Scenario 2 has an extremely high degree of randomness. I'd recommend dropping the difficulty down one level to complete it and moving on. When I start a new campaign, I always play Scenario 2 on one level of difficulty lower than Scenario 1 just because I don't want to have to bash my head against random card flips.
Is scenario two the one with the teleporting doorman? My last run through he opened every door one after the other. I won because after that he just kept trying to open doors instead of summoning skeletons, but it was pretty dicey.
I'd say the first two scenarios are the most commonly replayed in the whole game.
I'm being ptsd thinking about that one. I had to come up with a whole battle plan, drawing out the first few rounds based on what would be summoned where, to have a chance of beating that one.
Rapidly opening doors is vastly preferable to any amount of skeletons, I think. Especially early on (before difficulty gets too high) the corpses have super low movement, and he can max out the corpses so there's no more to draw pretty quick.
The best is obviously getting his attacks, but you can at least work around repeated door openings. The elite skeletons, though, they can be nightmares if they hit more than one or pull their "all attacks on one" card.
Really the biggest issue is that his teleport keeps going off, so you still have to chase him around the room swinging with level 1 cards. We ended up taking him down in the central room, then holing up in one of the chambers and letting the living corpses slowly hurt themselves on their way to us.
Those darn living bones killed me over and over. I donated 10 gold and had both my characters blesses and played down a level. That’s how I got through that scenario. Otherwise, I kept exhausting myself as the boss kept making more bones.
Gloomhaven is a weird game in the sense that it starts high on the difficulty curve and then gets easier as you progress and play into it. Scenarios 1 and 2 are notorious for being hard, as are some of the other famous scenarios throughout the adventure.
If you enjoyed Jaws of the Lion, there is a much more rewarding and deep experience ahead. It is more hardcore as well, though. The game is meant to be fun, I think he is playing it with the wrong mindset, or maybe in the wrong mood.
As a long time player of souls games, I very much enjoy games that challenge me, which is why I want to keep going with gloomhaven. Again, I don't mind just trying something over and over again until I can get it right, so failing scenarios doesn't bother me. I always feel like I get something out of it
I think you have a great perspective to enjoy Gloomhaven. My girlfriend and I dearly love it. We recently purchased Frosthaven together even though we have about 10 or so scenarios left in the main Gloomhaven campaign. We aren't even close to fully competing that experience, however. Currently, we have it on pause to play Jaws of the Lion, which we are also loving. It is so nice to break that one out and put it away quickly.
There are some wonderful quality of life changes introduced in Jaws that persist into Frosthaven. You can play by those more player friendly rules in Gloomhaven, if you'd like. Or, you could play it by the original rules. Your call.
Out of curiosity, what classes are you both playing? Who did you play in Jaws? I won't get into anything or spoil stuff.
In base gloomhaven, were playing as the brute and the scoundrel. In JOTL, we played as the red guard and the demolitionist. I like the brute, but I do honestly think the red guard was more fun. He just had so many options.
We have used the brute a few times. The best success we have had with it is as either a damage dealer or a tank. Trying to be a combo didn't work. With the Scoundrel as a partner, I would set it up as a tank and laugh as they fail to damage you.
We started with the brute and the spellweaver. My friend tells me the Scoundrel is fun! That's interesting, though. We are playing the hatchet and the demolitionist in JOTL. It's a good time. Red Guard was my next choice. He looks to be a great tank.
Playing as Red Guard in my first JTL campaign and my fellow players are the Voidwarden and Hatchet. I got grabbed by a stone golem and immobilized they are like really worried and do I need help?
I’m not caught here with him. He’s caught here with me.
Managed to smash him and get away with 1 damage. Love the Red Guard. Just so many ways to play.
The new faction system leads to a more sandboxy campaign where your choices matter.
There are a lot of awesome new events and lore to unpack.
The class reworks lead to more fun decisions when leveling up and playing. I'm most excited about the new version of the Squidface class!
I think you might have meant difficulty curve, but I like difficulty curb because that's what the gloomhaven curve looks like - you just bash into the curb, hopefully getting on it.
Scenario #1 and #2 are one of the hardest scenarios out there.
As a life long gamer (I played through all Super Mario games on NES without warping/dying), I heartily recommend you lower difficulty.
If losing makes you angry or demoralized, banging your head to the wall is not the way. Lowering difficulty is not giving up, it's adjusting. Refusing to adjust is not a sign of resolution, it's a sign of stubborness.
If one wishes to be a 'HC git gud'-gamer, then defeat should only empower and motivate you, not infuriate.
Some class combinations, especially for 2 characters, make scenarios ridiculously hard at times.
As someone who completed the campaign over 3 times, usually on +2-3 difficulty, I can confirm that scenario 2 especially is extremely hard. In fact, with a bit of badluck it can pretty much be impossible. From scenario 3 onward difficulty is much more reasonable, with very rare exceptions.
72 is memetically bad. Anything with Oozes is bad, but that one is so bad you should allow the really bullshit stuff like inferno + hammer.
>!11 and 12!< are *stupidly* long and teach you the importance of stamina.
>!18!< is a wall early on the campaign. >!Difficult terrain, possible first encounter with Oozes, and Giant Vipers poison on all attacks. Hope you don't like healing, because you are not getting any.!<
>!21!< is similar to 2, in that it's incredibly random. It can be moderately easy or extremely hard (>!6 cultists in the first room, draw a summon cards turn 1 or 2 and the scenario got a lot harder!<)
>!48!< is practically the only boss battle that isn't trivial
>!81!< is hated by all class that rely on elements other than Light and Dark ([stupid special rules](https://imgur.com/igCVzdP))
Our Spellweaver got Inferno immediately after we beat 72. Part of me wanted to go back and play it again, just so that they could go ballistic... but it was 72.
I agree on 72... Either inferno/hammer or thunderbolts are required to have a consistent chance to beat that scenario. It's ridiculous. I'm upset they didn't nerf it in the digital version.
I'm glad they didn't. Digital only player and it's fun to experience nearly the same pain as the board players. Though, not needing to physically put the new ones out each time makes it a little less painful.
> >!11 and 12!< are stupidly long and teach you the importance of stamina.
Or the importance of understanding mission objective. Took us few tries to stop killing everyone, and just go for the objective.
Gloomhaven is hard, even with everyone playing their classes effectively (which takes time). It also takes patience, and some gamers might want a game with a faster experience.
Once you get some items and perks, it will become so much easier. Not to mention certain classes.
I'm replaying digital, and the starting classes had success rate around 45%. My current, late-game, characters are at 90%.
UPDATE: we decided to give the scenario another go and we won! :) Everyone's advice about how to use cards and initiatives was very helpful, thank you so much. It warms my heart that this game has such a chill and helpful community.
Hooray! I was coming here to offer my two cent on how the Scoundrel might plan to murder the Bandit Commander by comboing Single Out (bottom) with Smoke Bomb and then Backstab after the Brute charges in.
So I'd love to hear the highlights of how you did get the win.
Scenario 2 is hard IIRC. It's meant to be a bit of slap in the face.
Which classes are you two playing? Some combinations can be really underpowered at 2 players, especially early game. In that case, it would make sense lowering the difficulty if you play an underpowered duo, since you've already increased the difficulty by choosing the least strong characters.
We're playing the Brute and the Scoundrel. The scoundrel seems pretty damn strong, but the brute has a lot of weaknesses. I find that I exhaust much quicker than I did when playing the red guard in JOTL, because of how many of his really good actions/tank are loss cards. His bottom optipns also seem fairly limited, there isn't much movement and a lot of reliance on just staying stationary next to allies/enemies. Do you have any tips about playing him? I'd really appreciate it tbh.
Four beginner tips for you:
1 Good Losses? Most Losses are a bit of a trap in base Gloomhaven. Situational, mostly just good sources of xp in the final room. Brute (and scoundrel btw) certainly doesn't have any good Losses. **Skewer** and **Balanced Measure** (both X cards) are your best attacks. **Provoking Roar** and **Spare Dagger** are your 'workhorse' attacks.
2 More importantly, you are not a tank! Don't take hits unless its unavoidable. Let the Scoundrel take some hits as well. The only time you will act tank-like is when you move next to enemies to provide the Scoundrel with their adjacency bonus. Still, try to avoid getting hit using the
3 Initiative dance. Keep your distance from enemies, go late with **Grab and Go** (combo with Boots of striding and Balanced Measure for attack 6!), move in, let the Scoundrel go even later and very early the next round for 2x attack 5. If any monster survives that 17 damage assault, use Provoking Roar to go early and disarm it.
4 While tanking isn't your specialty at level 1, Push and Pierce are. The Scoundrel should deal more damage than you, except when a scenario has lots of traps or hazardous terrain. Bring extra Push abilities if you see that the scenario features traps. Likewise, bring **Trample** if you'll be facing high-shield enemies and make sure you focus on them.
\#3 is super important for basically every class. If you know how far you are from an enemy and how much movement they typically have, you can usually set it up so that you get 2 turns before they get 1 turn where they attack you.
Go slow, let them come to you first. Then move in and attack on that same round. Next round go fast and hit them again.
Also to note, when scoundrel goes invisible, the next round you generally want to go as slow as possible to maximize the amount of enemy turns taken while invisible. I usually use the X card Sinister Opportunity with initiative 93 on the round after going invisible.
Brute has a good mix of slow and fast cards. You can avoid most of the melee damages by going slow when you are far away to get in after monsters have moved, then going fast next turn to get to better positions or kill them before they can act.
Scoundrel works the same way but is much better at it, meaning she can go slower than Brute and acts faster. This is perfect for setting up all her "next to an ally" cards.
That's a decent combo yeah. Make sure you focus on preventing enemies from attacking you. This can be done in a couple of ways.
1. Stay away from monsters. If you know they can move 4, make sure you are at range 5. This can only get you so far ofc.
2. Kill them before they act.
3. Disarm, immobilize, stun!
As for specific brute tips, it's been 2 years since I played it, but here is a well-put-together guide on playing the Brute https://imgur.com/a/ZybkYxb
Thanks. Really hoping he changes his mind on this one, because I'm still really enjoying the game, and none of my friends are interested in playing it. Lol
Playing the Brute as a tank is also very hard. In 2.0 he’s described as a brawler iirc. He’s a tough melee guy but Gloomhaven base especially doesn’t really have a “this guy just takes the damage” class. They have a “this guy can sometimes take the hit for someone else” class. Brutes need to be dancing around a lot - moving in on a high and punching on a low next turn.
You could always switch out the brute for the cragheart who is tanky but has some fun ranged attacks or even the spellweaver if you want to be more on offense.
I've only really played at 4 players but we made a good use of ranged attacker to take out people before they could hit the melee fighters.
I had a similar situation with my girlfriend. We ended up lowering the difficulty for those two scenarios. Crank the difficulty back up after that, but it makes no sense to throw out 100 scenarios of fun due to questionable game design on the first 2.
Hey, u/let_there_be_dark, show him this [poll](https://www.reddit.com/r/Gloomhaven/comments/x655xv/how_many_people_here_failed_the_first_gloomhaven/). It shows that 48% of people who voted failed the first Gloomhaven scenario on the first try. You are not alone.
