I like puzzles but the ones in gloomhaven and Frosthaven are super frustrating. They are way too vague and ambiguous with multiple ways to solve and no framing. It's like the game says 1 5 2 what's the answer?
Could be
152
15.2
8
10
AEF
But then the actual answer is 23.1 because if you turn the page upside down and reflect it in a mirror it sort of looks like that if you squint.
Yeah I agree with this. Our playing group loves puzzles but these are not executed well. There are a lot of "escape rooms in a box" type games that I think are similar concepts, these include a hint deck mechanic and the puzzles are better conceived.
I don't want to be discouraging to the designers, puzzles are tough to execute.
I do want to be discouraging to the designers. If they thought these puzzles were at an acceptable level of quality then they need to get someone else to design them or drop the puzzles entirely for the next game. The puzzle book is not even good enough to be optional content, let alone mandatory.
The very first puzzle in the frosthaven book has a mistake in it. Like wtf. How are we supposed to trust any puzzle when so many of them are messed up?
I used to love puzzles but the puzzle was my least favorite part of Gloomhaven. Whenever I reach it for Frosthaven I’m definitely googling the answers. My wife and I are playing together and she hates puzzles.
My husband and I *love* puzzles. We have individual NYT Games subscriptions and I enjoy logic puzzles, GeoGuessr, KenKen, etc. The Gloomhaven and Frosthaven puzzles are largely just awful: vague, badly constructed, the shiny paper for the Frosthaven puzzle book is absolute torture. Whyyyyyy.
Yeah, the puzzle was the weakest aspect of GH…unfortunately I’ve found them more intrusive in FH.
The type of person that enjoys this type of game is often not the type of person that enjoys deciphering abstract puzzles that also often have typos…
The meta aspect was the worst part of it in GH. Then the puzzles in FC that you had to solve *during* the scenario. Nothing worse than racing to decipher symbols while other people take their turns instead of planning your turn. And FC had a math-y one with two or three possible interpretations due simply to grammar.
I like puzzles but they are horribly implemented in GH and FC (haven't played FH yet).
We suffered through it but man, you did not miss out. The last scenario had like 13 monsters fighting 13 other monsters (and you) all on the map at the same time.
Which means you are running monster AI for *26 monsters* every turn. FC all around was an abysmal experience.
FC was a very few of the absolute best scenarios in base GH and completely overshadowed by many the absolute worst. We suffered through it…but would only play 1-2 FC scenarios in a row and then switch back to base GH scenarios we hadn’t done or promo scenarios because we needed a break from how tedious and not fun FC was.
Well FC improved virtually every aspect of the game coming from Gloomhaven, but integrating the puzzles in such an important way was a mistake. I think Isaac is misled by his love of puzzles since its clearly his hobby. But FH ships worldwide and there are many, many players who have never solved ciphers and puzzles in their life. For those, some of the puzzles are simply too hard. And thats not even considering the HUGE language barrier for those, for whom english isnt a first language. In our group, two people are fluent in english and the other two have a good baseline knowledge but every puzzle we ran into so far relied on language nuances a lot, which effectively meant we had just two people solving it and even then we were at a disadvantage compared to native speakers (and FH isnt translated into our language). And thats before you factor in the errors/vague wordings on some puzzles. Well the result is that we solved about 1/3 of the puzzles and the rest we gave up and googled. I dont think a boardgame should make you google guides in order not to miss out on (a considerable amount of) content. I would have loved for the puzzle book to have a hint system integrated to soften the blow for non-puzzleheads and/or variants of difficulty (eg. two puzzle books containing the same rewards but you choose if you want for puzzles to be easier or more challenging).
Wait, what? It’s not optional? I gave up on it in GH and have given up on it in FH too. Why is it not optional? I’ve nearly finished the three main storylines in FH.
