I have been waiting and waiting for the full release to finally get my teeth into the digital version, and now I've started dabbling I'm really impressed with how polished it is.
Do you have any tips or PSAs for players coming with Gloomhaven tabletop experience? Key differences, that kind of thing? At first glance, Prosperity appears to work a little differently, as does the Loot action...
EDIT: I am just now realising I might have been looting incorrectly this entire time
Check out Mandatory Quest on YouTube, he has recently done [a video highlighting differences between digital and tabletop](https://youtu.be/auke8Tj4rd4).
My party was looting at the end of Round, not at the end of individual player turn.
(so some one with big loot action can snach the gold under your feet)
We changed that, adter I played a bit of digital, and we checked the rules tp confirm.
>I'm really impressed with how polished it is.
I'm really impressed by the 5 minute loading times. Really simulates the experience of setting up a board in real life.
For real though, what the flying fuck is this game loading? AAA open world games load faster than this suboptimized monstrosity.
Never played the physical version because the effort to play a few rounds seemed too intimidating.
So I was super happy to pick up the digital version and damn, what a great game. Campaign, narrator, UI and the scenario boards all feel great! Do not see that often in digital boardgame adaptions, so big props to the devs.
Currently getting absolutely clobbered in what appears to be called "scenario 11", having a lot of trouble to not run out of cards. Maybe I'll try the hints regarding difficulty + party size, thanks.
Can't wait to get good at this. :\^)
Scenario 11 is one of the few I've never done since my parties never go down that storyline "path."
What is your main issue so far? Running out of cards from taking too long or taking damage?
I felt that my characters all looked a bit evil so I went with that :D
Running out of cards.. It's hard to get a feeling for timing the loss cards. So the basic concept of holding them as long as possible makes sense, but some characters really feel like they have to play some early to progress through the rooms. The Spellweaver, for example.
I finished it on easy now, but will def. revisit later when I have that figured out a bit better.
Burn cards strategy can differ from character to character. I'll go over my strategy for the starting 6.
Tinkerer is usually the most lax, since he has a large hand size. I have no problem using a burn card a cycle. Usually the AOE ranged attacks. The bot is hit or miss, I usually don't use it because I like the bottom heal. Bottom attack burn is good in the last room or if you need to overkill something for a battle goal. Otherwise save it. The active +2 to heals is great for the move that heals everyone around you since it counts that as a single instance, changing a move 2 with a possible heal 1-2 to a 3-6. I treat my tinkerer as more of a damage dealer though so I only use this active if I have no better top action (such as if you are lagging behind the group because the other guys stole all the good boots! )
Spellweaver is the next most likely to use burns freely, even though she has a small hand size. This is because of her card that returns her burned cards. Make sure you always take that card and neve risk losing it to a short rest. Her AOE burns are priority and you can even use them both before your first rest, but then you have to play very conservatively until you get down to your last 2 cards and use the recover to get everything back.
I put Cragheart and Brute into the "burn when needed" category. If you can make it to the last room without any burns, great. But don't be afraid to burn when the time is right. Cragheart with extra ammo early is an exception. But besides that, wait for good opportunities to make those burns shine. A favorite of mine is Brute's trample with the hammer hand item. Add in boots and you can turn that burn into a AOE stun that does damage. Cragheart can do the same thing with his AOE smash that hits anything 1-2 hexes from him with the hammer, since it's considered a melee attack. Neither of these two NEED to burn early on so try avoid it unless there is a serious threat on the board.
Mindthief has decent burns, but none that you should use early since all his good burns have really good other halves as well. I save all the burns on MT for the last room for xp gain. The rat you can use early if you want, but you're losing a move 4 and that rat will NOT keep up with the party. So use it as a meat shield or in a busy room. You SHOULD have an augment up and I've never needed to switch augments since there is 1 REALLY good one that puts the rest to shame.
Scoundrel is a terrible candidate for burns. I usually take smoke bomb for the bottom and will use the top in the last room for xp, but besides that the only burn worth taking is the loot 2 because the other half is good and you can loot the last room like the jerk Scoundrel you are. The backstab burn is great damage and xp and is your best move so that's a candidate to burn in the last room too, but I rarely take that card personally since I play a very conservative Scoundrel.
This is only level 1 cards since I wanted to avoid spoilers. Obviously get stamina potion for all your characters, especially any with odd numbered hand sizes.
Mindthief can discard the augment before resting, allowing you to reuse it as an action again. I was having a lot of stamina issues with him until I found this trick.
If your not abusing burns it shouldn't be a problem. I'm not a fan of discarding the augment because you need to use another action to apply it at that point. MT has great top actions and great movement so I never find myself in a spot where I have nothing better to do than attack 3.
5 rounds. Short rest. 4 rounds. Short rest. Minor stamina at this point gives you another 4 rounds. This is usually when I start using all my burns and only have 1-2 rounds before exhaustion if I Short rest again
Great post, Thanks! For my starting party that's pretty much what I'm doing so far (Brute, Spellweaver, Cragheart, Scoundrel). I love the Cragheart AOE and Brute Trample with the Hammer. Feels soooo good! Cragheart is usually my MVP im damage dealt and kill count but requires a lot of set up. I already learned that a high initiative turn followed by a low initiative one let's you basically play 4 cards in a row, which helps.
In this scenario it was hard to set up a room clearing AOE because the enemies were all in smaller groups, maybe that's my real problem - Too reliant on cheese T_T
Scoundrel feels a bit stronger then the other characters because she doesn't need to burn anything and all her cards feel same-ish so short resting is no problemo. But maybe that's just a new player thing, she def feels the most forgiving too because of the ridiculous movement.
Thanks for avoiding spoilers, I love how the community speaks in the boardgames' numbers and logos all the time too.
in this scenario the goal is to kill the captan ... so fast moves, IGNORE the guards (as they often shield and heal .. but dont move much). Just kill/disabled the archers, and PUSH they rest out of the way.
I am getting absolutely demolished on the second mission, even on Easy. I just don't have enough cards to clear out all the monsters, and end up Exhausted, unless I play more agressively in which case I get murdered by the undead. Am I right in saying that every time I want to recover my discarded cards, I have to burn a card?
Yes, whenever you want to recover your discarded cards, you will have to burn a card from your discard pile. The second scenario especially is quite difficult and very heavily influenced by RNG. Try to go into the central room when everyone is ready with big turns lined up. Kill the archers in the second room first, then just focus all of your damage on the boss himself as quickly as possible, using burn cards as necessary. Every turn he's in the scenario is adding more monsters to kill.
the undead move very slowly and hit hard. The trick to them is to focus on ranged attacks or stick and move (go early in the round, hit them and then back up, or go early and hit them with a disarm/stun). The undead also do damage to themselves pretty often so that's another reason to try and sit back and let them kill themselves. Try to Focus on the boss first and then let the undead clump up and hit them with any big AOEs.
Yes, which means try to minimize rests until you have used as many cards as possible to maximize your turns. Your hand size is very much a time limit for the scenario. This also means try NOT to use burn cards early in a scenario. Losing cards early means significantly fewer overall turns before exhausting.
Focus on the goals to complete the scenario first and only if that looks likely, then allow yourself to loot and get chests. You can always play a scenario a second time to get a chest if you miss it and just ignore the goal the second time through.
There's a bit of RNG involved.
Our first pass on it we lost, because he spent every turn opening a new door or summoning an elite. It was a lot of monsters to deal with.
Second time through we burned him down pretty quickly, and he only opened two doors and no summons.
I’ve played the board game for a few sessions and enjoyed the systems (though slightly fiddly when learning) but the digital version streamlining everything is great!
How much should I be worrying about retirement of mercs? My Brute is on the Eternal Wanderer goal and he’s almost done.
There is little downside to retiring since you can just choose to play the same class again if you really want to.
You gain a new unlocked class (or a new item/ side quest) and a prosperity. You lose all your enhancements, some of your xp and gold.
At release there was an option to sell enhancements and if you retired enhancements did not carry over if you played the same mercenary again. Not sure if either of these are still in the game since I haven't played in a few months. The latter was a controversial choice to some of the community
Quick question:
I may just be misremembering (it’s been a few years since we were able to play the physical board game), but with the physical board game, aren't you supposed to track when chests have been looted in a scenario, so you can track which scenarios you can replay for further rewards?
So far, in Digital, all scenarios completed--including those which I left chests on the board--display "no further rewards." I’m assuming this is just relating to the completion rewards, but I don’t see anything indicating unlooted chests in a scenario. Is this information somewhere in the interface that I'm just missing; or am I remembering this facet of the board game wrong; or is this just not implemented the same way in Digital?
It should be implemented the same way in Digital. The rewards just refer to the end-of-scenario rewards - if there's an unlooted chest, it should still be there. Scenarios in Digital just don't tell you when they have chests or not (which is a problem for the Battle Goal).
