Its awesome, I came to frosthaven straight from Jaws of the Lion so there's a lot more new stuff for me but its been an incredible experience exploring the game. We are 5 sessions in with a blinkblade and a deathwalker. We don't really have a tank so I (blinkblade) have to take a lot of the damage. I like that there is enough flexibility in the cards to make that manageable by supporting a lot of different builds with very few available cards.
I want to love it more than I do! Found the lack of stuns/disarms really affect the difficulty, and the city building is somewhat underwhelming and a lot of paperwork. City attacks and town guard are pretty underwhelming. Playing two player and struggle a lot of the time, and scenarios are sometimes pretty complex. Might try 2-handing as you suggest. But still overall 9/10 I’d say!
@@oliwhitworth8088 totally agree with lack of stuns/disarm. A lot of the changes seem to have been for the betterment of the game system rather than fun necessarily. You can still put together really fun and impactful turns, but the peaks and troughs have been levelled out considerably. There was a charm to the sometimes OP and janky nature of GH that's been lost.
Great video! My party has also been humbled coming over to FH from GH… in GH we regularly played on +1 difficulty but now we are losing almost 50% of the time on normal difficulty! Shows how much we relied on the cheesy mechanics like invisibility in door, Stam potions, repeatable stuns
Oh my. Im meeting my party 2-3 times per year 🤣 been playing Gloomhaven campaign 2+ years. Been fun tho!!! It seems our Gloomhaven campaign is coming to an end soon and Frosthaven is already waiting. Loving every moment I've had in Gloomhaven and I'm sure I will with Frosthaven 😊
Loving your Frosthaven vids - still got a few sessions of Gloomhaven to go, but itching to get into FH. Our box is still sealed, but I don’t know how my mates have trusted me to look after it! 😂😂
Fantastic summary. Agree with all of that. My feelings: 1. Items being weaker matter a great deal. Especially covering weaknesses. 2. You don’t need the tank, healer etc. But, having characters that are weak in a particular area can be noticeable if enemies or scenarios exploit it. Playing against heavy retaliate is hard without a decent health pool or healing. 3. Difficulty has been dependent on setting up a strategy early on. Failing to do it can be more fatal. 4. Outpost phase - not sure I like it. It’s too much bookkeeping. But I can see other people really loving it. It’s not badly done - just time Vs fun is too low in this phase. 5. Monsters are better. I found GH monsters design frustrating because "kill priority" was often the same for all enemies. Both FH and JotL had more distinct rewards for prioritising one monster over another. This can really encourage interesting tactical play. Taking out a back line enemy. I’m a player that likes strategising the scenario as a whole. Not sure everyone does. I like the cool moments this leads to. Clever and memorable moments. I think Frosthaven has this in spades. I don’t think I’d ever want to go back to the more generic scenarios of GH.
Also items taking quite a long time to unlock is a bit of a problem too. Multiple times I've upgraded the Craftsman and been like "oh none of these items are an upgrade for me" which has been a bit disappointing. Perhaps they should have less levels on the Craftsman building and more items unlock each time.
@@MandatoryQuest True. I remember one level unlocking which had zero interesting items. The level after was fantastic though. So it was like a gate to get to the good one.
Much like you, we found the overhead admin part of the outpost phase feeling much like paperwork. After playing through to midwinter with one retirement, we put our two-player game on hold for a while. We were backers on the second edition of Crimson Scales, and that showed up not long after Frosthaven. Playing both, we enjoyed the "fire and forget" method of Scales and Gloomhaven over the extra 30 minutes postscenario of Frosthaven admin. I have a job that requires me to do admin, so doing it in my fun time is not so great.
I definitely understand where you are coming from as I also spend a lot of time during the day staring at paperwork. I also always get that nagging feeling I'm missing something because of all the admin.
Hey, MQ! Been loving Frosthaven a lot so far! My local 3p group of Banner Spear, Blinkblade (me), and Geminate was able to take care of each scenario so far minus Jagged Shoals (we had to come back to that one, but were able to do it second time around). The scenarios seem much harder, but they're not impossible; feel like there's a good "difficulty sandwich" for most of the scenarios that's like "this is fine, this is tough, this is fine". Waiting in-game weeks for doing some things wasn't really a problem until we realized later that one of our personal quest's was a scenario questline that requires to wait many in-game weeks before continuing it with possibly multiple periods of in-game weeks to wait in between, but we'll live; there's still so much to do, just wish we started it sooner. We're about 12 scenarios in and we've got snowflake, trap, and coral lined up to play once we retire (our Geminate's about to retire and it's almost a sure-thing they're going to pick up coral). Favorite scenario we've done so far is probably The Realm of Endless Frost. Keep rockin' it! 👍
I've only hit a couple scenarios that have been run stoppers, but like you say you can usually just come back to it later. The wide number of directions you can go with scenarios is a great improvement in FH. I don't feel like you're blocked from some level of campaign progress. Calendar isn't too much of an issue for me, but yeah can be a little bit frustrating if you try and plan out retirements to sync up and don't realise.
I've hit a few that were redos playing solo with 2 characters...but then I dont think my characters were working well together nor the right sort for those scenarios (one scenario required me to play in a completely different way to what I had been to be able to finish it, stupid explosives). Only had 1 redo in my group of 4 though, also Jagged Shoals...but then I dont think we have tried anything particularly challenging as a group yet. For Jagged Shoals we just changed what we did round 1, and had new battle goals, and were fine afterwards. Hell we did 1 scenario 3 player, found out about an extra loss condition when Drifter opened the door to room 3 while Geminate and Boneshaper (me) were still in room 1, and we managed to win (thank the Aesther my skeles were in room 2).
Yeah I agree the difficulty has been alright with us. We've lost about 3 scenarios in about 40 scenarios. Coral is pretty amazing. I think the geminate player is going to love it. My favourite missions are often the "single large room" scenarios. I liked the elevator one. Many of the thematic missions and side missions have been great too. The writing in FH is so much better than GH. Though the game can get a bit "wordy" when it comes to new town developments. I'm not sure I need to read extensive passages about the Town Hall being built.
@@dannyf1168 I can recommended Foreteller as I just chuck it on in the background and listen while I move on to the next step. Might help break up some of the longer reading bits for you.