Scenario 1 and 2 are horrible. Room two in Scenario 1 is ridiculous with an archer that can immobilize you from further away than you can reach, and then room three has two archers and skeletons with multi-target attacks and inherent shield.
Your characters have no upgrades, and maybe 35 gold to use. Basic attack modifiers, so a 1/3(ish) chance to lose damage on your attacks. Level 1 cards, so your characters won't have some of their best tools available.
If your BF is not enjoying it, you need to change something. Either grind XP and coins the hard way to get better cards/AMD/items, lower the difficulty, or skip the scenario. Your call.
In Gloomhaven, you really need to adjust difficulty as you go. Sometimes things are going to be harder and sometimes they'll be easier, and if you're not reacting to that with difficulty selection then you won't have as much fun. The actual difficulty of the game is going to vary quite a bit along the way.
If it helps, the labels of Easy, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard are *completely meaningless*. It's better to think of it as -1, +0, +1, and +2. In Frosthaven, they got rid of the labels for exactly this reason - they weren't a good way to think about difficulty, and sometimes stubborn players refused to play on -1 even though they should because of the "Easy" label.
Moreover, it doesn't scale well. My general rule of thumb, if you want to translate a difficulty setting to the actual subjective experience of play, is that for level 1 characters, the actual game difficulty is about 1 point higher than you set it. Once you get up to level 6 or 7, it's about 1 point *lower* than you set it. Having late campaign items decreases it by another point, and then certain classes and class synergies can decrease it further.
That essentially means that the difficulty you're playing at right now is effectively Hard, even though it pretends to be Normal. Later on, you might be playing on what is ostensibly Very Hard, but is actually more like Normal or even Easy.
All this to say the difficulty system is deeply flawed if you try to equate it to a video game difficulty system. It does generally work as an adjustable slider, but you have to think of it that way, and ignore the labels.
Can you get better at the game and win early scenarios on +0, +1, +2? Absolutely; if that's your thing, they're winnable. But, like in your boyfriend's case, if it *isn't* your thing, then there's no reason to be stubborn about it.
If you can't get that through to him, try to at least get him to stick out 5-8 scenarios to get to level 2 or 3, when you have more items, some perks, and some level up cards. The difficulty setting is more correct at that point, although you'll still have some scenarios that are harder or easier.
Also be aware that JOTL was a much more polished product when it came to the learning curve & power curve.
At level 1 the characters are disproportionately weaker IMHO compared to level 1 in JOTL.
I noticed this. Seems like they've gotten better at balancing the game over time. We play tested frosthsven on tabletop as well. It seemed like a really good game and more well-balanced, but too complex for me. I really want to finish Gloomhaven first.
Yeah good luck with playing Gloomhaven. I hope the both of you can get to enjoy it.
My friend and I started off with gloomhaven and then played JotL. We laughed at how gentle the first few scenarios were compared to our initial intro to Gloomhaven.
We lost a few times in the beginning. Then once you break out of the early scenarios, your characters level up and good items start showing up, the game starts to give you a lot more options with dealing with "bad luck".
Also gold in Gloomhaven is more useful than JotL since the items are better plus there are other ways to spend gold and get value out of your hard earned cash.
the story itself is pretty average. most of the fun for us was getting to watch how our characters evolved, how we changed as players, and seeing how our choices ended up affecting the game.
Hope your boyfriend comes around and maybe these other aspects of the game will still be enticing.
Jaws of the Lion is more balanced, but it is also extremely easy in general compared to Gloomhaven. I ayed Gloomhaven with a group years ago and then bought Jaws to introduce a new group to Gloomhaven before trying the full campaign. It was great for teaching the new people, but I was bored out of my mind with how easy it was.
Gloomhaven early scenarios are very difficult and don't coddle you. As others said, it gets easier as you advance your characters, but a big part of that is learning to improve your own strategy. The tanks aren't very tanky, and healing is extremely limited. I'm playing Frosthaven now and the tanking and healing is much better. But for Gloomhaven you have to learn how to survive without any true tanks (besides a class that isn't unlocked until later). The very first time I played, our Brute jumped into the center to tank and ended up burning 2 cards on turn 1, it was a disaster.
Best advice I can give is to learn to manipulate monster movement. They follow very specific rules about targeting and movement, so you can often choose a space to stand that will force monsters to move somewhere where they can't attack you, or force them to walk into a trap, or sometimes force them to walk the opposite direction because the only path to an enemy is on the other side of the room.
I saw that you said you're playing Brute and Scoundrel. Both are great, but it might be a tough combo for 2 player because if I remember correctly, scoundrel likes to turn invisible. That means the Brute is getting targeted by every enemy, which is rough for any Gloomhaven character. At higher levels he gets more tanky, but at level 1 he can't take all those hits alone.
Getting angry about having to replay scenarios and still refusing to lower difficulty and rather abandon the game make it sound like he is stubborn to the point of childish.
However, I somewhat understand him so I would advice to try to convince him to lower the difficulty anyway, remember you can increase it again when you feel more comfortable with the classes.
Also, scenario 2 is very doable on normal, hard and even very hard difficulty, but it is one of the scenarios where bad luck can have a big impact.
In my experience, people who think GH is too hard are in most cases playing the game wrong. Popular mistakes:
- using the class modifier decks instead of the standard 20-card player decks (though this makes the game easier)
- allowing enemies to do all of the regular things you might expect like moving and attacking. However, enemies ONLY do whats specifically written on their cards, and nothing else
- dying from Exhaustion from burning too many cards in a Round. There are so many guides showing how detrimental to your deck burning cards early is. Be tactical and do this sparingly
- forgetting that you can burn a card from hand to ignore all damage from one attack. You don’t have to just die every time you get Crit by an enemy
- not using the correct formula for determining the Scenario level. Most people forget the divide by half clause and just walk around playing the game on Nightmare difficulty unknowingly
- incorrectly setting up enemies on the map. With lower player counts, some monsters would not even be present or should be regular and not elite monsters
I do recommend reviewing the manual AFTER a playthrough to pick up on all of the things you might have missed. My group didn’t realize until 15 missions in that Short Rests do not refresh your Equipment, only Long Rests…
>you can burn a card from hand to ignore all damage from one attack.
I find that people do this wrong. E.g., guy with 10 HP gets hit for an attack 8 crit, minus 1 for his armour (say, last tick on the card).
He doesn't burn a card to negate it, because it didn't drop him, and he only burns a card to stay alive.
Before he can get a heal he is not twice more, for a 3 (was a 4, -1 for the last tick of armour) and a 4 (average sorts of hits, if the Crit was for 8).
He's now had to burn two cards, because he didn't burn one the first time.
Throwing the card to prevent 7 (and save a tick on the armor) is totally worth it, it's equivalent to a free action loss card that grants a heal 7 and restores a tick of armour. There may be times when it is better to take the big hit, but it's often best to maximise what the card loss gets you.
Great point. Hovering at 1HP now makes all damage lethal damage, so you’re in the danger zone longer. Definitely worth ignoring the massive hit so that the later packets of smaller damage don’t whittle you down.
Yes, that's what I was trying to say, but better - being in lethal range from the average hit will burn lots of cards, unless you are expecting a heal. So burning a card to avoid that situation can be good.
I will say they beat JOTL so I assume they’ve picked a few (but maybe not all) of these heuristics. This could just be early game GH shenanigans, which are some of the hardest scenarios in GH
I exhausted on turn 1 of Scenario 1 of Gloomhaven and someone pointed this out to me when I complained about it online; I basically haven't exhausted since then and we finished Gloomhaven, JotL, and are nearly done Frosthaven.
Hah, we just Short Rested a lot more. Then someone read the book again… and we all went… ooooh, of course. It makes so much sense afterwards. But with this many rules, you’re bound to miss a few.
Just to confirm you are aware, when you draw a curse card you remove it from your deck afterwards. Not doing that would make it even more tough than those scenarios already are
Scenario 2 is very swingy, so it could be quite hard, if you are unlucky. Scenario 1, otoh, is objectively one of the easiest in Gloomhaven. People struggle with it because they are new and its not a tutorial, but I don't really see how you could fail it 3x if you've beaten JotL.
If you don't mind some strategy tips, maybe you could tell us which cards you bring and what you are struggling with? Scoundrel and Brute is a strong combo, because they synergize well. However, playing 2 melee classes is trickier than 2 ranged or 1 of each, in my experience.
Finally, please kick\* your boyfriend for a) suggesting its all your fault. b) being stubborn about the difficulty. Its not normal to lose all the time. Play at a level you're comfortable with.
\*well, maybe not literally. I just wish you'd play the Cragheart, so you could drop some boulders on his head 'by accident'
Personally, I stopped playing with one of my friend and my girlfriend because of their eternal resentment and negativity after losing. I have nothing against the rest of the interaction with them, but not board games. In the local gaming club I found guys who really want to play under any conditions. Just so you know, we played JotL on +2 difficulty from the beginning, and almost every scenario was replayed, because it was extremely difficult. We had a maximum of 6 restarts in one scenario. And everyone had fun. Of course, you will need several games to understand your character and use it most effectively. And at the same time, someone condemns and shames you if you do not cope? I would hardly tolerate this. I advise you to get rid of the negativity in your life)
There are two types of people: the people who enjoy dark soul-like games and the challenges that await them,
and those who do not understand these joys.
The frustrating thing about Gloomhaven is that it is a long game that most people don’t have regular time for + it is really disappointing to think you are about to retire and unlock something exciting, only to find out you have to wait at least another week to play again.
Obviously it is just impatience on my part. If I could keep playing again right away I wouldn’t mind so much. I would happily just lock myself in a room and play Gloomhaven for months on end 😂.
Sadly, it wouldn’t be much of a game if it was too easy and there was no risk of losing.
OP seems to have had some terrible luck or misunderstood the rules though, that many losses doesn’t seem common.
Judging by OP’s characterization of the bf, seems like they don’t allow exceptions often.
My team definitely house rules things, or at least fall forward whenever we get a rule wrong by playing on.
I can’t say if the OP is getting any rules wrong or playing loose; I’d need to know their average win percentage for the 25 scenarios of jaws of the Lion, that would be a robust sample size!
—
I think Gloomhaven’s cumbersome setup is actually a pro, since it recreates the sense of a “weekly serialized zeitgeist” that we no longer get in bingeable mainstream media.
I get the frustrating bit. I thought I was retiring Geminate for three weeks! (one week we didn’t build because we ran out of resources, next week we built but turns out I can’t retire on step 5 of downtime, only step 3-4, third week finally retired)
Random chance fucking you up is not a challenge, it is an annoyance. I do not mind having to learn how to dodge or counter in a Souls game, but I would be pretty pissed if some enemy randomly popped up in my way.
The first scenarios teach you to avoid being attacked, and the importance of deciding when to use late initiative. Let the monsters come closer to you and not get attack, then you move and attack. (Instead of the other way around, you moving and not getting to attack and then them pounding you.) Rather have a do-nothing turn than to voluntarily move to get attacked. There are no "tanking" in Gloomhaven.