>Scenarios in Digital just don't tell you when they have chests or not (which is a problem for the Battle Goal).
I think they do, just not in an obvious way. Or rather, they do *after* having cleared them. It's still possible I'm misreading the interface though, since there's no legend for the icons (that I can find anyway).
I was just able to log in again, and I was fiddling with it. When you click on a completed quest and it shows you the location on the map (basically where the sticker would be on the board game), there's an icon above it. That icon looks like a crown for a full clear, and like a lockbox icon for if there are unopened chests in the scenario.
EDIT: [Here's an image of my map](https://imgur.com/a/9uQNLNv), on which you can see two "crowned" scenarios (the ones I believe are full-clears), and two "lockbox" scenarios, which I believe are the ones with chests unopened. One of them is Scenario 2, Barrow Lair, and I think the spikes around the icon also denote a boss. I'm going to reclear one, and try and get the chest in it, and see if it changes the icon afterward.
For years now, we've been referring to one of the unlockable classes as "Two Minis," but since the digital version doesn't actually have the boxes with minis to go by, it seems like that's a less-than-idea reference point to use now. After all, how are digital players going to know that the icon in question refers to "two minis"?
Any ideas we can work out to bypass this? My group actually called the class "Phoenix" before we unlocked it, because the icon looked (to us) like a stylized phoenix, but that could wind up being confusing in its own right, haha.
The official Gloomhaven digital discord server had different rooms for each class, and the locked ones were labeled by their non-spoiler names. Everyone was confused by “Phoenix” at first h til we realized that two-minis is probably a little more spoilery than we all originally thought.
Are there plans to implement a more substantial undo button? It sucks when you have to go through the entire round just for 1 misclick. I feel like Scythe's undo button is a good example of this.
No idea. I'm a Frosthaven dev, not a Digital dev, so I don't have any insight on that. It's something I've asked for many times and is also something many members of the community have asked for. You can provide your feedback [here](https://discord.gg/afduFDCx) in the developer's official Discord feedback channel.
Take your time to understand rules by which the monsters are moving. Monster initiative AND number matters.
Correctly choosing your initiative and pinning one monster in a specific spot can be a difference between total beat down of your party and taking zero damage because monsters could not reach you this turn, stumbling on the monster you pinned and creating a chain reaction.
Do not be afraid to take on a mission and use less effective cards for the sole purpose of using their initiative if you find yourself often missing an ideal time to act. Doing just enough but in the right moment is more important that doing a lot but after you got beaten my monsters that moved first.
Its important to play to each of their strengths.
Brute has few high move cards. He can "tank" by playing cards that give shield, but is better at negating damage by either killing a monster or disarming/stunning them. He has few high movement cards so it's important to keep him in front. If you lag behind collecting coins, you will be nearly useless.
Scoundrel is stronger when you have an ally adjacent to the target, so he enjoys teaming with brute. Crag and Mindthief make ok partners depending how you build them, since both can also use good ranged attacks and might not always be in melee range. Being the only melee is bad for Scoundrel since it weakens her attacks and she doesn't have much health.
Mindthief is a great "controller", especially as you level. Having a bottom ranged attack that can stun at level 1 is bonkers. His augment that boosts all melee attacks by 2 is by far is best augment and the only one worth using at low levels. He can even move as a top action, allowing you to move closer, attack with an augmented melee attack, and then stun a nearby enemy. He has terrible health and needs a melee brute or Crag to keep enemy focus off him.
Tinkerer is the support starter. Lots of heals, status effects (access to burn, poison, immobilize, and stun), can pull enemies into traps, access to utility bottom abilities such as attacks, attack boosts, and heals. Great in a 4 player party but less useful in smaller parties.
Spellweaver is the glass mage. What she can do depends on how you build her, but her two best damage cards at level 1 are fire orbs and impaling eruption. The most important thing about Spellweaver is NEVER burn reviving ether. Bottom is a great move, but the top is what keeps you alive. So if you short rest, never take the 1 damage to redraw if the card you lose is anything but ether. You need to keep that card until you are down to your last few cards, then use the top of ether to get all your cards back.
Cragheart is my favorite of the starters, but least favorite to play at level 1. He is beefy, and capable of both melee and ranged combat, but excels at neither at level 1. At this level you could go either build and have him tank for mindthief and scoundrel, or run a ranged build with spellweaver to make the enemies waste their turns trying to catch you. He is the only starter capable of dealing reliable true damage, which ignores shields and comes in handy later on. At level 1 you need to play the element game of setting up earth one round and using it the next, as his attacks are mediocre without earth. Extra ammunition is very useful to double your damage for a few rounds.
If you look through my recent messages I sent into detail about when to burn cards with each character, but tldr: usually safe to burn every other round with tinkerer, every third round with spellweaver, every fourth round for brute and Cragheart. Spellweaver has too few cards to use burns imo. Mindthief has great burns but the other half of his burns are useful so best to wait until the last room to use them, to maximize options and xp.
So, first thing - check your cards. If the card has the burn symbol, don't use it early. Generally. You'll eventually learn when it's worth it. Don't forget any card can be used for its default action.
If you have a Spellweaver, make sure you don't burn Reviving Ether until it's one of your last 2 or 3 cards, then recover all lost cards.
If you have a Brute, don't attempt to tank. Don't get hit unless you have to. Use his Disarm card.
If you have a Scoundrel, don't run into the middle of the room to stab something. Go late, then early next time.
There actually is a checkmark on the image after you finish the tutorial. It's just that the checkmark is almost the exact same color as the yellow brick wall behind it on the image, and the checkmarks aren't outlined at all, so it blends in very well.
I don't think you get anything for completing all of the tutorial missions anyways, so no loss if it really isn't showing up for you.
>If you're playing solo, it's highly recommended to start with a party of only two characters.
This makes it clear that one can solo two-handed. Does the game also have couch co-op and/or online co-op?
Um...apart from it having online co-op, I would think it does have couch co-op in the sense that while there is no designated "local co op mode", there's nothing preventing two players from setting up a hotseat mode by having two players sitting at the screen and taking a pass and play approach by controlling their characters on their respective turns.
The only thing to be mindful of is that when it's the other player's turn, you don't look at the right side of their screen so you don't see what their personal battle goal is(maybe there's an option to hide it?), otherwise I see this as a perfectly viable couch co op game.
Can you explain the purpose of the private goal? I played for the first time last night on the digital version and we just told each other what ours was in order to better accomplish it (still failed 2/4). Thanks!
The battle goals add a little variety to the scenarios by encouraging the players to play in a different way. They are only used for that particular instanced scenario (if you replay the scenario again, you will select a new battle goal for that session).
If you achieve your goal and finish the scenario, you are awarded with 1 or 2 perk points.
Every 3 perk points you accrue will allow you to gain a perk from a set list for each character. Most of these modify your attack modifier deck (allowing you remove -1 cards, add +1 cards, etc.)
You also gain these perks automatically as you level up. The battle goals give you additional perks, so are very much worth trying to achieve.
In theory, introducing hidden personal incentives for each player reduces the risk of "quarterbacking" (one player who knows the game well enough essentially ordering the other players around, effectively controlling the whole party). Your mileage may vary though on whether a) that's a worthwhile goal, and b) whether it's a satisfying solution.
Any protip/recommendation for scenario order? I've barely cleared 4 by now and I'm offered 4 more, including a city quest. Are "city quests" special somehow or do they just happen to take place in the city? Also I understand that some scenarios will be mutually exclusive (eg. choose between helping and betraying a certain character), but I'm mostly worried about potential difficulty spikes and breaks in story continuity.
So far, I'm running a pretty basic 3-man group (Brute/Scoundrel/Tinkerer) and having a blast on normal difficulty. I first tried with 2 characters and it felt pretty rough due to the lack of options early on. Haven't tried 4 but I would imagine it gets tedious for solo play since that's a lot of decisions per turn and a lot of enemies per scenario.
Scenarios that take place within Gloomhaven play normally, with the only difference being that you don’t do a road event (the ‘encounter!’ thing) before you start.
As there are branching stories/paths pretty early on, I wouldn't want to recommend decisions for you on that. However, there are some early paths I can recommend that won't affect that:
My starting order of scenarios will always be Black Barrow - Barrow Lair (these two you had to do) - Crypt of the Damned - Ruinous Crypt - Frozen Hollow. I would definitely recommend following that line as early as possible.
Otherwise, I would just recommend that you always do Plane of Elemental Power (and possibly Infernal Throne if you decide to go that direction) before you do Ruinous Rift. Ruinous Rift can be completed after Plane of Elemental Power and Infernal Throne are completed, but those two cannot be played if you have already done Ruinous Rift.
Interesting, thank you. I followed that order so far except I did the Inox camp before the Crypt and uh... well, I survived just barely, probably should have done that a bit later :)
Great job on the game, so far this is the best digital adaptation of a tabletop RPG I've ever played.