@@MandatoryQuest I have forteller. I love it. But during an Outlook phase with 4+ sections to reference and read. It becomes a bit much to even listen to. We might be unlocking stuff at an unnaturally faster rate though. I like powergaming out the strategic level. So we always strategise the quickest way to get things. But maybe to our detriment - as it can be exhausting.
I agree with your thoughts on the 2player composition. been playing with my gf and we're probably 40ish scenarios in or more and we get the feeling that we cannot make any mistakes with our turns if we want to succeed a scenario.
Very nice review, my friend. I'm so used to playing characters until Level 9, but I guess that's not happening as often in Frosthaven if retirements are regularly occurring after 15 scenarios.
I am in about 4 scenarios after just completing Gloomhaven. Group of four friends every other week, which is great so far. The complexity is definitely up a level but I can appreciate what they did to balance it and ask for more engagement such as updates to resources and events. The scenarios I have seen have been shorter and maybe ask for you to burn cards more than most Gloomhaven maps. I feel like I have to prioritize looting more and bringing my loot card more often is a good way to up the difficulty.
Looting being way more impactful with the buildings/crafting is a great addition. It feels like even when you are flush with loot there's always a reason to get more, and also with random items being hidden in there sometimes you really want to dig for them.
13:14 stun rarity in the frosthaven starters made initiative weaving so much more important and tanking more challanging. We play with solorules so we can sprak frealy but we also dont rise the difficult level beyond that like we used to do.. we even dont do the additional goals u can choose to play every scenario if it is to difficult.
You're valuations of gold vs resources is extremely counter to mine so far. I'm only 6 scenarios in atm, but we have tons of gold. Were not lite on resources, but them and especially herbs are what were really hungry for. Thanks for the video buddy 😀
It might be that you have been a bit unlucky so far? I think it will take a good sample set before it all balances out, but its most noticeable when you retire or start a completely new party.
I just got my Frosthaven and haven’t started playing yet. It’s good to hear that it has a lot more twist than Gloomhaven. If players can play the same way, we don’t need a new game, perhaps an expansion is enough. Thanks for the great review. I am really looking forward to FH now. 😊
I have not jumped in yet, as we are about to finish Gloomhaven. Which sucks because I haven't watched any of your coverage due to spoilers. Hoping to catch up and watch some content soon.
18:17 yea the suprise of the last room when u have suddenly to defend somthing or last whay longer then u thought.. might be a replay from start as soon as you read the text of the last room.. is a pain ig u dont have the spear time that evening to retry and going in knowingly u wont manage is also defeting.
After playing through Jaws, Gloomhaven, and Forgotten Circles, I am really enjoying how much variety there is in each scenario in Frosthaven. It's more akin to Forgotten Circles which my group has enjoyed the most.
You might be the first person I've heard say that forgotten circles is your favourite. A lot of people were not a fan of the bits that broke it up mid scenario in FC. I haven't had anything like that in FH yet, but certainly every scenario feels very unique with thematic rules.
@MandatoryQuest I'm not sure what you are referring to by FC "bits that broke it up mid scenario"...do you mean the separate section book you have to read after you open a door? Just like Frosthaven does? I thought that addition was great and so were the scenario ideas. The only big downfall to FC is that you MUST use the Diviner class throughout the expansion, and it was a decent class but not amazing. Otherwise, I think it was very unique with the scenario design. It's much like Frosthaven in that way, but I think they perfected it in FH.
@@MandatoryQuest Makes sense! I suggest it only because I think it would make your video perform better for the algorithm. I think quite a few people would want to jump to the tips at the end.
4:31 with two player, party composition is key. You need a frontline tank and a damage character, otherwise you're going to find it pretty difficult - unless you lower the difficulty of course.
Never played gloomhaven. We went straight of jaws to frosthaven. My cousin though the 2nd frosthaven meant that it was going to be in book form like jaws. He was run. But we've been having fun. We are a group of 3 (hubs me and my cousin) and play about 2-5x/week depending on what we got going on. Most scenarios we can play fine but we sometimes hit scenarios that really suck for our party composition. Hubs retired a character and was playing a new character that does mainly melee damage and is very tanky so mostly low damage but all the monsters had shields or retaliates.
I have received my frosthaven box, but my group is playing crimson scales now. So I probably have to find a new group for frosthaven, or wait 2 years or something to finish crimson scales.(only playing once every 2 weeks at best) But one thing I noticed about frost haven is how much more limiting the stamina potion is. And control abilties seem alot less there. Alot less stun, less disarms, etc. My first gloomhaven character was the mindthief. I loved doing the ranged stun generate ice and do the heavy attack stun using the ice the next turn. I don't expect frosthaven classes being able to do that.
You can do some similar things on certain characters, but it requires more work and setup. The characters can be very rewarding when you pull off the setups and combos so I think you'll enjoy it. Hopefully you can find a group to start your FH.
Nice video! Interesting that you said you never use the various buildings to buy resources. I am the opposite, I seem to end up with way more money than i can use and not enough resources, so i have to buy them up. I'm about 35 scenarios into the game now. The storyline is amazing, glad that there are multiple main quests going on. I have found some of the scenarios with "spawn a monster every round" a bit tedious after a while. Some characters I loved (blinkblade, drifter and boneshaper) and others i have found really difficult to manage (bannerspear) and some took me a while to get going (Geminate and Deathwalker). Loot system is great, but the lack of good equipment is a bit annoying. The new buildings are a nice new mechanic and i really enjoy the calendar of events to look forward to.
I'm actually using the camps a bit more now they are level 2 . I'm trying to have a nice smooth transition between parties, so It makes sense to dump my gold reserves into materials and stock up FH for when we start with no materials again.
Thanks, some of the clearest most concise communication out there. Are you having any major issues with the Boneshaper? 15 scenarios in and I'm finding that the Skeletons are severely under powered, dying too easily and don't hit hard enough, there are some brutal scenarios out there that I can't ever imagine winning with these blundering bony friends. More often than not I find myself just racing to get another skeleton on the board as a shield to prevent yourself from taking the hits, they're lucky to survive a round or 2 then the race is on again. Meanwhile you're making no progress in the scenario. Some of the later summons are much more able, but if you luck out on a short rest and lose them, it's not a good outlook for the boneshaper. Any tips would be appreciated :)
I haven't played the Boneshaper yet I'm afraid, but I have heard similar problems from other players. Are you initiative dancing efficiently to go late when summoning, then early to have at least one good turn of attacks with your summons? Most summoning characters really hinge around this concept of weaving your own initiative well alongside your allies too.
