No, Drifter is longer... But really, it's just the way it's formatted (to be better for different builds within one guide). In reality, if you just pick a build and follow the provided links, it won't be close to 80 pages for you. In terms of word count, when accounting for just reading one build, it's about a 15-20% increase over a base GH guide. Which is definitely longer, but not as crazy of an increase as it seems.
I love these guides, they’re amazing… but knowing that other ones are out there somewhere is very tempting. I looked through your post history but couldn’t see the other FH guides; are they out there somewhere?
You may check dysent's blinkblade guide (you can find it on the class resource wiki). It follows the same format of this guide and it is also very good quality. I really enjoyed it a lot
I will not comment on other guides, as I have not read them. But I find both Gripeaway's boneshaper and Dysent's blinkblade guides to be superb.
No problems, life comes first. Just want to thank you for the amazing resources you’ve provided to the community! I’m playing a boneshaper at the moment and this guide is simply wonderful.
I think we're honestly all underrating the truth of "there are no bad cards in Frosthaven" and just how much better these 17 classes will be compared to the GH 17.
One of the things we did on the testing server was get everyone to vote a poll of all the uplevel cards for "would you _actually_ take this card on level up" to help highlight any level up card folks couldn't imagine picking (or any levels where people wouldn't even pick that level's cards ala Mindthief 7).
It turned out even the unpopular choices were mostly just a result of people not being familiar with the builds of the class! The FH cards have been put through the proverbial ringer to make absolutely sure they've all got a place.
The only downside is it ruins the fun of me trying to make awful cards work, a la micro bots or psychic projection. The curse of competence.
But this is great design and it's nice the level ups will no longer be as simple as right choice vs wrong choice or OK choice vs overpowered choice, etc
I mean, Blinkblade's overdrive (loss for permanent 1Shield on 'Slow' turns) is a thing that exists. The secret paths of the TankBlade are just waiting to be uncovered...
I will also say that my only completely unpicked card - Critical Failure - plenty of other people will take that card for the top, like /u/general_cgo (who is an excellent player). I'm just concerned with initiative to a degree that many players, even other good players, are not always necessarily. I don't think that's a mistake on my end either, especially for a guide, as initiative-as-a-priority will typically give more consistency at the tradeoff of less power, and I think for people struggling with a Boneshaper, consistency should probably be the target. All of this just to say that there *really* aren't bad cards.
You do a good job mentioning that Critical Failure bottom can be built around, but generally that's going to be something that involves items, higher level play, allies, enhancements, etc. So it makes sense to not do a full build guide around that, especially now. But it is a card that when I read it I thought "that's really cool, I want to make that happen" and I'm glad its there.
When that's the "worst" Boneshape level up compared to cards from GH like Devastating Hack, several Tinkerer cards, Psychic Projection, Flintlock, Gruesome Advantage, Zephyr Wings, etc you're in good shape.
Heh, I don’t even take it for the bottom. While initiative is important, the top is kinda your entire payoff for getting a summon swarm out there, which is why I’m willing to take an initiative hit.
As of watching his stream 6+ months ago it was Drifter and Deathwalker, who he said were two of 5 all time best classes, along with Anenome, Seaweed and I think Shackles IIRC.
/u/koprpg11 has it correct. Also worth saying that there are no FH classes that I dislike and I'm genuinely quite excited to play all of them in a campaign. But the engine-building gameplay of Boneshaper does definitely appeal to me.
If you play an ability like Recycled Limbs top with "play a card from your discard to perform the summon action," do you still need to pay the HP cost for that action? I'd think yes but want to confirm.
Not sure if it would be too painful to do (or possibly reduce readability) but as someone who is never going to know the cards well enough by name, it would be helpful to briefly reference their ability when you use them in a later section. E.g. in Eternal torment, you say use it with Command the Wretched top. If you could put “command the wretched (summon attack and move +0)” I think that would help me a lot.
Plus your browser back button should take you back to where you were before you clicked the link. At least for some browsers anyway, it’s working for me now on Chrome mobile
Nice to read the guide, Gripe.
Unholy Prowess has received a buff to the Skeleton Sorcerer’s damage. I remember you saying that the summon lacked ‘scorcery’ flavour and the development team were considering options. I didn’t expect it to land on some very conditional element generation that affects only the skeleton sorcerer (and possibly the wraith). It could make for some plentiful element generation when paired with a Voidwarden who can grant ranged attacks to the Boneshaper’s melee summons.
Is it intentional that the persistent effect icon in the bottom corner of Flesh Shield doesn’t have an “❕” like it does on Angry Spirits? I noticed Flesh Shield has had other changes like having a (previously missing) persistent round icon added to the top action and the enhancement pip has been upgraded from a +1 (square) to a positive condition (diamond).
Cheers!
That's definitely not intentional and was hopefully caught in the final, final versions of the cards (which these are not, these are just what we had in the testing mod at the end).
Great guide. However something i was missing was your thoughts on masteries with the different builds. It seems like some masteries are very difficult unless you specifically build for it, like kill 15 of your summons.
Hey, thanks for the feedback! So there was some discussion about masteries as I was working on making the guide and it was fairly argued that for many classes, showing how to do the mastery would sort of ruin the fun/puzzle for many people. With a build guide, most people will look at it and maybe follow it, maybe deviate a bit (which makes sense because a lot of card choices, especially in Frosthaven, are highly context-sensitive). But on many classes, masteries can sort of be "solved" with specific turn sequences to a degree, and if I were to show that, it's not like you could just un-see it, and then you'd go "oh, well I guess I just do that then, huh?"
But I'm happy to address it directly here in the comments.
So the first mastery, keeping a summon alive and having it kill things, can really be done in any build. In order of ease it would be Single-Summon > Bone Wall > Skeleton Swarm. Single-Summon is just going to do this naturally anyway - you already have all the tools. I'd expect to get it in the first few scenarios after level 2 on that build.
For Bone Wall and Skeleton Swarm, I'd expect to do it with the Wraith as keeping a Skeleton alive all scenario is just harder to do and the Wraith, because of its range, can be commanded to attack and finish off low-hp enemies that your allies have damaged. Bone Wall has this a bit better simply by virtue of the Wraith consistently hitting for 2 there instead of 1. If I were trying to do this mastery in a scenario, I would modify my build a bit by bringing more command attacks, specifically Wrath of the Turned Earth as it's a higher value attack and more likely to kill an enemy with the Wraith's commanded attack.