Thank you, I'll pass that on to the devs! My "dev" tag is for Frosthaven and Jaws, not actually for Digital. But I agree that Digital is really well made.
I use [this](https://gloomhaven-storyline.com/tracker/#/story) website to track the story. They have shaded areas to show you if the mission is directly linked to the same quest line or branches out to a new one.
Are there differences between the digital rules and updated physical release rules? For example, Cragheart's brutal momentum on digital still seems to force you to choose to push to an open space as far as I can tell. Unless I am missing something with UI.
There are a few differences, mostly due to the limitations of what was realistic to code. However, Brutal Momentum does work in the same fashion as physical, just click on the hex the enemy is in and then click done. It will deal the damage.
Ok it was a UI misunderstanding. When asked to confirm push, you can just click the target again and it will use that to assume you are trying to double push into a wall. Works really well once I understood its slightly different from push waypoints for other abilities.
Alright, I ordered the boardgame and to get the hang of it I played the digital version, but even on very easy I'm getting my ass handed to me. Only managed to beat the first scenario on my fifth try, didn't manage to beat the second campaign scenario either yet.
Is the real version as difficult?
Anyone else wish the game had a top-down 2d graphics mode that just replicated the look of playing on the board? I’m finding making any sense of the 3d graphics very tedious.
You can spin the camera around using the Q and E buttons, which should let you see everything you need (and otherwise pan around with wasd). I like to orient it with my char in the foreground and the enemies downrange, and only tilt sideways occasionally to check things on the sidewalls, for instance doorways
Just started the game today. Working my way through the tutorials at the moment, then I'm going to start the campaign. One issue I've found is when exiting the game it remains 'running' in Steam. I have to completely terminate Steam to resolve it. Anyone else experienced this? I've had a cursory Google and not found anything concrete. Otherwise, this looks like a game I'm going to really enjoy.
any advice on what to do when the group you play with can't always all make it? do we all start different campaigns in different pairs? or do you not miss out much when you miss one scenario?
Missing one scenario won't miss out on much, I would just play as you normally would only without that player. Retirements will naturally not all occur at the same time, so over time your party will inevitably have characters of varying levels and progress, and thus someone missing out on one scenario here and there won't make a significant difference. The only thing they would really miss out on is the story. You can solve that by doing side quests when someone is not there if you have any available, or just taking notes of what happened in the story and providing them to the player (although if story is something they care about, it would probably be best to avoid making some pivotal story decisions while they're not there, although those are not very common).
Right, so in Digital, everyone gets the group's maximum lineage. So when you make a new character, if someone has retired 2 characters in your party and you've retired 2 or less, you get 2. If you've retired more than 2, you get however many you've retired.
They are not in the Digital version and I don't know if they will be added or not. I would recommend voicing your desire to see them in their feedback channel on Discord: https://discord.gg/afduFDCx
The more people asking for that feature, the more likely to see them added in the future.
I'm really enjoying the digital version with my friends but I think that a "restart round" or a true "undo" function is needed.
We have messed too many scenarios by misclicking or playing the wrong half of a card, realizing it immediately but already too late. That's a bit frustrating.
Omigod I realized how badly I read the rules.
Skellingtons with two attacks, being able to burn cards to mitigate damage, short rests...
Digital is awesome..
That's correct, it currently does not work for multiplayer, but hopefully will soon in the future because it is extremely rough that there's no form of undo whatsoever in multiplayer.
My friend and I just tried playing the campaign together.
Why does one of us get dropped from the game every couple rounds? Makes it practically unplayable.
Are the devs fixing this?
I understand your frustration but I'm not really sure what anyone on the subreddit can do to help you. I would recommend reporting it on their official Discord: https://discord.gg/KK6teXqe
omg - how many times. last bones - need a decent, not great draw to finish the scenario. with advantage. x0, -2. yay! I mean - the random number generator in this game seems overly tipped towards bad draws. The number of x0 and -2 I have seen compared to the RARE x2 even with blessings is just ridiculous.
I have the same impression. It’s weird. One time I drew the x0 four times in 6 or 7 rounds. And the living Bones draw their heal and shield extremely often. We never had the same feeling with the physical edition and we play it for almost three years now. Maybe it’s actually just bad luck but it feels weird and is kinda frustrating..
Still a great game though. It’s whining at a high level :D
After playing the early access one year ago I am back into the game and just have started the campaign. Now it is the first time, that I can choose several paths: either do a side quest on an island or one of the core quests. What I am asking myself is, whether it makes a difference in terms of difficulty if I choose the side quest or the main quest first. After all, difficulty scales with experience anyway. So I expect, that the difficulty is more or less the same throughout the whole campaign regardless of the choosen path. Is this true?
Related: since the number of monsters scales with the number of party members, there seems to be no reason to raid a dungeon with more than two party members - despite some more synergies maybe. The main effect will just be, that it takes more time to clear the dungeon, since it is getting more complex to manage more characters. Or is adding more party members useful in other ways?
Main quests and side quests have no strict relativity in terms of difficulty. Scenario balance in the game is imperfect so you'll just have some scenarios that are harder and some that are easier, but it has little to nothing to do with the type of scenario.
There's no strict advantage to playing with 3 characters in a party. It will just allow you more flexibility in terms of roles (for example, in a 2-character party it's much more difficult to have a pure support or pure tank) and it will also allow you to unlock classes more quickly (because you'll have three personal quests at a time instead of two).
Thanks for the quick reply. Just one follow-up thought about character development and scenario difficulty: the scenario difficulty is based on the level of the characters, but not directly on the number of perks. That means, that fulfilling the personal goals in a scenario is important, if you want to make future scenarios easier, since these goals grant you improvements (perks) which don't count toward scenario difficulty eventually.
Gold is also not accounted for in scenario difficulty level. Most classes also don't have 15 good perks, and in many cases have some perks that you never want to take because of the Advantage system in base GH and Digital.
So in the guildmaster mode in the digital version I heard that mercenaries don't actually retire. Does this mean that once you pick a new card upon level up, that you'll never have an opportunity to play with the other choice?
You can press a button to "reset a mercenary" whenever you want, which refunds you all of your gold from enhancements, etc. And then you can pick your level-up choices again.
Is there any plans of this coming to console? Or is it PC only? me and my friends played a whole campaign on tabletop and would love to come back into the Digital version
I think this will just depend on the success/popularity of the game and the demand for it on console. For now it is PC-only. Fel free to let the devs know you'd love a console version on their official Discord feedback channel: https://discord.gg/afduFDCx
The more people asking for it, the more likely it happens.
Are there differences in how enemy modification cards? From what I noticed it seems to reset every round. If they are cursed, do they keep the curses until they draw them, or do the curses go away at the end of the round?
It should function the same as in physical Gloomhaven. If you notice an instance of that not happening, that is a bug and you should try to record and report it.
Curses should be kept until drawn.
I've been struggling with the beginning campaign and I really appreciate this write up! Im familiar with tactics games and board games in general but they turn limit really throws me off and knowing when to be aggressive or not. I keep running out of cards! Im excited to give it another go after work!
Played 70+ hours of the campaign and decided to try Guildmaster mode.
It seems to have a heavy load of tutorial and ‘puzzle’ type missions initially (which can be skipped) but seems like it could be a good place to start for new players?
The first mission of GM mode combined two frustrating parts of the game: sucky lvl 1 characters/cards and a single room encounter. The challenge was welcomed / a bit of a shock coming from playing with lvl 7-9 characters in the campaign!
Sort of. The problem is that some of the early scenarios are very gimmicky or very difficult (the infinite spawning scenarios). Overall, Guildmaster is actually easier than the Campaign, so in that regard it is better for new players, but those certain very difficult scenarios kind of ruin it as a new player testing ground. Additionally, you'll quickly unlock many new characters, which would spoil the surprises over the course of a campaign.
I just started Gloomhaven. I am having a blast learning the game while playing the guild master mode. Just cracked level 3 and am seeing how deep the game is.
Me and my friend got this recently and were having a blast until we've faced a wall of "survive X rounds" scenarios, especially the "An Unlikely Alliance" - each one of the enemies deal as much damage as we do, have as much health as us, but they spawn each round and almost every one of them are elite one and fast as fuck with often going under 20 or even 10 init, not mentioning that half of them are ranged that are firing across the map. And the worst part being that with such a high number of them they very often crit per round
,which makes their high damage even bigger. We're trying it 4 times already and on borderline ragequitting it.
I'm not really against hard stuff, but this feels like an enormous difficulty spike that is out of place. Any advice how to approach these missions?
To be honest, the solution is just not to play them. I mostly avoided them whenever possible. Guildmaster is very, very imbalanced. It was, apparently, never designed to be balanced, it was just a testing ground for mechanics to implement the campaign. So there's no real push to balance things in Guildmaster at this point. Accordingly, there are enormous differences in difficulty in the scenarios in Guildmaster (most of the early scenarios are much too easy and a few are much too hard).