@@MandatoryQuest Thanks for the response. I'm doing as much as I can with initiative but the Boneshaper has very limited options when it comes to early initiative cards, which makes it a difficult summoner to get the hang of. I imagine Boneshaper would be a great support in a 3-4 player team, but with 2 players it does often suffer from feeling like a bit of dead weight. That said, after a few quick level ups it is starting to show a lot more promise.
Great video! I've been playing through 2p solo. And have found some of the problems you have with only having the 2 characters. Would love to play 3, but just don't have the extra time to commit to the extra turns. Just want to play through and have fun. So it can be a bit frustrating at times. I do love the app and narration support however. That does speed things up, so I might think about adding in the 3rd if I can get in enough of a rhythm, but my sessions have been a little too sporadic due to life recently. I wish i could hang out on your stream more, but you've vaulted so far ahead, I'm trying not to know too much beforehand. Don't mind the light spoiler here and there, but not too many. Keep up the great work!
With the complexity of the characters and scenarios it can be exhausting controlling just 2 sometimes. I know a lot of people cant pop in to the stream at the moment because of spoilers so its all good. Hopefully in the future we will all be caught up :)
I think there's a chance that unbalanced things in the players favor in GH (starting items, broken cards, etc) may have masked some of the problems you talk about here. I mean try Scoundrel and Mindthief, two very strong classes, in a scenario like Abandoned Sewers where you're swarmed with enemies and they mostly can attack one thing a turn. Or imp balance being way off so levels with imps being way more difficult than intended. Or functionally limitless enemy range as you level up meaning that it forced you down a certain play style (invis, mass CC, room clearing abilities) in order to survive. I mean you're right that in GH you can just choose not to play the broken cards. I played Mindthief to retirement at +0 difficulty never using TMW on GH Digital just to test that out; but at some point if you play higher that breaks down as the class abilities were built around that card! So I think we may be looking back at GH with a bit more rose colored glasses than it warrants in a few situations, in large part because as the game goes on you just don't lose anymore, and we tend to question things a lot more after a loss than a win.
Totally agree with winning masking issues. That's true in any game I think, and it takes both time and a critical approach to be able to spot that. In GH increased difficulty feels like something that any party with the right items and piloted by good players can aspire to, but FH feels much more like it's reserved for the better synergy parties and top end level and item play. GH was ultimately an unbalanced mess, a beautiful mess, but still a mess. FH puts a lot of things right but that will not necessarily be to everyone's liking.
WOW! I agree! I'd totally forgotten about my biggest annoyance with Gloomhaven Scenario design. The opening door strategy Vs massive range. You open a door to a circular room with nowhere to hide. 3-5 enemies inside. If you step in you die. One turn wasted (tick tock). Next turn you need to wait for your team - going in solo will be too dangerous. Another turn wasted (tick tock). You think - OK. It's just not safe base on what cards they drew this turn. Another turn (tick tock). You go slow hoping they will move close enough. Nope. They didn't move (tick tock). Ranged enemies pepper you from a huge distance - you should have gone in earlier ... I can't put my finger on why this happened in GH - but not in JotL or FH. But it was a frustrating slow way to play. I really didn't think it was good - and I ended up leaning HEAVILY on invisibility.
@@dannyf1168 The big difference is in JOTL/FH the ranges are on the cards themselves and don't increase with enemy level, so there are just more instances where enemies cant immediately hit you from across the room.
I've played for around 20 Frosthaven scenarios so far, and the main difference I've noticed between Gloomhaven and Frostahven is how dangerous the ranged enemies are. Forced movement and focus manipulation I've found are a lot less effective on them, especially if they can fly. Any suggestions to make dealing with ranged enemies more manageable?
I've found archers actually a bit easier in FH due to them not having scaling range anymore and less movement. Shrike Fiends however are actually the worse enemies ever created. I have found getting up in their face fairly effective as they often cant move away so will have to attack with disadvantage.
Frosthavens great! other than the fact many masteries are "fuck around and wast some turns" or "play worse temporarily" rather than some masterful thing.
I haven't been doing the masteries because like you say they often aren't just "play really well" but actually very risky. In a 3 or 4P party I could see you telling everyone "I'm gonna force this" but at 2P I just want to win really without any distractions.
We've been strategizing actively around one of us getting a mastery done so far every now and again when we encounter a scenario that seems like it has potential. 4 player party. It really adds some nice extra risk management too the game :)
Too much to summarize but I've been most frustrated by the wackiness of scenario design. It does seem to undermine the agency of players who are just wanting to use their character's abilities. [Fabricated to avoid spoilers] "Neeto, I've just opened this new character who has a lightning mechanic where they build up electricity points and then shoots lighting... this looks amazing!!!" Mission: Deliver these twelve blueberry pies to hungry patrons while juggling bananas. Also, 40 sheep spawn from odd lettered pillars every prime numbered turn. "Wot? I guess I'll use the bottom half of 'Catastrophic Lightning Storm' for its move 3??"
I have also thought about this too. Many times scenarios have tried to be too clever for their own good. That's what I'm alluding to when I say every scenario has a twist. It's not always a bad twist or unfun, but it's sometimes frustrating when all you want to do is play your character's mechanics. efficiently, but you have to keep making odd choices to satisfy the goal.
My solution to this is to play random scenarios as a ‘palate-cleanser’ after a particularly irksome mission, and also when introducing a new character (to give the player a chance to find out how it plays before its core mechanic has to be ignored or is nerfed by a core scenario).
19:21 “….playing like the big dumb brute….” What a missed opportunity to say “balanced measure” instead of “measured approach”. You even got the matching t-shirt and all xD
Problem with boneshaper is in 4 player game, when your character is boneshaper, it's kinda boring to summon skeletons to just tank damage. It's a great character if your playing more than one character and you use it as support.
Also, wish corpse explosion wasn't a burn. considering boneshaper has terrible initiative values, generally have to not burn it because of its 21 initiative. Maybe if it burned the skeleton card instead? Only reason I keep it is for initiative, doesn't seem balanced. Maybe I'm bad, tho, I dunno.
