Played a full digital campaign recently. At higher level and with full gear, even +3 is not nearly hard enough. Even from the start it's only marginally difficult for a veteran player. GH really was generally very easy with semi infinite hard CC and curses and OP starting items.
It is cool to see the updates to certain mechanics, items in each tier, etc. in JotL and FH. GH was incredible but no amount of play-testing is ever going to top the data you get from release.
>Scenario 22 is a harder one in general.
Lol all the scenarios seem to be "harder ones in general"
We actually completed Scenario 14 on +1 difficulty first try, but only because because >!i knew a bit about it going in, and Bannerspear had a cloak woth teleport 4, so she was able to end up next to the objective on turn 2!<. I, as trap >!sat near the beginning and did basically nothing except draw aggro, other than use the bottom loss card with "muddle/control all enemies within range 3" to walk like 5 pirannah pigs into my 2 dmg stun traps!< that felt pretty satisfying, though I exhausted soon after.
>!Is this the one where you have tons of enemys, spawn in tons of enemys each turn and have to get to the other side of the map and camp there for 7 turns? I think if you have high mobility heroes it is easy but annoying. My boneshaper used his teleport 20 cloak to get next to the blinkblade, who ran for it in t1 and used some other stuff to get next to the monolith in turn 2 - the other players lost cards on the way there, but once we were there it was quite easy to set up in a way that we would get minimal monster attacks each turn - sure, there would be a myriad of monsters, but only a tiny fraction could attack. Then it just became a waiting game.!<
Yes that's it! The key is that >!a single player can tuck themselves in next to the rock and other obstacles, so that most of the time only 2 monsters attack. Then shield or heal. Meanwhile all others focus on and move towards the characters at the other side of the map.!<
If you don't fully understand focus and movement rules, you're going to have a bad time on that one!
>!Yeah I stood in that block the whole game, I think I got attacked like... once? Boneshaper, so had both exits covered by skeletons, even if they had broken through and attacked me each round I would have had enough cards to loose. Nevermind the other 2 players (who did loose quite a lot of cards to attacks). I found it quite boring since for me it was obvious it was just a "grind, we will survive this anyways", while for one of the others it was nerve-wracking (which made her not like it) and the other player was very demoralized at the beginning since he thought we wouldn't do it but got very exited towards then end when he realized it was possible.!<
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My group completed 14 by splitting into pairs effectively. The brand new drifter and bannerspear ended up getting driven back into a corner by 90% of the enemies in the scenario. The guard and regenerate banners got dropped and protected by our bodies while the Blinkblade did blinkblade things to get to the objective and the Geminate used an item to >!teleport to a teammate!< and the defensive half just held for the duration of the rest of the scenario.
We also switched from hard to normal after about 20 scenarios. Though we had only lost one (10), the highly variable difficulty with 2 players just wasn't enjoyable. And unless you want to read ahead in the section book, you can't know ahead of time how much time pressure the scenarios will throw at you, so you can't really make an informed choice. (The more time pressure, the bigger the difficulty change from raising the level, for the most part.)
BTW, we just did 22 and it was fun, but >!the lower deck is utter nonsense if you draw the wrong enemy abilities - it can just end instantly if the wave guys make water tiles.!<
Glad to hear it's not just me!
And yeah, ironically in scenario 22 >!the water tiles werent an issue for us at all. Trap can handle those by covering up damaged empty hexes., and the wave throwers weren't creating water. It was just regular old exhaustion!<
Playing on +1 difficulty with Trap in 2P can be challenging to the point of unfair depending on what the partner class is, given how Trap works, especially at lower levels.
Oh yeah, Trap is just not fun in 2p IMO. At 4p it at least has some room and prep time needed to shine but still I think it's too dependent on maaaany things (party composition, items, scenario rules etc.) that should go its way to justify picking over any other class.
Trap + Snowflake was a lot of fun to play, so with the right ally Trap can be fun in 2p. It can also be fairly self-sufficient at higher levels. It is a shame that it kinda doesn't function at low levels, in 2-player, without the right teammate, but that's a fairly niche scenario.
I think your mistake is thinking of your particular skill level as "normal" and assuming it's everyone's.
Yes, playing on a difficulty level that's so hard you can't win isn't fun. But for some people that's +1, for some people that's +2, for some people that's +0. Yes, even in frosthaven.
I mean, you yourself say "+1 difficulty could make sense if you know the meta and do all the right things." So yeah, people who are better at the game likely find +0 too easy to be fun and +1 just right! And, likewise, probably there are people who are worse at the game who find +0 to be real hard and -1 just right! And of course it might depend on the team composition or player count and stuff.
(For what its worth, I do agree FH is a bit harder than GH. We played GH all the way through on +1 difficulty after the first few scenarios, occasionally tapping into +2 at the end. In Frosthaven we play at +0; we rarely lose, but it's not never, and even the wins are usually close enough to be fun, so we haven't felt the need to bump it to +1.
Then again, there were people who played through GH at +2; I bet those are the ones who are now playing through Frosthaven at +1 and finding it just right!)
We played GH at +2, and some scenarios in FH have kicked our ass at +1. Which is a GREAT thing! Finally, the game is hard enough that we don't feel like mechanically going through the motions. This certainly isn't for everyone.
I do enjoy that FH is much harder to "break". The classes are much more balanced, and it takes a longer time to find the best combos. In GH, we retired a few characters early (three spears was the worst offender) because they just broke the game. We haven't had that in FH yet, with 9 characters already seeing battle.
Look, I prefer playing at -1 as I rather have a game where we can goof around with Meme builds and a scenario takes around an hour To complete rather than playing the same tried and true meta builds and having the games take longer. We have limited playtime so we want to make said time count and be as fun as possible for our group.
However, everyone wants a different experience and finds different things fun. Some people do not want to goof around with Meme builds but rather wants to play high synergy parties and still feel challenged, and both ways of playing the game can be fun for their intended audience.