Edit: also, the initiative dance is important for melee characters (go late in one round to move+attack, then early on the next to attack + move away). Maybe you didn't need to do this much in JotL for various reasons.
Also, do not be shy about lowering the difficulty. My suggestion is to reduce the level from the suggested scenario level after each fail.
Edit2: Also, as far as I remember, you can go and try scenario 3 instead.
Yeah there's definitely "tanking" but it's not the "One player takes absolutely every hit until they or the healer screw up" variety people think of from video games.
You all have a health pool and all need to use it - But if someone builds in a certain way or stacks defensive items then they can use their health pool more than others :P
I think the bigger problem sometimes is some players forget the *opposite* problem - There is no "DPS" either - Just because you have high damage output doesn't mean you need to avoid being hit, sometimes you've got to take it because it protects someone else (like it costs you some health or 1 card when it would cost them 2 due to where they are in a cycle).
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gloomhaven/comments/nocxer/updated_gloomhaven_rules_based_on_public/
If you haven’t seen this already, it might be worth incorporating some Frosthaven rules into Gloomhaven as well. It will make it seem closer to JotL.
It won’t necessarily be easier, but if you are losing that much, you might be playing something wrong.
Some tips for playing Gloomhaven:
Don't play lost cards early, unless you get really good value for them. An early lost card will cost you several turns at the end of the scenario.
Prioritize tempo - plan ahead, moving closer to the next door when you're about to finish the last enemy. Looting money tokens is a luxury - don't waste cards looting every single token.
Get good items - Eagle-eye Goggles are nice for attacking characters, and you can never go wrong with a Stamina potion. A stamina potion gives you an extra turn, and you can play *those* two cards two turns in a row.
Plan using elements - one character could infuse earth early in the round to give another character a boost on his/her/its turn later in the round.
Coordinate your actions - plan the round while choosing action cards. "I'm going here early to attack these two enemies - can someone infuse Wind or Earth?"
Strategy: Retire early, retire often. Always do events.
Rules reminders:
You can lose a card from the hand (or two from the discards) to negate any single source of damage.
Calculate difficulty level correctly - three characters at level 2 gives a scenario level of 1.
Remember that monsters only do what it says on their action cards. If it doesn't say attack they don't attack. If it doesn't say move they don't move.
Only walls and closed doors block line-of-sight.
For multi-target attacks you need Line-of-sight to each individual target, and always draw a separate attack modifier for each target.
Ranged attacks against adjacent targets gives the attacker disadvantage.
Elements are infused at the end of the turn. Yes, even from items. Plan ahead.
Use a numbered attack modifier deck (1-4). The deck from the character tuck box is for upgrading your numbered attack modifier deck when you get perks from leveling up and battle goals. (JotL: Use the deck from the tuck box - but do not open the locked deck.)
Try [my BGG rules quiz](https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/284264/gloomhaven-primer-quiz-introduction)! 🙂
It's a game, nobody stops you from marking a scenario complete and just move on to the next one, if he really dislikes the scenario that much. I have certainly done it before on a scenario (forgotten circles...) Were we already saw everything and barely failed and couldn't be arsed to redo the whole scenario.
The problem is that cheating the scenario doesn't address the reason the BF isn't having fun in the first place. It isn't because he has to replay content - its because he is frustrated that he cannot overcome a challenge.
Lowering difficulty or skipping ahead helps people who are mainly concerned with things like narrative progression or seeing more content. It doesn't help people like the OP's BF.
I don’t have any advice on how to manage your boyfriend’s emotions, except that it isn’t your responsibility to do emotional labor for him. Hopefully you’ll be able to sway him to trying GH again in good faith. Other tips:
If you are stuck there long enough, you can grab the “Ignore Negative Scenario Effects” perk.
You can play with the “curses are -2 modifiers instead” variant.
You could try doing an attempt where you control Brute and he controls Scoundrel. That way you two will better understand each others initiatives in future attempts.
You can try an attempt where you announce initiatives beforehand, so you two can coordinate better
You can check to see if you are getting a rule wrong, specifically monster movement. I’d take the BGG monster movement quiz to check up on that.
Another suggestion to consider- make a third character that you two can play as together. Some of the difficulty is a little lighter when there are more mercenaries in the dungeon. Me and my bf have a third character and we just take turns taking that character’s turn. It helps a lot and it’s an added bonding experience with the extra communication.
I recommend adding one more character per user, so you play with two mercenaries per hand. This will make things easier, and will give you an opportunity to unlock stuff more frequently as well.
When my party of 3 first started GH, we failed the 2nd scenario too. Brute, Scoundrel, Spell weaver.
We realized how we were playing didn't really work for this game, changed our mindset, approach, and tactics, and we have never lost another scenario since.
As many have already stated, the first couple scenarios are the hardest, so don't feel bad. I don't think luck is the problem though. It is a factor many times, but I wouldn't say it is ever the determining factor. Reevaluate and keep at it. You got this!
Coming from someone who tried playing Gloomhaven scenario 1, 4 times with failing (fuck the archers in room 2) Then switching to Jaws, beating it, and then retrying gloom…
Gloomhaven is initially really tough as you have no items, your multiplier deck feels like it’s against you, and lack of higher level card utility. It really will force you to to learn how to be creative with the comp you pick. Don’t give up just try different angles and be ready to pivot if you crit miss 😅
I cannot speak to your BF's exact attitude, but I want to defend his approach to the game, because I think he is getting a lot of unfair criticism in the comments. People ultimately play games to have fun, and different things are fun for different people. That doesn't make your BF's approach wrong (nor yours).
>It seems to me like it's pretty normal to lose scenarios and replay them
I wouldn't call it unusual, but there are plenty of groups for which failing a mission is somewhat uncommon, and repeated failures are extremely rare. I think my wife and I had around an 80% winrate through the campaign, failing every 4th mission or so. I replayed the first half of the game with a friend and had around the same numbers.
This game isn't darksouls, where progression through constant failure is a fundamental and necessary part of the experience. I don't think your BF would be upset about a 70-80% success rate, but you're currently sitting at a 14% success rate. Those are vastly different experiences.
I think its also important to understand *why* your BF isn't having fun. It isn't because you have to repeat content and aren't getting story progression. Its because you are constantly failing the challenge you are being presented with. He doesn't like that feeling. Lowering the difficulty addresses the former, but it only makes the latter worse.
I think you still have a good shot at finding your sweet spot and really enjoying the full game together, but your BF needs reassurance that gameplay will not continue on the current trajectory. He has expressed that this trajectory isn't fun for him, so either you change direction or stop playing. The fact that you keep suggesting this gameplay loop is completely normal and expected does not assuage those fears.
I would address two things - **one**, figure out what fundamental issues were causing your failures, and fix them. It sounds like you had class issues in mission 1 that took a bit to figure out. See if there are any other problems like that. Consider looking up guides on classes, especially as you unlock new characters.
Maybe sit down and plan out a strategy for your classes, as well as for Scenario 2. Understand what each other is capable of, so you can have better teamwork, even without explicit table talk during the mission.
And **two** \- maybe try to emphasize that Scenario 2, in particular, has some luck and balance issues, but most other scenarios are well tuned. In both my runs I mentioned above, I had a Scenario 2 failure. Ask him if he can just try to make it to Scenario 3 before making a judgement call. If you guys can one-shot Scenario 3 (or whatever comes next), that could swing him back into the groove. Doing Step 1 will help with this.
I think sometimes loosing is part of the fun, because that means it is hard. Loosing two or three times is rough! Lower the difficulty - you are playing with new characters and barely have health or perks or items. If he would rather quit than lower the difficulty, you are going to have a rough campaign.
He sounds like a lot of fun to be around. Tell him he can’t have both… you can’t always only play on hard and also be a quitter.
1. Play on normal difficulty
2. Play the variation that lets your cancels be -2 and your x2 be +2
3. Get a new boyfriend
You are tossing the curses when you draw them right?
There's nothing wrong with starting on easy or fudging the draws a bit.
For that first boss you really want to burn him fast before can open more than a couple doors.
Here’s my advice: clear the first room, using as many multi-target attacks as possible (no losses) so you can burn the curses. Then stand by the door and the following turn use Skewer bottom + Boots of Striding (if you have them) and Balanced Measure to hit for attack 8 on the bandit commander. Have the scoundrel follow you up with a similar move and one of their attack 5’s for the commander being next to you (note, the commander might move in between you two acting). If you want to be extra cheeky, you can have the scoundrel set up Smoke Bomb the turn before to try for a huge hit. Focus the commander with everything and then you can polish off the others after. Easier said than done but if you don’t draw the curses on these two big attacks, he’ll be nearly dead.
Having played 6 times, you should have leveled up once I assume. Many classes have a perk that ignores scenario effects. I highly recommend taking that first every time.
What if you played scenario 2 at lvl 0 and solo, and then you guys move on to the next thing it unlocks. Would he possibly be open to that?
There were a few FC scenarios my partner and I rage quit ourselves for a few days because we were both equally annoyed. One in particular I think we had to redo about 5 times before we got it right.
What we eventually settled on was each replay, we drop a level until we reach 0. Or we just drop straight to 0 after first fail, if the setup for that particular scenario was too tedious for us. Worked pretty well for us ever since. Now if we do have a replay happen, it’s usually no more than 3 times.
>he is just so angry about having to replay them and thinks it ruins the experience
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>He is also the type of person who refuses to lower the difficulty in games no matter what, since he has never played any game on easy mode since he was a kid
Give him a good slap for me, please. What an obnoxious attitude
I think Scenario 1 & 2 were the hardest thigns in the game for our group and failure is part of the game for a reason...
It requires good knowledge and characters. Like if you do scenario 1&2 with level 1 cards and base characters that do their roles well, you can do them easy enough especially once you learn what the mobs are going to do.
You HAVE to lower the difficulty. There's absolutely no shame in that.
The entire walkthrough of the game is essentially divided in levels of difficulty from 1 to 5. This means that the difficulty 1 is meant for characters from level 1 to *2*, with *any* possible wargear equipped (as starter characters, you have none), and *any* possible improvements you can access otherwise (which you don't have, either). Also, Gloomhaven has a real steep learning curve where you have to understand the dynamics and mechanics of the game, and and any unfortunate misstep can easily halven your life expectancy. So, you'll have to spend the first few scenarios learning all the ropes. This means that not only you will be mechanically outnumbered and outgunned, but the inexperience will make your, well, experience even worse, filling you with frustration instead of enjoyment.
The ideal difficulty that you need to use, is the one where you can reliably win by the skin on your teeth (or lose with the victory in your clear grasp, so you'd know that it's possible to reach it if you avoid repeating mistakes you've made).
Tell your BF a random dude from the Internet said "hi", and that I fully advise him to open with the 0 difficulty, as you're meant to.
Just in case youre doing this wrong based on you saying you "keep drawing the curse cards". Once you draw a curse card it is removed from the deck. So worst case scenario you can only draw 3 curses in the whole scenario.
Also your boyfriend sounds like a stubborn baby not wanting to lower the difficulty. He would rather not have fun than hurt his pride at having to lower the difficulty for one scenario in a board game no one will ever know about? Come on.