I've also been thinking that quite a few characters add tiles to the board and at 4p I can imagine the board gets incredibly busy. I bet the same is true for Boneshaper with the summons.
Exploding Corpse does feel like a corner stone type card (especially coming from a Diablo background) so having it as a burn does seem a bit harsh. Maybe nerf the attack down to just attack 2 but make it reusable. I guess though the design decision was to have a great attack all style burn on the character, so perhaps you'd need to switch another card around too.
I played in 2/3 player - but understand where you're coming from. Solo Monster summoning focus is pretty good. I think you could focus more on "support" as well. Depends on party make up - you didn't need to tank though. If someone else is doing it - stay back build up a ball of summons.
@@dannyf1168 I've tried to set up a bunch of summons. Noticed two issues: it takes a lot of turns to build up summons, most of that time your doing nothing because it's a top action, sometimes you end up inadvertently tanking damage because your summons still act on their own. And finally, most of the scenarios have choke points, either thru obstacles or tiles chosen. Too many summons clogs things up and makes it hard for them and your companions to move. I find the best way to play is to use summons to set up banner spear formations and tank damage. Everything just doesn't seem to work as well for me
Played about 8 missions with 2 players each one using two characters me blink blade and banner spear him with fist and bone shaper. We are loving it but it takes a long time for each mission.
Did you consider or try playing just 1 each or did you just go straight to 2 each? I'm interested if people other than solo players/streamers have tried just 2.
I'm new to the system, trying Solo mode (2 characters) at Recommended Difficulty and I literally cannot win even Scenario 1 and 2. 😕 It feels like the maps are sooooooo long, and my characters are just... slow. Inevitably, I just run out of cards and hit Exhaustion sometime around Room 3. I realize I could lower the Scenario difficulty i guess, but it really feels so disappointing to get this kind of intro after the rave reviews I was reading. The game is more of a "bash your head against the wall, restarting scenarios several times" than I expected.
Damn really not sure if I should buy it when it releases in germany :/ So a mate introduced me with JotL and his experience is also pretty much only JotL and like 3-4 Scenarios from Gloomhaven. I played half through Gloomhaven digital now on +1 Difficulty and it's feeling very comfy on +1. I would do a 2 player playthrough with the same mate now but he is more of the type to just take the cards that sound cool instead of really strategizing in depth which card is better (like me lol) And obviously I wouldn't try to talk him into taking cards he doesnt want or even tell him how to play, that's not fun for anyone :p So do you think we would manage to go through Frosthaven on normal difficulty with me having a bit more Gloomhaven experience and him only having JotL? Since a scenario takes 2-3 hours each it gets really frustrating if you end up having to repeat a scenario after 3 hours because the game screws you over with a late minute setup change :/
FH has much better balance with cards than GH so there's a lot less "bad" or less optimal cards, so your friend should still be able to have fun without feeling like its sacrificing anything. Normal difficulty is what I would recommend as 2 players and only 2 mercs is IMO a harder experience anyway due to gaps in your party composition. This is where your friend could struggle because sometimes at 2 mercs you just need to take things that give you flexibility. In FH there is a lot more reason to change your cards between scenarios than GH. If you could play 2 mercs each then that would be ideal really as you can then go hard on one strategy with a character without leaving you with an obvious gap.
@@MandatoryQuest yeah don't think we would go for 2 each as it is even more Admin we'd have to do ^^" More monsters, more choices, more tactics. I wish the scenarios were just a tad bit shorter. Each one is such a huge time commitment
@rigdigwus yeah FH scenarios are I would say generally a little bit longer due to the variety of styles and win conditions. The actual number of tiles and rounds is mostly the same as GH though
I actually never did a formal review as it felt a bit irrelevant by the time I started making videos. But as a mini review I think Jaws is the best Gloomhaven product they have ever released excluding FH at the moment.
PQ Aesther Outpost has you waiting after the first scenario (which is unlocked as soon as you select that PQ)...do that ASAP, and the next thing ASAP. For the outpost phase and purchasing materials. I didn't buy much in the way of materials until my first pair of characters were full decked out and getting closer to retiring, then upon retiring dumped all the material resources into Frosthaven's supply. With the second pair I was buying materials pretty much as soon as I could, mostly so I could craft the gear they needed, and was using the materials in Forsthaven's supply to build/upgrade buildings. Once they had been decked out I was spending all the money I could get on materials so I ended up with a little over 20 of each material in Frosthaven's supply after they retired. Current pair of characters are in the process of decking themselves out with gear, but since I had so many materials in Frosthaven's supply I'm pretty much always able to build/upgrade something during construction despite looting less with these characters that I did with the first four.
So basically looting has been fine for you? My thought is that while looting then building and crafting feels fun it's actually a very forgiving and easy mechanic. It doesn't really add or subtract from the difficulty of the game but it's an extra step that in GH was just given to you.
@@MandatoryQuest Looting has been easy on 3 of the 6 characters I've played...only times I've really felt I'm struggling with resources is starting the campaign, though I've always had enough to do something during construction, and when starting a new character, but only for their individual gear. Then again I have focused heavily on doing that, provided its not too inefficient, in most of the scenarios I've played. Coral and Trap seem to be struggling with collecting loot while Snowflake and Meteor were doing that with no problems at all...well...nearly...you'll understand when you play Meteor, and Boneshaper was grabbing everything that's not nailed down while Banner Spear got practically nothing. I also figured early on that if you aren't going to be enhancing cards, for whatever reason, then gold doesn't really have a purpose when retiring so spending as much as you can on purchasing materials every outpost phase made sense (so long as you keep a small supply spare if you are about to start a new building). Even doing that my Snowflake and Meteor both retired with something like 30 odd gold each. I agree that building, much more so than crafting, is fun but its mostly due to discovering what the building leads to (I tend to focus things that 'reward' a Section number) and yeah it doesn't really affect the difficulty, though having certain buildings wrecked cos you didn't improve your defenses certainly would affect the difficulty.