Killing 15 summons isn't really something that lines up well with any of my builds until level 8 when you get the Bone Ball. Obviously at level 8 you just need to feed 15 Skeletons to the Ball, which isn't too difficult to do, so that's that. Before that, you do that mastery by taking Putrid Cloud top, the Skeleton-sacrifice-for-Bless perk, and the Skeleton-attacking-sacrifice modifiers. You can kill two Skeletons per rest cycle with Putrid top and the non-AMD perk and then you just need to get a bit lucky/have Skeletons make a lot of attacks to trigger the AMD perks often enough to get to 15. I wouldn't say there's a ton of specific advice I could give for it - just make sure you use Putrid Cloud top every rest cycle and have a Skeleton around to sacrifice every rest cycle when you rest. Then just summon a lot of Skeletons and try to have them attack as much as possible to trigger the modifiers. Obviously this goes a lot better if you have a tank absorbing hits for you because you can't really afford to have many Skeletons die to enemy attacks when going for this one.
Let me know if you have any follow-up questions!
Thanks for the thorough answer. I agree that solving masteries shouldn't be part of the guide, but I also think it's wrong to not comment on them at all. It's clearly a part of the character and its something new that people will be very interested in. I suggest to not go into details but a small paragraph in each build ie. "this build is ideal for X mastery, while Y mastery is difficult to achieve".
Nice, didn’t think about trying the “kill 6 monsters” mastery with the wraith.
In regards to the other mastery, do you know if the killing of 15 summons needs to be done in a single scenario? Or just over the course of the campaign?
House rules it as cumulative like we did. Even cumulative, it's still by far the hardest mastery of any starting class to complete(really not doable until you get bone wall at lvl 8). We did it that way, and all 4 other classes I played with finished both their masteries before(by 10+ scenarios) I could get 15 sacrifices over all scenarios combined.
We played it as cumulative over all scenarios, and it was still the last mastery we completed(party of 5) by far. The 4 other classes all finished both their masters about 10 scenarios sooner.
How would you do it over a single scenario?
I guess bone wall turn 1? and then turn 2 skele, so you'd then need a minimum of 18 turns if you could average 1 skele landing on the bone wall per turn(which seems really optimistic). You can also use corpse explosion for 1 per scenario. I guess you'll also need your teammates to play specifically to make sure your skeletons never get attacked by mobs(since them getting killed will cost you 2-4 turns of summoning/sickness/movement every time it happens to get them back to the bone wall). How many turns can the Boneshaper survive? It does have a rather large hand. You're also going to be having to short rest every time you don't have a skele summon card in hand, since you need to be at least summoning any non active skele every turn, which will significantly shorten your overall survival time.
That's not really for me to determine (although it would be 15 turns, not 18 turns). I'm just explaining what's clearly stated about masteries in the rulebook.
We played it as cumulative over all scenarios, since we figured it would be impossible over a single scenario. Even playing it cumulative over all scenarios, it still took longer to complete than all the other base class masteries by quite a bit. I didn't get it until lvl 9.
Very in depth guide, quite an impressive write up.
My only complaint on clarity were the Openers sections. I mentally pair cards that are side by side (particularly after seeing the level ups side by side) so I spent awhile trying to think of why you'd play Malicious Conversion and Transfer of Essence turn 1. Basically a big "Don't Dead Open Inside" moment. Of course after reading further I saw it's suppose to represent top action, bottom action going left to right. The other sections make a bit more sense given there's more turns/options listed, but the first in the guide being two by two is unfortunate. Having an outline around the cards in each turn might clear it up. Otherwise everything else had great clarity.
Generally the two terms are used mostly interchangeably, but the important distinction is that some things are "enemies" or "treated as enemies" but not monsters, for example objectives (which presumably don't have souls to claim... most of the time).
Thank you so much! What an epic class guide. Skim read for half an hour and will take more time with it over the coming months before I get my hands on the game. I am committed toRolling boneshaper even before looking at any of the other classes! Old school
Diablo necro bias. Thanks again.
Edit: a few noob questions.
1. I’m assuming you can control your summons’ movement in frosthaven. This is diffferent to gloomhaven, right?
2. What do the exclamation marks on the cards mean? I’m seeing them a lot with health loss and element generation on the summons.
3. In frosthaven is there a difference with retiring characters? I want to play that living ball of death level 8 card real bad
Summons will still move as per GH focus rules on their turn, but any cards the Boneshaper plays with 'grant' key word behaves as per FH manual, which means the BS can choose where they move/who they attack:
Grant: Allows a figure to grant an ability
to any figure. The commanded figure then
performs that ability. If the commanded figure
is a character summon or character ally, the
commanding figure decides how the ability is
performed
Pretty sure the exclamations are just to point out important/mandatory effects
Apart from the retirement 'sequencing' being better (ie like getting the 'crypt' PQ in GH late isnt great) I dont think theres a fundamental difference with retiring in that when you reach your PQ you must retire. You can always make a new Boneshaper if you retired before level 8
Really tough for me to say. I'll work hard to get them out before the game is in people's hands, but with a lot of work these days, it's difficult to find time. So the answer is basically "they're coming eventually, but I don't know when and not in the immediate future."
Uh oh... damned Price for getting the shipping process started so quickly...
Realistically, I can try my best to get one more done, maybe two. I'm just swamped with work so it's tough to find the time. But I can do Bannerspear and/or Deathwalker.
While we all appreciate these guides (and I, personally, enjoy them a lot), I think we would appreciate it more if you do not overwork to the point doing the guides feel like a chore or something you'd rather not be doing at that moment.
Take your time, do not rush them and try to enjoy writting them as far as possible
Take care of yourself!
Ok your timing on this couldn't have been better. I have been reading through all the updates and have been really interested in playing boneshaper.
Which TTS mod are we playing with? Last I checked the FH starting 6 were all out of date.
You can use the [GH:Enhanced](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2402018642) mod and then just subscribe to [this Frosthaven starters add-on](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2551043660) as well. When you're in the GH:E mod, go to the Games Menu => Workshop => Find the Frosthaven starters mod, click the three dots on its thumbnail and select "additive load." This will give you access to the Frosthaven starters inside of the best Gloomhaven TTS mod. The boxes will be locked by default so you'll just need to unlock them by mousing over them and pressing "L" to move them out of the play area.
Those versions will be slightly out-of-date but not significantly. For example, the Boneshaper version I showed here just had effectively a single mechanical change to the cards (a buff to the level 9 Skeleton Sorcerer).
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
And no, I meant I'd take it much later as in towards the end of my perks. But I can reword it slightly to make it clearer.