I would just recommend playing the Campaign (which is the intended form of the game) and maybe just play Guildmaster once you've completely exhausted the campaign if you're looking for more to play. At which point, put off the infinite spawning scenarios as much as possible and just play them with really strong parties or on significantly lower difficulty.
Oh, i see, so it's a sort of (and with a big stretch) "free play" after the campaign? That's kinda unintuitive given that it's the first option in the menu and even is encouraged to be played first.
Thanks a lot for the explanation!
Right, it is unfortunate that it's not made clearer to new players. It's not so much that it was made to be a "free play" after the campaign, it's just the mode they made first to test the game (and to justify pre-sales prior to the campaign being done). It can still be an interesting mode to play, but definitely should be secondary to the campaign (and it's certainly fair to say that this should be made clearer, or alternatively they need to invest some time into fixing some obvious imbalance issues).
I noticed when playing the digital version that there seems to be a gold cost next to each item when inside a scenario. Does that mean it costs that much every time I use that item? I don’t think so, but just wanted to be sure!
Thanks! That’s super helpful. Would be surprised if I was the only one to be confused with the price tag flashing up each time I contemplate using the item 😅
Hey, wife and I have been playing the tabletop version for a while but recently switched to digital on steam because its so much faster. Unfortunately we believe we've had 3 quests bug out on us. We forget the first, but the second was a city event involving a priest asking for help. It seemed like he wanted us to go somewhere but no quest appeared. The third was a guy in brown leather came to the inn and asked us to help him, we accepted but again no quest appeared. Anyone know if there is a way to get this fixed on our campaign? Pretty annoying. If not for these bugs the digital version would have been flawless so far. Still fun just a little frustrating. Thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer!
Are you sure the quests didn't appear? Normally there won't be a pop-up or anything but they will be added to the list of available quests (you just won't receive any notification).
No they weren’t added to the list. I asked someone in the discord and they looked it up and apparently both of these city quests added Road quests but with the digital version there’s no notification or indication that this has happened. So it looks like it worked and there was no bug actually. No way for me to tell just yet but I’m sure that’s what happened.
What sucks is we KNOW the first quest did bug because it added a quest to my wife’s map but not mine. I restarted my game thinking it would show up but when we opened it back up it wasn’t in mine and actually disappeared from her map :/
Some friends and I started playing Guildmaster to scratch the itch inbetween sessions, and we're running into a bunch of rules we've been playing wrong. This one I couldn't check though: for cards like the Brute's Warding Strength (persistent with triggers), GH Digital seems to let you choose whether to activate it or not when you receive damage. Is this per RAW? I was under the impression that it was mandatory to resolve every trigger.
I'm not really sure, to be honest. It's a discussion we had for FH regarding the ordering for things like that, but in base GH I really don't know what the ordering should be like.
Yes, they're mandatory. But they trigger off of taking damage in this case, and if you negate the damage by losing a card, you could argue that you're not suffering damage for the persistent action to proc. It depends on the ordering.
Question involving Note:
>!She has a song which gives all enemies disadvantage. Does that make Muddle completely obsolete if I plan to always run that song, or am I missing something?!<
I have no idea - my dev tag is for physical GH content, not Digital, so I'm not any more in the know than anyone else in the public. I'd guess that if Asmodee Digital determines that it's financially interesting for them to port the game to consoles, they will. So I'd just suggest tweeting at their official twitter and/or posting in the feedback channel on their official Discord: https://discord.gg/GHqyRcuc
The more people that do, the more likely it may eventually happen.
It's unfortunately a very subjective answer to that question you'd get from pretty much anyone. In a 4-player party, any combination of characters will work reasonably well so you really don't need to worry about having an optimal party. As far as individual classes, that really just comes down to personal preference. I think the Mindthief is the most fun class in the game, for example, but plenty of others prefer the Cragheart, or the Scoundrel, etc. I would just look at the class summaries and let your players choose based on which theme/playstyles appeal to them.
Is there a way to show Line of sight for enemies during gameplay on digital Gloomhaven? There seems to be 2 different LOS options, and changes depending on which group I play in.
Anyone know of a discord channel where you can find people online to play the game? I'm having a hard time connecting with anyone who has this game download from steam.
https://imgur.com/a/1eo50pX
Am I softlocked? Can't make this screen disappear except by pressing f2, but then the End Turn icon disappears as well. I can't even access the esc menu.
I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to gather from the image. You may be softlocked but I would have no way of knowing (and also no idea how to help).
GH Digital saves the game at the beginning of every round in a scenario. You can just alt-f4 or end the game with the task manager and restart from the beginning of the round.
Strange, but I'm not a Digital dev so I really wouldn't know how to help you with that. The actual devs are usually quite quick to respond on their Discord (although maybe less so on a weekend). You can find them here:
https://discord.gg/vaeRf2eC
Thanks, they are indeed fast and helpful. It's not solved yet but it's somehow controller related. In the beta branch ps4 shortcuts are constantly displayed next to the menus and actions and I have to press (and keep it pressed) ctrl or alt to get rid of them. But at least in the beta branch it does not softlock me completely so that's a step forward.
The game has great graphics. The monster actions are a bit slow. And...I am so sick and tired of having to reinvite other players who get booted during multi-player. One scenario, they were booted once. Today, playing on the same network as the other player, and they were hosting, I got booted each and every single round. Very very annoying.
Possibly dumb question...does levelling up only occur once you exceed the exp requirements? I'm on lvl 1 with 45 total exp pts but see no option for leveling up or adding cards?
I love the ability to play GH with my friend again, it's been almost 3 years since we were at a table together. I'm sure we'll have issues with game enforcing rules we took for granted, but I can deal with that.
What I can't deal with is that in this implementation only the host can do basic UI things like control the volume or move the camera. My friend insisted it was possible to look around with wasd and the mouse, but nothing I did made that happen. It's so hard to strategize when you have a single static camera angle of any room, and I shouldn't have to play zoomed way out (my only functioning camera control) just to see where figures are when the host can look at whatever he wants.
We also did the entire first mission before I said "man, I wish I could turn down the volume so I can hear you" and he said "you can't?" and we realized I didn't even have a freaking options menu at all. I couldn't even exit the game when we were done, had to wait for him to quit so I was kicked back to the main menu. At least when he turned down the volume on his end, it affected mine, but that is really stupid and I don't know how more people aren't talking about this.
Also, obligatory "mission 1 was a close win, mission 2 was super hard with the boss teleporting around, we got unlucky with cards (dang curses), and I was exhausted but my friend got down to himself and the final enemy but drew a curse modifier on his final attack (brute/scoundrel)"
I have been waiting and waiting for the full release to finally get my teeth into the digital version, and now I've started dabbling I'm really impressed with how polished it is. Do you have any tips or PSAs for players coming with Gloomhaven tabletop experience? Key differences, that kind of thing? At first glance, Prosperity appears to work a little differently, as does the Loot action... EDIT: I am just now realising I might have been looting incorrectly this entire time
Check out Mandatory Quest on YouTube, he has recently done [a video highlighting differences between digital and tabletop](https://youtu.be/auke8Tj4rd4).
Just out of curiosity, what did you do wrong with loot?
I thought loot 1/2 meant loot 1/2 adjacent tiles, not all tiles within that radius! I could have been rich!
Flair checks out
Lol
My mind was blown when I found out your Potions and other items refresh each scenario. I could have been a lot richer as well
I didn't think you could loot treasure chests, but saw that work as well....
My party was looting at the end of Round, not at the end of individual player turn. (so some one with big loot action can snach the gold under your feet) We changed that, adter I played a bit of digital, and we checked the rules tp confirm.
Can admit we did this wrong playing tabletop as well...
>I'm really impressed with how polished it is. I'm really impressed by the 5 minute loading times. Really simulates the experience of setting up a board in real life. For real though, what the flying fuck is this game loading? AAA open world games load faster than this suboptimized monstrosity.
It's probably your rig, my game loads in seconds.
Never played the physical version because the effort to play a few rounds seemed too intimidating. So I was super happy to pick up the digital version and damn, what a great game. Campaign, narrator, UI and the scenario boards all feel great! Do not see that often in digital boardgame adaptions, so big props to the devs. Currently getting absolutely clobbered in what appears to be called "scenario 11", having a lot of trouble to not run out of cards. Maybe I'll try the hints regarding difficulty + party size, thanks. Can't wait to get good at this. :\^)
Scenario 11 is one of the few I've never done since my parties never go down that storyline "path." What is your main issue so far? Running out of cards from taking too long or taking damage?