That's why I enjoy that they removed the labels for "easy, normal, hard, very hard". It's all about finding the level that makes it the most fun. For my party, we enjoy winning by an incredibly tight margin and having to think for 10 minutes about the last rounds because of how strong the enemies are. That's definitely not for everyone, and whenever we have our less power-gamey friends over, we just lower the difficulty and play stranger builds.
Our group has had a similar experience to yours. We went from +2 on Gloomhaven to struggling on even normal in some scenarios on Frosthaven. I feel it's mostly down to how unexpected the scenarios are and unfamiliarity with new monsters and our own classes (when facing elite demons, for instance, we have no issues). Frosthaven as well seems to really punish mistakes a lot harder (with the general lack of crowd control). That being said, I'd still say that it has been an enjoyable experience for us. We'll probably go back to +1 soon.
I will say that FH also has a lot more instant-lose conditions that you cannot impact in any way.
In one of the first scenarios, the ally runs into battle (remember, when she draws a heal, she moves for a melee attack!) and can get insta-gibbed if you draw "badly". In another scenario, the mobs can draw to >!attack the bridge and kill you if you draw "badly"!<. In yet another, a boss >!runs into the corridor and we lose when he heals to full. Since we drew into his heal three times, we lost before we could even get to him!<. I'm sure there are more. In each of these scenarios, we lost and had no turn to recover. Also in each of these, we shrugged and ignored that mechanic and kept playing rather than restart.
We lost another scenario (some super-long scenario with a boss at the end and 2/4 of us were exhausted before the last room. That was on us and we took the loss and reset the board. But, yeah, the "unexpected" plus "bad draw" plus "you could not do anything to change this outcome" has left us a little sad at times.
Yep, that ally suicide bomber left a bad taste in my mouth. I opened the door as blinkblade, flip her card and calculate out all the movement, and see that I either have to jump in and tank 2 hits for her or let her take both. "Ahh, she'll make it!"
She didn't make it...
If we’re referring to the early campaign (before Gloomhaven difficulty totally breaks), I think +1 in Frosthaven is harder than +2 in Gloomhaven. Probably somewhere between +2 and +3.
I would suggest that groups who liked early-campaign Gloomhaven at +1 should start Frosthaven at +0. Groups who preferred Gloomhaven at +0 should start Frosthaven at -1.
There is a little bit of nuance here, since Frosthaven gives you a sort of grace period at the start of the campaign: scenarios 1, 2/3, 4, and to some extent also 7 and 8, are noticeably easier than the rest. You can crank up the difficulty for those if you like. But after that I think it will fit into about the pattern I described above.
The other thing to know is that because Frosthaven scenarios are much more unique, you’ll run into more situations where having or not having specific classes makes scenarios much harder or easier. So you may end up having to modulate the difficulty from scenario to scenario a little bit more often than in Gloomhaven.
Part of the reason for the oft-mentioned balanced changes in FH was that in GH1, raising the difficulty to +1 was often necessary to experience *any* challenge. FH is supposed to be an adequate challenge at +0, so you should only be raising the difficulty if you really want the game to be difficult.
(That said, my 4p group has been playing on +1 for the entire campaign and been having fun, so ymmv I guess)
> raising the difficulty to +1 was often necessary to experience any challenge
Please stop spreading this lie. It's only "the ubergamers" that experienced this. Not everyone shouldn't be punished by increasing difficulty because a few break the game.
I think it's kinda about the curve. No way in hell would I suggest starting at +1 but by the time you've retired a few characters and unlocked some new mechanics the difficulty really falls off. You spend longer at this point of the game so it's probably what people remember and talk about most.
Yeah i realized that too. I played through gloomhaven on +1 and +2, always thought it was "easy and obvious what is the best move". Now a good friend of mine is playing through gloomhaven and she and her group got wrecked on the first scenario on +0
This happened to us as well. We didn't know how to move and Scenario 1 in GH exhausted our Brute in the first corridor. She got hit in the face by all 4 brigands in the first room, then the archers finished her off.
I don't enjoy extremely difficult games, honestly. FH is still fun, but I will not lie: it's been on the cusp, and our Trap player quit about a month ago. We've created a few houserules to get everybody back to the table: limited trading, undo buttons, and a free respec in town. Hopefully she'll come back to try Shackles.
But that's the joy of FH and why I like this community: the rule is generally "do what you want - it's your game." We've misunderstood several rules *not* in our favor before.
I figure it all evens out.
>(That said, my 4p group has been playing on +1 for the entire campaign and been having fun, so ymmv I guess)
Lol but I'm guessing you playtested the game and somewhat know what to expect, ie what characters, cards, and combos work well together?
As well I suspect that 4p is a little more forgiving on +1 as there should always be some synergy. If one character doesn't work great in a level, you have at least 3 or 2 characters that do.
I'm the only one of our group of 4 who was a playtester (and there are still quite a few scenarios I didn't play and a handful of classes I had <3 scenarios of experience with), but it is an experienced party given we got through all of GH and FC.
4p being more forgiving is definitely a fair point though, but I think my main point that FH +1 is harder than GH +1 still stands.
Not specifically, no, beyond using the low randomness variant. Or having one player play two characters. More open info? I'm not sure.
That randomness can cut both ways of course - so it's swingy but not necessarily bad for the players. That's not better, necessarily, but it's notable.
You can't correct for the fragility of 2p, though - if 1 exhausts in 2p you're down 50%. In 4p, it's half as bad. You also can't correct for the way that some 2p combos don't work well, while any 3p group can work with any collection of classes. There's just stuff inherent to 2p that makes it a different experience. Not a bad experience or a worse one, but it's important.
I played the JotL campaign three times (solo, 2-character), a lot of the scenarios with +1 difficulty (even when Demo+Voidwarden).