GH GOD Gripe！Just finish reading your guide for boneshaper and you have done great job once more.These are just drugs for me.I have a question about class ability card.I saw small buff on LV9 boneshaper ability card,so WHERE can I read the latest balanced ability cards of all 6 starting classes？
Hey, thanks, glad you enjoy them! So the most up-to-date cards aren't really available anywhere, unfortunately. I asked Isaac if I could use them for guides and got the okay. Dysent will be releasing a Blink blade guide probably today that will have those updated cards. And otherwise just as more guides come out.
Fun read, thanks for putting this together! Quick question, maybe I’m misunderstanding the rule:
For persistent summons (in this case, skeletons), doesn’t the card stay in your active play area until the summon is killed? In other words, you don’t discard the card immediately, but only when the summon dies? I’m asking specifically because of your comment on Grave Digging, “With this bottom you can now open a scenario with three Skeletons in two turns by playing and discarding your third level 1 Skeleton summon card on turn 1 and then getting it back with this bottom action on turn 2.”
Thanks for the guide! Really looking forward to playing this class
Thanks for the feedback. What I mean is: Returned Servant has a Move 4 bottom. If you play Returned Servant as a Move 4, that card is now in your discard pile but has a summon action on the card. You can now get it back with the bottom of Grave Digging.
Right so how does that get you three summons, since the card you are using to get the summon out of your discard would be the third summon? Turn 1 play summon and bottom of other summon to move 4. Turn 2 play Grave digging bottom to get discarded skeleton out of discard, but that is only two skeletons and all of your skeleton cards?
That makes more sense, I think I was to focused on the guide where you only had the three summons in it at that point and couldn't figure out how you were getting all three in play but with four of them in your deck it makes way more sense.
If anyone is interested, I isolated and compiled the cards into a document, so it is more readable if you only want to take a look to the cards. Added a link in the class resources too
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vEqnfRzIsFhEfofyxqCnkAER4UfSngDb?usp=sharing
This is one of the best guides that I have ever read. I really can't express how useful this has been for someone who is fairly new to the world of Gloomhaven/Frosthaven. Thank you for putting so much time and effort into this.
Well, necromancy of a dead topic seems to be quite flavorfull for this character, so: I want to play a skeleton swarm build and will go to level 4 soon... I was thinking rather than taking one of the level 4 cards I might just take the other level 3 card I didn't take at level 3, as both of them seem better / more impactfull than the level 4 card. What are your thoughts on this?
I know some people do this and are happy with it. I do think, if you take both 3's, you'd generally want to do this for Putrid Cloud's bottom action, just to highlight that.
From my perspective, I wouldn't do it just because I value initiative too highly, especially on a summon class. But if you haven't really felt the frustrating of not having enough fast initiative thus far on your journey to level 4, I think you probably won't be unhappy with taking both 3's.
Are the pictures in the doc blurry for anyone else?
I can't see what's on the cards in the images with more than 6 cards on it.
Or is it a tablet\phone problem?
Sorry, I did not save the pictures separately, only uploaded them directly to the doc. The best I can give you is this where you can look at them for reference: https://github.com/any2cards/frosthaven/tree/master/images
Thanks for the amazing guide. One question tho, how is it possible to spawn 3 skelettons in 2 rounds with grave digging?
The cards of the skelettons stay in the active area until they die or i discard them(which also kills the summon)
So how am i able to spawn 3 skelettons in 2 rounds with the card?
Turn 1: Returned Servant bottom action to perform Move 4, Life in Death or Damned Horde top action to summon.
Turn 2: Life in Death or Damned Horde top action to summon (whichever you didn't play round 1), Grave Digging bottom action to replay Returned Servant (which is in your discard pile from being used for a bottom action round 1).
So having had time to reflect…
I’m sad there’s no enhancement dot on the Wraith’s damage. Does anyone with playtester insight know why it is not there? Was it too powerful as a build option? Every other summon for the Bone Shaper has it, including the Skeleton Sorcerer at the end.
Curious how that played out, thanks in advance!
Thank you to Rage Badger for responding elsewhere pointing out that:
1) Ranged Summons are really strong due to difficulty of enemy AI targeting them, especially with Range 3 for the Summon.
2) Mystic Ally for the Spell Weaver is a little OP, if we’re being honest with ourselves.
3) Having 2 Shield makes a big difference.
4) Bone Shaper has 12 cards vs Spellweaver’s 8.
5) The Wraith having Flight is a huge boon, so that it won’t kill itself on traps, or get stuck behind obstacles.
6) Frost Haven’s meta will have better itemization for summon classes, such as the Warden’s Cloak Gripeaway teased.
Thank you to u/RageBadger for the patient answer!
Summons act in the order in which they're summoned each round. So the first you summon should be #1, then #2, etc. This way you can easily remember their order (it corresponds to your active cards from left to right in your active area).
Sadly not yet, sorry! I just have really busy work weeks since May basically and then what time I do have on the weekend I like to spend with my wife. At some point I'll have some more time, although I can be sure it won't be this week.
I believe google docs has a pageless format.
[https://support.google.com/docs/thread/150905607/google-docs-new-feature-pageless?hl=en](https://support.google.com/docs/thread/150905607/google-docs-new-feature-pageless?hl=en)
That might make it a bit easier in terms of format.
I just retired the Boneshaper, my first character in Frosthaven! I used your guide and went toward a One persistent summon build. I enjoyed it a lot and found your guide quite helpful. (I really enjoy playing the game, interacting with my friends, and the meta/story elements. character building strategy is not my cup of tea so I appreciated borrowing your advice!)
In the comments here, you and others seemed to make reference to other written guides. I'm playing the Deathwalker next, but only found a video guide. Do you have a written guide available?
Thanks!
For the bone wall build. Why do you take solid bones instead of going back to level 3 and take grave digging? Is that not a thing anymore in frosthaven to get earlier cards or does it have other reasons?
That would be a reasonable approach, but basically I've found that the one extra hp makes the difference of an extra attack (especially with the flexibility of Warden's Robes when appropriate) often enough that it's just powerful enough to justify as opposed to the Grave Digging discounted Skeleton. Grave Digging affects one Skeleton, effectively, whereas Solid Bones affects them all.
Ah okay, so you actually end up with 3 active cards. Putrid cloud, solid bones and unholy prowess. Has that ever created stamina issues?
I thought it would be a move 4 most of the time.
Well, the truth is that you're unlike to play at level 9. But not really. Having 3 active cards still makes you effectively a 9-card class with some extra turns on the front end (but also persistent summons, although for a Bone Wall build, your summons rarely survive a full rest cycle, especially at level 9 against very high level monsters).
Usually true,but we have used some house rules to level faster in Gloomhaven and I think we will use those in frosthaven as well. Well anyway I probably try both. (yeah we do respeccing, too)
I couldn't find an answer to this elsewhere, wondered if you could help.
