt mind replaying some scenarios but we don't like feeling we are banging our heads against a wall. Some Skulls scenarios took 3 tries to be successful and for us that starts to wear thinand isn't fun. Especially since we only get to game on average 3 or 4 times a month.
That's good to hear, that they are aware of the issue. If WotR was meant to be "expert" level, then a little head's up on the advertising would be appropriate. I felt S&S was a pretty good challenge, tough in spots but not a chore. I don't want to play games that are a chore.
I'd like to push back on this a bit. WotR isn't "expert" level. It has ridiculously hard base scenarios, and the scenarios in AP2 pose particular problems for large groups of players. But, once you get past those initial scenarios, the set isn't significantly more difficult than other sets. I am finding AP3 & AP4 of wrath easier than S&S, and I haven't seen anyone posting data that suggests their experiences with these later sets is different than mine.
Gonna agree with ya on that one Joshua. :)
Out of curiosity, how many players do you have and what characters are you playing?
Currently we have 3... playing Adowyn, Seelah and Seoni. After mixing around line ups, this seems like a fairly balanced triad.
***
I'd like to push back on this a bit. WotR isn't "expert" level. It has ridiculously hard base scenarios, and the scenarios in AP2 pose particular problems for large groups of players. But, once you get past those initial scenarios, the set isn't significantly more difficult than other sets. I am finding AP3 & AP4 of wrath easier than S&S, and I haven't seen anyone posting data that suggests their experiences with these later sets is different than mine.
That's great to hear! We're going to press with AP1 and not worry about the base scenario anymore.
We've just finished adventure 3, and I'm revising my analysis to "WotR is just too hard" to be "WotR has poor scaling".
That does track what Chad wrote in his blog post here about the intended difficulty fluctuation of Wrath. Things should start getting more difficult again from there, as I understand it.
That said, it does sound like at least many players aren't a big fan of the difficulty level fluctuating greatly, even if that might fit the source material. That's pretty good information.
I suspect there could be more buy-in if it were more prominently advertised and/or optional. In working on Season of the Righteous, I generally like having an easy _scenario_ every now and then, as well as a hard scenario every now and then, but not entire ADs. Not 100% sure how well it's working, but that's been the theory.
It seems much more like the scaling is the problem, both by # of players and the difficulty curve, like Ron says. My wife and I played through the B scenarios with +1 or +2 locations like we usually do. I remember the second scenario being pretty tough, but I don't think we failed it (we failed the fifth scenario of AP1 a handful of times, I think? the one with the Wardstone Chamber). It seems like an overwhelming amount of people's issues are in 6 people groups. We played that AP2 Citadel scenario I think with five or six locations and cleared it on our second try.
Admittedly this is with Kyra and Adowyn, two very strong hybrid characters. We don't usually play Pures so I can't comment on that, though Kyra certainly got caught flatfooted by Carrion Golems a couple times.
For my money, I liked it better in the beginning. Once mythic paths got introduced monsters became 1000% less of a problem, especially in that weird doldrums during AP3 and AP4 where there's still a lot of basics and elites stomping around, and so a lot of your difficulty is based on luck of the draw: do you pull a role card-destroying dragon out of the deck, or is it time for another Pitborn Rogue or Mongrel Ranger? Mostly, our path through AP3 and AP4 involved a lot of easy monsters not requiring checks at all, when factoring in Kyra's +11 Divine or Adowyn's +8 Ranged and +4 Bow. We almost never spend mythic charges on anything but the last check, unless it's required to close a location, against a monster with the Mythic trait, etc.
We've just finished adventure 3, and I'm revising my analysis to "WotR is just too hard" to be "WotR has poor scaling".That does track what Chad wrote in his blog post here about the intended difficulty fluctuation of Wrath. Things should start getting more difficult again from there, as I understand it.
I was just about to link that article. I'm not currently caught up, but so far my experience with Wrath, just starting OP 1-3A, has matched that power curve pretty close. It's amazing how much that mythic path helps. Needless to say, I'm excited/horrified, to see what will happen at the end of all this to bring that power curve back to where things are more evenly matched.
I was going to write an insightful post on this but my computer just took -1 Memory damage and I failed my knowledge check, so Firefox crashed out on me.