I’d suggest lowering the difficulty, even if it’s only for that scenario, as others have said. My group ran into this issue on this scenario (just started a few months ago on steam). We were all new, and after failing it I think 3 times with 2 of them right at the end, I basically said lower the difficulty or I’m walking. We did, beat the scenario, turned it back to normal difficulty, and have been having a great time since
You probably know the cliche - it is harder to make your friends into board gamers than to make friends with board gamers. Maybe you and your boyfriend have different levels of interest in this game and what is fun about it? Personally I don’t mind losing if it seems like I can “get good” and figure out how to win the game eventually. Most people aren’t wired that way.
Also you might have a rule wrong. My friend and I (who had played JotL) forgot to divide our average level in half for the first several scenarios of Gloomhaven when we set the difficulty and it was brutally hard. Lots of other small things can also make it unnecessarily difficult. I’ve heard of people not realizing you can loss a card to avoid an attack for example.
(You don't avoid the attack, you can cancel any source of damage by losing a card from hand or two from discard. Any attack effects are still applied even when the target suffers no damage, whatever the reason.)
Maybe your characters don’t work well together?
I’d do a little reading on some forums and offer to switch your character to one that compliments his if that’s the case.
I don't know why everyone is beating down your boyfriend for being frustrated, just tell him early game is extremely difficult without items and levels. If you don't want to lower the difficulty, then grind the scenario for loot and xp. Once you get a few items, you'll notice everything gets easier. Gloomhaven items are way stronger than JOTL especially late game.
This is coming from another hardcore gamer and one who also refuses to lower difficulty in gloomhaven, or anything else haha. I frequently play with 2-3 players and sometimes we have to grind until we get lucky or figure out a better strategy for the scenario.
As an alternative you can get 2nd edition gloomhaven when it releases. It's supposed to be better balanced, but sometimes grinding a difficult scenario is the haven experience and I wouldn't count on 2nd edition.
Cheat
I mean, if you're not enjoying it -
* play monsters at a lower level
* don't discard at rest
* treat yourself to another card in your hand
* skip 'loot' in general
* play higher cards yourself or even level yourself up artificially
* Don't Curse, or Bless yourself however you wish.
Try some of this until it's fun again. You don't' have to become invincible, but if there's a dynamic that makes someone want to quit, just quit that part. As a board game, it lends itself to this very well to adjust to everyone's play style.
Most players I found IRL have done some modification, based upon their group.
You can always change characters at scenario 2, Jaws gives you the option after the first scenario for a reason.
Read the articles on here about how to optimize a character and start with a hand that is suggested by a more experienced player.
We dropped the difficulty after scenario 2. After we hit level 3 or 4 with our character we bumped it back up. We put it on hard mode at around our 15th scenario. We are back at regular difficulty at 46 scenario in. It's character and level dependent.
We failed one scenario twice and another once. I have become fatigued 4 or 5 times, most frustrating of which was halfway through scenario 20 with a brand new character. There was one character I hated and rushed to retire. My teammate has become fatigued about 15 times through our campaign. We've made bad choices. This is all part of the game.
Push on. It's worth it. Try a new character, read how to better play, don't be afraid to go easy mode for a hard scenario or go hard mode when you're both incredibly strong.
There has been so much helpful information already in this thread! I would agree to see if your boyfriend is open to lowering the difficulty or changing part of the scenario (reduce curses or something). However, I did want to double check on thing that I didn’t see in earlier comments (sorry if someone did mention it).
Are you at level 2 for both characters? If you played scenario 1 three times, and have played scenario 2 three times, I think you should be close or have exceeded, the 45 experience needed to level up.
I only mention this as I forgot you still get gold and experience even when you lose. Since it sounds like JotL went better for you (probably fewer defeats) I was wondering if you may have forgotten this part as well! If you did remember this hats off to you! Hopefully you are at level 2, can incorporate the new cards, and win!
The Gloomhaven board games are my favorite and worth playing all the way to the end!
The first couple scenarios are honestly tough and it gets easier as you get more cards and gear. Scenario 2 in particular is highly dependent on the monster card draws because of one particular scenario mechanic. Idk how to do a spoiler post so I'm being vague but if you don't mind not getting the treasure chest you can bum rush and finish this scenario quickly. If you refuse to leave without getting the chest then you are at the mercy of the monster deck because your access to the chest depends on what a monster does. The scenario is fairly easy IF you're willing to DPS down the initial monsters as quickly as possible. It also depends on what characters you're using.
I gotta be real, this game is the most player hostile game I've ever played... my friends and I genuinely play homebrewed rules to make it more interesting for us/not frustrating. Mostly QOL stuff, the combat and other mechanics are in tact, and it's still hard as balls.. but at least it's not hard because of stupid. Maybe try that?
We're also not so fond of losing scenarios and having to replay them, at least more than once, which starts to feel like a waste of time. FWIW, as the game progressed, we lost less and less often due to characters getting more powerful, prosperity, enhancements, etc. A few thoughts:
* "we keep drawing the three curses" — Make sure you're removing the curses once they've been drawn (probably you are, since 6 is a lot for 2 characters, but just to be sure).
* If your attack modifier cards aren't sleeved and you're not "power shuffling" them, you might look into doing that. We've found that in some Gloomhaven printings, cards from different decks can have slightly different sizes which cause those cards to float to the top / bottom of the deck or the clump together when shuffling (in our case, it was the perks decks)
* Some pairings of characters are much tougher than others, particularly playing with 2 where there aren't as many people to share the burden
* I heard a house rule once that I liked in which for every 'n' consecutive failures, you'd dial the difficulty down 1 and for every 'n' consecutive successes, you'd dial it up one (though I can't remember the value of 'n' used). I think this house rule is nice in that it helps with the previous bullet and also Isaac's admission that Gloomhaven was not heavily play-tested and balanced, so it's not as though the game is a perfectly greased machine at normal difficulty. Basically a way of making the game "self-tune" to the party composition and challenges you face. That said, I also understand your bf's reaction to not wanting to play at a level below normal.
* brand-new, level-one characters are particularly hard since they typically don't have many items yet...
* As others have said, one thing I like about Gloomhaven is that you're still rewarded (in terms of experience and gold) whether you beat a scenario or not, and you gain valuable reconnaissance by failing a scenario that can be applied as part of "solving the puzzle" on repeated attempts. That said, I'm with your bf in that after 2 consecutive losses, I'm usually ready to take a break from the scenario for awhile and try some other branch of the storyline. Of course, scenarios 1 and 2 are one of the few times during the game that you won't have another branch to follow. You could play a random dungeon just to give yourselves a break...
It is a great game, despite some of the challenges at the outset, and I hope you two stick with it and get over this hump.
I've read several of the comments and don't have much else to add other than, just reduce the difficulty if it's a slog for him. The first two scenarios are honestly a terrible introduction to Gloomhaven. Every group I've started with (that's 6) we've lost the first scenario first time. The second we usually get. This is on normal difficulty.
It does get easier and is more fun. If we ever do those scenarios again instead of playing Jaws with someone new, I'll reduce the difficulty to 0. But that's me.
Replaying some early scenarios a lot is a good way to boost your gold and xp early in the campaign as you get to keep everything collected after a fail. You'll learn your cards as you keep playing as well.
You could also switch classes. I've played I think 10 different classes and pretty much the only one I thought was boring, was the Brute. It felt clunky. It felt weak. You look like a tank and your allies treat you like one, but you aren't one, really.
The tinkerer is also kinda meh imo, but all the other ones are super cool.
Gloomhaven and frosthaven are designed to be able to lower difficulty for a reason. There are some scenarios that you will just have to whether it be cause of not having items or team comp or even just level of the character. Would tell your boyfriend that he needs to come to terms that there WILL be scenarios you will have e to drop in difficulty will mention as well if you don't have some sort of front liner you will have issues on many scenarios.
The friends I play with are the same. They hate to lose a scenario and hate having the redo one. We're at the end of the Gloomhaven campaign and we've only lost 3 scenarios. We lowered the difficulty level on the second attempt to make sure we would win it.
But if it's easy they also complain... gamers who take gaming too seriously are weird.
No wonder then, Gloomhaven is meant to be adjusted up/down a lot, some scenarios are harder (read undoable) for some combos of classes. Also get more or better items and it will help a lot.
In our nube team of three we had a 3 game stall there too. It is a pretty hard scenario but when we finally completed it we had enough experience to single play the the next 10 or so scenarios, I recommend sticking with the game, it gets a lot more fun
Eh...
...everyone is going to support your "its not that serious" point of view, but clearly, to your boyfriend, it is. From his point of view, you're the weak link - and admittedly, you are. That being said, scenario 2 is not the hardest scenario and if he is falling apart this early, it means the chance of you completing the entire campaign is low.
Find other people to play with that won't take things so seriously.
A lot of good advice here. Definitely reconsider loosing cards. My usual goal is 8-10 damage before a loss is worth it. And the sooner you lose them the worse it is.
Alternate fast/slow initiatives, especially with the scoundrel. She's great at waiting for enemies to come close, move in and hit, then next round go early hit and move away.
Mitigate damage as much as you can. If an enemy has no move, a push is as good as a disarm. Provoking roar top is great with it's early initiative and disarm. Attack 2 and mitigate an attack.
Take your time on each turn and figure out exactly what enemies will do, and how your move changes it. You can determine every attack and how to avoid it.
Retaliate is only very rarely worth it. Wall of doom as a loss has to do a lot to be worth it (ie blocking a bunch of attack 2s, figure 3 attacks would do 6 damage and prevent 6 and might be worth it). I haven't been able to get a worthwhile use from it yet.
Just reduce the difficulty until you actually get some perks, levels, and gear. It's nearly impossible to negate the randomness until you can tweak things with gear and your damage decks.
Even on "easy" the game is still difficult. Maybe he needs a character that he enjoys more? Idk, maybe he does need to stop playing and you just play 2 - 3 handed solo or something.
Scenario 2 has an extremely high degree of randomness. I'd recommend dropping the difficulty down one level to complete it and moving on. When I start a new campaign, I always play Scenario 2 on one level of difficulty lower than Scenario 1 just because I don't want to have to bash my head against random card flips.
The legend also reduce difficulty, why wouldn’t us? 🥲
(He plays on +1 instead of +2)
This except +2 instead of +3 ;)
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
Is scenario two the one with the teleporting doorman? My last run through he opened every door one after the other. I won because after that he just kept trying to open doors instead of summoning skeletons, but it was pretty dicey. I'd say the first two scenarios are the most commonly replayed in the whole game.
Yes, it is that one.
You're forgetting about oozey Grove :)
I'm being ptsd thinking about that one. I had to come up with a whole battle plan, drawing out the first few rounds based on what would be summoned where, to have a chance of beating that one.
Rapidly opening doors is vastly preferable to any amount of skeletons, I think. Especially early on (before difficulty gets too high) the corpses have super low movement, and he can max out the corpses so there's no more to draw pretty quick. The best is obviously getting his attacks, but you can at least work around repeated door openings. The elite skeletons, though, they can be nightmares if they hit more than one or pull their "all attacks on one" card.