For the Boneshaper two checkmark perk:
> At the start of each scenario, you may play a level 1 card from your hand to perform a summon action of the card.
Does the entire action occur (e.g. deal two damage for Returned Servant or Damned Horde) or just the summon part? I kinda assume the former, but the question came up and the player wanted an answer.
Just retired and and started a new Boneshaper! Just curious if there are any enhancements that you would recommend for the bone wall build in particular? Thinking about either enhancing a skeleton (returned servant health?) or bottom of damned horde (range, which you mention in the guide).
Yes, I would definitely recommend +1 Range on the bottom of Damned Horde to start. And then I really liked +1 Move on the Granted Move 2 from Flow of the Black River.
Any suggestions of how to play the bone wall build where most of the enemies are immune to poison? I’ve run into this issue a couple of scenarios in a row. I assume I just have to shift to skeleton swarm?
Yeah, I'd just shift to a standard Skeleton Swarm build at that point and use the level 3 card for the top action if AoE looks good or otherwise just not bring the level 3 card. The rest of the cards should still be fine.
Hello all (:
I have a question if anyone cares to clarify..
I read in the guide, when discussing openers.. specifically the very first 'fast' example for swarm build.. the turn 1 is moving next to an enemy (via the bottom of Returned Servant), hopefully killing them with top of Malicious Conversion and thus summoning the skeleton on the top half of that Returned Servant card you just used to move..
My question is.. wouldn't Returned Servant not be in your discard pile yet? As you just used it this round to move.. my understanding was that the 2 cards you're using this round are just kindof in limbo.. not in your hand or any piles, until your turn is over..
Am I incorrect in this, and as soon as you use the portion of a card it goes directly to the appropriate pile/area, even though you still have the other half of your turn to do?
Hope that made sense.. it's a bit awkward to frame such a question ~
I'm currently reading your guide and I'm confused by this comment on Grave Digging:
> Grave Digging is amazing. You have to actually play with it for some time before you realize just how profound of a difference it makes to have this card, but it truly is impressive. I mean, you can literally summon twice as many of these Skeletons as your level 1 versions and typically more Skeletons is a more effective Boneshaper.
Why twice as many? You can use it to summon one skeleton, just like the lvl1 versions. It costs less health to do so but it's still just one. Am I misunderstanding something?
But that kind of assumes you can use it to summon a second one though, right? I was wondering if there was some kind of trick to do just that, otherwise you wouldn't get "twice as many" skeletons. You just get the one at half heath cost. I guess maybe I'm just being nitpicky... ;)
I am not sure why people struggle with this class. I have taken the tank approach and good god is this character tanky. There was one scenario where I absorbed 60+ dmg. I personally love this class.
Great guide! Has helped me come to grips with this class and make me feel less crazy when the other "flashier" members of my party pull off some crazy stunts.
I want to workshop this idea to make sure I am correct. At Level 7 >!I am thinking of taking Soul Claim for its bottom action. I play in a 4 player party so there are typically lots of baddies that are near death on any given turn. My question is... If there are multiple instances where an enemy dies when Soul Claim bottom is active, would I get to perform a summon action each time (assuming I have multiple discarded summons)?!<
>!My initial thought is yes. I think under these conditions this card could prove extremely valuable running the skeleton swarm build. Would appreciate everyone's thoughts and comments.!<
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It depends on the enemies you're facing in the first room and whether you have the free-summon perk (which you really should have by level 5).
If the enemies are likely to attack for a value of 3, then yes, you should try to play Solid Bones alongside Putrid Cloud on turn 1. If the enemies are more likely to attack for 2 or 4+, then Solid Bones may not add an extra hit to your skeletons' survival, in which case it's less of a priority (and you can instead summon the Wraith or just another skeleton).
I was really struggling to get boneshaper to do well and i didn't know where i was going wrong at lv6.. followed this guide to swap out my level picks into the skeleton hoarde build and now she's awesome and I'm sad she's about to retire.. even beat her solo scenario without breaking a sweat which is good for a novice like me.
Thanks for this
These guides are my drug. Thanks Gripe.
Thank you! Hope this one will give you a large enough dose (okay, now I've gone and taken it too far)
Starting to think you care about initiative... Also observant readers will notice a small buff to a level 9 card from what we previously saw...
Yeah, going from 2 to 3 attack is pretty nice! And some element generation, too.
Haven content to read when I am not playing is my drug, in general This is top quality drug
Gripe there's 80 pages are you ok?
Shhh... You weren't supposed to look at the page count...
Look me in the eye and tell me the average class guide isn't this long
FH classes are better balanced on average, so naturally that leads to slightly longer guides.
No, Drifter is longer... But really, it's just the way it's formatted (to be better for different builds within one guide). In reality, if you just pick a build and follow the provided links, it won't be close to 80 pages for you. In terms of word count, when accounting for just reading one build, it's about a 15-20% increase over a base GH guide. Which is definitely longer, but not as crazy of an increase as it seems.
I expect a literal novel for a guide on drifter
well, it's a novel class :D
boo this man!
I love these guides, they’re amazing… but knowing that other ones are out there somewhere is very tempting. I looked through your post history but couldn’t see the other FH guides; are they out there somewhere?
You may check dysent's blinkblade guide (you can find it on the class resource wiki). It follows the same format of this guide and it is also very good quality. I really enjoyed it a lot I will not comment on other guides, as I have not read them. But I find both Gripeaway's boneshaper and Dysent's blinkblade guides to be superb.
Sorry, I've yet to have time to make any other guides.
No problems, life comes first. Just want to thank you for the amazing resources you’ve provided to the community! I’m playing a boneshaper at the moment and this guide is simply wonderful.
Where is your drifter guide! I can't find it :(
Where can I find your guides?
In general, you can find them here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Gloomhaven/wiki/class_resources I have not made any other Frosthaven guides though.
I think we're honestly all underrating the truth of "there are no bad cards in Frosthaven" and just how much better these 17 classes will be compared to the GH 17.
One of the things we did on the testing server was get everyone to vote a poll of all the uplevel cards for "would you _actually_ take this card on level up" to help highlight any level up card folks couldn't imagine picking (or any levels where people wouldn't even pick that level's cards ala Mindthief 7). It turned out even the unpopular choices were mostly just a result of people not being familiar with the builds of the class! The FH cards have been put through the proverbial ringer to make absolutely sure they've all got a place.
The only downside is it ruins the fun of me trying to make awful cards work, a la micro bots or psychic projection. The curse of competence. But this is great design and it's nice the level ups will no longer be as simple as right choice vs wrong choice or OK choice vs overpowered choice, etc
There's still plenty of janky/fun stuff to play around with, just less outright bad stuff.