+ I definitely share the sentiment that the game wasn't entirely optimized for 2p. There are a few scenario that are too gimmicky or flooded with enemies that feel more appropriate for either bigger party or for a different party composition. It does get a bit frustrating when you constantly feel "The scenario obviously says I can do this... but only if I had the right characters". + I agree with the calendar getting annoying at times. Maybe you don't like the current character so you do the scenario to at least complete a retirement goal... except that you have to wait for the next calendar section to finally show up so retirement takes even longer. + Overall I do like Frosthaven but I'd like to see some rebalancing for 2p. (This is just the impression I got, it might be a me problem though, I started playing the Xhavens only at the beginning of the year so I am by no means a veteran)
I get the feeling that haven games will just never be perfect at 2P. If they want to keep creating complicated and interesting scenarios its only going to get worse. The only thing I can think of is to actually change the map or scenario conditions at 2P and not just change the number of enemies, but that's an awful lot of work. The inspiration system is a nice addition but really just a gimmick so you don't fall behind with no other real purpose. I'm sure they know what the most common number of players is (I'm assuming 3 or 4) and have created the game with that in mind then retroactively added things to support 2P.
I don’t think you can keep things tense and interesting at 2 player AND keep it perfectly balanced for any composition. I actually think it’s fine the way it is right now. BUT you need to put in a little effort before the scenario starts analysing the map - enemies and objectives. Then adjusting your card pool accordingly. Random thought - what if you could allow one card swap in during the match for 2 player? That might help with the lack of flexibility.
@Danny F For sure, there's no way the game can be properly balanced for 2p but also for everybody else (like MandatoryQuest said, the main focus is probably 3-4 players). As I said, the problem might just be with my skills ( I'm having a blast with the Deathwalker right now). I should clarify that overall the game is fine. My main gripe is with the overly gimmicky scenarios but, as you said, planning ahead usually compensates for that.
@@dannyf1168 That could work, or you could just encourage people to create more characters but only play 2 each scenario. Treat it a bit like a roster of characters where you select the best for each scenario instead. All characters on your roster still get some XP per scenario so that they all stay at similar levels.
SPOILER. My friends and I are about 80% of the way through. Doing a 3 player game. I like the game a lot. I didn’t think I would be a fan of the outpost/building, but it is fun. SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER….just wish it was a little more obvious on how to unlock characters. We still have 2 characters we haven’t unlocked this late in the campaign. Favorite character I played so far is the Pain Conduit. I also wish the masteries were a little more relevant. Only getting a perk point for completing one seems really meh given how hard they are to complete isn’t really worth it.
Agreed. I think the mastries should have really focused on "hey have you thought of trying out this build"? Not some impossible hoop jumping at level 8.
I'm pretty disappointed on how MUCH they nerfed the Stamina potion. Recover 1 level 1 card and it's unrecoverable. I understand it needed it nerfed but I think they took it too far. They could've not restricted it only to a level 1 card and IMO that would've been nerfed enough.
There might be a better one later (I haven't found it yet if there is) but I actually think its a fine change. It means they can give you powerful cards at higher levels without worrying you'll just loop them constantly. It being unrecoverable hasn't come up for me yet because I haven't seen any ways to get lost small items back yet anyway.
I think its fine. With the nerfed version. When I take stamina potion its because my character REALLY needs it. 9 card class. My favourite is actually the one that does 2 damage - explosive? Early game that's pretty clutch.
Anyone else heard from MQ lately? Last time I saw him was late and he was concerned about his Green Screen because of the Infuser’s card colors. MQ you still out there and OK?
That’s a long winded way to say the game is better at 3 or 4 players. I can only play 2. Playing with 3 is too much on my own and had a great time in GH. I imagine FH will be more or less similar whenever I decide to start my campaign.
So how are you all finding Frosthaven what are your thoughts on the game?
Its awesome, I came to frosthaven straight from Jaws of the Lion so there's a lot more new stuff for me but its been an incredible experience exploring the game. We are 5 sessions in with a blinkblade and a deathwalker. We don't really have a tank so I (blinkblade) have to take a lot of the damage. I like that there is enough flexibility in the cards to make that manageable by supporting a lot of different builds with very few available cards.
I want to love it more than I do! Found the lack of stuns/disarms really affect the difficulty, and the city building is somewhat underwhelming and a lot of paperwork.
City attacks and town guard are pretty underwhelming.
Playing two player and struggle a lot of the time, and scenarios are sometimes pretty complex.
Might try 2-handing as you suggest.
But still overall 9/10 I’d say!
@@oliwhitworth8088 totally agree with lack of stuns/disarm. A lot of the changes seem to have been for the betterment of the game system rather than fun necessarily. You can still put together really fun and impactful turns, but the peaks and troughs have been levelled out considerably. There was a charm to the sometimes OP and janky nature of GH that's been lost.
@@MandatoryQuest we are very much enjoying the potion brewing (highlight, perhaps, of the new systems...).
@@oliwhitworth8088 I enjoy the alchemy board a lot too :)
Great video! My party has also been humbled coming over to FH from GH… in GH we regularly played on +1 difficulty but now we are losing almost 50% of the time on normal difficulty! Shows how much we relied on the cheesy mechanics like invisibility in door, Stam potions, repeatable stuns
Yeah its a real adjustment in your playstyle and expectation of success.
The funny thing is I never got far in gloomhaven so never relied on those crutches. I’m playing frosthaven, having a blast and not lost once yet
This was a fantastic video. So many good general tips without giving away anything from the game. Thank you.
I really enjoy it! My party is not playing frequently enough, so I bought Gloomhaven digital to keep me busy in between our sessions 😂
Definitely not addicted :P
Same for me. My group can only meet twice a month which is not enough!
Oh my. Im meeting my party 2-3 times per year 🤣 been playing Gloomhaven campaign 2+ years. Been fun tho!!! It seems our Gloomhaven campaign is coming to an end soon and Frosthaven is already waiting. Loving every moment I've had in Gloomhaven and I'm sure I will with Frosthaven 😊
Loving your Frosthaven vids - still got a few sessions of Gloomhaven to go, but itching to get into FH. Our box is still sealed, but I don’t know how my mates have trusted me to look after it! 😂😂
Fantastic summary. Agree with all of that. My feelings:
1. Items being weaker matter a great deal. Especially covering weaknesses.
2. You don’t need the tank, healer etc. But, having characters that are weak in a particular area can be noticeable if enemies or scenarios exploit it. Playing against heavy retaliate is hard without a decent health pool or healing.
3. Difficulty has been dependent on setting up a strategy early on. Failing to do it can be more fatal.
4. Outpost phase - not sure I like it. It’s too much bookkeeping. But I can see other people really loving it. It’s not badly done - just time Vs fun is too low in this phase.