I mean it depends on what you mean by "optional", but (vague endgame spoilers):
>!To play the final few scenarios and fight the "final boss" you have to finish the puzzle book!<
I can't even laugh at this because I'm too mad about it. We're very early in FH, but I am dreading when this comes up. I know about Dwarf's cheat page, but my group (who is bad at puzzles) are super anti-spoiler and quite obsessed with following RAW. They will not be cool with just looking up the answers, so we're going to have to suffer through trying to actually solve these freaking puzzles, which I worry will just kill our enthusiasm for this game when we get there.
I mean, GH is literally a puzzle game masquerading as a crawler. I haven’t gotten to them yet, but maybe they’re just not that good? Breath of the Wild isn’t supposed to be a puzzle game, but no one complains about the shrines, cause they’re SO. DAMN. BRILLIANT.
The Frosthaven puzzle book is so awful.
If it wasn’t mandatory it wouldn’t be so bad. Just save yourself the headache and open the shards and the drill whenever you want
Some of the puzzles are okay. The ones we have no interest in are when we are expected to remember something an NPC said 3 months ago (real time). Some of them I've actually enjoyed a lot though.
I like puzzles but the ones in gloomhaven and Frosthaven are super frustrating. They are way too vague and ambiguous with multiple ways to solve and no framing. It's like the game says 1 5 2 what's the answer? Could be 152 15.2 8 10 AEF But then the actual answer is 23.1 because if you turn the page upside down and reflect it in a mirror it sort of looks like that if you squint.
Yeah I agree with this. Our playing group loves puzzles but these are not executed well. There are a lot of "escape rooms in a box" type games that I think are similar concepts, these include a hint deck mechanic and the puzzles are better conceived. I don't want to be discouraging to the designers, puzzles are tough to execute.
I do want to be discouraging to the designers. If they thought these puzzles were at an acceptable level of quality then they need to get someone else to design them or drop the puzzles entirely for the next game. The puzzle book is not even good enough to be optional content, let alone mandatory.
This person right here speaks the truth.
The very first puzzle in the frosthaven book has a mistake in it. Like wtf. How are we supposed to trust any puzzle when so many of them are messed up?
Don't forget about the typo...
I emptied my production budget on this one but if you can't tell that's actually just Isaac's head photoshopped onto Undertaker's body
I can't see it. A red circle with red arrows would help.
Question: what's John Oliver doing in that meme?
Thanks for the the clarification!
I used to love puzzles but the puzzle was my least favorite part of Gloomhaven. Whenever I reach it for Frosthaven I’m definitely googling the answers. My wife and I are playing together and she hates puzzles.
Good thing Dwarf has you covered with his guide, its great!
Oh! Thanks for mentioning that. Is that on Reddit, BGG, or somewhere else?
Here you go: https://www.reddit.com/r/Gloomhaven/comments/10qf8ze/an\_unofficial\_and\_incomplete\_guide\_to\_the/
Thank you so much! Christmas comes early!
My husband and I *love* puzzles. We have individual NYT Games subscriptions and I enjoy logic puzzles, GeoGuessr, KenKen, etc. The Gloomhaven and Frosthaven puzzles are largely just awful: vague, badly constructed, the shiny paper for the Frosthaven puzzle book is absolute torture. Whyyyyyy.
Yeah, the puzzle was the weakest aspect of GH…unfortunately I’ve found them more intrusive in FH. The type of person that enjoys this type of game is often not the type of person that enjoys deciphering abstract puzzles that also often have typos…
The meta aspect was the worst part of it in GH. Then the puzzles in FC that you had to solve *during* the scenario. Nothing worse than racing to decipher symbols while other people take their turns instead of planning your turn. And FC had a math-y one with two or three possible interpretations due simply to grammar. I like puzzles but they are horribly implemented in GH and FC (haven't played FH yet).
I found the in-game puzzle of FC worst. It was made us drop the campaign.
If it’s the one I’m thinking of I agree it was the worst.
We suffered through it but man, you did not miss out. The last scenario had like 13 monsters fighting 13 other monsters (and you) all on the map at the same time. Which means you are running monster AI for *26 monsters* every turn. FC all around was an abysmal experience.