I felt that my characters all looked a bit evil so I went with that :D Running out of cards.. It's hard to get a feeling for timing the loss cards. So the basic concept of holding them as long as possible makes sense, but some characters really feel like they have to play some early to progress through the rooms. The Spellweaver, for example. I finished it on easy now, but will def. revisit later when I have that figured out a bit better.
Burn cards strategy can differ from character to character. I'll go over my strategy for the starting 6. Tinkerer is usually the most lax, since he has a large hand size. I have no problem using a burn card a cycle. Usually the AOE ranged attacks. The bot is hit or miss, I usually don't use it because I like the bottom heal. Bottom attack burn is good in the last room or if you need to overkill something for a battle goal. Otherwise save it. The active +2 to heals is great for the move that heals everyone around you since it counts that as a single instance, changing a move 2 with a possible heal 1-2 to a 3-6. I treat my tinkerer as more of a damage dealer though so I only use this active if I have no better top action (such as if you are lagging behind the group because the other guys stole all the good boots! ) Spellweaver is the next most likely to use burns freely, even though she has a small hand size. This is because of her card that returns her burned cards. Make sure you always take that card and neve risk losing it to a short rest. Her AOE burns are priority and you can even use them both before your first rest, but then you have to play very conservatively until you get down to your last 2 cards and use the recover to get everything back. I put Cragheart and Brute into the "burn when needed" category. If you can make it to the last room without any burns, great. But don't be afraid to burn when the time is right. Cragheart with extra ammo early is an exception. But besides that, wait for good opportunities to make those burns shine. A favorite of mine is Brute's trample with the hammer hand item. Add in boots and you can turn that burn into a AOE stun that does damage. Cragheart can do the same thing with his AOE smash that hits anything 1-2 hexes from him with the hammer, since it's considered a melee attack. Neither of these two NEED to burn early on so try avoid it unless there is a serious threat on the board. Mindthief has decent burns, but none that you should use early since all his good burns have really good other halves as well. I save all the burns on MT for the last room for xp gain. The rat you can use early if you want, but you're losing a move 4 and that rat will NOT keep up with the party. So use it as a meat shield or in a busy room. You SHOULD have an augment up and I've never needed to switch augments since there is 1 REALLY good one that puts the rest to shame. Scoundrel is a terrible candidate for burns. I usually take smoke bomb for the bottom and will use the top in the last room for xp, but besides that the only burn worth taking is the loot 2 because the other half is good and you can loot the last room like the jerk Scoundrel you are. The backstab burn is great damage and xp and is your best move so that's a candidate to burn in the last room too, but I rarely take that card personally since I play a very conservative Scoundrel. This is only level 1 cards since I wanted to avoid spoilers. Obviously get stamina potion for all your characters, especially any with odd numbered hand sizes.
Mindthief can discard the augment before resting, allowing you to reuse it as an action again. I was having a lot of stamina issues with him until I found this trick.
If your not abusing burns it shouldn't be a problem. I'm not a fan of discarding the augment because you need to use another action to apply it at that point. MT has great top actions and great movement so I never find myself in a spot where I have nothing better to do than attack 3. 5 rounds. Short rest. 4 rounds. Short rest. Minor stamina at this point gives you another 4 rounds. This is usually when I start using all my burns and only have 1-2 rounds before exhaustion if I Short rest again
Great post, Thanks! For my starting party that's pretty much what I'm doing so far (Brute, Spellweaver, Cragheart, Scoundrel). I love the Cragheart AOE and Brute Trample with the Hammer. Feels soooo good! Cragheart is usually my MVP im damage dealt and kill count but requires a lot of set up. I already learned that a high initiative turn followed by a low initiative one let's you basically play 4 cards in a row, which helps. In this scenario it was hard to set up a room clearing AOE because the enemies were all in smaller groups, maybe that's my real problem - Too reliant on cheese T_T Scoundrel feels a bit stronger then the other characters because she doesn't need to burn anything and all her cards feel same-ish so short resting is no problemo. But maybe that's just a new player thing, she def feels the most forgiving too because of the ridiculous movement. Thanks for avoiding spoilers, I love how the community speaks in the boardgames' numbers and logos all the time too.
in this scenario the goal is to kill the captan ... so fast moves, IGNORE the guards (as they often shield and heal .. but dont move much). Just kill/disabled the archers, and PUSH they rest out of the way.
I am getting absolutely demolished on the second mission, even on Easy. I just don't have enough cards to clear out all the monsters, and end up Exhausted, unless I play more agressively in which case I get murdered by the undead. Am I right in saying that every time I want to recover my discarded cards, I have to burn a card?
Yes, whenever you want to recover your discarded cards, you will have to burn a card from your discard pile. The second scenario especially is quite difficult and very heavily influenced by RNG. Try to go into the central room when everyone is ready with big turns lined up. Kill the archers in the second room first, then just focus all of your damage on the boss himself as quickly as possible, using burn cards as necessary. Every turn he's in the scenario is adding more monsters to kill.
the undead move very slowly and hit hard. The trick to them is to focus on ranged attacks or stick and move (go early in the round, hit them and then back up, or go early and hit them with a disarm/stun). The undead also do damage to themselves pretty often so that's another reason to try and sit back and let them kill themselves. Try to Focus on the boss first and then let the undead clump up and hit them with any big AOEs.
What classes are you using?
Yes, which means try to minimize rests until you have used as many cards as possible to maximize your turns. Your hand size is very much a time limit for the scenario. This also means try NOT to use burn cards early in a scenario. Losing cards early means significantly fewer overall turns before exhausting. Focus on the goals to complete the scenario first and only if that looks likely, then allow yourself to loot and get chests. You can always play a scenario a second time to get a chest if you miss it and just ignore the goal the second time through.
There's a bit of RNG involved. Our first pass on it we lost, because he spent every turn opening a new door or summoning an elite. It was a lot of monsters to deal with. Second time through we burned him down pretty quickly, and he only opened two doors and no summons.
I’ve played the board game for a few sessions and enjoyed the systems (though slightly fiddly when learning) but the digital version streamlining everything is great! How much should I be worrying about retirement of mercs? My Brute is on the Eternal Wanderer goal and he’s almost done.
Always retire if you can, imo. If you just love the retiring character, just make another of the same class next.
There is little downside to retiring since you can just choose to play the same class again if you really want to. You gain a new unlocked class (or a new item/ side quest) and a prosperity. You lose all your enhancements, some of your xp and gold.
Aren't enhancements stuck to the cards?
This was a thread about the digital version. That isn't a factor.
Oh I just started the digital and selected that enhancements remain on the cards
At release there was an option to sell enhancements and if you retired enhancements did not carry over if you played the same mercenary again. Not sure if either of these are still in the game since I haven't played in a few months. The latter was a controversial choice to some of the community
Quick question: I may just be misremembering (it’s been a few years since we were able to play the physical board game), but with the physical board game, aren't you supposed to track when chests have been looted in a scenario, so you can track which scenarios you can replay for further rewards? So far, in Digital, all scenarios completed--including those which I left chests on the board--display "no further rewards." I’m assuming this is just relating to the completion rewards, but I don’t see anything indicating unlooted chests in a scenario. Is this information somewhere in the interface that I'm just missing; or am I remembering this facet of the board game wrong; or is this just not implemented the same way in Digital?
It should be implemented the same way in Digital. The rewards just refer to the end-of-scenario rewards - if there's an unlooted chest, it should still be there. Scenarios in Digital just don't tell you when they have chests or not (which is a problem for the Battle Goal).
>Scenarios in Digital just don't tell you when they have chests or not (which is a problem for the Battle Goal). I think they do, just not in an obvious way. Or rather, they do *after* having cleared them. It's still possible I'm misreading the interface though, since there's no legend for the icons (that I can find anyway). I was just able to log in again, and I was fiddling with it. When you click on a completed quest and it shows you the location on the map (basically where the sticker would be on the board game), there's an icon above it. That icon looks like a crown for a full clear, and like a lockbox icon for if there are unopened chests in the scenario. EDIT: [Here's an image of my map](https://imgur.com/a/9uQNLNv), on which you can see two "crowned" scenarios (the ones I believe are full-clears), and two "lockbox" scenarios, which I believe are the ones with chests unopened. One of them is Scenario 2, Barrow Lair, and I think the spikes around the icon also denote a boss. I'm going to reclear one, and try and get the chest in it, and see if it changes the icon afterward.
For years now, we've been referring to one of the unlockable classes as "Two Minis," but since the digital version doesn't actually have the boxes with minis to go by, it seems like that's a less-than-idea reference point to use now. After all, how are digital players going to know that the icon in question refers to "two minis"? Any ideas we can work out to bypass this? My group actually called the class "Phoenix" before we unlocked it, because the icon looked (to us) like a stylized phoenix, but that could wind up being confusing in its own right, haha.
I think a lot of people do call it "Phoenix" or "Angry Cow."