5. Monsters are better. I found GH monsters design frustrating because "kill priority" was often the same for all enemies. Both FH and JotL had more distinct rewards for prioritising one monster over another. This can really encourage interesting tactical play. Taking out a back line enemy.
I’m a player that likes strategising the scenario as a whole. Not sure everyone does. I like the cool moments this leads to. Clever and memorable moments. I think Frosthaven has this in spades. I don’t think I’d ever want to go back to the more generic scenarios of GH.
Also items taking quite a long time to unlock is a bit of a problem too. Multiple times I've upgraded the Craftsman and been like "oh none of these items are an upgrade for me" which has been a bit disappointing. Perhaps they should have less levels on the Craftsman building and more items unlock each time.
@@MandatoryQuest True. I remember one level unlocking which had zero interesting items. The level after was fantastic though. So it was like a gate to get to the good one.
Much like you, we found the overhead admin part of the outpost phase feeling much like paperwork. After playing through to midwinter with one retirement, we put our two-player game on hold for a while. We were backers on the second edition of Crimson Scales, and that showed up not long after Frosthaven. Playing both, we enjoyed the "fire and forget" method of Scales and Gloomhaven over the extra 30 minutes postscenario of Frosthaven admin. I have a job that requires me to do admin, so doing it in my fun time is not so great.
I definitely understand where you are coming from as I also spend a lot of time during the day staring at paperwork. I also always get that nagging feeling I'm missing something because of all the admin.
Hey, MQ! Been loving Frosthaven a lot so far!
My local 3p group of Banner Spear, Blinkblade (me), and Geminate was able to take care of each scenario so far minus Jagged Shoals (we had to come back to that one, but were able to do it second time around). The scenarios seem much harder, but they're not impossible; feel like there's a good "difficulty sandwich" for most of the scenarios that's like "this is fine, this is tough, this is fine".
Waiting in-game weeks for doing some things wasn't really a problem until we realized later that one of our personal quest's was a scenario questline that requires to wait many in-game weeks before continuing it with possibly multiple periods of in-game weeks to wait in between, but we'll live; there's still so much to do, just wish we started it sooner.
We're about 12 scenarios in and we've got snowflake, trap, and coral lined up to play once we retire (our Geminate's about to retire and it's almost a sure-thing they're going to pick up coral). Favorite scenario we've done so far is probably The Realm of Endless Frost. Keep rockin' it! 👍
I've only hit a couple scenarios that have been run stoppers, but like you say you can usually just come back to it later. The wide number of directions you can go with scenarios is a great improvement in FH. I don't feel like you're blocked from some level of campaign progress. Calendar isn't too much of an issue for me, but yeah can be a little bit frustrating if you try and plan out retirements to sync up and don't realise.
I've hit a few that were redos playing solo with 2 characters...but then I dont think my characters were working well together nor the right sort for those scenarios (one scenario required me to play in a completely different way to what I had been to be able to finish it, stupid explosives).
Only had 1 redo in my group of 4 though, also Jagged Shoals...but then I dont think we have tried anything particularly challenging as a group yet. For Jagged Shoals we just changed what we did round 1, and had new battle goals, and were fine afterwards. Hell we did 1 scenario 3 player, found out about an extra loss condition when Drifter opened the door to room 3 while Geminate and Boneshaper (me) were still in room 1, and we managed to win (thank the Aesther my skeles were in room 2).
Yeah I agree the difficulty has been alright with us. We've lost about 3 scenarios in about 40 scenarios. Coral is pretty amazing. I think the geminate player is going to love it.
My favourite missions are often the "single large room" scenarios. I liked the elevator one. Many of the thematic missions and side missions have been great too. The writing in FH is so much better than GH. Though the game can get a bit "wordy" when it comes to new town developments. I'm not sure I need to read extensive passages about the Town Hall being built.
@@dannyf1168 I can recommended Foreteller as I just chuck it on in the background and listen while I move on to the next step. Might help break up some of the longer reading bits for you.
@@MandatoryQuest I have forteller. I love it. But during an Outlook phase with 4+ sections to reference and read. It becomes a bit much to even listen to. We might be unlocking stuff at an unnaturally faster rate though. I like powergaming out the strategic level. So we always strategise the quickest way to get things. But maybe to our detriment - as it can be exhausting.
I agree with your thoughts on the 2player composition. been playing with my gf and we're probably 40ish scenarios in or more and we get the feeling that we cannot make any mistakes with our turns if we want to succeed a scenario.
Yeah it seems the margin for error is very thin at 2P especially so when the scenario design doesn't suit either of your characters too.
Very nice review, my friend. I'm so used to playing characters until Level 9, but I guess that's not happening as often in Frosthaven if retirements are regularly occurring after 15 scenarios.
Oh yeah me too. So far it looks like I'll be retiring somewhere between 5 and 7 with my second set of characters which was pretty similar to my first.
I am in about 4 scenarios after just completing Gloomhaven. Group of four friends every other week, which is great so far. The complexity is definitely up a level but I can appreciate what they did to balance it and ask for more engagement such as updates to resources and events. The scenarios I have seen have been shorter and maybe ask for you to burn cards more than most Gloomhaven maps. I feel like I have to prioritize looting more and bringing my loot card more often is a good way to up the difficulty.
Looting being way more impactful with the buildings/crafting is a great addition. It feels like even when you are flush with loot there's always a reason to get more, and also with random items being hidden in there sometimes you really want to dig for them.
13:14 stun rarity in the frosthaven starters made initiative weaving so much more important and tanking more challanging.
We play with solorules so we can sprak frealy but we also dont rise the difficult level beyond that like we used to do.. we even dont do the additional goals u can choose to play every scenario if it is to difficult.
You're valuations of gold vs resources is extremely counter to mine so far. I'm only 6 scenarios in atm, but we have tons of gold. Were not lite on resources, but them and especially herbs are what were really hungry for.
Thanks for the video buddy 😀
It might be that you have been a bit unlucky so far? I think it will take a good sample set before it all balances out, but its most noticeable when you retire or start a completely new party.