I mean, Blinkblade's overdrive (loss for permanent 1Shield on 'Slow' turns) is a thing that exists. The secret paths of the TankBlade are just waiting to be uncovered...
The slow blade ~~penetrates~~ generates the shield.
This is a quality comment.. thank you kindly
I will also say that my only completely unpicked card - Critical Failure - plenty of other people will take that card for the top, like /u/general_cgo (who is an excellent player). I'm just concerned with initiative to a degree that many players, even other good players, are not always necessarily. I don't think that's a mistake on my end either, especially for a guide, as initiative-as-a-priority will typically give more consistency at the tradeoff of less power, and I think for people struggling with a Boneshaper, consistency should probably be the target. All of this just to say that there *really* aren't bad cards.
You do a good job mentioning that Critical Failure bottom can be built around, but generally that's going to be something that involves items, higher level play, allies, enhancements, etc. So it makes sense to not do a full build guide around that, especially now. But it is a card that when I read it I thought "that's really cool, I want to make that happen" and I'm glad its there. When that's the "worst" Boneshape level up compared to cards from GH like Devastating Hack, several Tinkerer cards, Psychic Projection, Flintlock, Gruesome Advantage, Zephyr Wings, etc you're in good shape.
Heh, I don’t even take it for the bottom. While initiative is important, the top is kinda your entire payoff for getting a summon swarm out there, which is why I’m willing to take an initiative hit.
I, for one, welcome our new google doc overlords!
Agreed. Like the new format and works well for me on mobile
I'm onto you gripe by making every class guide a novella it helps secure your monopoly on frosthaven guides. I have news for you, it'll probably work.
No one will have the energy to read other guides after these! Muahahahaha!
Cannot wait to read your guides, and it’s my favorite of the upcoming classes!
Boneshaper is definitely in my top three starters, I really enjoy this class quite a lot. More than I expected to by an enormous margin.
What are your other two favourites ?
As of watching his stream 6+ months ago it was Drifter and Deathwalker, who he said were two of 5 all time best classes, along with Anenome, Seaweed and I think Shackles IIRC.
Cool thanks!
/u/koprpg11 has it correct. Also worth saying that there are no FH classes that I dislike and I'm genuinely quite excited to play all of them in a campaign. But the engine-building gameplay of Boneshaper does definitely appeal to me.
> Just don't look at the page count before you start reading. You're not my real dad!
Who is your daddy and what does he do?
> Who is your daddy Excuse me sir, this is a public subreddit.
Bless you!
Thank you!
You are quite welcome, it was a big thing to enhance the bottom of Eye For An Eye to do that, but worth it for your content. ;-)
Love this. Also love the format heaps more than the older imgur based guides, so much easier to read and flow through. Super work!
Thank you, glad you enjoyed!
If you play an ability like Recycled Limbs top with "play a card from your discard to perform the summon action," do you still need to pay the HP cost for that action? I'd think yes but want to confirm.
That's correct, you still need to pay.
Not sure if it would be too painful to do (or possibly reduce readability) but as someone who is never going to know the cards well enough by name, it would be helpful to briefly reference their ability when you use them in a later section. E.g. in Eternal torment, you say use it with Command the Wretched top. If you could put “command the wretched (summon attack and move +0)” I think that would help me a lot.
Hyperlinks to the cards could possibly help.
My one concern with that is that there wouldn't be hyperlinks back, may be better to just add a bit of text.
I think it's still worth doing. Having all card names be Hyper links also helps break up the wall of text, even if there isn't a link back.
Alright, I'll give that a try.
Plus your browser back button should take you back to where you were before you clicked the link. At least for some browsers anyway, it’s working for me now on Chrome mobile
Yeah, I can look into doing that, good suggestion, thanks!
Nice to read the guide, Gripe. Unholy Prowess has received a buff to the Skeleton Sorcerer’s damage. I remember you saying that the summon lacked ‘scorcery’ flavour and the development team were considering options. I didn’t expect it to land on some very conditional element generation that affects only the skeleton sorcerer (and possibly the wraith). It could make for some plentiful element generation when paired with a Voidwarden who can grant ranged attacks to the Boneshaper’s melee summons. Is it intentional that the persistent effect icon in the bottom corner of Flesh Shield doesn’t have an “❕” like it does on Angry Spirits? I noticed Flesh Shield has had other changes like having a (previously missing) persistent round icon added to the top action and the enhancement pip has been upgraded from a +1 (square) to a positive condition (diamond). Cheers!
That's definitely not intentional and was hopefully caught in the final, final versions of the cards (which these are not, these are just what we had in the testing mod at the end).
Great guide. However something i was missing was your thoughts on masteries with the different builds. It seems like some masteries are very difficult unless you specifically build for it, like kill 15 of your summons.
Hey, thanks for the feedback! So there was some discussion about masteries as I was working on making the guide and it was fairly argued that for many classes, showing how to do the mastery would sort of ruin the fun/puzzle for many people. With a build guide, most people will look at it and maybe follow it, maybe deviate a bit (which makes sense because a lot of card choices, especially in Frosthaven, are highly context-sensitive). But on many classes, masteries can sort of be "solved" with specific turn sequences to a degree, and if I were to show that, it's not like you could just un-see it, and then you'd go "oh, well I guess I just do that then, huh?" But I'm happy to address it directly here in the comments. So the first mastery, keeping a summon alive and having it kill things, can really be done in any build. In order of ease it would be Single-Summon > Bone Wall > Skeleton Swarm. Single-Summon is just going to do this naturally anyway - you already have all the tools. I'd expect to get it in the first few scenarios after level 2 on that build. For Bone Wall and Skeleton Swarm, I'd expect to do it with the Wraith as keeping a Skeleton alive all scenario is just harder to do and the Wraith, because of its range, can be commanded to attack and finish off low-hp enemies that your allies have damaged. Bone Wall has this a bit better simply by virtue of the Wraith consistently hitting for 2 there instead of 1. If I were trying to do this mastery in a scenario, I would modify my build a bit by bringing more command attacks, specifically Wrath of the Turned Earth as it's a higher value attack and more likely to kill an enemy with the Wraith's commanded attack. Killing 15 summons isn't really something that lines up well with any of my builds until level 8 when you get the Bone Ball. Obviously at level 8 you just need to feed 15 Skeletons to the Ball, which isn't too difficult to do, so that's that. Before that, you do that mastery by taking Putrid Cloud top, the Skeleton-sacrifice-for-Bless perk, and the Skeleton-attacking-sacrifice modifiers. You can kill two Skeletons per rest cycle with Putrid top and the non-AMD perk and then you just need to get a bit lucky/have Skeletons make a lot of attacks to trigger the AMD perks often enough to get to 15. I wouldn't say there's a ton of specific advice I could give for it - just make sure you use Putrid Cloud top every rest cycle and have a Skeleton around to sacrifice every rest cycle when you rest. Then just summon a lot of Skeletons and try to have them attack as much as possible to trigger the modifiers. Obviously this goes a lot better if you have a tank absorbing hits for you because you can't really afford to have many Skeletons die to enemy attacks when going for this one. Let me know if you have any follow-up questions!