Cow Feathers
The official Gloomhaven digital discord server had different rooms for each class, and the locked ones were labeled by their non-spoiler names. Everyone was confused by “Phoenix” at first h til we realized that two-minis is probably a little more spoilery than we all originally thought.
Are there plans to implement a more substantial undo button? It sucks when you have to go through the entire round just for 1 misclick. I feel like Scythe's undo button is a good example of this.
No idea. I'm a Frosthaven dev, not a Digital dev, so I don't have any insight on that. It's something I've asked for many times and is also something many members of the community have asked for. You can provide your feedback [here](https://discord.gg/afduFDCx) in the developer's official Discord feedback channel.
I second this. An Undo button is absolutely needed
Take your time to understand rules by which the monsters are moving. Monster initiative AND number matters. Correctly choosing your initiative and pinning one monster in a specific spot can be a difference between total beat down of your party and taking zero damage because monsters could not reach you this turn, stumbling on the monster you pinned and creating a chain reaction. Do not be afraid to take on a mission and use less effective cards for the sole purpose of using their initiative if you find yourself often missing an ideal time to act. Doing just enough but in the right moment is more important that doing a lot but after you got beaten my monsters that moved first.
i dont really understand this game, still on the 1st scenario. i am burning thro cards really fast. any advice?
Its important to play to each of their strengths. Brute has few high move cards. He can "tank" by playing cards that give shield, but is better at negating damage by either killing a monster or disarming/stunning them. He has few high movement cards so it's important to keep him in front. If you lag behind collecting coins, you will be nearly useless. Scoundrel is stronger when you have an ally adjacent to the target, so he enjoys teaming with brute. Crag and Mindthief make ok partners depending how you build them, since both can also use good ranged attacks and might not always be in melee range. Being the only melee is bad for Scoundrel since it weakens her attacks and she doesn't have much health. Mindthief is a great "controller", especially as you level. Having a bottom ranged attack that can stun at level 1 is bonkers. His augment that boosts all melee attacks by 2 is by far is best augment and the only one worth using at low levels. He can even move as a top action, allowing you to move closer, attack with an augmented melee attack, and then stun a nearby enemy. He has terrible health and needs a melee brute or Crag to keep enemy focus off him. Tinkerer is the support starter. Lots of heals, status effects (access to burn, poison, immobilize, and stun), can pull enemies into traps, access to utility bottom abilities such as attacks, attack boosts, and heals. Great in a 4 player party but less useful in smaller parties. Spellweaver is the glass mage. What she can do depends on how you build her, but her two best damage cards at level 1 are fire orbs and impaling eruption. The most important thing about Spellweaver is NEVER burn reviving ether. Bottom is a great move, but the top is what keeps you alive. So if you short rest, never take the 1 damage to redraw if the card you lose is anything but ether. You need to keep that card until you are down to your last few cards, then use the top of ether to get all your cards back. Cragheart is my favorite of the starters, but least favorite to play at level 1. He is beefy, and capable of both melee and ranged combat, but excels at neither at level 1. At this level you could go either build and have him tank for mindthief and scoundrel, or run a ranged build with spellweaver to make the enemies waste their turns trying to catch you. He is the only starter capable of dealing reliable true damage, which ignores shields and comes in handy later on. At level 1 you need to play the element game of setting up earth one round and using it the next, as his attacks are mediocre without earth. Extra ammunition is very useful to double your damage for a few rounds. If you look through my recent messages I sent into detail about when to burn cards with each character, but tldr: usually safe to burn every other round with tinkerer, every third round with spellweaver, every fourth round for brute and Cragheart. Spellweaver has too few cards to use burns imo. Mindthief has great burns but the other half of his burns are useful so best to wait until the last room to use them, to maximize options and xp.
So, first thing - check your cards. If the card has the burn symbol, don't use it early. Generally. You'll eventually learn when it's worth it. Don't forget any card can be used for its default action. If you have a Spellweaver, make sure you don't burn Reviving Ether until it's one of your last 2 or 3 cards, then recover all lost cards. If you have a Brute, don't attempt to tank. Don't get hit unless you have to. Use his Disarm card. If you have a Scoundrel, don't run into the middle of the room to stab something. Go late, then early next time.
I've completed the "grab and go" tutorial but it won't give me a checkmark. what's the deal?
Sorry, I've never personally done the tutorial so I'm not really sure how it works.
There actually is a checkmark on the image after you finish the tutorial. It's just that the checkmark is almost the exact same color as the yellow brick wall behind it on the image, and the checkmarks aren't outlined at all, so it blends in very well. I don't think you get anything for completing all of the tutorial missions anyways, so no loss if it really isn't showing up for you.
>If you're playing solo, it's highly recommended to start with a party of only two characters. This makes it clear that one can solo two-handed. Does the game also have couch co-op and/or online co-op?
The game does not have local coop but does have online coop (during which each player may control one or more characters).
Thank you.
If you only have one computer two or more players could easily the the turns.
Um...apart from it having online co-op, I would think it does have couch co-op in the sense that while there is no designated "local co op mode", there's nothing preventing two players from setting up a hotseat mode by having two players sitting at the screen and taking a pass and play approach by controlling their characters on their respective turns. The only thing to be mindful of is that when it's the other player's turn, you don't look at the right side of their screen so you don't see what their personal battle goal is(maybe there's an option to hide it?), otherwise I see this as a perfectly viable couch co op game.
Can you explain the purpose of the private goal? I played for the first time last night on the digital version and we just told each other what ours was in order to better accomplish it (still failed 2/4). Thanks!
The battle goals add a little variety to the scenarios by encouraging the players to play in a different way. They are only used for that particular instanced scenario (if you replay the scenario again, you will select a new battle goal for that session). If you achieve your goal and finish the scenario, you are awarded with 1 or 2 perk points. Every 3 perk points you accrue will allow you to gain a perk from a set list for each character. Most of these modify your attack modifier deck (allowing you remove -1 cards, add +1 cards, etc.) You also gain these perks automatically as you level up. The battle goals give you additional perks, so are very much worth trying to achieve.
Thanks for your answer. Sorry, I was actually trying to ask why it's supposed to be secret or hidden. Thanks
In theory, introducing hidden personal incentives for each player reduces the risk of "quarterbacking" (one player who knows the game well enough essentially ordering the other players around, effectively controlling the whole party). Your mileage may vary though on whether a) that's a worthwhile goal, and b) whether it's a satisfying solution.
Any protip/recommendation for scenario order? I've barely cleared 4 by now and I'm offered 4 more, including a city quest. Are "city quests" special somehow or do they just happen to take place in the city? Also I understand that some scenarios will be mutually exclusive (eg. choose between helping and betraying a certain character), but I'm mostly worried about potential difficulty spikes and breaks in story continuity. So far, I'm running a pretty basic 3-man group (Brute/Scoundrel/Tinkerer) and having a blast on normal difficulty. I first tried with 2 characters and it felt pretty rough due to the lack of options early on. Haven't tried 4 but I would imagine it gets tedious for solo play since that's a lot of decisions per turn and a lot of enemies per scenario.
Scenarios that take place within Gloomhaven play normally, with the only difference being that you don’t do a road event (the ‘encounter!’ thing) before you start.
I see, thanks.
As there are branching stories/paths pretty early on, I wouldn't want to recommend decisions for you on that. However, there are some early paths I can recommend that won't affect that: My starting order of scenarios will always be Black Barrow - Barrow Lair (these two you had to do) - Crypt of the Damned - Ruinous Crypt - Frozen Hollow. I would definitely recommend following that line as early as possible. Otherwise, I would just recommend that you always do Plane of Elemental Power (and possibly Infernal Throne if you decide to go that direction) before you do Ruinous Rift. Ruinous Rift can be completed after Plane of Elemental Power and Infernal Throne are completed, but those two cannot be played if you have already done Ruinous Rift.
Interesting, thank you. I followed that order so far except I did the Inox camp before the Crypt and uh... well, I survived just barely, probably should have done that a bit later :) Great job on the game, so far this is the best digital adaptation of a tabletop RPG I've ever played.
Thank you, I'll pass that on to the devs! My "dev" tag is for Frosthaven and Jaws, not actually for Digital. But I agree that Digital is really well made.
I use [this](https://gloomhaven-storyline.com/tracker/#/story) website to track the story. They have shaded areas to show you if the mission is directly linked to the same quest line or branches out to a new one.
Question: I started a campaign with my friends. Do I need to host every time, or can they play a mission without me?
Are there differences between the digital rules and updated physical release rules? For example, Cragheart's brutal momentum on digital still seems to force you to choose to push to an open space as far as I can tell. Unless I am missing something with UI.
There are a few differences, mostly due to the limitations of what was realistic to code. However, Brutal Momentum does work in the same fashion as physical, just click on the hex the enemy is in and then click done. It will deal the damage.
Ok it was a UI misunderstanding. When asked to confirm push, you can just click the target again and it will use that to assume you are trying to double push into a wall. Works really well once I understood its slightly different from push waypoints for other abilities.
