Congratulations to a team of Legends!

[redeux]

Hi all,

So when Core first came out I believe there was a statement made at some point that no one had yet completed Legendary difficulty. If you're not familiar with Legendary difficulty here's some developer commentary on Legendary (and at the 15:10 timestamp Keith is referring to this group). Essentially though, Legendary adds in 3 wildcards and increases bane difficulty. Naturally there was a group that decided "Hey, that sounds fun" and took on the challenge.

I'd like to formally congratulate the following for completing Dragon's Demand on Legendary difficulty:

Skizzerz (Core Valeros)

NathanDavis (Core Seelah)

Maelwys0 (Core Kyra)

Yewstance (Core Lem)

It was a society based game and the team randomly chose wildcards for each scenario. They also opted for randomly generating scenario 3C which resulted in a siege scenario with ablaze damage. I was convinced that they wouldn’t necessarily die but they would lose from locations closing before they could win. Sure enough, they managed to pull out a victory anyway.

Here's a few misc. stats from the campaign:

0 failed scenarios

0 character deaths

0 hero points used to prevent death

2 hero points used on rerolls

1 respect point earned (via Friendly Game of Sredna)

4 wildcards that were never randomly chosen

5 Trolls encountered

1 Troll defeated in combat

[skizzerz]

It was a fun ride for sure, thanks for running it redeux and thanks to the other players in the group for a very enjoyable time :)

3C was by far the hardest scenario I think I've played in PACG, certainly harder than any of the actual capstones I've played. We ran into Labyrinth and Summoning Trap a couple of times and used them to pad out the only 2 locations that didn't have negative effects. Without that, I'm not sure if we would have won that.

For those that want to try it at home, here was our 3C setup:
Theme: Wild
Scenario Type: Survive the Siege
Locations: Farm, Lair, Cliff, Slaughterhouse, Glade
Danger: Wight
Proxy A: Boggard Champion probably the easiest thing about this scenario...
Non-Closing Henchmen: Vampire, Drake, Cindermaw, Pack Landshark, Dragon
Wildcards: Harrow of Shields, Confusing, Impoverished, Ablaze, Harrow of Crowns

Next up: Legendary Curse of the Crimson Throne ;)

[Nathan Davis]

That last random scenario was tough and we didn't get the easiest banes either for an ablaze siege that is burning away location decks. Namely, Xenarth, Red Mantis Initiate, Evoker, Troll (of course) and a Swamp Ooze.Thankfully, the Glade allowed us to swap in a Wight for these, but even that had a BYA Cold damage and a total combat value of 22 thanks to Legendary and Harrows. And Confusing (which randomly shuffles away one card after reset) was brutal for my 4-Card Handed Seelah.

Beyond that, we felt well in control of each scenario. A lot of fun and a fantastic group and BR!

[Frencois]

Bravo. Champagne!

[Maelwys0]

Not too much to add to what the other guys said, this was a blast. I did want to point out the significance of one of these stats though:

redeux wrote:

5 Trolls encountered

1 Troll defeated in combat

The reason this stat is important, is because through the entire adventure not a single one of us ever had a single Fire or Acid card stocked in our decks. So it was basically impossible to ever beat a Troll in combat. The one that we did manage to beat only happened because on the previous turn Lem happened to have acquired a Fire spell from a location (Eruption, I believe), and so he was able to take one of the two combat checks and ensure the Troll stayed defeated. The rest of them we just shuffled out of the way and made sure we closed those locations before needing to encounter them again. So when we hit a Troll on our last scenario, in the Siege deck, with no possibility of acquiring any cards to defeat it, and no possibility of shuffling it out of the way and closing locations around it... well, luring it to the Glade to replace it with a Wight the second time we encountered it turned out to be our only hope of winning.

And now, since I'm taking this Kyra onwards into a Curse campaign, and swapped out her Cleric class deck for the Divine adventure deck, the first deck upgrade I'm going to look for is a Flaming Mace. ;-)

[Yewstance]

It was certainly a blast... I wouldn't have even minded a slightly higher difficulty, since it's not as if we lost any of the scenarios!

It's probably worth noting that our run was probably a little harder than a 'standard' Dragon's Demand Legendary playthrough in PACS, because...

We elected for random wildcards (as mentioned), as opposed to what is instructed in the Card Guild Guide.

We included Curse of the Crimson Throne cards. If you just play with the Core Set, then the Legendary difficulty "Use Banes of #+1" doesn't do anything except adjust Veteran difficulties in AD3, because Core has no AD4 cards, unlike Curse. As a result, we played with, and encountered many, banes that normally are never seen in a Dragons Demand game of any difficulty.

We all used Core Set characters, which are not particularly powerful by PACG standards in most regards (compare Core Lem to Class Deck Lem for a very overt example).

We also did the entire AP prior to the inclusion of 'Adventurer's Packs', which potentially could make it a bit easier, too; I think it just goes to show that anyone certainly can take on Legendary Difficulty with some strategic considerations, if we were able to do it under all of these circumstances.

However, we all had Ultimate Add-On Decks and all players were extremely capable and willing to support each other and make cohesive strategies. Plus, we were playing in a 4 player party, which is arguably the easiest party size to play in.

I will also attest to skizzerz' assessment that scenario 3C was probably the hardest scenario I've ever had to play in... though I will caveat that by saying it was the hardest scenario based on the characters and party we were using. Our party was built to stick together at one location as often as possible, as every single player could provide large quantities of local support, but Siege scenarios hugely penalize such a strategy. Furthermore, we didn't have the means to mitigate the worst of the scenario through specific boons like we may have had access to if in a different AP, or with a different characters, or of a higher levels (like location-displayable damage prevention spells).

I've certainly encountered scenarios that appeared extremely player-hostile, like endgame Season 3, but only after a time when players have built up extremely powerful, boon-rich, post-role characters that can handle all kinds of checks and requirements easily. Being thrown into such a challenge for our 10th scenario was... tricky. :D

[Matsu Kurisu]

Congratulations! Awesome run guys

[Mike Selinker]

Congrats, all!

But to be clear, we didn't say no one at Lone Shark had completed Core on Legendary difficulty.

[zeroth_hour2]

Mike Selinker wrote:

Congrats, all!

But to be clear, we didn't say no one at Lone Shark had completed Core on Legendary difficulty.

I don't think we'd expect anything else.

[eddiephlash]

Very neat! I've found that even Heroic difficulty has required the table to think things through more than usual. I'd like to again thank the devs for making more difficulty options available and look forward to more reports of teams willing to take on these challenges!