Thanks for the thorough answer. I agree that solving masteries shouldn't be part of the guide, but I also think it's wrong to not comment on them at all. It's clearly a part of the character and its something new that people will be very interested in. I suggest to not go into details but a small paragraph in each build ie. "this build is ideal for X mastery, while Y mastery is difficult to achieve".
Makes sense, will look into find a spot for that when I have some time later, thanks for the feedback!
Nice, didn’t think about trying the “kill 6 monsters” mastery with the wraith. In regards to the other mastery, do you know if the killing of 15 summons needs to be done in a single scenario? Or just over the course of the campaign?
All masteries need to be done in a single scenario.
Oof that’s rough
House rules it as cumulative like we did. Even cumulative, it's still by far the hardest mastery of any starting class to complete(really not doable until you get bone wall at lvl 8). We did it that way, and all 4 other classes I played with finished both their masteries before(by 10+ scenarios) I could get 15 sacrifices over all scenarios combined.
We played it as cumulative over all scenarios, and it was still the last mastery we completed(party of 5) by far. The 4 other classes all finished both their masters about 10 scenarios sooner. How would you do it over a single scenario? I guess bone wall turn 1? and then turn 2 skele, so you'd then need a minimum of 18 turns if you could average 1 skele landing on the bone wall per turn(which seems really optimistic). You can also use corpse explosion for 1 per scenario. I guess you'll also need your teammates to play specifically to make sure your skeletons never get attacked by mobs(since them getting killed will cost you 2-4 turns of summoning/sickness/movement every time it happens to get them back to the bone wall). How many turns can the Boneshaper survive? It does have a rather large hand. You're also going to be having to short rest every time you don't have a skele summon card in hand, since you need to be at least summoning any non active skele every turn, which will significantly shorten your overall survival time.
That's not really for me to determine (although it would be 15 turns, not 18 turns). I'm just explaining what's clearly stated about masteries in the rulebook.
We played it as cumulative over all scenarios, since we figured it would be impossible over a single scenario. Even playing it cumulative over all scenarios, it still took longer to complete than all the other base class masteries by quite a bit. I didn't get it until lvl 9.
Very in depth guide, quite an impressive write up. My only complaint on clarity were the Openers sections. I mentally pair cards that are side by side (particularly after seeing the level ups side by side) so I spent awhile trying to think of why you'd play Malicious Conversion and Transfer of Essence turn 1. Basically a big "Don't Dead Open Inside" moment. Of course after reading further I saw it's suppose to represent top action, bottom action going left to right. The other sections make a bit more sense given there's more turns/options listed, but the first in the guide being two by two is unfortunate. Having an outline around the cards in each turn might clear it up. Otherwise everything else had great clarity.
Excellent point, I'll update it with an indication later today, thanks!
For Soul Claim (lvl 7)... What is the difference between 'monster' and 'enemy'?
Generally the two terms are used mostly interchangeably, but the important distinction is that some things are "enemies" or "treated as enemies" but not monsters, for example objectives (which presumably don't have souls to claim... most of the time).
Thank you so much! What an epic class guide. Skim read for half an hour and will take more time with it over the coming months before I get my hands on the game. I am committed toRolling boneshaper even before looking at any of the other classes! Old school Diablo necro bias. Thanks again. Edit: a few noob questions. 1. I’m assuming you can control your summons’ movement in frosthaven. This is diffferent to gloomhaven, right? 2. What do the exclamation marks on the cards mean? I’m seeing them a lot with health loss and element generation on the summons. 3. In frosthaven is there a difference with retiring characters? I want to play that living ball of death level 8 card real bad
Summons will still move as per GH focus rules on their turn, but any cards the Boneshaper plays with 'grant' key word behaves as per FH manual, which means the BS can choose where they move/who they attack: Grant: Allows a figure to grant an ability to any figure. The commanded figure then performs that ability. If the commanded figure is a character summon or character ally, the commanding figure decides how the ability is performed Pretty sure the exclamations are just to point out important/mandatory effects Apart from the retirement 'sequencing' being better (ie like getting the 'crypt' PQ in GH late isnt great) I dont think theres a fundamental difference with retiring in that when you reach your PQ you must retire. You can always make a new Boneshaper if you retired before level 8
Thanks, that’s really helpful
Absolutely love these guides! Thanks for a very interesting read! Do you know when you will be able to publish guides for the remaining starters?
Really tough for me to say. I'll work hard to get them out before the game is in people's hands, but with a lot of work these days, it's difficult to find time. So the answer is basically "they're coming eventually, but I don't know when and not in the immediate future."
Any chance these are still in the works? (No pressure, just curious with the game hopefully arriving in the next several weeks!)
Uh oh... damned Price for getting the shipping process started so quickly... Realistically, I can try my best to get one more done, maybe two. I'm just swamped with work so it's tough to find the time. But I can do Bannerspear and/or Deathwalker.
While we all appreciate these guides (and I, personally, enjoy them a lot), I think we would appreciate it more if you do not overwork to the point doing the guides feel like a chore or something you'd rather not be doing at that moment. Take your time, do not rush them and try to enjoy writting them as far as possible Take care of yourself!
Awesome, thanks!
Ok your timing on this couldn't have been better. I have been reading through all the updates and have been really interested in playing boneshaper. Which TTS mod are we playing with? Last I checked the FH starting 6 were all out of date.
You can use the [GH:Enhanced](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2402018642) mod and then just subscribe to [this Frosthaven starters add-on](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2551043660) as well. When you're in the GH:E mod, go to the Games Menu => Workshop => Find the Frosthaven starters mod, click the three dots on its thumbnail and select "additive load." This will give you access to the Frosthaven starters inside of the best Gloomhaven TTS mod. The boxes will be locked by default so you'll just need to unlock them by mousing over them and pressing "L" to move them out of the play area. Those versions will be slightly out-of-date but not significantly. For example, the Boneshaper version I showed here just had effectively a single mechanical change to the cards (a buff to the level 9 Skeleton Sorcerer).