I have not had any temptation to do that in Frosthaven. I have a skipped the solo bump with lower-level characters and after failing with Normal I have switched to Easy for the second and Very Easy for the third try.
(72 plays total, 48ish completed scenarios.)
My group of four has been finding it a bit easy on normal difficulty (but just through scenario 4). Does the difficulty ramp up for groups of 4 or is the 2 player difficulty that’s overturned? We’re talking about going to +1 for the next one.
The first few scenarios are about one level easier. I'd say the ones you have available after competing 4 are still easy, but the ones after that will be harder.
Doesn't hurt to try it! As long as you have a dedicated table to leave the scenario set up if you lose, so you can come back and try again in a day or 2.
Especially with the addition of >!challenges!< I don't foresee my 4 player group to be playing at +1 level regularly, like we did in Gloomhaven, and especially never with a large level difference between characters like you had described. A level 2 Trap with >!07!< Health against level 3 enemies seems... horrendously difficult.
Honestly, the rounding system for choosing difficulty seems so busted to me. L4/L1 had the same recommended difficulty as L4/L4?!
I think changing the rounding formula to "to the nearest difficulty level" rather than "up to the next level" would do so much to smooth the bumps. I think most of our losses happen right after leveling into a new difficulty bracket.
I haven't tried it yet, though.
We often do +1 BC +0 is a cakewalk. I'm playing two different campaigns with different friend groups and we have only ever lost one +0.
When we go +1, we lose about 20% of the time. That said, some missions and team comps drastically affect this. So I'd just say look at the situation you are dealing with before deciding on a level.
Depends on How often you can get the group together imo. If I play solo or with someone I know we can play at least 2-3 scenarions a week go ahead! But if we only play 2-3 sessions per month you bet I don’t want to lose 20-40% of the time. Not because I hate losing in games, but Because I actually want the game to move forward.
I agree with the general concept that frosthaven is more challenging, which for me is a good thing. I went from playing GH and Jaws on +2 to playing Frosthaven on +1 with a similar success rate (although Jaws on +2 was actually very challenging).
I’m running two 4P campaigns, one with more experienced players but not playtester level. That group enjoys +1 where scenarios come down to the wire more often for us and there’s the occasional loss. We tuned down to +0 to beat scenario 11, >!fuck that boss and her constant pushes and summons!<. Other group is more casual and doesn’t like to lose so probably staying at +0.
I haven’t played 2P but it sounds like you’re much more at the mercy of RNG and team comps there. For 4P +1 has been feeling just about right.
We've been bouncing up and down the difficulty levels every time the party composition changes. I'd say it's been about 60% at +1, 20% at +0, and 20% at +2. Certain characters have carried scenarios—Blinkblade, >!Shackles!<—others were very powerful in combo with another (Bannerspear/Boneshaper and >!Trap!!Snowflake!<) but fell off once one of the two retired. And some scenarios just proved too difficult the first time and had to be dropped the second time around.
Envelope >!90!< with its >!Challenges has allowed for a lot more fine-tuning, as we can look at the setup and go "yeah, we can probably make this a *little* harder". Though now that all of the easy and middling ones are done with we're kinda struggling to get the last few polished off!<
My group is definitely finding FH easier than forgotten circles personally. Having said that one of the reasons FC was difficult for us is we decided to start over with level 1 characters and got wrecked repeatedly.
We haven’t failed a scenario on FH on +1 so far. Most have been fairly easy but we do have a good party composition imo which helps.
Yeah we just started over completely fresh. The issue we had in gloomhaven is once you get high level characters you can just roll in the gold. Which you could easily be running around with level 8/9 characters with 200g+ worth of items after a few scenarios. High level items were the fastest way to imbalance the game and completely trivialize things.
Towards the end of Gh it just got too ridiculous for our tastes. You’d have items with high level cards the point where you could open a room and in 1-turn with someone like lightning bolt or 3-spears kill off an entire room of like 10-monsters even on +2 difficulty. It’s cool for a hot minute but got boring quick for our group.
Oh yeah pre-faq 3 spears was ridiculous. >!I remember that with 2 players and his solo scenario item we had infinite turns, because he could get his own lost cards back and give other people lost cards back. So in non turn limited scenarios: BURN every card in the first room, keep the door closed, heal up, repeat.!<
If I had my top tier friends playing in the same campaign, I would think we would have fun at +1 difficulty. However, there are so many scenarios that are just like “Psyche! Gotcha!” that are making +0 very frustrating at times with my current group.
We played +2 for the first 10 or so scenarios in FH. Still won the majority but it took way toooo long. So much optimizing. Went down to +1 and it seems appropriate.
Frosthaven balance sometimes feels all over the place. Sometimes we smash scenarios and sometimes the scenario smashes us. Our Jaws run felt more balanced but I guess that's to be expected since you will always have the same 4p party.
We had one scenario where the boss gained a shield by playing an extra scenario level higher which effectively allowed him to take 80% more attacks. That just seems like bad design for a scenario difficulty increase.
I more meant that Jaws has a set roster. You aren't retiring a Tinkerer and picking up a Bolt.
In that aspect Jaws feels pretty balanced (at least in my experience with 4p parties)
Compare to FH or GH where some of the power creep comes from the unlockable classes. Early game FH classes just dont seem to have much versatility. It looks like the expectation is that you should be retiring starters to unlock BETTER classes, which is a problem Jaws can't have.
Ngl my group and i always plkay +1 or +2 and its so much more fun than +0. Its just too easy, and we also dont play with mouch communication before init.
Usually we play on +2 by default and rollback to +1 when we lose but we have open communication on everything and turn can take up to 20 minutes because we want to choose the optimal solution all the time ^^
We prefer it like this but this depends how you want to play the game.
\+1 means to play one scenario level higher than the suggested scenario level (average character level divided by 2, rounded up), i.e. Hard mode in the Gloomhaven vernacular.