In all seriousness, the base adventure that comes in the box is garbage. The risk versus reward aspect of it is a complete letdown. As to the rest of the campaign, it does get better when you start unlocking abilities and the mythic paths are really nice for a boost. What I think really makes a lot of players groan in WotR are the ridiculous barriers. In the old games, some barriers were useful, such as treasure chests or caches. Now they are all punishing. There is nothing fun about getting stuck fighting 4 demons due to the Demonic Horde, nor taking (mostly) unavoidable damage because those idiot tree monsters happened to spawn in a throne room.
I really am dreading what barriers await me in the upcoming adventure decks.
It seems much more like the scaling is the problem, both by # of players and the difficulty curve, like Ron says. My wife and I played through the B scenarios with +1 or +2 locations like we usually do. I remember the second scenario being pretty tough, but I don't think we failed it (we failed the fifth scenario of AP1 a handful of times, I think? the one with the Wardstone Chamber). It seems like an overwhelming amount of people's issues are in 6 people groups. We played that AP2 Citadel scenario I think with five or six locations and cleared it on our second try.
Admittedly this is with Kyra and Adowyn, two very strong hybrid characters. We don't usually play Pures so I can't comment on that, though Kyra certainly got caught flatfooted by Carrion Golems a couple times.
For my money, I liked it better in the beginning. Once mythic paths got introduced monsters became 1000% less of a problem, especially in that weird doldrums during AP3 and AP4 where there's still a lot of basics and elites stomping around, and so a lot of your difficulty is based on luck of the draw: do you pull a role card-destroying dragon out of the deck, or is it time for another Pitborn Rogue or Mongrel Ranger? Mostly, our path through AP3 and AP4 involved a lot of easy monsters not requiring checks at all, when factoring in Kyra's +11 Divine or Adowyn's +8 Ranged and +4 Bow. We almost never spend mythic charges on anything but the last check, unless it's required to close a location, against a monster with the Mythic trait, etc.
I can echo the comment about the basic/elite monsters being very underwhelming come AD3, to the point where after the first scenario in AD3 I just went ahead and purged all the Basics from the box like I would in Organized Play (with exception of Blessing of Ascension, I kept all of those and used normal rules for purging them). I purged all the Elites from the box at the beginning of AD5 as well. This ensured that the banes would at least be mostly challenging and worthy of mythic heroes.
Purging basic/elites may mitigate some of the problems, but there are still a large number of very easy monsters that you never banish.
Yeah, Worm Demons are gonna be there forever. But at least purging those cards in advance gets rid of most of the zombies/rat swarms/giant cockroaches and so on.
I want to continue, but the game so far is sucking away my motivation. Am I doing it wrong?
First and foremost, the basic set is difficult. It makes thematic sense given that the world opened up and demons started pouring through. In the storyline, the heroes were only trying to escape with their lives intact. Things calm down once you get away from the fray.
Could you describe how your group plays? In order to know if you're doing things "wrong," we'd have to understand what you do first.
Does your group communicate with each other? Are explorations conducted methodically according to character strength at a location, and are villain chases coordinated? Are you all good at utilizing your resources? Do you run probability calculations on your rolls? What about tracking what's been played out of your deck to have a better idea of what might be coming up? Is your team aware of the blessings deck's status and the ramifications at different stages?
If you are doing those things, kudos and things will get better. If you're not, give those things a shot. The game isn't that hard, but it's also not mindless. Your Adowyn needs to pick up the power feat to evade summons ASAP if the blight and horde are troubling you so much.
My group bombed a few of the scenarios in the basic path. To us, it was just more gameplay time :D. AD3 and AD4 almost felt like the money's worth wasn't there. AD1, 2, and 5 were all superb.
I think the evolution of your character is clearly the best part of the game. I don't know your experience with previous PACG sets, and you may realize this already but just in case you didn't, it takes a while for your character to shape and for you to figure out how to manipulate that shape before setting into the roles.
Don't get locked into any single paradigm either. My Kyra is quite fierce with 5 Blessings of Ascensions in her deck and the Hierophant mythic path. My goal is to expend all cards on every turn cycle (except armor). Between my powers, one big damage spell, one check difficulty reducer, 4 heals, a solid weapon, 8 total blessings, 3 allies, rolling 5-10 d20s per game, and, most importantly, my teammates' help, I average 3-4 explorations per turn, not failing virtually any checks (except on a bad beat but that happens), and maintaining a 0 card discard pile most of the time. It is a blast to play, and it's rewarding because I sat through entire adventures being not much more than a blessing bot.