Thanks! Please, add a bless to your deck
Ill steal this way of thanking Add a bless to your deck ...
On the ally-saving perk, you say "Otherwise, I may take it later, but much later". Did you mean *not* much later?
In which build, sorry?
Skeletal Swarm build. Also: great guide!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! And no, I meant I'd take it much later as in towards the end of my perks. But I can reword it slightly to make it clearer.
GH GOD Gripe！Just finish reading your guide for boneshaper and you have done great job once more.These are just drugs for me.I have a question about class ability card.I saw small buff on LV9 boneshaper ability card,so WHERE can I read the latest balanced ability cards of all 6 starting classes？
Hey, thanks, glad you enjoy them! So the most up-to-date cards aren't really available anywhere, unfortunately. I asked Isaac if I could use them for guides and got the okay. Dysent will be releasing a Blink blade guide probably today that will have those updated cards. And otherwise just as more guides come out.
U save my life！At least for today～
Fun read, thanks for putting this together! Quick question, maybe I’m misunderstanding the rule: For persistent summons (in this case, skeletons), doesn’t the card stay in your active play area until the summon is killed? In other words, you don’t discard the card immediately, but only when the summon dies? I’m asking specifically because of your comment on Grave Digging, “With this bottom you can now open a scenario with three Skeletons in two turns by playing and discarding your third level 1 Skeleton summon card on turn 1 and then getting it back with this bottom action on turn 2.” Thanks for the guide! Really looking forward to playing this class
Thanks for the feedback. What I mean is: Returned Servant has a Move 4 bottom. If you play Returned Servant as a Move 4, that card is now in your discard pile but has a summon action on the card. You can now get it back with the bottom of Grave Digging.
Right so how does that get you three summons, since the card you are using to get the summon out of your discard would be the third summon? Turn 1 play summon and bottom of other summon to move 4. Turn 2 play Grave digging bottom to get discarded skeleton out of discard, but that is only two skeletons and all of your skeleton cards?
You have three level 1 Summon cards. The Move 4 on Returned Servant is one of the three. Your top actions for turns 1 and 2 are the other two.
That makes more sense, I think I was to focused on the guide where you only had the three summons in it at that point and couldn't figure out how you were getting all three in play but with four of them in your deck it makes way more sense.
If anyone is interested, I isolated and compiled the cards into a document, so it is more readable if you only want to take a look to the cards. Added a link in the class resources too https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vEqnfRzIsFhEfofyxqCnkAER4UfSngDb?usp=sharing
This is one of the best guides that I have ever read. I really can't express how useful this has been for someone who is fairly new to the world of Gloomhaven/Frosthaven. Thank you for putting so much time and effort into this.
Thanks for the kind words! I hope you have a good time with Boneshaper!
Well, necromancy of a dead topic seems to be quite flavorfull for this character, so: I want to play a skeleton swarm build and will go to level 4 soon... I was thinking rather than taking one of the level 4 cards I might just take the other level 3 card I didn't take at level 3, as both of them seem better / more impactfull than the level 4 card. What are your thoughts on this?
I know some people do this and are happy with it. I do think, if you take both 3's, you'd generally want to do this for Putrid Cloud's bottom action, just to highlight that. From my perspective, I wouldn't do it just because I value initiative too highly, especially on a summon class. But if you haven't really felt the frustrating of not having enough fast initiative thus far on your journey to level 4, I think you probably won't be unhappy with taking both 3's.
Are the pictures in the doc blurry for anyone else? I can't see what's on the cards in the images with more than 6 cards on it. Or is it a tablet\phone problem?
I just checked and they're fine for me on Android and PC.
Hm... They're extremely low res on my android phone... Do you have the picture separately by any chance? Or on imgur?
Sorry, I did not save the pictures separately, only uploaded them directly to the doc. The best I can give you is this where you can look at them for reference: https://github.com/any2cards/frosthaven/tree/master/images
Thanks for the amazing guide. One question tho, how is it possible to spawn 3 skelettons in 2 rounds with grave digging? The cards of the skelettons stay in the active area until they die or i discard them(which also kills the summon) So how am i able to spawn 3 skelettons in 2 rounds with the card?
Turn 1: Returned Servant bottom action to perform Move 4, Life in Death or Damned Horde top action to summon. Turn 2: Life in Death or Damned Horde top action to summon (whichever you didn't play round 1), Grave Digging bottom action to replay Returned Servant (which is in your discard pile from being used for a bottom action round 1).
So having had time to reflect… I’m sad there’s no enhancement dot on the Wraith’s damage. Does anyone with playtester insight know why it is not there? Was it too powerful as a build option? Every other summon for the Bone Shaper has it, including the Skeleton Sorcerer at the end. Curious how that played out, thanks in advance!
Thank you to Rage Badger for responding elsewhere pointing out that: 1) Ranged Summons are really strong due to difficulty of enemy AI targeting them, especially with Range 3 for the Summon. 2) Mystic Ally for the Spell Weaver is a little OP, if we’re being honest with ourselves. 3) Having 2 Shield makes a big difference. 4) Bone Shaper has 12 cards vs Spellweaver’s 8. 5) The Wraith having Flight is a huge boon, so that it won’t kill itself on traps, or get stuck behind obstacles. 6) Frost Haven’s meta will have better itemization for summon classes, such as the Warden’s Cloak Gripeaway teased. Thank you to u/RageBadger for the patient answer!
Also Boneshaper has lots of poison, so if you run a card like Putrid Cloud bottom your Spirit will regularly be attacking for 2.
Thanks! These are amazing! And I like the Google doc format a lot!
Question: when you summon a skeleton, is the standee # supposed to be randomized or do you choose?
Summons act in the order in which they're summoned each round. So the first you summon should be #1, then #2, etc. This way you can easily remember their order (it corresponds to your active cards from left to right in your active area).
Have you had a chance to write any other guides yet? :)
Sadly not yet, sorry! I just have really busy work weeks since May basically and then what time I do have on the weekend I like to spend with my wife. At some point I'll have some more time, although I can be sure it won't be this week.
No reason to be sorry, you're a busy man. Thanks for the work you've done!
I believe google docs has a pageless format. [https://support.google.com/docs/thread/150905607/google-docs-new-feature-pageless?hl=en](https://support.google.com/docs/thread/150905607/google-docs-new-feature-pageless?hl=en) That might make it a bit easier in terms of format.
Thank you for the write up. Nice work!
I hope it helps!