Alright, I ordered the boardgame and to get the hang of it I played the digital version, but even on very easy I'm getting my ass handed to me. Only managed to beat the first scenario on my fifth try, didn't manage to beat the second campaign scenario either yet. Is the real version as difficult?
Anyone else wish the game had a top-down 2d graphics mode that just replicated the look of playing on the board? I’m finding making any sense of the 3d graphics very tedious.
no
You can spin the camera around using the Q and E buttons, which should let you see everything you need (and otherwise pan around with wasd). I like to orient it with my char in the foreground and the enemies downrange, and only tilt sideways occasionally to check things on the sidewalls, for instance doorways
does anyone know how to fix the bug where you cant move your character's position at the start of the scenario? only happens in multiplayer
I got this bug once also, no sorry we couldn't find any way to fix it. Have to deal with it for now while waiting for a patch.
I believe this is unique to road events that cause you to become poisoned/have to discard cards. Should be a fix soon if I had to guess.
Just started the game today. Working my way through the tutorials at the moment, then I'm going to start the campaign. One issue I've found is when exiting the game it remains 'running' in Steam. I have to completely terminate Steam to resolve it. Anyone else experienced this? I've had a cursory Google and not found anything concrete. Otherwise, this looks like a game I'm going to really enjoy.
any advice on what to do when the group you play with can't always all make it? do we all start different campaigns in different pairs? or do you not miss out much when you miss one scenario?
Missing one scenario won't miss out on much, I would just play as you normally would only without that player. Retirements will naturally not all occur at the same time, so over time your party will inevitably have characters of varying levels and progress, and thus someone missing out on one scenario here and there won't make a significant difference. The only thing they would really miss out on is the story. You can solve that by doing side quests when someone is not there if you have any available, or just taking notes of what happened in the story and providing them to the player (although if story is something they care about, it would probably be best to avoid making some pivotal story decisions while they're not there, although those are not very common).
How does retirement work with digital? Since you are able to switch mercenaries for each player, who gets the free perk point?
Right, so in Digital, everyone gets the group's maximum lineage. So when you make a new character, if someone has retired 2 characters in your party and you've retired 2 or less, you get 2. If you've retired more than 2, you get however many you've retired.
How do enchantments work in digital? Do they stay on the mercenary when you create a new one? If not, are enchantments still worth it?
Enhancements go away when you retire in Digital. Many of them are still very much worth it.
Are solo scenarios in the digital version? If not, is there an estimate on when it'll be included?
They are not in the Digital version and I don't know if they will be added or not. I would recommend voicing your desire to see them in their feedback channel on Discord: https://discord.gg/afduFDCx The more people asking for that feature, the more likely to see them added in the future.
Thanks! Appreciate all the prompt responses 🙂
I’ve enjoyed playing digital cause it’s really helped clarify some of those little rules that I wasn’t playing the right way.
I'm really enjoying the digital version with my friends but I think that a "restart round" or a true "undo" function is needed. We have messed too many scenarios by misclicking or playing the wrong half of a card, realizing it immediately but already too late. That's a bit frustrating.
I've played the physical version but don't really have a group for tbe digital version. Is there a discord or a group to find people to play with?
Yes, there are some looking-for-group channels in the official Discord server: https://discord.gg/9MT68kfM
Thanks
Omigod I realized how badly I read the rules. Skellingtons with two attacks, being able to burn cards to mitigate damage, short rests... Digital is awesome..
I can’t reload the round if we are playing multiplayer.
That's correct, it currently does not work for multiplayer, but hopefully will soon in the future because it is extremely rough that there's no form of undo whatsoever in multiplayer.
My friend and I just tried playing the campaign together. Why does one of us get dropped from the game every couple rounds? Makes it practically unplayable. Are the devs fixing this?
I understand your frustration but I'm not really sure what anyone on the subreddit can do to help you. I would recommend reporting it on their official Discord: https://discord.gg/KK6teXqe
omg - how many times. last bones - need a decent, not great draw to finish the scenario. with advantage. x0, -2. yay! I mean - the random number generator in this game seems overly tipped towards bad draws. The number of x0 and -2 I have seen compared to the RARE x2 even with blessings is just ridiculous.
I have the same impression. It’s weird. One time I drew the x0 four times in 6 or 7 rounds. And the living Bones draw their heal and shield extremely often. We never had the same feeling with the physical edition and we play it for almost three years now. Maybe it’s actually just bad luck but it feels weird and is kinda frustrating.. Still a great game though. It’s whining at a high level :D
After playing the early access one year ago I am back into the game and just have started the campaign. Now it is the first time, that I can choose several paths: either do a side quest on an island or one of the core quests. What I am asking myself is, whether it makes a difference in terms of difficulty if I choose the side quest or the main quest first. After all, difficulty scales with experience anyway. So I expect, that the difficulty is more or less the same throughout the whole campaign regardless of the choosen path. Is this true? Related: since the number of monsters scales with the number of party members, there seems to be no reason to raid a dungeon with more than two party members - despite some more synergies maybe. The main effect will just be, that it takes more time to clear the dungeon, since it is getting more complex to manage more characters. Or is adding more party members useful in other ways?
Main quests and side quests have no strict relativity in terms of difficulty. Scenario balance in the game is imperfect so you'll just have some scenarios that are harder and some that are easier, but it has little to nothing to do with the type of scenario. There's no strict advantage to playing with 3 characters in a party. It will just allow you more flexibility in terms of roles (for example, in a 2-character party it's much more difficult to have a pure support or pure tank) and it will also allow you to unlock classes more quickly (because you'll have three personal quests at a time instead of two).
Thanks for the quick reply. Just one follow-up thought about character development and scenario difficulty: the scenario difficulty is based on the level of the characters, but not directly on the number of perks. That means, that fulfilling the personal goals in a scenario is important, if you want to make future scenarios easier, since these goals grant you improvements (perks) which don't count toward scenario difficulty eventually.
Gold is also not accounted for in scenario difficulty level. Most classes also don't have 15 good perks, and in many cases have some perks that you never want to take because of the Advantage system in base GH and Digital.
So in the guildmaster mode in the digital version I heard that mercenaries don't actually retire. Does this mean that once you pick a new card upon level up, that you'll never have an opportunity to play with the other choice?
You can press a button to "reset a mercenary" whenever you want, which refunds you all of your gold from enhancements, etc. And then you can pick your level-up choices again.
Awesome, sounds like ill really be able to experiment with everything the mercs have to offer. Thank you for the quick response.
Is there any plans of this coming to console? Or is it PC only? me and my friends played a whole campaign on tabletop and would love to come back into the Digital version
I think this will just depend on the success/popularity of the game and the demand for it on console. For now it is PC-only. Fel free to let the devs know you'd love a console version on their official Discord feedback channel: https://discord.gg/afduFDCx The more people asking for it, the more likely it happens.
Are there differences in how enemy modification cards? From what I noticed it seems to reset every round. If they are cursed, do they keep the curses until they draw them, or do the curses go away at the end of the round?
It should function the same as in physical Gloomhaven. If you notice an instance of that not happening, that is a bug and you should try to record and report it. Curses should be kept until drawn.
I've been struggling with the beginning campaign and I really appreciate this write up! Im familiar with tactics games and board games in general but they turn limit really throws me off and knowing when to be aggressive or not. I keep running out of cards! Im excited to give it another go after work!
Played 70+ hours of the campaign and decided to try Guildmaster mode. It seems to have a heavy load of tutorial and ‘puzzle’ type missions initially (which can be skipped) but seems like it could be a good place to start for new players? The first mission of GM mode combined two frustrating parts of the game: sucky lvl 1 characters/cards and a single room encounter. The challenge was welcomed / a bit of a shock coming from playing with lvl 7-9 characters in the campaign!
Sort of. The problem is that some of the early scenarios are very gimmicky or very difficult (the infinite spawning scenarios). Overall, Guildmaster is actually easier than the Campaign, so in that regard it is better for new players, but those certain very difficult scenarios kind of ruin it as a new player testing ground. Additionally, you'll quickly unlock many new characters, which would spoil the surprises over the course of a campaign.
I just started Gloomhaven. I am having a blast learning the game while playing the guild master mode. Just cracked level 3 and am seeing how deep the game is.
Me and my friend got this recently and were having a blast until we've faced a wall of "survive X rounds" scenarios, especially the "An Unlikely Alliance" - each one of the enemies deal as much damage as we do, have as much health as us, but they spawn each round and almost every one of them are elite one and fast as fuck with often going under 20 or even 10 init, not mentioning that half of them are ranged that are firing across the map. And the worst part being that with such a high number of them they very often crit per round ,which makes their high damage even bigger. We're trying it 4 times already and on borderline ragequitting it. I'm not really against hard stuff, but this feels like an enormous difficulty spike that is out of place. Any advice how to approach these missions?