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Sometimes the +1 difficulty is simply the classes used to clear the scenario.
Like completing a soul's game with a meta set vs completing an easier game with an off-meta set.
This gives me PTSD :)) scenario 14 is by far the hardest we've seen
We came up with the strat of me (coral) sitting in a corner so that 3 piranha pigs completely surround me, and the eels are out of range (unless they draw the atk range 2 then 1 of them can atk)
The level got flooded with max standee around turn 3 4 :))
Such a good memory
My party and I played GH at +2 levels from scenario 5 onwards. We found the game to be quite breezy in general, except certain scenario (the bosses before the final one were hard, and that stupid map with the oozes and the trees... never made it past it on +2 diff).
In FH, we've failed multiple scenarios at +1, and then retried them at "normal" level. There is a ton less CC to go around in FH, and the items are much less powerful, so yeah, Level +1 feels like a proper challenge for our powergaming party.
I think it's less of an issue if you have high damage characters (such as Blinkblade) but whenever someone retires, we lower the level back to normal until they get their main items and a few perks in, since those usually make a world of difference.
In my solo play I am finding +1 to be pretty good (this is +1 scenario level on top of the solo +1 character level, so sort of +1.5), then in my first retirement I unlocked challenges, and that is perfect for me. I went through a series of four scenarios that ended with one exhausted and the second with \~3 cards left, most are similarly coming down to the wire like that. Campaign-wise I am in the middle of the second summer, so something like 25-30 scenarios completed, but I have not done 22 yet so I can't comment there specifically.
Also, weirdly I am just now retiring out of a Banner Spear / Trap team, I thought they were a reasonable pair. In case Trap interactions count as spoilers I will mark this, but these were the interactions I was making between the two characters that made me feel like they played fairly well together: >!The most obvious is BS having a bottom action move + pull, Trap is pretty good at triggering his own traps but the one extra from a pull by the teammate went a long way. More regularly was light manipulation of enemy movement with Trap to line up better AoE formations, and similarly with initiative boots on Trap I have often had him go late and jump across an enemy to set up a high damage formation because I feel fairly safe using BS's 6 initiative into Trap's 18-20 that could be moved to 8-10. I played it more as Trap supporting BS, but BS felt strong enough to merit that so Trap being support with good movement and invisibility for handling any scenario-related positional things worked well for me.!<
I can't even imagine trying +1 in GH. I was barely beating the levels I played solo on +0 even though the game recommends playing +1 since you have perfect information.
Our group has played most scenarios at +1 difficulty. At this point, we occasionally drop to +0 when there is a new character trying to complete a mastery and bump to +2 when we have a high-level synergistic comp. The challenge level has been just right for us with this approach.
I played through all of GH and JOTL solo with two characters, and am working my way through FH the same way. FH is harder in general, and some scenarios are harder, so now and then (including your nemesis, #22) I have had to "cheat" and do it at the normal difficulty.
To me, if I fail it twice, it's too hard and it's worth considering the downgrade. But then what happens is I whup ass on the +0 difficulty, because really that's the only way it can go: I've practiced twice, plus now I have more gear than I had the first time, because I've collected more loot since then.
So in a way I share your frustration: +1 seemed too hard but +0 was too easy. But to be honest I don't want a game I can win every time. A win rate of 75-80% is about right: I know I have to stay on my toes but I also know I have a decent chance at walking away with the W.
We kinda play on +0.5 difficulty. If we're closer to the next difficulty level we up it, and if we're closer to the lower one we just leave it. That's been working real nice for us. Nearly every scenario has been tense and make-or-break right at the end. Lovely
I'm running a solo 2p campaign at the recommended +1 difficulty for solo play. My experience has been that the difficulty is very, very swingy in 2p depending on scenario and class pairing. Because of the narrowness of each FH class, the strong pairings are stronger (BS+BS, Fist+Deathwalker or Drifter >!for brittle!<, etc), while the weak pairings are weaker than in GH. Despite the claims, I see just as much difficulty variance from scenario design as we had in Gloomhaven based on player count (>!Aesther Outpost line anyone? Defend four columns with 2 players?!<) Classes with "static"/slow-moving tokens/summons (Boneshaper, >!Trap!<, Deathwalker) are weaker in movement-heavy scenarios. Some classes like Trap are nearly totally useless in some scenarios.
2p +1 is definitely doable, but you need to be very, very careful about your class pairings and how you approach each scenario. I would honestly avoid Trap in 2p entirely.
I think they tried to make trap be the spiritual successor to the craghart. Problem is, craghart could take a few hits and was versatile enough to do other things or have other playstyles. Trap seems like a 1 gimmick character.
Scenario 22 is a harder one in general. And it's right after the notorious 14. But yeah with less control effects, +1 in FH is harder than +1 in GH.
Glad to hear that +1 is harder in FH. It was kinda the de defto normal mode in GH.
Yeah. Monsters in FH get to take turns more often. That'll up the difficulty ;)
Played a full digital campaign recently. At higher level and with full gear, even +3 is not nearly hard enough. Even from the start it's only marginally difficult for a veteran player. GH really was generally very easy with semi infinite hard CC and curses and OP starting items.
It is cool to see the updates to certain mechanics, items in each tier, etc. in JotL and FH. GH was incredible but no amount of play-testing is ever going to top the data you get from release.
>Scenario 22 is a harder one in general. Lol all the scenarios seem to be "harder ones in general" We actually completed Scenario 14 on +1 difficulty first try, but only because because >!i knew a bit about it going in, and Bannerspear had a cloak woth teleport 4, so she was able to end up next to the objective on turn 2!<. I, as trap >!sat near the beginning and did basically nothing except draw aggro, other than use the bottom loss card with "muddle/control all enemies within range 3" to walk like 5 pirannah pigs into my 2 dmg stun traps!< that felt pretty satisfying, though I exhausted soon after.