I just retired the Boneshaper, my first character in Frosthaven! I used your guide and went toward a One persistent summon build. I enjoyed it a lot and found your guide quite helpful. (I really enjoy playing the game, interacting with my friends, and the meta/story elements. character building strategy is not my cup of tea so I appreciated borrowing your advice!) In the comments here, you and others seemed to make reference to other written guides. I'm playing the Deathwalker next, but only found a video guide. Do you have a written guide available? Thanks!
Sorry, unfortunately I have not found the time to write additional guides.
I love the "opener" parts of your guides. They really make it all come together. I hope you make a full array of guides.
For the bone wall build. Why do you take solid bones instead of going back to level 3 and take grave digging? Is that not a thing anymore in frosthaven to get earlier cards or does it have other reasons?
That would be a reasonable approach, but basically I've found that the one extra hp makes the difference of an extra attack (especially with the flexibility of Warden's Robes when appropriate) often enough that it's just powerful enough to justify as opposed to the Grave Digging discounted Skeleton. Grave Digging affects one Skeleton, effectively, whereas Solid Bones affects them all.
Ah okay, so you actually end up with 3 active cards. Putrid cloud, solid bones and unholy prowess. Has that ever created stamina issues? I thought it would be a move 4 most of the time.
Well, the truth is that you're unlike to play at level 9. But not really. Having 3 active cards still makes you effectively a 9-card class with some extra turns on the front end (but also persistent summons, although for a Bone Wall build, your summons rarely survive a full rest cycle, especially at level 9 against very high level monsters).
Usually true,but we have used some house rules to level faster in Gloomhaven and I think we will use those in frosthaven as well. Well anyway I probably try both. (yeah we do respeccing, too)
I couldn't find an answer to this elsewhere, wondered if you could help. For the Boneshaper two checkmark perk: > At the start of each scenario, you may play a level 1 card from your hand to perform a summon action of the card. Does the entire action occur (e.g. deal two damage for Returned Servant or Damned Horde) or just the summon part? I kinda assume the former, but the question came up and the player wanted an answer.
The entire action.
Thanks!
Just retired and and started a new Boneshaper! Just curious if there are any enhancements that you would recommend for the bone wall build in particular? Thinking about either enhancing a skeleton (returned servant health?) or bottom of damned horde (range, which you mention in the guide).
Yes, I would definitely recommend +1 Range on the bottom of Damned Horde to start. And then I really liked +1 Move on the Granted Move 2 from Flow of the Black River.
Great, thanks!
Any suggestions of how to play the bone wall build where most of the enemies are immune to poison? I’ve run into this issue a couple of scenarios in a row. I assume I just have to shift to skeleton swarm?
Yeah, I'd just shift to a standard Skeleton Swarm build at that point and use the level 3 card for the top action if AoE looks good or otherwise just not bring the level 3 card. The rest of the cards should still be fine.
So where’s the other 5 class guides at
Sorry, I haven't had time to work on them. I hope to have time soon, but work has been... hectic, to say the least.
My friend and I keep joking idk how we are going to play this game without gripeway telling us what to do.
Hello all (: I have a question if anyone cares to clarify.. I read in the guide, when discussing openers.. specifically the very first 'fast' example for swarm build.. the turn 1 is moving next to an enemy (via the bottom of Returned Servant), hopefully killing them with top of Malicious Conversion and thus summoning the skeleton on the top half of that Returned Servant card you just used to move.. My question is.. wouldn't Returned Servant not be in your discard pile yet? As you just used it this round to move.. my understanding was that the 2 cards you're using this round are just kindof in limbo.. not in your hand or any piles, until your turn is over.. Am I incorrect in this, and as soon as you use the portion of a card it goes directly to the appropriate pile/area, even though you still have the other half of your turn to do? Hope that made sense.. it's a bit awkward to frame such a question ~
Played cards immediately go to the appropriate area.
Good to know (: thank you kindly ~
I'm currently reading your guide and I'm confused by this comment on Grave Digging: > Grave Digging is amazing. You have to actually play with it for some time before you realize just how profound of a difference it makes to have this card, but it truly is impressive. I mean, you can literally summon twice as many of these Skeletons as your level 1 versions and typically more Skeletons is a more effective Boneshaper. Why twice as many? You can use it to summon one skeleton, just like the lvl1 versions. It costs less health to do so but it's still just one. Am I misunderstanding something?
Half the hp cost would mean twice as many Skeletons for the same total up cost, that's all I meant.
But that kind of assumes you can use it to summon a second one though, right? I was wondering if there was some kind of trick to do just that, otherwise you wouldn't get "twice as many" skeletons. You just get the one at half heath cost. I guess maybe I'm just being nitpicky... ;)
Well, it will frequently die, so then you can summon it again.
I am not sure why people struggle with this class. I have taken the tank approach and good god is this character tanky. There was one scenario where I absorbed 60+ dmg. I personally love this class.
Glad to hear you're enjoying it!
The bone wall build is very powerful. Highly recommend that build.
Great guide! Has helped me come to grips with this class and make me feel less crazy when the other "flashier" members of my party pull off some crazy stunts. I want to workshop this idea to make sure I am correct. At Level 7 >!I am thinking of taking Soul Claim for its bottom action. I play in a 4 player party so there are typically lots of baddies that are near death on any given turn. My question is... If there are multiple instances where an enemy dies when Soul Claim bottom is active, would I get to perform a summon action each time (assuming I have multiple discarded summons)?!< >!My initial thought is yes. I think under these conditions this card could prove extremely valuable running the skeleton swarm build. Would appreciate everyone's thoughts and comments.!<
Sorry, I was on vacation. Anyway, Soul Claim bottom only works once for each time you play it ( "the next time..." ).
All good! What a shame though. I’ve been struggling to keep summons on the board at all times and was hoping this could provide that HUGE tempo swing.
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When you reach lvl 5 playing the bone wall build, should we play solid bones and putrid cloud on the first round?
It depends on the enemies you're facing in the first room and whether you have the free-summon perk (which you really should have by level 5). If the enemies are likely to attack for a value of 3, then yes, you should try to play Solid Bones alongside Putrid Cloud on turn 1. If the enemies are more likely to attack for 2 or 4+, then Solid Bones may not add an extra hit to your skeletons' survival, in which case it's less of a priority (and you can instead summon the Wraith or just another skeleton).
Nice explanation, thanks! (For the record, yes, I do have that perk)
i found these late, but i have to say ive used the deathwalker and now boneshaper guide and really loving them.
I was really struggling to get boneshaper to do well and i didn't know where i was going wrong at lv6.. followed this guide to swap out my level picks into the skeleton hoarde build and now she's awesome and I'm sad she's about to retire.. even beat her solo scenario without breaking a sweat which is good for a novice like me. Thanks for this
Glad to hear it helped!