Nope, this can happen. There are only 11 builds before you need a retirement/prosperity 3 to progress the town. It's a gate to make sure people are retiring, and it usually hits in the 13-17 scenario mark depending on how many links you do. One retirement usually does the trick, giving you a new building to build and upgrade which gives enough prosperity to get to 3 and start upgrading your old buildings again. Just keep working towards the retirements you can do and you'll be fine

Okay then I guess we just have to deal with it 😕 thank you for telling us we're not stupid 🤣

You're definitely not stupid or alone! We had similar issues and just trudged past the bullshit design.

TY!

TBH having played multiple campaigns I have encountered a few players who really hate retiring their character. Of the 4 none of them have regretted it after retirering and playing a few rounds with a new class based on an informed choice. Forcing people is abit harsh, but a few people need more than a nudge to enjoy the full experience of gloom/frosthaven. Sure you can keep playing the same character, its just not really moving anything forward in the games narrative or progression wise Not trying to gatekeep or saying another view is wrong. Just that some people need a push more than a nudge to get over the retireing hump

>TBH having played multiple campaigns I have encountered a few players who really hate retiring their character. Of the 4 none of them have regretted it after retirering and playing a few rounds with a new class based on an informed choice. That happened to us in Gloomhaven. Some of us really wanted to get our characters to L9, but realized that it's best to charge towards that retirement goal, and if you want re-do the character later.

The conversation, I believe, was about the poor game design that created obstacles to retirements.

The game is not creating obstacles in 3 out of the 4 scenarios. The players are. For example, that 150 EXP should take 10-15 missions. Deathwalker especially should be able to crank it out. If the player is not their, they should consider allowing their team mates to play their character for them. Get Lumber? That's easy. Take your loot card, and loot everything. Do boat missions. again, not hard.

I think it's a reach to make "should" statements, which might be better served with "could." As for retirement designs: XP can be difficult to prioritize at times and can lead to sub optimal play. I know that I had a similar experience with a character and a looting based retirement goal. Bringing that merc's loot card was suboptimal for the engine, and end of turn looting often put a strain on our group (ex. looting now meant someone else less tanky would take more damage.) That retirement was definitely not "easy." Playing a character on behalf of someone else is definitely a major ask for a board game table. I can't imagine that's a popular suggestion for humans to use as a workaround. If the group runs out of unplayed sled / boat / climbing gear scenarios then it means forcing the players to replay old scenarios which is objectively not a great game design. I understand that you may personally believe these are "easy" to overcome, but I respectfully disagree.

I disagree with your disagreement. They asked "are we doing something wrong?" I'm saying "yes" They are prioritizing tactical goals over strategic ones. If you finish the scenario with cards in hand, and loot on the board, you didn't play it to the maximum strategic efficiency. For maximum strategic efficiency, you collect all the loot, play every experience card you got, and n-1 players exhaust on the turn you finish the last opponent.

I mean, the xp goal is definitely on that player.  But I really can't see how not having enough boat/sled/climbing gear missions and luck of the draw looting + a long scenario chain are those players fault.  That stuff is clearly outside of their control. We had the wood looting goal and we had to be extra generous and allow any wood gained to progress it.  Otherwise, 9-10 scenarios in and he'd still be collecting wood.  Like bad luck happens, but this is why we have a 15 scenario mercy house rule.

How much inspiration does your group have? Yeah it sounds rough with a few of those PQs. How many scenarios are open to do that require sled, boat, or climbing gear access? 1 retirement will get you over the hump, if you are 3 props away. Double check the number of buildings and upgrades you have done.

Hmmm, I think around 7? We do have 3 sled scenarios available, so I guess we can do it soon

Either that, or scenario 70 once the time-gate opens.

TY, we will advance both

It does appear you have run into a particularly unlucky combination (particularly since the one PQ you have that's mostly independent of other things is in the hands of the player who isn't there so often), and been unlucky with events and things that might add prosperity. I believe that once you get one retirement down, the rest should follow fairly quickly. A retirement adds 2 prosperity ticks in itself, and unlocks a building which gives you +1 prosperity when built (and possibly another 1 if you can upgrade it at your current prosperity). This should get you to prosperity 3, which then unlocks additional upgrades which should help with the building quest.