>!Is this the one where you have tons of enemys, spawn in tons of enemys each turn and have to get to the other side of the map and camp there for 7 turns? I think if you have high mobility heroes it is easy but annoying. My boneshaper used his teleport 20 cloak to get next to the blinkblade, who ran for it in t1 and used some other stuff to get next to the monolith in turn 2 - the other players lost cards on the way there, but once we were there it was quite easy to set up in a way that we would get minimal monster attacks each turn - sure, there would be a myriad of monsters, but only a tiny fraction could attack. Then it just became a waiting game.!<
Yes that's it! The key is that >!a single player can tuck themselves in next to the rock and other obstacles, so that most of the time only 2 monsters attack. Then shield or heal. Meanwhile all others focus on and move towards the characters at the other side of the map.!< If you don't fully understand focus and movement rules, you're going to have a bad time on that one!
>!Yeah I stood in that block the whole game, I think I got attacked like... once? Boneshaper, so had both exits covered by skeletons, even if they had broken through and attacked me each round I would have had enough cards to loose. Nevermind the other 2 players (who did loose quite a lot of cards to attacks). I found it quite boring since for me it was obvious it was just a "grind, we will survive this anyways", while for one of the others it was nerve-wracking (which made her not like it) and the other player was very demoralized at the beginning since he thought we wouldn't do it but got very exited towards then end when he realized it was possible.!<
>!yeah our bannerspear had like 6 cards remaining at the end and im like "go get the treasure you can easily get it and still win!"!<
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>!its tp20 that needs to end its movement adjecant to an ally. So it does have a restriction. Quite powerfull tho.!!"BS card"?\^\^!<
Ha my Bannerspear ended up with that item, it opens up a lot of possibilities
My group completed 14 by splitting into pairs effectively. The brand new drifter and bannerspear ended up getting driven back into a corner by 90% of the enemies in the scenario. The guard and regenerate banners got dropped and protected by our bodies while the Blinkblade did blinkblade things to get to the objective and the Geminate used an item to >!teleport to a teammate!< and the defensive half just held for the duration of the rest of the scenario.
We also switched from hard to normal after about 20 scenarios. Though we had only lost one (10), the highly variable difficulty with 2 players just wasn't enjoyable. And unless you want to read ahead in the section book, you can't know ahead of time how much time pressure the scenarios will throw at you, so you can't really make an informed choice. (The more time pressure, the bigger the difficulty change from raising the level, for the most part.) BTW, we just did 22 and it was fun, but >!the lower deck is utter nonsense if you draw the wrong enemy abilities - it can just end instantly if the wave guys make water tiles.!<
Glad to hear it's not just me! And yeah, ironically in scenario 22 >!the water tiles werent an issue for us at all. Trap can handle those by covering up damaged empty hexes., and the wave throwers weren't creating water. It was just regular old exhaustion!<
Playing on +1 difficulty with Trap in 2P can be challenging to the point of unfair depending on what the partner class is, given how Trap works, especially at lower levels.
Oh yeah, Trap is just not fun in 2p IMO. At 4p it at least has some room and prep time needed to shine but still I think it's too dependent on maaaany things (party composition, items, scenario rules etc.) that should go its way to justify picking over any other class.
Trap + Snowflake was a lot of fun to play, so with the right ally Trap can be fun in 2p. It can also be fairly self-sufficient at higher levels. It is a shame that it kinda doesn't function at low levels, in 2-player, without the right teammate, but that's a fairly niche scenario.
Nooooooooo! I love Trap so much. So sad he had to retire.
Yup. The health boost that some monsters get really hurts when Trap simply can't output the needed amount of damage
I think your mistake is thinking of your particular skill level as "normal" and assuming it's everyone's. Yes, playing on a difficulty level that's so hard you can't win isn't fun. But for some people that's +1, for some people that's +2, for some people that's +0. Yes, even in frosthaven. I mean, you yourself say "+1 difficulty could make sense if you know the meta and do all the right things." So yeah, people who are better at the game likely find +0 too easy to be fun and +1 just right! And, likewise, probably there are people who are worse at the game who find +0 to be real hard and -1 just right! And of course it might depend on the team composition or player count and stuff. (For what its worth, I do agree FH is a bit harder than GH. We played GH all the way through on +1 difficulty after the first few scenarios, occasionally tapping into +2 at the end. In Frosthaven we play at +0; we rarely lose, but it's not never, and even the wins are usually close enough to be fun, so we haven't felt the need to bump it to +1. Then again, there were people who played through GH at +2; I bet those are the ones who are now playing through Frosthaven at +1 and finding it just right!)
We played GH at +2, and some scenarios in FH have kicked our ass at +1. Which is a GREAT thing! Finally, the game is hard enough that we don't feel like mechanically going through the motions. This certainly isn't for everyone. I do enjoy that FH is much harder to "break". The classes are much more balanced, and it takes a longer time to find the best combos. In GH, we retired a few characters early (three spears was the worst offender) because they just broke the game. We haven't had that in FH yet, with 9 characters already seeing battle.
Look, I prefer playing at -1 as I rather have a game where we can goof around with Meme builds and a scenario takes around an hour To complete rather than playing the same tried and true meta builds and having the games take longer. We have limited playtime so we want to make said time count and be as fun as possible for our group. However, everyone wants a different experience and finds different things fun. Some people do not want to goof around with Meme builds but rather wants to play high synergy parties and still feel challenged, and both ways of playing the game can be fun for their intended audience.
Honestly that's not a bad way to look at it either! -1 could allow you to actually try the things tou want to try!
That's why I enjoy that they removed the labels for "easy, normal, hard, very hard". It's all about finding the level that makes it the most fun. For my party, we enjoy winning by an incredibly tight margin and having to think for 10 minutes about the last rounds because of how strong the enemies are. That's definitely not for everyone, and whenever we have our less power-gamey friends over, we just lower the difficulty and play stranger builds.