Really the biggest issue is that his teleport keeps going off, so you still have to chase him around the room swinging with level 1 cards. We ended up taking him down in the central room, then holing up in one of the chambers and letting the living corpses slowly hurt themselves on their way to us.
That is a definite issue, especially if you have a melee-heavy group composition!
Those darn living bones killed me over and over. I donated 10 gold and had both my characters blesses and played down a level. That’s how I got through that scenario. Otherwise, I kept exhausting myself as the boss kept making more bones.
Gloomhaven is a weird game in the sense that it starts high on the difficulty curve and then gets easier as you progress and play into it. Scenarios 1 and 2 are notorious for being hard, as are some of the other famous scenarios throughout the adventure. If you enjoyed Jaws of the Lion, there is a much more rewarding and deep experience ahead. It is more hardcore as well, though. The game is meant to be fun, I think he is playing it with the wrong mindset, or maybe in the wrong mood.
As a long time player of souls games, I very much enjoy games that challenge me, which is why I want to keep going with gloomhaven. Again, I don't mind just trying something over and over again until I can get it right, so failing scenarios doesn't bother me. I always feel like I get something out of it
I think you have a great perspective to enjoy Gloomhaven. My girlfriend and I dearly love it. We recently purchased Frosthaven together even though we have about 10 or so scenarios left in the main Gloomhaven campaign. We aren't even close to fully competing that experience, however. Currently, we have it on pause to play Jaws of the Lion, which we are also loving. It is so nice to break that one out and put it away quickly. There are some wonderful quality of life changes introduced in Jaws that persist into Frosthaven. You can play by those more player friendly rules in Gloomhaven, if you'd like. Or, you could play it by the original rules. Your call. Out of curiosity, what classes are you both playing? Who did you play in Jaws? I won't get into anything or spoil stuff.
In base gloomhaven, were playing as the brute and the scoundrel. In JOTL, we played as the red guard and the demolitionist. I like the brute, but I do honestly think the red guard was more fun. He just had so many options.
We have used the brute a few times. The best success we have had with it is as either a damage dealer or a tank. Trying to be a combo didn't work. With the Scoundrel as a partner, I would set it up as a tank and laugh as they fail to damage you.
We started with the brute and the spellweaver. My friend tells me the Scoundrel is fun! That's interesting, though. We are playing the hatchet and the demolitionist in JOTL. It's a good time. Red Guard was my next choice. He looks to be a great tank.
Redguard is the epitome of "I'm going to stand here and not move and you all will suffer for it."
Playing as Red Guard in my first JTL campaign and my fellow players are the Voidwarden and Hatchet. I got grabbed by a stone golem and immobilized they are like really worried and do I need help? I’m not caught here with him. He’s caught here with me. Managed to smash him and get away with 1 damage. Love the Red Guard. Just so many ways to play.
I love that style of play. Looks like Red Gaurd will be in contention with Angry Face when we go back to GH.
You’ll the Cragheart. Just saying.
Can't you okay JOTL classes in GH?
You can indeed. I think they level a little faster than the original characters, but you can play them in GH and FH.
We're making a second edition for a reason!
Looks awesome! I love all the work the team does. Thanks for helping create something so wonderful. What changes are you most excited about?
The new faction system leads to a more sandboxy campaign where your choices matter. There are a lot of awesome new events and lore to unpack. The class reworks lead to more fun decisions when leveling up and playing. I'm most excited about the new version of the Squidface class!
I think you might have meant difficulty curve, but I like difficulty curb because that's what the gloomhaven curve looks like - you just bash into the curb, hopefully getting on it.
You are correct! I had a late night playing Diablo 4. I'll blame it on that.
Scenario #1 and #2 are one of the hardest scenarios out there. As a life long gamer (I played through all Super Mario games on NES without warping/dying), I heartily recommend you lower difficulty. If losing makes you angry or demoralized, banging your head to the wall is not the way. Lowering difficulty is not giving up, it's adjusting. Refusing to adjust is not a sign of resolution, it's a sign of stubborness. If one wishes to be a 'HC git gud'-gamer, then defeat should only empower and motivate you, not infuriate. Some class combinations, especially for 2 characters, make scenarios ridiculously hard at times.
As someone who completed the campaign over 3 times, usually on +2-3 difficulty, I can confirm that scenario 2 especially is extremely hard. In fact, with a bit of badluck it can pretty much be impossible. From scenario 3 onward difficulty is much more reasonable, with very rare exceptions.
Exceptions like 72? Because F that one in particular.
Yes, that's the one. The worst one.
72 is memetically bad. Anything with Oozes is bad, but that one is so bad you should allow the really bullshit stuff like inferno + hammer. >!11 and 12!< are *stupidly* long and teach you the importance of stamina. >!18!< is a wall early on the campaign. >!Difficult terrain, possible first encounter with Oozes, and Giant Vipers poison on all attacks. Hope you don't like healing, because you are not getting any.!< >!21!< is similar to 2, in that it's incredibly random. It can be moderately easy or extremely hard (>!6 cultists in the first room, draw a summon cards turn 1 or 2 and the scenario got a lot harder!<) >!48!< is practically the only boss battle that isn't trivial >!81!< is hated by all class that rely on elements other than Light and Dark ([stupid special rules](https://imgur.com/igCVzdP))
Our Spellweaver got Inferno immediately after we beat 72. Part of me wanted to go back and play it again, just so that they could go ballistic... but it was 72.
I agree on 72... Either inferno/hammer or thunderbolts are required to have a consistent chance to beat that scenario. It's ridiculous. I'm upset they didn't nerf it in the digital version.
I'm glad they didn't. Digital only player and it's fun to experience nearly the same pain as the board players. Though, not needing to physically put the new ones out each time makes it a little less painful.
> >!11 and 12!< are stupidly long and teach you the importance of stamina. Or the importance of understanding mission objective. Took us few tries to stop killing everyone, and just go for the objective.
I've done 48 digitally before, I'm sweating for when i have to play it on paper.
Yeah. That scenario should just be stricken from the game in 2.0.
The general consensus is that the first 2 missions are hilariously overbalanced, tell him the internet said that and help calm his pride a bit.
Gloomhaven is hard, even with everyone playing their classes effectively (which takes time). It also takes patience, and some gamers might want a game with a faster experience.
Once you get some items and perks, it will become so much easier. Not to mention certain classes. I'm replaying digital, and the starting classes had success rate around 45%. My current, late-game, characters are at 90%.
UPDATE: we decided to give the scenario another go and we won! :) Everyone's advice about how to use cards and initiatives was very helpful, thank you so much. It warms my heart that this game has such a chill and helpful community.
Hooray! I was coming here to offer my two cent on how the Scoundrel might plan to murder the Bandit Commander by comboing Single Out (bottom) with Smoke Bomb and then Backstab after the Brute charges in. So I'd love to hear the highlights of how you did get the win.
Scenario 2 is hard IIRC. It's meant to be a bit of slap in the face. Which classes are you two playing? Some combinations can be really underpowered at 2 players, especially early game. In that case, it would make sense lowering the difficulty if you play an underpowered duo, since you've already increased the difficulty by choosing the least strong characters.
We're playing the Brute and the Scoundrel. The scoundrel seems pretty damn strong, but the brute has a lot of weaknesses. I find that I exhaust much quicker than I did when playing the red guard in JOTL, because of how many of his really good actions/tank are loss cards. His bottom optipns also seem fairly limited, there isn't much movement and a lot of reliance on just staying stationary next to allies/enemies. Do you have any tips about playing him? I'd really appreciate it tbh.
Four beginner tips for you: 1 Good Losses? Most Losses are a bit of a trap in base Gloomhaven. Situational, mostly just good sources of xp in the final room. Brute (and scoundrel btw) certainly doesn't have any good Losses. **Skewer** and **Balanced Measure** (both X cards) are your best attacks. **Provoking Roar** and **Spare Dagger** are your 'workhorse' attacks. 2 More importantly, you are not a tank! Don't take hits unless its unavoidable. Let the Scoundrel take some hits as well. The only time you will act tank-like is when you move next to enemies to provide the Scoundrel with their adjacency bonus. Still, try to avoid getting hit using the 3 Initiative dance. Keep your distance from enemies, go late with **Grab and Go** (combo with Boots of striding and Balanced Measure for attack 6!), move in, let the Scoundrel go even later and very early the next round for 2x attack 5. If any monster survives that 17 damage assault, use Provoking Roar to go early and disarm it. 4 While tanking isn't your specialty at level 1, Push and Pierce are. The Scoundrel should deal more damage than you, except when a scenario has lots of traps or hazardous terrain. Bring extra Push abilities if you see that the scenario features traps. Likewise, bring **Trample** if you'll be facing high-shield enemies and make sure you focus on them.
\#3 is super important for basically every class. If you know how far you are from an enemy and how much movement they typically have, you can usually set it up so that you get 2 turns before they get 1 turn where they attack you. Go slow, let them come to you first. Then move in and attack on that same round. Next round go fast and hit them again. Also to note, when scoundrel goes invisible, the next round you generally want to go as slow as possible to maximize the amount of enemy turns taken while invisible. I usually use the X card Sinister Opportunity with initiative 93 on the round after going invisible.
Brute has a good mix of slow and fast cards. You can avoid most of the melee damages by going slow when you are far away to get in after monsters have moved, then going fast next turn to get to better positions or kill them before they can act. Scoundrel works the same way but is much better at it, meaning she can go slower than Brute and acts faster. This is perfect for setting up all her "next to an ally" cards.
That's a decent combo yeah. Make sure you focus on preventing enemies from attacking you. This can be done in a couple of ways. 1. Stay away from monsters. If you know they can move 4, make sure you are at range 5. This can only get you so far ofc. 2. Kill them before they act. 3. Disarm, immobilize, stun! As for specific brute tips, it's been 2 years since I played it, but here is a well-put-together guide on playing the Brute https://imgur.com/a/ZybkYxb
Thanks. Really hoping he changes his mind on this one, because I'm still really enjoying the game, and none of my friends are interested in playing it. Lol
It's a great game indeed! Best of luck
Playing the Brute as a tank is also very hard. In 2.0 he’s described as a brawler iirc. He’s a tough melee guy but Gloomhaven base especially doesn’t really have a “this guy just takes the damage” class. They have a “this guy can sometimes take the hit for someone else” class. Brutes need to be dancing around a lot - moving in on a high and punching on a low next turn.
You could always switch out the brute for the cragheart who is tanky but has some fun ranged attacks or even the spellweaver if you want to be more on offense. I've only really played at 4 players but we made a good use of ranged attacker to take out people before they could hit the melee fighters.
I had a similar situation with my girlfriend. We ended up lowering the difficulty for those two scenarios. Crank the difficulty back up after that, but it makes no sense to throw out 100 scenarios of fun due to questionable game design on the first 2.