Give the game a chance, try new things, and I think you'll enjoy your experience a lot more pretty soon. Best of luck. Cheers.
Between my powers, one big damage spell, one check difficulty reducer, 4 heals, a solid weapon, 8 total blessings, 3 allies, rolling 5-10 d20s per game, and, most importantly, my teammates' help, I average 3-4 explorations per turn, not failing virtually any checks...
Kyra is playing the game with ONE damage spell? How does she fight the non-demon/non-undead monsters after she's used her damage spell -- with her weapon? Seems like that would require a fair number of blessings.
In OP my WotR Kyra has 3 damage spells, and still sometimes I have to hold back on an explore, or exploring the fight-non-demon/undead-to-close locations, because I'm not ready for a fight.
Between my powers, one big damage spell, one check difficulty reducer, 4 heals, a solid weapon, 8 total blessings, 3 allies, rolling 5-10 d20s per game, and, most importantly, my teammates' help, I average 3-4 explorations per turn, not failing virtually any checks...Kyra is playing the game with ONE damage spell? How does she fight the non-demon/non-undead monsters after she's used her damage spell -- with her weapon? Seems like that would require a fair number of blessings.
In OP my WotR Kyra has 3 damage spells, and still sometimes I have to hold back on an explore, or exploring the fight-non-demon/undead-to-close locations, because I'm not ready for a fight.
Self bless and roll d20s or use a weapon with teammates getting me over humps. Since my goal is to expend my hand each turn, I don't mind making a conscious decision to simply lose an encounter either if it only means losing a couple of cards. All the cards come back eventually so the jeopardy is very small.
edit: I also carry a Boom Crown.
Which mythic path do you use?
edit: Nevermind, just saw it. Still not sure how you beat non-demon, non-undead since you can't roll d20s against them. But maybe you just get a ton of help from your team mates.
Which mythic path do you use?
edit: Nevermind, just saw it. Still not sure how you beat non-demon, non-undead since you can't roll d20s against them. But maybe you just get a ton of help from your team mates.
Well, looks like I just learned something. Time to pick up the sword of iomedae :PP
Everyone is maxed on blessings though. Many Shaxes and Baphomets.
We had a moment like that where my wife, playing Kyra, was like "wait a minute, why would I ever take more all these attack spells? I can just recharge a card!"
We realized next scenario that this revelation came upon her when Kyra was storming through the Cemetery, where everything counts as Undead. :D
Blessings of Baphomet though <3 <3 <3 Most of my Adowyn's deck are those.
Which mythic path do you use?
edit: Nevermind, just saw it. Still not sure how you beat non-demon, non-undead since you can't roll d20s against them. But maybe you just get a ton of help from your team mates.
Well, looks like I just learned something. Time to pick up the sword of iomedae :PP
Everyone is maxed on blessings though. Many Shaxes and Baphomets.
Sword of Iomedae is so amazingly sweet. The only down side of it is that Seelah, Kyra and Imrijka all want to have it to themselves.
Sword of Iomedae is so amazingly sweet. The only down side of it is that Seelah, Kyra and Imrijka all want to have it to themselves.Which mythic path do you use?
edit: Nevermind, just saw it. Still not sure how you beat non-demon, non-undead since you can't roll d20s against them. But maybe you just get a ton of help from your team mates.
Well, looks like I just learned something. Time to pick up the sword of iomedae :PP
Everyone is maxed on blessings though. Many Shaxes and Baphomets.
I'm pretty sure whatever party member is willing to run the most Blessings of Ascension to actually make use of the power should get to have it---the only thing better than Mastiff/Imp/Restoration giving a draw 2 (or Dawnflower's Grace Kyra giving an effective draw d4+1 with a Cure on the right ally/armor-rich discard pile) is a 'draw up to your handsize' power. The heal is just a bonus to keep all the card-draw from killing you :).