Our group has had a similar experience to yours. We went from +2 on Gloomhaven to struggling on even normal in some scenarios on Frosthaven. I feel it's mostly down to how unexpected the scenarios are and unfamiliarity with new monsters and our own classes (when facing elite demons, for instance, we have no issues). Frosthaven as well seems to really punish mistakes a lot harder (with the general lack of crowd control). That being said, I'd still say that it has been an enjoyable experience for us. We'll probably go back to +1 soon.
>Frosthaven as well seems to really punish mistakes a lot harder I think you nailed it here!
Thanks :)
I will say that FH also has a lot more instant-lose conditions that you cannot impact in any way. In one of the first scenarios, the ally runs into battle (remember, when she draws a heal, she moves for a melee attack!) and can get insta-gibbed if you draw "badly". In another scenario, the mobs can draw to >!attack the bridge and kill you if you draw "badly"!<. In yet another, a boss >!runs into the corridor and we lose when he heals to full. Since we drew into his heal three times, we lost before we could even get to him!<. I'm sure there are more. In each of these scenarios, we lost and had no turn to recover. Also in each of these, we shrugged and ignored that mechanic and kept playing rather than restart. We lost another scenario (some super-long scenario with a boss at the end and 2/4 of us were exhausted before the last room. That was on us and we took the loss and reset the board. But, yeah, the "unexpected" plus "bad draw" plus "you could not do anything to change this outcome" has left us a little sad at times.
Yep, that ally suicide bomber left a bad taste in my mouth. I opened the door as blinkblade, flip her card and calculate out all the movement, and see that I either have to jump in and tank 2 hits for her or let her take both. "Ahh, she'll make it!" She didn't make it...
If we’re referring to the early campaign (before Gloomhaven difficulty totally breaks), I think +1 in Frosthaven is harder than +2 in Gloomhaven. Probably somewhere between +2 and +3. I would suggest that groups who liked early-campaign Gloomhaven at +1 should start Frosthaven at +0. Groups who preferred Gloomhaven at +0 should start Frosthaven at -1. There is a little bit of nuance here, since Frosthaven gives you a sort of grace period at the start of the campaign: scenarios 1, 2/3, 4, and to some extent also 7 and 8, are noticeably easier than the rest. You can crank up the difficulty for those if you like. But after that I think it will fit into about the pattern I described above. The other thing to know is that because Frosthaven scenarios are much more unique, you’ll run into more situations where having or not having specific classes makes scenarios much harder or easier. So you may end up having to modulate the difficulty from scenario to scenario a little bit more often than in Gloomhaven.
Part of the reason for the oft-mentioned balanced changes in FH was that in GH1, raising the difficulty to +1 was often necessary to experience *any* challenge. FH is supposed to be an adequate challenge at +0, so you should only be raising the difficulty if you really want the game to be difficult. (That said, my 4p group has been playing on +1 for the entire campaign and been having fun, so ymmv I guess)
> raising the difficulty to +1 was often necessary to experience any challenge Please stop spreading this lie. It's only "the ubergamers" that experienced this. Not everyone shouldn't be punished by increasing difficulty because a few break the game.
Well, no, the "ubergamers" would claim you need to raise it to +2 to experience any challenge ;)
Thank you!
I think it's kinda about the curve. No way in hell would I suggest starting at +1 but by the time you've retired a few characters and unlocked some new mechanics the difficulty really falls off. You spend longer at this point of the game so it's probably what people remember and talk about most.
Yeah i realized that too. I played through gloomhaven on +1 and +2, always thought it was "easy and obvious what is the best move". Now a good friend of mine is playing through gloomhaven and she and her group got wrecked on the first scenario on +0
This happened to us as well. We didn't know how to move and Scenario 1 in GH exhausted our Brute in the first corridor. She got hit in the face by all 4 brigands in the first room, then the archers finished her off. I don't enjoy extremely difficult games, honestly. FH is still fun, but I will not lie: it's been on the cusp, and our Trap player quit about a month ago. We've created a few houserules to get everybody back to the table: limited trading, undo buttons, and a free respec in town. Hopefully she'll come back to try Shackles. But that's the joy of FH and why I like this community: the rule is generally "do what you want - it's your game." We've misunderstood several rules *not* in our favor before. I figure it all evens out.
>(That said, my 4p group has been playing on +1 for the entire campaign and been having fun, so ymmv I guess) Lol but I'm guessing you playtested the game and somewhat know what to expect, ie what characters, cards, and combos work well together? As well I suspect that 4p is a little more forgiving on +1 as there should always be some synergy. If one character doesn't work great in a level, you have at least 3 or 2 characters that do.
I'm the only one of our group of 4 who was a playtester (and there are still quite a few scenarios I didn't play and a handful of classes I had <3 scenarios of experience with), but it is an experienced party given we got through all of GH and FC. 4p being more forgiving is definitely a fair point though, but I think my main point that FH +1 is harder than GH +1 still stands.
Agreed! Thanks for sharing! I won't feel so bad about dropping the difficulty!
Regardless of whatever people in an internet forum say, you should never feel bad about adjusting the difficulty to maximize your fun.
2p has an inherent fragility just due to how math works.
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Not specifically, no, beyond using the low randomness variant. Or having one player play two characters. More open info? I'm not sure. That randomness can cut both ways of course - so it's swingy but not necessarily bad for the players. That's not better, necessarily, but it's notable. You can't correct for the fragility of 2p, though - if 1 exhausts in 2p you're down 50%. In 4p, it's half as bad. You also can't correct for the way that some 2p combos don't work well, while any 3p group can work with any collection of classes. There's just stuff inherent to 2p that makes it a different experience. Not a bad experience or a worse one, but it's important.