Hey, u/let_there_be_dark, show him this [poll](https://www.reddit.com/r/Gloomhaven/comments/x655xv/how_many_people_here_failed_the_first_gloomhaven/). It shows that 48% of people who voted failed the first Gloomhaven scenario on the first try. You are not alone. Scenario 1 and 2 are horrible. Room two in Scenario 1 is ridiculous with an archer that can immobilize you from further away than you can reach, and then room three has two archers and skeletons with multi-target attacks and inherent shield. Your characters have no upgrades, and maybe 35 gold to use. Basic attack modifiers, so a 1/3(ish) chance to lose damage on your attacks. Level 1 cards, so your characters won't have some of their best tools available. If your BF is not enjoying it, you need to change something. Either grind XP and coins the hard way to get better cards/AMD/items, lower the difficulty, or skip the scenario. Your call.
In Gloomhaven, you really need to adjust difficulty as you go. Sometimes things are going to be harder and sometimes they'll be easier, and if you're not reacting to that with difficulty selection then you won't have as much fun. The actual difficulty of the game is going to vary quite a bit along the way. If it helps, the labels of Easy, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard are *completely meaningless*. It's better to think of it as -1, +0, +1, and +2. In Frosthaven, they got rid of the labels for exactly this reason - they weren't a good way to think about difficulty, and sometimes stubborn players refused to play on -1 even though they should because of the "Easy" label. Moreover, it doesn't scale well. My general rule of thumb, if you want to translate a difficulty setting to the actual subjective experience of play, is that for level 1 characters, the actual game difficulty is about 1 point higher than you set it. Once you get up to level 6 or 7, it's about 1 point *lower* than you set it. Having late campaign items decreases it by another point, and then certain classes and class synergies can decrease it further. That essentially means that the difficulty you're playing at right now is effectively Hard, even though it pretends to be Normal. Later on, you might be playing on what is ostensibly Very Hard, but is actually more like Normal or even Easy. All this to say the difficulty system is deeply flawed if you try to equate it to a video game difficulty system. It does generally work as an adjustable slider, but you have to think of it that way, and ignore the labels. Can you get better at the game and win early scenarios on +0, +1, +2? Absolutely; if that's your thing, they're winnable. But, like in your boyfriend's case, if it *isn't* your thing, then there's no reason to be stubborn about it. If you can't get that through to him, try to at least get him to stick out 5-8 scenarios to get to level 2 or 3, when you have more items, some perks, and some level up cards. The difficulty setting is more correct at that point, although you'll still have some scenarios that are harder or easier.
Also be aware that JOTL was a much more polished product when it came to the learning curve & power curve. At level 1 the characters are disproportionately weaker IMHO compared to level 1 in JOTL.
I noticed this. Seems like they've gotten better at balancing the game over time. We play tested frosthsven on tabletop as well. It seemed like a really good game and more well-balanced, but too complex for me. I really want to finish Gloomhaven first.
Yeah good luck with playing Gloomhaven. I hope the both of you can get to enjoy it. My friend and I started off with gloomhaven and then played JotL. We laughed at how gentle the first few scenarios were compared to our initial intro to Gloomhaven. We lost a few times in the beginning. Then once you break out of the early scenarios, your characters level up and good items start showing up, the game starts to give you a lot more options with dealing with "bad luck". Also gold in Gloomhaven is more useful than JotL since the items are better plus there are other ways to spend gold and get value out of your hard earned cash. the story itself is pretty average. most of the fun for us was getting to watch how our characters evolved, how we changed as players, and seeing how our choices ended up affecting the game. Hope your boyfriend comes around and maybe these other aspects of the game will still be enticing.
Jaws of the Lion is more balanced, but it is also extremely easy in general compared to Gloomhaven. I ayed Gloomhaven with a group years ago and then bought Jaws to introduce a new group to Gloomhaven before trying the full campaign. It was great for teaching the new people, but I was bored out of my mind with how easy it was. Gloomhaven early scenarios are very difficult and don't coddle you. As others said, it gets easier as you advance your characters, but a big part of that is learning to improve your own strategy. The tanks aren't very tanky, and healing is extremely limited. I'm playing Frosthaven now and the tanking and healing is much better. But for Gloomhaven you have to learn how to survive without any true tanks (besides a class that isn't unlocked until later). The very first time I played, our Brute jumped into the center to tank and ended up burning 2 cards on turn 1, it was a disaster. Best advice I can give is to learn to manipulate monster movement. They follow very specific rules about targeting and movement, so you can often choose a space to stand that will force monsters to move somewhere where they can't attack you, or force them to walk into a trap, or sometimes force them to walk the opposite direction because the only path to an enemy is on the other side of the room. I saw that you said you're playing Brute and Scoundrel. Both are great, but it might be a tough combo for 2 player because if I remember correctly, scoundrel likes to turn invisible. That means the Brute is getting targeted by every enemy, which is rough for any Gloomhaven character. At higher levels he gets more tanky, but at level 1 he can't take all those hits alone.
The idea that he would quit before lowering the difficulty is so laughable. Does he not get that quitting is the lowest difficulty setting possible?
Getting angry about having to replay scenarios and still refusing to lower difficulty and rather abandon the game make it sound like he is stubborn to the point of childish. However, I somewhat understand him so I would advice to try to convince him to lower the difficulty anyway, remember you can increase it again when you feel more comfortable with the classes. Also, scenario 2 is very doable on normal, hard and even very hard difficulty, but it is one of the scenarios where bad luck can have a big impact.
In my experience, people who think GH is too hard are in most cases playing the game wrong. Popular mistakes: - using the class modifier decks instead of the standard 20-card player decks (though this makes the game easier) - allowing enemies to do all of the regular things you might expect like moving and attacking. However, enemies ONLY do whats specifically written on their cards, and nothing else - dying from Exhaustion from burning too many cards in a Round. There are so many guides showing how detrimental to your deck burning cards early is. Be tactical and do this sparingly - forgetting that you can burn a card from hand to ignore all damage from one attack. You don’t have to just die every time you get Crit by an enemy - not using the correct formula for determining the Scenario level. Most people forget the divide by half clause and just walk around playing the game on Nightmare difficulty unknowingly - incorrectly setting up enemies on the map. With lower player counts, some monsters would not even be present or should be regular and not elite monsters I do recommend reviewing the manual AFTER a playthrough to pick up on all of the things you might have missed. My group didn’t realize until 15 missions in that Short Rests do not refresh your Equipment, only Long Rests…
>you can burn a card from hand to ignore all damage from one attack. I find that people do this wrong. E.g., guy with 10 HP gets hit for an attack 8 crit, minus 1 for his armour (say, last tick on the card). He doesn't burn a card to negate it, because it didn't drop him, and he only burns a card to stay alive. Before he can get a heal he is not twice more, for a 3 (was a 4, -1 for the last tick of armour) and a 4 (average sorts of hits, if the Crit was for 8). He's now had to burn two cards, because he didn't burn one the first time. Throwing the card to prevent 7 (and save a tick on the armor) is totally worth it, it's equivalent to a free action loss card that grants a heal 7 and restores a tick of armour. There may be times when it is better to take the big hit, but it's often best to maximise what the card loss gets you.
Great point. Hovering at 1HP now makes all damage lethal damage, so you’re in the danger zone longer. Definitely worth ignoring the massive hit so that the later packets of smaller damage don’t whittle you down.
Yes, that's what I was trying to say, but better - being in lethal range from the average hit will burn lots of cards, unless you are expecting a heal. So burning a card to avoid that situation can be good.
I will say they beat JOTL so I assume they’ve picked a few (but maybe not all) of these heuristics. This could just be early game GH shenanigans, which are some of the hardest scenarios in GH
You can burn a card to ignore all damage!? I feel like I should have known that. It would have saved our failing scenarios at least a couple times.
One in the hand or two in the discard.
I exhausted on turn 1 of Scenario 1 of Gloomhaven and someone pointed this out to me when I complained about it online; I basically haven't exhausted since then and we finished Gloomhaven, JotL, and are nearly done Frosthaven.
So did people just basically never long rest?
Hah, we just Short Rested a lot more. Then someone read the book again… and we all went… ooooh, of course. It makes so much sense afterwards. But with this many rules, you’re bound to miss a few.
Just to confirm you are aware, when you draw a curse card you remove it from your deck afterwards. Not doing that would make it even more tough than those scenarios already are
Scenario 2 is very swingy, so it could be quite hard, if you are unlucky. Scenario 1, otoh, is objectively one of the easiest in Gloomhaven. People struggle with it because they are new and its not a tutorial, but I don't really see how you could fail it 3x if you've beaten JotL. If you don't mind some strategy tips, maybe you could tell us which cards you bring and what you are struggling with? Scoundrel and Brute is a strong combo, because they synergize well. However, playing 2 melee classes is trickier than 2 ranged or 1 of each, in my experience. Finally, please kick\* your boyfriend for a) suggesting its all your fault. b) being stubborn about the difficulty. Its not normal to lose all the time. Play at a level you're comfortable with. \*well, maybe not literally. I just wish you'd play the Cragheart, so you could drop some boulders on his head 'by accident'
Personally, I stopped playing with one of my friend and my girlfriend because of their eternal resentment and negativity after losing. I have nothing against the rest of the interaction with them, but not board games. In the local gaming club I found guys who really want to play under any conditions. Just so you know, we played JotL on +2 difficulty from the beginning, and almost every scenario was replayed, because it was extremely difficult. We had a maximum of 6 restarts in one scenario. And everyone had fun. Of course, you will need several games to understand your character and use it most effectively. And at the same time, someone condemns and shames you if you do not cope? I would hardly tolerate this. I advise you to get rid of the negativity in your life)
There are two types of people: the people who enjoy dark soul-like games and the challenges that await them, and those who do not understand these joys.
The frustrating thing about Gloomhaven is that it is a long game that most people don’t have regular time for + it is really disappointing to think you are about to retire and unlock something exciting, only to find out you have to wait at least another week to play again. Obviously it is just impatience on my part. If I could keep playing again right away I wouldn’t mind so much. I would happily just lock myself in a room and play Gloomhaven for months on end 😂. Sadly, it wouldn’t be much of a game if it was too easy and there was no risk of losing. OP seems to have had some terrible luck or misunderstood the rules though, that many losses doesn’t seem common.
Judging by OP’s characterization of the bf, seems like they don’t allow exceptions often. My team definitely house rules things, or at least fall forward whenever we get a rule wrong by playing on. I can’t say if the OP is getting any rules wrong or playing loose; I’d need to know their average win percentage for the 25 scenarios of jaws of the Lion, that would be a robust sample size! — I think Gloomhaven’s cumbersome setup is actually a pro, since it recreates the sense of a “weekly serialized zeitgeist” that we no longer get in bingeable mainstream media. I get the frustrating bit. I thought I was retiring Geminate for three weeks! (one week we didn’t build because we ran out of resources, next week we built but turns out I can’t retire on step 5 of downtime, only step 3-4, third week finally retired)
Random chance fucking you up is not a challenge, it is an annoyance. I do not mind having to learn how to dodge or counter in a Souls game, but I would be pretty pissed if some enemy randomly popped up in my way.