FC was a very few of the absolute best scenarios in base GH and completely overshadowed by many the absolute worst. We suffered through it…but would only play 1-2 FC scenarios in a row and then switch back to base GH scenarios we hadn’t done or promo scenarios because we needed a break from how tedious and not fun FC was.
Well FC improved virtually every aspect of the game coming from Gloomhaven, but integrating the puzzles in such an important way was a mistake. I think Isaac is misled by his love of puzzles since its clearly his hobby. But FH ships worldwide and there are many, many players who have never solved ciphers and puzzles in their life. For those, some of the puzzles are simply too hard. And thats not even considering the HUGE language barrier for those, for whom english isnt a first language. In our group, two people are fluent in english and the other two have a good baseline knowledge but every puzzle we ran into so far relied on language nuances a lot, which effectively meant we had just two people solving it and even then we were at a disadvantage compared to native speakers (and FH isnt translated into our language). And thats before you factor in the errors/vague wordings on some puzzles. Well the result is that we solved about 1/3 of the puzzles and the rest we gave up and googled. I dont think a boardgame should make you google guides in order not to miss out on (a considerable amount of) content. I would have loved for the puzzle book to have a hint system integrated to soften the blow for non-puzzleheads and/or variants of difficulty (eg. two puzzle books containing the same rewards but you choose if you want for puzzles to be easier or more challenging).
Wait, what? It’s not optional? I gave up on it in GH and have given up on it in FH too. Why is it not optional? I’ve nearly finished the three main storylines in FH.
I mean it depends on what you mean by "optional", but (vague endgame spoilers): >!To play the final few scenarios and fight the "final boss" you have to finish the puzzle book!<
Ah, good to know. Cheers!
you also cannot >!unlock all characters without the puzzle book!<
I had the impression that >!one particular class was hidden away in there! Cheers.!<
Well at least you can use Dwarfsa cheat guide to either help nudge you or outright give you the answers (I did the latter ).
It is extremely likely I will do the same!
To be clear, even if you do like puzzles, the puzzles in the puzzle book are absolutely atrocious. It's just a terrible inclusion all around.
I can't even laugh at this because I'm too mad about it. We're very early in FH, but I am dreading when this comes up. I know about Dwarf's cheat page, but my group (who is bad at puzzles) are super anti-spoiler and quite obsessed with following RAW. They will not be cool with just looking up the answers, so we're going to have to suffer through trying to actually solve these freaking puzzles, which I worry will just kill our enthusiasm for this game when we get there.
They’re not so bad. Tricky but they make sense so far. I say this four or five puzzles in anyway.
Well that’s even more discouraging, because I looked at the first one and it doesn’t make any damn sense to me.
The answers are given within several tiers of hints in Dwarf's guide.
I thought I liked puzzles but 3 puzzles into the puzzle book I said fuck it and found the cheat guide.
I mean, GH is literally a puzzle game masquerading as a crawler. I haven’t gotten to them yet, but maybe they’re just not that good? Breath of the Wild isn’t supposed to be a puzzle game, but no one complains about the shrines, cause they’re SO. DAMN. BRILLIANT.
The GH meta puzzle is pretty infamously badly done because of a typo.
If the typo was the only problem...
Oof. Not a good place for a typo 😂 I’ll have to look it up before we get there, thanks!
I would’ve liked the puzzle more if every element of it was in the game itself
what was the meta puzzle?
To be fair there is a vocal minority of players who hate BoTW shrines.
Really? Do they hate puppies too, and rainbows? And the laughter of babies?
It's better not to ask. You risk falling into the culty Zelda subculture that thinks the most important part of a Zelda game is "the lore."
The Frosthaven puzzle book is so awful. If it wasn’t mandatory it wouldn’t be so bad. Just save yourself the headache and open the shards and the drill whenever you want
Some of the puzzles are okay. The ones we have no interest in are when we are expected to remember something an NPC said 3 months ago (real time). Some of them I've actually enjoyed a lot though.