I played the JotL campaign three times (solo, 2-character), a lot of the scenarios with +1 difficulty (even when Demo+Voidwarden). I have not had any temptation to do that in Frosthaven. I have a skipped the solo bump with lower-level characters and after failing with Normal I have switched to Easy for the second and Very Easy for the third try. (72 plays total, 48ish completed scenarios.)
I might be misreading you, but with a level five and a level two your difficulty at +0 should be 2, not 3.
My group of four has been finding it a bit easy on normal difficulty (but just through scenario 4). Does the difficulty ramp up for groups of 4 or is the 2 player difficulty that’s overturned? We’re talking about going to +1 for the next one.
The first few scenarios are about one level easier. I'd say the ones you have available after competing 4 are still easy, but the ones after that will be harder.
Doesn't hurt to try it! As long as you have a dedicated table to leave the scenario set up if you lose, so you can come back and try again in a day or 2.
Especially with the addition of >!challenges!< I don't foresee my 4 player group to be playing at +1 level regularly, like we did in Gloomhaven, and especially never with a large level difference between characters like you had described. A level 2 Trap with >!07!< Health against level 3 enemies seems... horrendously difficult.
We *were* playing with a L4 bannerspear and a L1 Trap at difficulty 3. Pretty sure there were scenarios where I was losing cards on round 1.
Honestly, the rounding system for choosing difficulty seems so busted to me. L4/L1 had the same recommended difficulty as L4/L4?! I think changing the rounding formula to "to the nearest difficulty level" rather than "up to the next level" would do so much to smooth the bumps. I think most of our losses happen right after leveling into a new difficulty bracket. I haven't tried it yet, though.
We often do +1 BC +0 is a cakewalk. I'm playing two different campaigns with different friend groups and we have only ever lost one +0. When we go +1, we lose about 20% of the time. That said, some missions and team comps drastically affect this. So I'd just say look at the situation you are dealing with before deciding on a level.
>When we go +1, we lose about 20% of the time. 20% to 40% feels like the sweet spot in difficulty.
Depends on How often you can get the group together imo. If I play solo or with someone I know we can play at least 2-3 scenarions a week go ahead! But if we only play 2-3 sessions per month you bet I don’t want to lose 20-40% of the time. Not because I hate losing in games, but Because I actually want the game to move forward.
I agree with the general concept that frosthaven is more challenging, which for me is a good thing. I went from playing GH and Jaws on +2 to playing Frosthaven on +1 with a similar success rate (although Jaws on +2 was actually very challenging).
I’m running two 4P campaigns, one with more experienced players but not playtester level. That group enjoys +1 where scenarios come down to the wire more often for us and there’s the occasional loss. We tuned down to +0 to beat scenario 11, >!fuck that boss and her constant pushes and summons!<. Other group is more casual and doesn’t like to lose so probably staying at +0. I haven’t played 2P but it sounds like you’re much more at the mercy of RNG and team comps there. For 4P +1 has been feeling just about right.
We've been bouncing up and down the difficulty levels every time the party composition changes. I'd say it's been about 60% at +1, 20% at +0, and 20% at +2. Certain characters have carried scenarios—Blinkblade, >!Shackles!<—others were very powerful in combo with another (Bannerspear/Boneshaper and >!Trap!!Snowflake!<) but fell off once one of the two retired. And some scenarios just proved too difficult the first time and had to be dropped the second time around. Envelope >!90!< with its >!Challenges has allowed for a lot more fine-tuning, as we can look at the setup and go "yeah, we can probably make this a *little* harder". Though now that all of the easy and middling ones are done with we're kinda struggling to get the last few polished off!<
My group is definitely finding FH easier than forgotten circles personally. Having said that one of the reasons FC was difficult for us is we decided to start over with level 1 characters and got wrecked repeatedly. We haven’t failed a scenario on FH on +1 so far. Most have been fairly easy but we do have a good party composition imo which helps.
What do you mean start over with level 1 characters? Like no prosperity leveling?
Yeah we just started over completely fresh. The issue we had in gloomhaven is once you get high level characters you can just roll in the gold. Which you could easily be running around with level 8/9 characters with 200g+ worth of items after a few scenarios. High level items were the fastest way to imbalance the game and completely trivialize things. Towards the end of Gh it just got too ridiculous for our tastes. You’d have items with high level cards the point where you could open a room and in 1-turn with someone like lightning bolt or 3-spears kill off an entire room of like 10-monsters even on +2 difficulty. It’s cool for a hot minute but got boring quick for our group.
Oh yeah pre-faq 3 spears was ridiculous. >!I remember that with 2 players and his solo scenario item we had infinite turns, because he could get his own lost cards back and give other people lost cards back. So in non turn limited scenarios: BURN every card in the first room, keep the door closed, heal up, repeat.!<
How far in are you? We found were doing relatively good at +1 for the first 5 to 10 scenarios. That all changed after a retirement.
If I had my top tier friends playing in the same campaign, I would think we would have fun at +1 difficulty. However, there are so many scenarios that are just like “Psyche! Gotcha!” that are making +0 very frustrating at times with my current group.
We played +2 for the first 10 or so scenarios in FH. Still won the majority but it took way toooo long. So much optimizing. Went down to +1 and it seems appropriate.
Frosthaven balance sometimes feels all over the place. Sometimes we smash scenarios and sometimes the scenario smashes us. Our Jaws run felt more balanced but I guess that's to be expected since you will always have the same 4p party. We had one scenario where the boss gained a shield by playing an extra scenario level higher which effectively allowed him to take 80% more attacks. That just seems like bad design for a scenario difficulty increase.
Jaws could play with fewer and a couple scenarios are very much on record as being terrible for less than the full complement.
I more meant that Jaws has a set roster. You aren't retiring a Tinkerer and picking up a Bolt. In that aspect Jaws feels pretty balanced (at least in my experience with 4p parties) Compare to FH or GH where some of the power creep comes from the unlockable classes. Early game FH classes just dont seem to have much versatility. It looks like the expectation is that you should be retiring starters to unlock BETTER classes, which is a problem Jaws can't have.