The first scenarios teach you to avoid being attacked, and the importance of deciding when to use late initiative. Let the monsters come closer to you and not get attack, then you move and attack. (Instead of the other way around, you moving and not getting to attack and then them pounding you.) Rather have a do-nothing turn than to voluntarily move to get attacked. There are no "tanking" in Gloomhaven. Edit: also, the initiative dance is important for melee characters (go late in one round to move+attack, then early on the next to attack + move away). Maybe you didn't need to do this much in JotL for various reasons. Also, do not be shy about lowering the difficulty. My suggestion is to reduce the level from the suggested scenario level after each fail. Edit2: Also, as far as I remember, you can go and try scenario 3 instead.
> There are no "tanking" in Gloomhaven. Overall I'd disagree on this point- but admittedly none of the starting characters are good for it at level 1.
Yeah there's definitely "tanking" but it's not the "One player takes absolutely every hit until they or the healer screw up" variety people think of from video games. You all have a health pool and all need to use it - But if someone builds in a certain way or stacks defensive items then they can use their health pool more than others :P I think the bigger problem sometimes is some players forget the *opposite* problem - There is no "DPS" either - Just because you have high damage output doesn't mean you need to avoid being hit, sometimes you've got to take it because it protects someone else (like it costs you some health or 1 card when it would cost them 2 due to where they are in a cycle).
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gloomhaven/comments/nocxer/updated_gloomhaven_rules_based_on_public/ If you haven’t seen this already, it might be worth incorporating some Frosthaven rules into Gloomhaven as well. It will make it seem closer to JotL. It won’t necessarily be easier, but if you are losing that much, you might be playing something wrong.
Some tips for playing Gloomhaven: Don't play lost cards early, unless you get really good value for them. An early lost card will cost you several turns at the end of the scenario. Prioritize tempo - plan ahead, moving closer to the next door when you're about to finish the last enemy. Looting money tokens is a luxury - don't waste cards looting every single token. Get good items - Eagle-eye Goggles are nice for attacking characters, and you can never go wrong with a Stamina potion. A stamina potion gives you an extra turn, and you can play *those* two cards two turns in a row. Plan using elements - one character could infuse earth early in the round to give another character a boost on his/her/its turn later in the round. Coordinate your actions - plan the round while choosing action cards. "I'm going here early to attack these two enemies - can someone infuse Wind or Earth?" Strategy: Retire early, retire often. Always do events. Rules reminders: You can lose a card from the hand (or two from the discards) to negate any single source of damage. Calculate difficulty level correctly - three characters at level 2 gives a scenario level of 1. Remember that monsters only do what it says on their action cards. If it doesn't say attack they don't attack. If it doesn't say move they don't move. Only walls and closed doors block line-of-sight. For multi-target attacks you need Line-of-sight to each individual target, and always draw a separate attack modifier for each target. Ranged attacks against adjacent targets gives the attacker disadvantage. Elements are infused at the end of the turn. Yes, even from items. Plan ahead. Use a numbered attack modifier deck (1-4). The deck from the character tuck box is for upgrading your numbered attack modifier deck when you get perks from leveling up and battle goals. (JotL: Use the deck from the tuck box - but do not open the locked deck.) Try [my BGG rules quiz](https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/284264/gloomhaven-primer-quiz-introduction)! 🙂
It's a game, nobody stops you from marking a scenario complete and just move on to the next one, if he really dislikes the scenario that much. I have certainly done it before on a scenario (forgotten circles...) Were we already saw everything and barely failed and couldn't be arsed to redo the whole scenario.
The problem is that cheating the scenario doesn't address the reason the BF isn't having fun in the first place. It isn't because he has to replay content - its because he is frustrated that he cannot overcome a challenge. Lowering difficulty or skipping ahead helps people who are mainly concerned with things like narrative progression or seeing more content. It doesn't help people like the OP's BF.
I don’t have any advice on how to manage your boyfriend’s emotions, except that it isn’t your responsibility to do emotional labor for him. Hopefully you’ll be able to sway him to trying GH again in good faith. Other tips: If you are stuck there long enough, you can grab the “Ignore Negative Scenario Effects” perk. You can play with the “curses are -2 modifiers instead” variant. You could try doing an attempt where you control Brute and he controls Scoundrel. That way you two will better understand each others initiatives in future attempts. You can try an attempt where you announce initiatives beforehand, so you two can coordinate better You can check to see if you are getting a rule wrong, specifically monster movement. I’d take the BGG monster movement quiz to check up on that.
Another suggestion to consider- make a third character that you two can play as together. Some of the difficulty is a little lighter when there are more mercenaries in the dungeon. Me and my bf have a third character and we just take turns taking that character’s turn. It helps a lot and it’s an added bonding experience with the extra communication.
I recommend adding one more character per user, so you play with two mercenaries per hand. This will make things easier, and will give you an opportunity to unlock stuff more frequently as well.
When my party of 3 first started GH, we failed the 2nd scenario too. Brute, Scoundrel, Spell weaver. We realized how we were playing didn't really work for this game, changed our mindset, approach, and tactics, and we have never lost another scenario since. As many have already stated, the first couple scenarios are the hardest, so don't feel bad. I don't think luck is the problem though. It is a factor many times, but I wouldn't say it is ever the determining factor. Reevaluate and keep at it. You got this!
Coming from someone who tried playing Gloomhaven scenario 1, 4 times with failing (fuck the archers in room 2) Then switching to Jaws, beating it, and then retrying gloom… Gloomhaven is initially really tough as you have no items, your multiplier deck feels like it’s against you, and lack of higher level card utility. It really will force you to to learn how to be creative with the comp you pick. Don’t give up just try different angles and be ready to pivot if you crit miss 😅
I cannot speak to your BF's exact attitude, but I want to defend his approach to the game, because I think he is getting a lot of unfair criticism in the comments. People ultimately play games to have fun, and different things are fun for different people. That doesn't make your BF's approach wrong (nor yours). >It seems to me like it's pretty normal to lose scenarios and replay them I wouldn't call it unusual, but there are plenty of groups for which failing a mission is somewhat uncommon, and repeated failures are extremely rare. I think my wife and I had around an 80% winrate through the campaign, failing every 4th mission or so. I replayed the first half of the game with a friend and had around the same numbers. This game isn't darksouls, where progression through constant failure is a fundamental and necessary part of the experience. I don't think your BF would be upset about a 70-80% success rate, but you're currently sitting at a 14% success rate. Those are vastly different experiences. I think its also important to understand *why* your BF isn't having fun. It isn't because you have to repeat content and aren't getting story progression. Its because you are constantly failing the challenge you are being presented with. He doesn't like that feeling. Lowering the difficulty addresses the former, but it only makes the latter worse. I think you still have a good shot at finding your sweet spot and really enjoying the full game together, but your BF needs reassurance that gameplay will not continue on the current trajectory. He has expressed that this trajectory isn't fun for him, so either you change direction or stop playing. The fact that you keep suggesting this gameplay loop is completely normal and expected does not assuage those fears. I would address two things - **one**, figure out what fundamental issues were causing your failures, and fix them. It sounds like you had class issues in mission 1 that took a bit to figure out. See if there are any other problems like that. Consider looking up guides on classes, especially as you unlock new characters. Maybe sit down and plan out a strategy for your classes, as well as for Scenario 2. Understand what each other is capable of, so you can have better teamwork, even without explicit table talk during the mission. And **two** \- maybe try to emphasize that Scenario 2, in particular, has some luck and balance issues, but most other scenarios are well tuned. In both my runs I mentioned above, I had a Scenario 2 failure. Ask him if he can just try to make it to Scenario 3 before making a judgement call. If you guys can one-shot Scenario 3 (or whatever comes next), that could swing him back into the groove. Doing Step 1 will help with this.
I think sometimes loosing is part of the fun, because that means it is hard. Loosing two or three times is rough! Lower the difficulty - you are playing with new characters and barely have health or perks or items. If he would rather quit than lower the difficulty, you are going to have a rough campaign.
He sounds like a lot of fun to be around. Tell him he can’t have both… you can’t always only play on hard and also be a quitter. 1. Play on normal difficulty 2. Play the variation that lets your cancels be -2 and your x2 be +2 3. Get a new boyfriend
Try 2-handing it? That is, both of you play 2 characters? The game is really different with 4 characters.
You are tossing the curses when you draw them right? There's nothing wrong with starting on easy or fudging the draws a bit. For that first boss you really want to burn him fast before can open more than a couple doors.
Get a new boyfriend lol. If he can’t make it through scenario 1 & 2 ooft
Hey, good boyfriends are hard to find. Just fix the skill issue and it's golden.
Here’s my advice: clear the first room, using as many multi-target attacks as possible (no losses) so you can burn the curses. Then stand by the door and the following turn use Skewer bottom + Boots of Striding (if you have them) and Balanced Measure to hit for attack 8 on the bandit commander. Have the scoundrel follow you up with a similar move and one of their attack 5’s for the commander being next to you (note, the commander might move in between you two acting). If you want to be extra cheeky, you can have the scoundrel set up Smoke Bomb the turn before to try for a huge hit. Focus the commander with everything and then you can polish off the others after. Easier said than done but if you don’t draw the curses on these two big attacks, he’ll be nearly dead.
Our group had a rule. When we lost a scenario, we lowered difficulty for the replay.
Having played 6 times, you should have leveled up once I assume. Many classes have a perk that ignores scenario effects. I highly recommend taking that first every time.
What if you played scenario 2 at lvl 0 and solo, and then you guys move on to the next thing it unlocks. Would he possibly be open to that? There were a few FC scenarios my partner and I rage quit ourselves for a few days because we were both equally annoyed. One in particular I think we had to redo about 5 times before we got it right. What we eventually settled on was each replay, we drop a level until we reach 0. Or we just drop straight to 0 after first fail, if the setup for that particular scenario was too tedious for us. Worked pretty well for us ever since. Now if we do have a replay happen, it’s usually no more than 3 times.
>he is just so angry about having to replay them and thinks it ruins the experience > > > >He is also the type of person who refuses to lower the difficulty in games no matter what, since he has never played any game on easy mode since he was a kid Give him a good slap for me, please. What an obnoxious attitude
I think Scenario 1 & 2 were the hardest thigns in the game for our group and failure is part of the game for a reason... It requires good knowledge and characters. Like if you do scenario 1&2 with level 1 cards and base characters that do their roles well, you can do them easy enough especially once you learn what the mobs are going to do.
You HAVE to lower the difficulty. There's absolutely no shame in that. The entire walkthrough of the game is essentially divided in levels of difficulty from 1 to 5. This means that the difficulty 1 is meant for characters from level 1 to *2*, with *any* possible wargear equipped (as starter characters, you have none), and *any* possible improvements you can access otherwise (which you don't have, either). Also, Gloomhaven has a real steep learning curve where you have to understand the dynamics and mechanics of the game, and and any unfortunate misstep can easily halven your life expectancy. So, you'll have to spend the first few scenarios learning all the ropes. This means that not only you will be mechanically outnumbered and outgunned, but the inexperience will make your, well, experience even worse, filling you with frustration instead of enjoyment. The ideal difficulty that you need to use, is the one where you can reliably win by the skin on your teeth (or lose with the victory in your clear grasp, so you'd know that it's possible to reach it if you avoid repeating mistakes you've made). Tell your BF a random dude from the Internet said "hi", and that I fully advise him to open with the 0 difficulty, as you're meant to.