I just got my Frosthaven and haven’t started playing yet. It’s good to hear that it has a lot more twist than Gloomhaven. If players can play the same way, we don’t need a new game, perhaps an expansion is enough. Thanks for the great review. I am really looking forward to FH now. 😊
I have not jumped in yet, as we are about to finish Gloomhaven. Which sucks because I haven't watched any of your coverage due to spoilers. Hoping to catch up and watch some content soon.
Good luck finishing GH :)
So good video! Liking the game so far. Thank you to you!
Thanks glad you liked it! :)
18:17 yea the suprise of the last room when u have suddenly to defend somthing or last whay longer then u thought.. might be a replay from start as soon as you read the text of the last room.. is a pain ig u dont have the spear time that evening to retry and going in knowingly u wont manage is also defeting.
After playing through Jaws, Gloomhaven, and Forgotten Circles, I am really enjoying how much variety there is in each scenario in Frosthaven. It's more akin to Forgotten Circles which my group has enjoyed the most.
You might be the first person I've heard say that forgotten circles is your favourite. A lot of people were not a fan of the bits that broke it up mid scenario in FC. I haven't had anything like that in FH yet, but certainly every scenario feels very unique with thematic rules.
@MandatoryQuest I'm not sure what you are referring to by FC "bits that broke it up mid scenario"...do you mean the separate section book you have to read after you open a door? Just like Frosthaven does? I thought that addition was great and so were the scenario ideas. The only big downfall to FC is that you MUST use the Diviner class throughout the expansion, and it was a decent class but not amazing. Otherwise, I think it was very unique with the scenario design. It's much like Frosthaven in that way, but I think they perfected it in FH.
@@dlm89538 I haven't played through it myself but I heard you had to pause and solve puzzles and things? maybe miss reported or over exaggerated.
Hey man, can you add timeline bookmarks in the video? Those are super helpful!
Sure! I usually do but I felt like this one was more of a stream of thought type video but I can do.
@@MandatoryQuest Makes sense! I suggest it only because I think it would make your video perform better for the algorithm. I think quite a few people would want to jump to the tips at the end.
4:31 with two player, party composition is key. You need a frontline tank and a damage character, otherwise you're going to find it pretty difficult - unless you lower the difficulty of course.
Never played gloomhaven. We went straight of jaws to frosthaven. My cousin though the 2nd frosthaven meant that it was going to be in book form like jaws. He was run. But we've been having fun. We are a group of 3 (hubs me and my cousin) and play about 2-5x/week depending on what we got going on. Most scenarios we can play fine but we sometimes hit scenarios that really suck for our party composition. Hubs retired a character and was playing a new character that does mainly melee damage and is very tanky so mostly low damage but all the monsters had shields or retaliates.
I have received my frosthaven box, but my group is playing crimson scales now. So I probably have to find a new group for frosthaven, or wait 2 years or something to finish crimson scales.(only playing once every 2 weeks at best)
But one thing I noticed about frost haven is how much more limiting the stamina potion is.
And control abilties seem alot less there. Alot less stun, less disarms, etc.
My first gloomhaven character was the mindthief. I loved doing the ranged stun generate ice and do the heavy attack stun using the ice the next turn. I don't expect frosthaven classes being able to do that.
You can do some similar things on certain characters, but it requires more work and setup. The characters can be very rewarding when you pull off the setups and combos so I think you'll enjoy it. Hopefully you can find a group to start your FH.
10:50 the ring that uses light and dark to heal is shurly an item that rises the powerlevwl of certain tanks massivly.
In original gloomhaven.
Nice video! Interesting that you said you never use the various buildings to buy resources. I am the opposite, I seem to end up with way more money than i can use and not enough resources, so i have to buy them up.
I'm about 35 scenarios into the game now. The storyline is amazing, glad that there are multiple main quests going on. I have found some of the scenarios with "spawn a monster every round" a bit tedious after a while. Some characters I loved (blinkblade, drifter and boneshaper) and others i have found really difficult to manage (bannerspear) and some took me a while to get going (Geminate and Deathwalker). Loot system is great, but the lack of good equipment is a bit annoying. The new buildings are a nice new mechanic and i really enjoy the calendar of events to look forward to.
I'm actually using the camps a bit more now they are level 2 . I'm trying to have a nice smooth transition between parties, so It makes sense to dump my gold reserves into materials and stock up FH for when we start with no materials again.
Thanks, some of the clearest most concise communication out there. Are you having any major issues with the Boneshaper? 15 scenarios in and I'm finding that the Skeletons are severely under powered, dying too easily and don't hit hard enough, there are some brutal scenarios out there that I can't ever imagine winning with these blundering bony friends.
More often than not I find myself just racing to get another skeleton on the board as a shield to prevent yourself from taking the hits, they're lucky to survive a round or 2 then the race is on again. Meanwhile you're making no progress in the scenario. Some of the later summons are much more able, but if you luck out on a short rest and lose them, it's not a good outlook for the boneshaper. Any tips would be appreciated :)
I haven't played the Boneshaper yet I'm afraid, but I have heard similar problems from other players. Are you initiative dancing efficiently to go late when summoning, then early to have at least one good turn of attacks with your summons? Most summoning characters really hinge around this concept of weaving your own initiative well alongside your allies too.
@@MandatoryQuest Thanks for the response. I'm doing as much as I can with initiative but the Boneshaper has very limited options when it comes to early initiative cards, which makes it a difficult summoner to get the hang of. I imagine Boneshaper would be a great support in a 3-4 player team, but with 2 players it does often suffer from feeling like a bit of dead weight. That said, after a few quick level ups it is starting to show a lot more promise.
@@tommyg83333333 yeah although I think FH does a better job than GH of getting classes "online" at low levels it's definitely not perfect.
Great video! I've been playing through 2p solo. And have found some of the problems you have with only having the 2 characters. Would love to play 3, but just don't have the extra time to commit to the extra turns. Just want to play through and have fun. So it can be a bit frustrating at times. I do love the app and narration support however. That does speed things up, so I might think about adding in the 3rd if I can get in enough of a rhythm, but my sessions have been a little too sporadic due to life recently. I wish i could hang out on your stream more, but you've vaulted so far ahead, I'm trying not to know too much beforehand. Don't mind the light spoiler here and there, but not too many. Keep up the great work!
With the complexity of the characters and scenarios it can be exhausting controlling just 2 sometimes. I know a lot of people cant pop in to the stream at the moment because of spoilers so its all good. Hopefully in the future we will all be caught up :)
I really enjoy Frosthaven, but some of the intro texts are a little too long for me.