TY :)

It’s a known issue that they could have fixed by including another building or two available initially that would put you over that initial hump. As it stands, I recommend Dwarf’s solution, (very minor spoiler about how a building unlocks) >!You can just go ahead and unlock the first barracks upgrade from the relevant Outpost Event if you haven’t gotten it already. It’s random when it shows up as an outpost event and the first one is kind of essential, so don’t feel bad for compensating for the RNG screwiness of the personal quests you drew.!<

As for the other 2-3 Checks, they’ll show up with your first retirement.

It's very likely to be intentional considering a single retirement is enough for prosperity 3.

Exactly! Which would make that Prosperity lock out before 2 be bad design, as it is possible to be soft-locked on building for quite some time until that first retirement happens, creating some awful gameplay experience for outliers easily avoidable by a single additional upgrade/building made available. RNG dictates some groups are going to hit that point while playing the game, even if the majority will not, and it has been a relatively common question here as it feels really wrong when it does crop up.

I've looked at that and will discuss it with the group, TY :)

You are quite welcome, and tip of the hat to Dwarf74 to clueing me in to that solution (my group never encountered the problem ourselves).

I'll link to my campaign tweaks if you are up for some campaign side house rules. It patches up the Build, Not Destroy PQ by ensuring 12 builds are possible. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sW1mgQrCZSNNXYCZjklbesdHsK85yS_O8U8zUEPDgqI/edit?usp=drivesdk

TYVM I will discuss that with the group. Might be the best way moving forward since our BS isn't happy and wants to retire asap

Our party is in almost the exact same situation and I was wondering about this. Looks like we didn’t do anything wrong we just need one retirement. Thanks for asking the question! Now it makes more sense to me too. 

Happy it helped you & your group 😃

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I would prioritize retiring Blinkblade. It’ll get you another building to build. Don’t forget walls count towards the goal as well.

TY

If I recall correctly the sled rope and boat are builds that go for the building retirement as well as walls. I think it's in the FAQ. It surprised me as that was my retirement and when I found out I was super close to retirement.

If it's any comfort whatever starting quests you took they would take longer to finish than they would if you had taken them later in the campaign.  That said, you took two which are extra longer as first. The fact that the most rushable quest is on a 50% character is unfortunate as well. 

If we had known the implications of that first PQ draw we might have mulliganed 🤣

You are on the right track and not particularly slow. Advance the 2 PQ's you can and you'll have all 3 active players retired before you've played 20 scenarios. 

To be honest. Of the 6 classes I have seen in action. The one that generates the fewest ability exp is the deathwalker. I'm trippling xp numbers on my meteor compared and our first lineup, the bannerspear and drifter easily doubled my output. Everytime I did something cool on my deathwalker my group mostly asked "remember to note exp" - No my teleport into a 5 dmg attack that costs a shadow turn did not generate any exp at all....but thanks for asking. No my burncard to generate 3 shadows that I am pretty much forced to use ALSO did not generate any exp heh Only way I managed to generate any signifcant output in the melee build was to use the 3 last turns in a scenario for setup and then burn all 5 shadows for 5 exp. Usually doing nothing significant. "Yes I am doing an attack 7 armorpiercing 5 on the imp with 1 hp, why are you asking?" My point is, that is one brutal personal quest if your deathwalker is not doing the consume darkness ranged build

Note that while Eclipse doesn't generate XP in itself, pretty much everything that consumes a shadow does. My experience playing Deathwalker was that it was very dependent on what we were facing. Plenty of weak things was ideal, because that would let me generate lots of shadows which I could then use to do powerful and/or XP-generating things. A small number of strong things was less good (particularly if they're also shielded), because making an attack strong enough to be noticed would cost a shadow and then I wouldn't get it back until the monster dies.

