We started playing Season 0 recently, and so far, it's just been really hard for the most part, especially 0-1A, 0-1B and 0-1E.
We easily lost both 0-1A and 0-1B during the first try, so we decided to move on to 0-1C and 0-1D to get some feats, and today we barely succeeded at 0-1E on the last turn through sheer luck.
0-1C and 0-1D have been so much easier than the other scenarios so far, and I wonder why the more difficult scenarios are at the beginning. Have people been complaining about a lack of difficulty in SnS?
I found the original campaign already pretty unforgiving at times, and the scenario setup/rules in A, B and E just seem to make everything more difficult than a comparable scenario from AD1 in the box.
As a reference, our party was Ak, Mogmurch and Zeta for scenarios A-D, and now Koren joined our ranks for E.
Part of the reason is that they were still trying to figure out the game balance.
People claimed that RotR was too easy, so they ramped up the difficulty on S&S. They made it a little too hard. And, if you do not have the right skills, you really struggle.
They solved this by WotR.
Hmmm. I am really puzzled by this response.
Definitely the widespread opinion was RotR was too easy, so S&S was made harder. But aside from two scenarios that come down to lucky shuffling (Bizarre Love Triangle and Toll of the Bell) and one that seems perversely difficult (looking at you, Best Served Cold), the difficulty of S&S is not too hard to manage.
The B scenarios of Wrath, on the other hand, are brutal. The difficulty modulates after that (moderate/sort easy/back to moderate) as the characters advance, but many people would not look at Wrath as solving the difficulty problem. (Especially if you draw too many of the two most-hated barriers.)
To the OP, Doppelschwert: hmm again. Our 4-character party lost the first scenario of Season 0, then only lost one other in the entire campaign, as I recall (running of out time in a deck 3 or 4 scenario, I think). You seem an experienced player, but maybe if you could post something more about how y'all are struggling, we could give useful advice.
|
Our group also (IIRC) lost 0-1A the first time we played, but didn't have much trouble with the others or 1A once we circled back. This wasn't much different from our Season of the Righteous experience, where we lost one or two of the Adventure 1 scenarios the first time around. After we got some deck upgrades, feats, and had an idea of what we were facing things went much smoother.
To me losing a scenario once isn't "struggling", even if it happens in the first couple scenarios of the campaign.
If you'd like some advice: you should be able to handle 0-1B's Shark Islands like you'd handle any location with an annoying "at the start of your turn" power: start away from them, swarm one to clear it out, and remember that they can't hurt someone with no cards at the start of their turn. Also don't forget that you're on a ship and can move back to Lonely Island as a group if you need a break from the extra attacks.
Venture-Captain, Maryland— Baltimore
|
Doppelschwert, it's interesting how your experience was the exact opposite of mine. I have a group that just finished Adventure 1 of Season 0. We were Jirelle, Lirianne, and Varian. We finished A and B no problem, but D took us three tries. Varian actually died on our first run of it. Combat checks are pretty easy for us, but inevitably the boons we'd need to acquire to close the location were at the bottom of their decks, and there was no villain we could smack repeatedly to close locations for free.
Thanks for all the responses!
First off, don't get me wrong - the reasons for the difficult start are pretty clear to me:
At the start, we lacked both a means of healing and examining, AND we had low wisdom skills. That's not a good setup for SnS, so it makes sense that we needed to use more ressources than usual. Can't say the party was very good at consistently winning at combat checks either.
However, that was expected, and as Parody already remarked, we got much better pretty fast with a couple upgrades and the skill/power feat. In the long run, this party will work just as well as any other party we could've come up with, I have no doubts about that.
That still doesn't explain the setup for the scenarios, however. Take 1E for example:
The henchman has a whooping 16 / 12 (combat/wisdom survival) to defeat, and is immune to both slashing and piercing.
That's a Carrion Golem designed for weapon-based characters if I've ever seen one; and in contrast to WotR, SnS wants you to have high rolls for barriers as well. It's a much tougher opponent than in any other scenario in B/1 that I can recall. At the Fringes of the Eye, there are also 4 barriers whose difficulty is increased by 3. You only need so many barriers with a difficulty of 10 in a skill you're bad at to drain a lot of ressources.
To be honest, I never quite understood why WotR has the bad reputation it has for its B scenarios (at least for small/medium parties). The summoning barriers are nasty, yes, but WotR is pretty straight forward about damage and combat checks being the main obstacle throughout most of the campaign, so you can hyperspecialize against these things.
SnS on the other hand, is, IMHO, mostly random. If you can't examine, there is no way to know what's up, and even if the party can cover all grounds, you're still likely to run into a barrier that needs exactly the skill check you suck at - at the same time, the combat isn't much easier either. MM fixed this problem by giving means to examine as well as lowering the difficulty of combat checks, making it much more viable to focus on the noncombat ressources.
By now, I think we will manage to beat 1A thanks to the upgrades. Regarding 1B - thanks Parody for pointing out the usage of the ship to skip all the summons at the start of the turn - that hasn't occured to us, and that makes the scenario considerably easier as well. I'll keep this in mind for similiar locations in the future of SnS as well.
I made this thread mostly because I'm interested in other people's experiences, and because I wasn't around when the season got released. I'm aware that people complained about RotR being too easy, but I'd expect this season to be released after SnS, which should mean that it's difficulty is based around the feedback to SnS instead, doesn't it?
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I still consider 0-1A to be the toughest scenario I've ever played. I think I'm 3W-8L on it. Now, I've only ever played against it with original 7 class deck characters, and starting ones at that. So the decks are pretty much about a third junk - weapons that don't work with your skills, armor you're not proficient in, banish to use items with target restrictions, and so forth. Also, throwing a multiple check villain against utter newbie characters is harsh.
Solo 0-1A is definitely really hard. Especially if you include the Owlbeartross and it shows up (it's probably harder than the villain). And you don't have healing support.
But I would the promo scenarios as "harder" because in most of them you die if you can't complete the scenario.
|
Designer
|
Solo 0-1A is definitely really hard. Especially if you include the Owlbeartross and it shows up (it's probably harder than the villain). And you don't have healing support.
But I would the promo scenarios as "harder" because in most of them you die if you can't complete the scenario.
I think John tried to do Solo 0-1A with Wu Shen. Based on his recounting, for anyone who wants a true challenge without Obsidian-style nightmare mode, I recommend trying it!
I can confirm that solo 0-1A is difficult. :)
|
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
|
Solo 0-1A is definitely really hard. Especially if you include the Owlbeartross and it shows up (it's probably harder than the villain). And you don't have healing support.
But I would the promo scenarios as "harder" because in most of them you die if you can't complete the scenario.
I would separate "hard" and "risky." The promo scenarios, and some others (automatic damage every turn, bury a card every turn, no blessings deck types) are risky because there is high chance of character death if you screw up. Once you go in, you're coming out the other end either dead or a winner.
A hard scenario doesn't necessarily kill off characters, but you might end up playing it over and over until the stars align and you finally win. Scenarios where the villain is always undefeated the first time you beat it are generally hard - especially if you meet the villain early and lose a whole bunch of turns to it. Other luck based things can artificially make a scenario hard - you must roll exactly a 4 on a d6 to win.
A few rare scenarios are both hard and risky...Runelords final scenario for a solo non-caster is pretty rough if you don't have location deck manipulation. No escape, you may end fighting the villain many times trying to shuffle him to the bottom, bury a card every turn, and the villain has two checks after he hits your hand for 2-5 damage.