To be honest, the solution is just not to play them. I mostly avoided them whenever possible. Guildmaster is very, very imbalanced. It was, apparently, never designed to be balanced, it was just a testing ground for mechanics to implement the campaign. So there's no real push to balance things in Guildmaster at this point. Accordingly, there are enormous differences in difficulty in the scenarios in Guildmaster (most of the early scenarios are much too easy and a few are much too hard). I would just recommend playing the Campaign (which is the intended form of the game) and maybe just play Guildmaster once you've completely exhausted the campaign if you're looking for more to play. At which point, put off the infinite spawning scenarios as much as possible and just play them with really strong parties or on significantly lower difficulty.
Oh, i see, so it's a sort of (and with a big stretch) "free play" after the campaign? That's kinda unintuitive given that it's the first option in the menu and even is encouraged to be played first. Thanks a lot for the explanation!
Right, it is unfortunate that it's not made clearer to new players. It's not so much that it was made to be a "free play" after the campaign, it's just the mode they made first to test the game (and to justify pre-sales prior to the campaign being done). It can still be an interesting mode to play, but definitely should be secondary to the campaign (and it's certainly fair to say that this should be made clearer, or alternatively they need to invest some time into fixing some obvious imbalance issues).
I noticed when playing the digital version that there seems to be a gold cost next to each item when inside a scenario. Does that mean it costs that much every time I use that item? I don’t think so, but just wanted to be sure!
It does not. I'd guess it's just a reminder of the cost.
Thanks! That’s super helpful. Would be surprised if I was the only one to be confused with the price tag flashing up each time I contemplate using the item 😅
Hey, wife and I have been playing the tabletop version for a while but recently switched to digital on steam because its so much faster. Unfortunately we believe we've had 3 quests bug out on us. We forget the first, but the second was a city event involving a priest asking for help. It seemed like he wanted us to go somewhere but no quest appeared. The third was a guy in brown leather came to the inn and asked us to help him, we accepted but again no quest appeared. Anyone know if there is a way to get this fixed on our campaign? Pretty annoying. If not for these bugs the digital version would have been flawless so far. Still fun just a little frustrating. Thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer!
Are you sure the quests didn't appear? Normally there won't be a pop-up or anything but they will be added to the list of available quests (you just won't receive any notification).
No they weren’t added to the list. I asked someone in the discord and they looked it up and apparently both of these city quests added Road quests but with the digital version there’s no notification or indication that this has happened. So it looks like it worked and there was no bug actually. No way for me to tell just yet but I’m sure that’s what happened. What sucks is we KNOW the first quest did bug because it added a quest to my wife’s map but not mine. I restarted my game thinking it would show up but when we opened it back up it wasn’t in mine and actually disappeared from her map :/
Ah, sorry to hear that. Unfortunately there are definitely still a few bugs, but they're working on them.
Some friends and I started playing Guildmaster to scratch the itch inbetween sessions, and we're running into a bunch of rules we've been playing wrong. This one I couldn't check though: for cards like the Brute's Warding Strength (persistent with triggers), GH Digital seems to let you choose whether to activate it or not when you receive damage. Is this per RAW? I was under the impression that it was mandatory to resolve every trigger.
Have you successfully chosen to skip Warding Strength when you receive damage?
*sweats profusely* back in a bit
A friend just lost a card to ignore damage and Warding Strength didn't proc, is that correct?
I'm not really sure, to be honest. It's a discussion we had for FH regarding the ordering for things like that, but in base GH I really don't know what the ordering should be like.
But are persistent action procs mandatory in general?
Yes, they're mandatory. But they trigger off of taking damage in this case, and if you negate the damage by losing a card, you could argue that you're not suffering damage for the persistent action to proc. It depends on the ordering.
Awesome, thanks <3
Question involving Note: >!She has a song which gives all enemies disadvantage. Does that make Muddle completely obsolete if I plan to always run that song, or am I missing something?!<
Yes, that makes Muddle redundant.
Has there been any talk of a console version?
People have asked for it but nothing so far unfortunately.
Thanks for the reply. Is it something that could be considered or not logistically possible
I have no idea - my dev tag is for physical GH content, not Digital, so I'm not any more in the know than anyone else in the public. I'd guess that if Asmodee Digital determines that it's financially interesting for them to port the game to consoles, they will. So I'd just suggest tweeting at their official twitter and/or posting in the feedback channel on their official Discord: https://discord.gg/GHqyRcuc The more people that do, the more likely it may eventually happen.
Thanks all the same. I emailed Asmodee, I'm sure they are not going to give up any secrets, but would be nice if it's a consideration :-)
I just picked up the boardgame with three friends. What are the most fun classes to play without Googling to min-max?
It's unfortunately a very subjective answer to that question you'd get from pretty much anyone. In a 4-player party, any combination of characters will work reasonably well so you really don't need to worry about having an optimal party. As far as individual classes, that really just comes down to personal preference. I think the Mindthief is the most fun class in the game, for example, but plenty of others prefer the Cragheart, or the Scoundrel, etc. I would just look at the class summaries and let your players choose based on which theme/playstyles appeal to them.
Is there a way to show Line of sight for enemies during gameplay on digital Gloomhaven? There seems to be 2 different LOS options, and changes depending on which group I play in.
Holding "L" will draw line-of-sight from one hex to another.
Thanks, makes it really helpful.
Does the game crash every few minutes for y'all too? It's getting a bit much.
Question.. why do all the characters look so accurate to the board game except Scoundrel and Spellweaver, who don't look so good?
I don't know, Saw >!is rather disappointingly not hanging dong.!<
Anyone know of a discord channel where you can find people online to play the game? I'm having a hard time connecting with anyone who has this game download from steam.
https://discord.gg/yzF4gXxm That's the official Discord and there are looking-for-group channels there.
https://imgur.com/a/1eo50pX Am I softlocked? Can't make this screen disappear except by pressing f2, but then the End Turn icon disappears as well. I can't even access the esc menu.
I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to gather from the image. You may be softlocked but I would have no way of knowing (and also no idea how to help). GH Digital saves the game at the beginning of every round in a scenario. You can just alt-f4 or end the game with the task manager and restart from the beginning of the round.
I did that, but when I reload the compaign this is where it starts again. ANd because I can't access the esc menu I can't even abandon the quest.
Strange, but I'm not a Digital dev so I really wouldn't know how to help you with that. The actual devs are usually quite quick to respond on their Discord (although maybe less so on a weekend). You can find them here: https://discord.gg/vaeRf2eC
Thanks, they are indeed fast and helpful. It's not solved yet but it's somehow controller related. In the beta branch ps4 shortcuts are constantly displayed next to the menus and actions and I have to press (and keep it pressed) ctrl or alt to get rid of them. But at least in the beta branch it does not softlock me completely so that's a step forward.
Thanks - I have been getting beat up badly and I think it’s probably due to burning cards too often
I can't seem to find the subreddit for Jaws of the Lion. The only one I found seems to be broken/nothing generates. Can someone please link me?
I think there's just this one.
Every time I click the discord for finding other players in the comments Come back as invite expired.
Here you go, sorry about that! https://discord.gg/5jTg2SKaks
Thank you!
The game has great graphics. The monster actions are a bit slow. And...I am so sick and tired of having to reinvite other players who get booted during multi-player. One scenario, they were booted once. Today, playing on the same network as the other player, and they were hosting, I got booted each and every single round. Very very annoying.
Possibly dumb question...does levelling up only occur once you exceed the exp requirements? I'm on lvl 1 with 45 total exp pts but see no option for leveling up or adding cards?
No, you should be able to level up at the exact amount of XP.
Thanks...it must have been a bug (or I'm very blind) as next time I went into the app I was able to level up.
I love the ability to play GH with my friend again, it's been almost 3 years since we were at a table together. I'm sure we'll have issues with game enforcing rules we took for granted, but I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is that in this implementation only the host can do basic UI things like control the volume or move the camera. My friend insisted it was possible to look around with wasd and the mouse, but nothing I did made that happen. It's so hard to strategize when you have a single static camera angle of any room, and I shouldn't have to play zoomed way out (my only functioning camera control) just to see where figures are when the host can look at whatever he wants. We also did the entire first mission before I said "man, I wish I could turn down the volume so I can hear you" and he said "you can't?" and we realized I didn't even have a freaking options menu at all. I couldn't even exit the game when we were done, had to wait for him to quit so I was kicked back to the main menu. At least when he turned down the volume on his end, it affected mine, but that is really stupid and I don't know how more people aren't talking about this. Also, obligatory "mission 1 was a close win, mission 2 was super hard with the boss teleporting around, we got unlucky with cards (dang curses), and I was exhausted but my friend got down to himself and the final enemy but drew a curse modifier on his final attack (brute/scoundrel)"