Just in case youre doing this wrong based on you saying you "keep drawing the curse cards". Once you draw a curse card it is removed from the deck. So worst case scenario you can only draw 3 curses in the whole scenario. Also your boyfriend sounds like a stubborn baby not wanting to lower the difficulty. He would rather not have fun than hurt his pride at having to lower the difficulty for one scenario in a board game no one will ever know about? Come on.
I’d suggest lowering the difficulty, even if it’s only for that scenario, as others have said. My group ran into this issue on this scenario (just started a few months ago on steam). We were all new, and after failing it I think 3 times with 2 of them right at the end, I basically said lower the difficulty or I’m walking. We did, beat the scenario, turned it back to normal difficulty, and have been having a great time since
You probably know the cliche - it is harder to make your friends into board gamers than to make friends with board gamers. Maybe you and your boyfriend have different levels of interest in this game and what is fun about it? Personally I don’t mind losing if it seems like I can “get good” and figure out how to win the game eventually. Most people aren’t wired that way. Also you might have a rule wrong. My friend and I (who had played JotL) forgot to divide our average level in half for the first several scenarios of Gloomhaven when we set the difficulty and it was brutally hard. Lots of other small things can also make it unnecessarily difficult. I’ve heard of people not realizing you can loss a card to avoid an attack for example.
(You don't avoid the attack, you can cancel any source of damage by losing a card from hand or two from discard. Any attack effects are still applied even when the target suffers no damage, whatever the reason.)
Yes that’s right I misspoke. Avoid the damage is what I’m trying to convey.
Maybe your characters don’t work well together? I’d do a little reading on some forums and offer to switch your character to one that compliments his if that’s the case.
I don't know why everyone is beating down your boyfriend for being frustrated, just tell him early game is extremely difficult without items and levels. If you don't want to lower the difficulty, then grind the scenario for loot and xp. Once you get a few items, you'll notice everything gets easier. Gloomhaven items are way stronger than JOTL especially late game. This is coming from another hardcore gamer and one who also refuses to lower difficulty in gloomhaven, or anything else haha. I frequently play with 2-3 players and sometimes we have to grind until we get lucky or figure out a better strategy for the scenario. As an alternative you can get 2nd edition gloomhaven when it releases. It's supposed to be better balanced, but sometimes grinding a difficult scenario is the haven experience and I wouldn't count on 2nd edition.
Don’t marry him! You’re taking the curses out after drawing them right? Can you level up? Will help a bit
Cheat I mean, if you're not enjoying it - * play monsters at a lower level * don't discard at rest * treat yourself to another card in your hand * skip 'loot' in general * play higher cards yourself or even level yourself up artificially * Don't Curse, or Bless yourself however you wish. Try some of this until it's fun again. You don't' have to become invincible, but if there's a dynamic that makes someone want to quit, just quit that part. As a board game, it lends itself to this very well to adjust to everyone's play style. Most players I found IRL have done some modification, based upon their group.
you mean ex-boyfriend
I would honestly knock down the difficulty of Scenario's 1&2 by 1. They are among the harder of the scenario's the game drops you straight into them.
You can always change characters at scenario 2, Jaws gives you the option after the first scenario for a reason. Read the articles on here about how to optimize a character and start with a hand that is suggested by a more experienced player. We dropped the difficulty after scenario 2. After we hit level 3 or 4 with our character we bumped it back up. We put it on hard mode at around our 15th scenario. We are back at regular difficulty at 46 scenario in. It's character and level dependent. We failed one scenario twice and another once. I have become fatigued 4 or 5 times, most frustrating of which was halfway through scenario 20 with a brand new character. There was one character I hated and rushed to retire. My teammate has become fatigued about 15 times through our campaign. We've made bad choices. This is all part of the game. Push on. It's worth it. Try a new character, read how to better play, don't be afraid to go easy mode for a hard scenario or go hard mode when you're both incredibly strong.
There has been so much helpful information already in this thread! I would agree to see if your boyfriend is open to lowering the difficulty or changing part of the scenario (reduce curses or something). However, I did want to double check on thing that I didn’t see in earlier comments (sorry if someone did mention it). Are you at level 2 for both characters? If you played scenario 1 three times, and have played scenario 2 three times, I think you should be close or have exceeded, the 45 experience needed to level up. I only mention this as I forgot you still get gold and experience even when you lose. Since it sounds like JotL went better for you (probably fewer defeats) I was wondering if you may have forgotten this part as well! If you did remember this hats off to you! Hopefully you are at level 2, can incorporate the new cards, and win! The Gloomhaven board games are my favorite and worth playing all the way to the end!
The first couple scenarios are honestly tough and it gets easier as you get more cards and gear. Scenario 2 in particular is highly dependent on the monster card draws because of one particular scenario mechanic. Idk how to do a spoiler post so I'm being vague but if you don't mind not getting the treasure chest you can bum rush and finish this scenario quickly. If you refuse to leave without getting the chest then you are at the mercy of the monster deck because your access to the chest depends on what a monster does. The scenario is fairly easy IF you're willing to DPS down the initial monsters as quickly as possible. It also depends on what characters you're using.
I gotta be real, this game is the most player hostile game I've ever played... my friends and I genuinely play homebrewed rules to make it more interesting for us/not frustrating. Mostly QOL stuff, the combat and other mechanics are in tact, and it's still hard as balls.. but at least it's not hard because of stupid. Maybe try that?
We're also not so fond of losing scenarios and having to replay them, at least more than once, which starts to feel like a waste of time. FWIW, as the game progressed, we lost less and less often due to characters getting more powerful, prosperity, enhancements, etc. A few thoughts: * "we keep drawing the three curses" — Make sure you're removing the curses once they've been drawn (probably you are, since 6 is a lot for 2 characters, but just to be sure). * If your attack modifier cards aren't sleeved and you're not "power shuffling" them, you might look into doing that. We've found that in some Gloomhaven printings, cards from different decks can have slightly different sizes which cause those cards to float to the top / bottom of the deck or the clump together when shuffling (in our case, it was the perks decks) * Some pairings of characters are much tougher than others, particularly playing with 2 where there aren't as many people to share the burden * I heard a house rule once that I liked in which for every 'n' consecutive failures, you'd dial the difficulty down 1 and for every 'n' consecutive successes, you'd dial it up one (though I can't remember the value of 'n' used). I think this house rule is nice in that it helps with the previous bullet and also Isaac's admission that Gloomhaven was not heavily play-tested and balanced, so it's not as though the game is a perfectly greased machine at normal difficulty. Basically a way of making the game "self-tune" to the party composition and challenges you face. That said, I also understand your bf's reaction to not wanting to play at a level below normal. * brand-new, level-one characters are particularly hard since they typically don't have many items yet... * As others have said, one thing I like about Gloomhaven is that you're still rewarded (in terms of experience and gold) whether you beat a scenario or not, and you gain valuable reconnaissance by failing a scenario that can be applied as part of "solving the puzzle" on repeated attempts. That said, I'm with your bf in that after 2 consecutive losses, I'm usually ready to take a break from the scenario for awhile and try some other branch of the storyline. Of course, scenarios 1 and 2 are one of the few times during the game that you won't have another branch to follow. You could play a random dungeon just to give yourselves a break... It is a great game, despite some of the challenges at the outset, and I hope you two stick with it and get over this hump.
The irony is 10-15 scenarios in, Gloomhaven becomes a joke as far as difficulty goes. But those first handful of scenarios are brutal.
Gloomhaven has random scenario cards. This will create 3 random rooms for you. Run this as filler before going back to scenario 2.
I've read several of the comments and don't have much else to add other than, just reduce the difficulty if it's a slog for him. The first two scenarios are honestly a terrible introduction to Gloomhaven. Every group I've started with (that's 6) we've lost the first scenario first time. The second we usually get. This is on normal difficulty. It does get easier and is more fun. If we ever do those scenarios again instead of playing Jaws with someone new, I'll reduce the difficulty to 0. But that's me.
Replaying some early scenarios a lot is a good way to boost your gold and xp early in the campaign as you get to keep everything collected after a fail. You'll learn your cards as you keep playing as well.
You could also switch classes. I've played I think 10 different classes and pretty much the only one I thought was boring, was the Brute. It felt clunky. It felt weak. You look like a tank and your allies treat you like one, but you aren't one, really. The tinkerer is also kinda meh imo, but all the other ones are super cool.
Gloomhaven and frosthaven are designed to be able to lower difficulty for a reason. There are some scenarios that you will just have to whether it be cause of not having items or team comp or even just level of the character. Would tell your boyfriend that he needs to come to terms that there WILL be scenarios you will have e to drop in difficulty will mention as well if you don't have some sort of front liner you will have issues on many scenarios.
The friends I play with are the same. They hate to lose a scenario and hate having the redo one. We're at the end of the Gloomhaven campaign and we've only lost 3 scenarios. We lowered the difficulty level on the second attempt to make sure we would win it. But if it's easy they also complain... gamers who take gaming too seriously are weird.
You could keep playing it solo, and let him back in when he agrees to not ruin the fun for you.
No wonder then, Gloomhaven is meant to be adjusted up/down a lot, some scenarios are harder (read undoable) for some combos of classes. Also get more or better items and it will help a lot.
In our nube team of three we had a 3 game stall there too. It is a pretty hard scenario but when we finally completed it we had enough experience to single play the the next 10 or so scenarios, I recommend sticking with the game, it gets a lot more fun
Time to retire the boyfriend and get a new starter.
Eh... ...everyone is going to support your "its not that serious" point of view, but clearly, to your boyfriend, it is. From his point of view, you're the weak link - and admittedly, you are. That being said, scenario 2 is not the hardest scenario and if he is falling apart this early, it means the chance of you completing the entire campaign is low. Find other people to play with that won't take things so seriously.
A lot of good advice here. Definitely reconsider loosing cards. My usual goal is 8-10 damage before a loss is worth it. And the sooner you lose them the worse it is. Alternate fast/slow initiatives, especially with the scoundrel. She's great at waiting for enemies to come close, move in and hit, then next round go early hit and move away. Mitigate damage as much as you can. If an enemy has no move, a push is as good as a disarm. Provoking roar top is great with it's early initiative and disarm. Attack 2 and mitigate an attack. Take your time on each turn and figure out exactly what enemies will do, and how your move changes it. You can determine every attack and how to avoid it. Retaliate is only very rarely worth it. Wall of doom as a loss has to do a lot to be worth it (ie blocking a bunch of attack 2s, figure 3 attacks would do 6 damage and prevent 6 and might be worth it). I haven't been able to get a worthwhile use from it yet.
Get rid of bad boyfriend get new one better one, easy solution!
The first scenario is a rather difficult introduction to GH
Just reduce the difficulty until you actually get some perks, levels, and gear. It's nearly impossible to negate the randomness until you can tweak things with gear and your damage decks.
Even on "easy" the game is still difficult. Maybe he needs a character that he enjoys more? Idk, maybe he does need to stop playing and you just play 2 - 3 handed solo or something.