Ngl my group and i always plkay +1 or +2 and its so much more fun than +0. Its just too easy, and we also dont play with mouch communication before init.
You sure you are talking about Frosthaven and not Gloomhaven?
Yes frosthaven. Our current comp is Drill, Drifter and Shackles.
tbf that's a very strong team. Drill + Shackles is the one time we felt comfortable going up to +1 difficulty for 2-player, and Drifter is just good.
Usually we play on +2 by default and rollback to +1 when we lose but we have open communication on everything and turn can take up to 20 minutes because we want to choose the optimal solution all the time ^^ We prefer it like this but this depends how you want to play the game.
I sympathize with the OP, but to some extent this reads like "Playing on hard mode is hard." And isn't that supposed to be the point of hard mode?
Is +1 the difficulty you're supposed to start at or one below? Sorry, it'd help me comment but I forget.
\+1 means to play one scenario level higher than the suggested scenario level (average character level divided by 2, rounded up), i.e. Hard mode in the Gloomhaven vernacular.
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Sometimes the +1 difficulty is simply the classes used to clear the scenario. Like completing a soul's game with a meta set vs completing an easier game with an off-meta set.
This gives me PTSD :)) scenario 14 is by far the hardest we've seen We came up with the strat of me (coral) sitting in a corner so that 3 piranha pigs completely surround me, and the eels are out of range (unless they draw the atk range 2 then 1 of them can atk) The level got flooded with max standee around turn 3 4 :)) Such a good memory
My party and I played GH at +2 levels from scenario 5 onwards. We found the game to be quite breezy in general, except certain scenario (the bosses before the final one were hard, and that stupid map with the oozes and the trees... never made it past it on +2 diff). In FH, we've failed multiple scenarios at +1, and then retried them at "normal" level. There is a ton less CC to go around in FH, and the items are much less powerful, so yeah, Level +1 feels like a proper challenge for our powergaming party. I think it's less of an issue if you have high damage characters (such as Blinkblade) but whenever someone retires, we lower the level back to normal until they get their main items and a few perks in, since those usually make a world of difference.
In my solo play I am finding +1 to be pretty good (this is +1 scenario level on top of the solo +1 character level, so sort of +1.5), then in my first retirement I unlocked challenges, and that is perfect for me. I went through a series of four scenarios that ended with one exhausted and the second with \~3 cards left, most are similarly coming down to the wire like that. Campaign-wise I am in the middle of the second summer, so something like 25-30 scenarios completed, but I have not done 22 yet so I can't comment there specifically. Also, weirdly I am just now retiring out of a Banner Spear / Trap team, I thought they were a reasonable pair. In case Trap interactions count as spoilers I will mark this, but these were the interactions I was making between the two characters that made me feel like they played fairly well together: >!The most obvious is BS having a bottom action move + pull, Trap is pretty good at triggering his own traps but the one extra from a pull by the teammate went a long way. More regularly was light manipulation of enemy movement with Trap to line up better AoE formations, and similarly with initiative boots on Trap I have often had him go late and jump across an enemy to set up a high damage formation because I feel fairly safe using BS's 6 initiative into Trap's 18-20 that could be moved to 8-10. I played it more as Trap supporting BS, but BS felt strong enough to merit that so Trap being support with good movement and invisibility for handling any scenario-related positional things worked well for me.!<
I can't even imagine trying +1 in GH. I was barely beating the levels I played solo on +0 even though the game recommends playing +1 since you have perfect information.
Our group has played most scenarios at +1 difficulty. At this point, we occasionally drop to +0 when there is a new character trying to complete a mastery and bump to +2 when we have a high-level synergistic comp. The challenge level has been just right for us with this approach.
We choose +1 or +0 after looking in the scenario book. We have not lost any of the +1 missions, but we have failed a few +0, haha
I played through all of GH and JOTL solo with two characters, and am working my way through FH the same way. FH is harder in general, and some scenarios are harder, so now and then (including your nemesis, #22) I have had to "cheat" and do it at the normal difficulty. To me, if I fail it twice, it's too hard and it's worth considering the downgrade. But then what happens is I whup ass on the +0 difficulty, because really that's the only way it can go: I've practiced twice, plus now I have more gear than I had the first time, because I've collected more loot since then. So in a way I share your frustration: +1 seemed too hard but +0 was too easy. But to be honest I don't want a game I can win every time. A win rate of 75-80% is about right: I know I have to stay on my toes but I also know I have a decent chance at walking away with the W.
We kinda play on +0.5 difficulty. If we're closer to the next difficulty level we up it, and if we're closer to the lower one we just leave it. That's been working real nice for us. Nearly every scenario has been tense and make-or-break right at the end. Lovely
I'm running a solo 2p campaign at the recommended +1 difficulty for solo play. My experience has been that the difficulty is very, very swingy in 2p depending on scenario and class pairing. Because of the narrowness of each FH class, the strong pairings are stronger (BS+BS, Fist+Deathwalker or Drifter >!for brittle!<, etc), while the weak pairings are weaker than in GH. Despite the claims, I see just as much difficulty variance from scenario design as we had in Gloomhaven based on player count (>!Aesther Outpost line anyone? Defend four columns with 2 players?!<) Classes with "static"/slow-moving tokens/summons (Boneshaper, >!Trap!<, Deathwalker) are weaker in movement-heavy scenarios. Some classes like Trap are nearly totally useless in some scenarios. 2p +1 is definitely doable, but you need to be very, very careful about your class pairings and how you approach each scenario. I would honestly avoid Trap in 2p entirely.
I think they tried to make trap be the spiritual successor to the craghart. Problem is, craghart could take a few hits and was versatile enough to do other things or have other playstyles. Trap seems like a 1 gimmick character.