Although, if there's someone who can engineer having a big enough hand-size (for a turn, or period), there are some abusive possibilities if you shrink your deck by burying/displaying/giving away enough non-Blessing-of-Ascension cards that you can average (or guarantee) 5+ cards that restore mythic charges per hand reset. As in, you can generate unlimited mythic charges (until they wear off at end of turn), at which point you can use the BoAs to explore as often as you wish (albeit at the edge of death), with arbitrarily-high bonuses to Str/Wis/Cha, with the ability to heal whenever you like barring an 'end-your-turn' trigger or enough hostile 'bury' effects that you just unavoidably die.
Ok...this really calls for running 10-Blessing-of-ascension RotR Sajan through WotR solo, to demonstrate his struggles through the first five ADs culminating in a literal ascension to godhood when he assumes the mantle of Sword of Iomedae! I mean, apart from the likelihood that before-the-check combat damage would murder him long before then :).
Isn't there a spell that increases your hand size by potentially absurd amounts?
Skull and Shackles has shapechange. You can choose a hand size of 10 with it.
Someone in our group has already purchased WotR, and has suggested starting it after we finish RotR (we have two adventures left to complete). This discussion is making me quite ... uneasy about it.
Our group of 3 has generally found RotR to be a good challenge. A rare steamroll, occasional losses, generally victorious (though the Holy Candle has saved our butts more than once). Obviously, we aren't amazing expert players.
We've chosen characters and built decks for WotR ... we have Imrikija (however you spell that), Harsk, and Enora. How screwed are we?
Not too badly. You need to take good care of enora till she gets her role card. You've good combat & divine/arcane capability. Only missing is scouting which scholar can do eventually.
Someone in our group has already purchased WotR, and has suggested starting it after we finish RotR (we have two adventures left to complete). This discussion is making me quite ... uneasy about it.
Our group of 3 has generally found RotR to be a good challenge. A rare steamroll, occasional losses, generally victorious (though the Holy Candle has saved our butts more than once). Obviously, we aren't amazing expert players.
We've chosen characters and built decks for WotR ... we have Imrikija (however you spell that), Harsk, and Enora. How screwed are we?
Harsk should be Adowyn and you're fine.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There are some good characters to team with Enora to help keep her alive. If you have the Paladin class deck, Raz seems to work really well with her, since she can jump in and take Enora's encounter when necessary (aka Carrion Golem). Or having anyone that can let Enora know what is coming. Enora is a super fun character, but does have some weaknesses that can get her killed if you don't mitigate them.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hey all, as the OP, I figured it was worth posting an update.
We just finished AD1 and, as advertised, it was a *huge* improvement over the base scenarios! For anyone that is wary of buying into WotR due to the difficulty complaints, I'd say don't worry -- just skip the base and go straight into the main adventure path. The AD1 scenarios were very enjoyable, IMO.
To mitigate some of the pain, I removed 2 each of the Demon Horde and Arboreal Blight cards from the game, leaving 2 still in, I believe. I still had once scenario (1-4, I think) where we encountered a blight, horde and carrion golem all in short succession, but we muscled through them.
In hindsight, I think its worth noting how much the *locations* are part of the pain in the base scenarios. Many of them are tough on the characters exploring, some causing damage every turn, or forcing bury/discard to close with no rewards coming back. I think these played a subtle role in making the base scenarios so awful, because the locations in AD1 were much more "friendly", or at least the painful locations were thinned out -- 1 or maybe 2 per scenario, rather than the whole spread!
Anyway, I'm glad we continued and we are enjoying the game again. Just unlocked the mythic paths and can't wait to give them a try! =D
Nice one! Glad you're having as much fun as we are :)
|
Thanks for the advice in this thread, we are starting WotR tomorrow, most of us only having played around with the first base scenario, and not won yet, I was wondering if we were just not getting something...sounds like it's also pretty hard. I'll try starting with the first AP scenario and going from there...
I've been trying to play the base set solo. Every time I've died in scenario two. I've tried the summoner, inquisitor, and now paladin. Now I'm just curious if anyone has managed to.
I've been playing by the book, so dying means starting over. (Ok, it could also mean trying again with an unimproved character, but that seems harder.)
I've been trying to play the base set solo. Every time I've died in scenario two. I've tried the summoner, inquisitor, and now paladin. Now I'm just curious if anyone has managed to.
I've been playing by the book, so dying means starting over. (Ok, it could also mean trying again with an unimproved character, but that seems harder.)
Try Hunter. She solo's quite well and should be able to handle the base scenarios without too much trouble.