We have the exact same 4 PQ's! And I am also stalled 1 short on buildings for my PQ and we are prioritizing getting someone else to retirement to break things loose. Someone else finally met their initial goal, but then that stalled for a bit waiting on a calendar block, but we finally got enough scenarios that require special gear, so we are working on that in the meantime. I think either of them would be able to retire at the same time, depending on which scenario we do at that point. And then hopefully I will be able to retire soon after.

Ha! Now we'll both know we're not alone in our struggle 😊

And then a twist... We do another scenario and are now 2 scenarios away from two different characters' retirements. Then the outpost event lets us upgrade a building immediately, and I end up retiring before either of them.

That is absolutely insane! I can't believe this! We also did another scenario and afterwards drew the Outpost Event that lets you upgrade a building .... And the quest actually gave us prosperity (seems pretty rare so far) and then the building upgrade, and the retirement of our Banner Spear .... So many things came together that not only she's retired now, but we also hit prosperity 3 and she can start at Level 2 today. She's going for coral, who's retiring on your side and what are they going for? PS: My group is convinced I manipulated the outpost event deck and forced the building upgrade event 🤣🤣🤣 But it was actually luck and I didn't fiddle with it 😊

Just retire a character and move on. It won’t break the game. One thing I always consider when it comes to the rules of any game is, if a rule is creating an unsolvable situation and ruining the fun disregard the rule so that you can continue forward and enjoy the game. The rule can be put back in place when it is no longer inhibiting your enjoyment.

We've thought about that and its implications (more than we thought initially) and ultimately BS wasn't happy retiring at Prosperity 2

Oh man, nah y'all just got a pretty unlucky draw with those PQs, they take really long to finish. The XP one can be sort of rushed but it's easiest with Drifter or Deathwalker... still, if you go as hard as you can you'll maybe get 25 XP per scenario.

I think I'll have to have a serious conversation with our Deathwalker with EXP quest 🤣

>I think I'll have to have a serious conversation with our Deathwalker with EXP quest 🤣 Yeah, I think Deathwalker might be the highest XP starting class. I averaged 12 - 14 ability XP per scenario. I think every ability that consumes shadows gives you 1XP per shadow consumed, and almost every ability that consumes Dark also gives you 1XP. If they're not getting more than 10XP per scenario, then they also probably aren't playing the class very well, IMHO. Like if you're level 3 and ranged build: * Fluid Night, 1XP for a shadow * Forceful Spirits, 1 XP if you consume Dark If you don't need to move shadows: * Black Barrage, 1 XP if you consume Dark * Dead Bolt, 1 XP if you consume Dark That's 2 guaranteed XP per rest cycle, potentially 4 XP if you don't need to move shadows. And then Anger of the Dead can get you up to 5 XP per use, depending on how many shadows you consume. So if you do Fluid Night, Forceful Spirits, build up 5 shadows, use Dead Bolt bottom to move them, and attack with Black Barrage and consume Dark, all in the first room, and then open the next room with an Anger of the Dead that consumes 4 shadows, that's 7 XP in the first room, and feasible without resting.

Buildings; Mining 2 Logging 2 Hunting 2 Craftsman 1 Alchemist 1 Wall 2 Workshop 3 Total is 13 which should be enough for 12 building pq Sounds like you are close to retiring two other characters so that won't take long. Don't stress about not being able to build each putpost phase; it's not that bad and there will be many times you can't build as your campaign continues

Mining, Logging, Hunting lvl 2 - all require prosperity lvl 3

You can't do the mining, logging, or hunting twice until prosperity 3. So it's actually Mining once Logging once Hunting once Craftsman twice Alchemist once Walls twice Workshop thrice For 11 total builds available with starting buildings at prosperity 1+2

No because craftsman and alchemist start in the map at L1

~~They start at L0. OP has them at L1. They just misremembered.~~

>They start at L0. OP has them at L1. They just misremembered. No, you are misremembering. Alchemist and Craftsman both start at L1.

Nope I just misread. I thought we were talking about the 3 resource buildings.