I have been using Foreteller for the narration and it's been great. Highly recommend it 👍
I think there's a chance that unbalanced things in the players favor in GH (starting items, broken cards, etc) may have masked some of the problems you talk about here. I mean try Scoundrel and Mindthief, two very strong classes, in a scenario like Abandoned Sewers where you're swarmed with enemies and they mostly can attack one thing a turn. Or imp balance being way off so levels with imps being way more difficult than intended. Or functionally limitless enemy range as you level up meaning that it forced you down a certain play style (invis, mass CC, room clearing abilities) in order to survive.
I mean you're right that in GH you can just choose not to play the broken cards. I played Mindthief to retirement at +0 difficulty never using TMW on GH Digital just to test that out; but at some point if you play higher that breaks down as the class abilities were built around that card! So I think we may be looking back at GH with a bit more rose colored glasses than it warrants in a few situations, in large part because as the game goes on you just don't lose anymore, and we tend to question things a lot more after a loss than a win.
Totally agree with winning masking issues. That's true in any game I think, and it takes both time and a critical approach to be able to spot that. In GH increased difficulty feels like something that any party with the right items and piloted by good players can aspire to, but FH feels much more like it's reserved for the better synergy parties and top end level and item play. GH was ultimately an unbalanced mess, a beautiful mess, but still a mess. FH puts a lot of things right but that will not necessarily be to everyone's liking.
WOW! I agree! I'd totally forgotten about my biggest annoyance with Gloomhaven Scenario design. The opening door strategy Vs massive range.
You open a door to a circular room with nowhere to hide. 3-5 enemies inside. If you step in you die. One turn wasted (tick tock). Next turn you need to wait for your team - going in solo will be too dangerous. Another turn wasted (tick tock). You think - OK. It's just not safe base on what cards they drew this turn. Another turn (tick tock). You go slow hoping they will move close enough. Nope. They didn't move (tick tock). Ranged enemies pepper you from a huge distance - you should have gone in earlier ...
I can't put my finger on why this happened in GH - but not in JotL or FH. But it was a frustrating slow way to play. I really didn't think it was good - and I ended up leaning HEAVILY on invisibility.
@@dannyf1168 The big difference is in JOTL/FH the ranges are on the cards themselves and don't increase with enemy level, so there are just more instances where enemies cant immediately hit you from across the room.
I've played for around 20 Frosthaven scenarios so far, and the main difference I've noticed between Gloomhaven and Frostahven is how dangerous the ranged enemies are. Forced movement and focus manipulation I've found are a lot less effective on them, especially if they can fly. Any suggestions to make dealing with ranged enemies more manageable?
I've found archers actually a bit easier in FH due to them not having scaling range anymore and less movement. Shrike Fiends however are actually the worse enemies ever created. I have found getting up in their face fairly effective as they often cant move away so will have to attack with disadvantage.
Frosthavens great! other than the fact many masteries are "fuck around and wast some turns" or "play worse temporarily" rather than some masterful thing.
I haven't been doing the masteries because like you say they often aren't just "play really well" but actually very risky. In a 3 or 4P party I could see you telling everyone "I'm gonna force this" but at 2P I just want to win really without any distractions.
We've been strategizing actively around one of us getting a mastery done so far every now and again when we encounter a scenario that seems like it has potential. 4 player party.
It really adds some nice extra risk management too the game :)
Too much to summarize but I've been most frustrated by the wackiness of scenario design. It does seem to undermine the agency of players who are just wanting to use their character's abilities. [Fabricated to avoid spoilers] "Neeto, I've just opened this new character who has a lightning mechanic where they build up electricity points and then shoots lighting... this looks amazing!!!" Mission: Deliver these twelve blueberry pies to hungry patrons while juggling bananas. Also, 40 sheep spawn from odd lettered pillars every prime numbered turn. "Wot? I guess I'll use the bottom half of 'Catastrophic Lightning Storm' for its move 3??"
I have also thought about this too. Many times scenarios have tried to be too clever for their own good. That's what I'm alluding to when I say every scenario has a twist. It's not always a bad twist or unfun, but it's sometimes frustrating when all you want to do is play your character's mechanics. efficiently, but you have to keep making odd choices to satisfy the goal.
My solution to this is to play random scenarios as a ‘palate-cleanser’ after a particularly irksome mission, and also when introducing a new character (to give the player a chance to find out how it plays before its core mechanic has to be ignored or is nerfed by a core scenario).
19:21 “….playing like the big dumb brute….”
What a missed opportunity to say “balanced measure” instead of “measured approach”. You even got the matching t-shirt and all xD
Dang you're right!
I wish we could play it on Steam like the original
Me too man hopefully they are working on it in secret.
How is Frosthaven for converting it to 5 players?
Problem with boneshaper is in 4 player game, when your character is boneshaper, it's kinda boring to summon skeletons to just tank damage. It's a great character if your playing more than one character and you use it as support.
Also, wish corpse explosion wasn't a burn. considering boneshaper has terrible initiative values, generally have to not burn it because of its 21 initiative. Maybe if it burned the skeleton card instead? Only reason I keep it is for initiative, doesn't seem balanced. Maybe I'm bad, tho, I dunno.
I've also been thinking that quite a few characters add tiles to the board and at 4p I can imagine the board gets incredibly busy. I bet the same is true for Boneshaper with the summons.
Exploding Corpse does feel like a corner stone type card (especially coming from a Diablo background) so having it as a burn does seem a bit harsh. Maybe nerf the attack down to just attack 2 but make it reusable. I guess though the design decision was to have a great attack all style burn on the character, so perhaps you'd need to switch another card around too.
I played in 2/3 player - but understand where you're coming from. Solo Monster summoning focus is pretty good. I think you could focus more on "support" as well. Depends on party make up - you didn't need to tank though. If someone else is doing it - stay back build up a ball of summons.
@@dannyf1168 I've tried to set up a bunch of summons. Noticed two issues: it takes a lot of turns to build up summons, most of that time your doing nothing because it's a top action, sometimes you end up inadvertently tanking damage because your summons still act on their own.
And finally, most of the scenarios have choke points, either thru obstacles or tiles chosen. Too many summons clogs things up and makes it hard for them and your companions to move.
I find the best way to play is to use summons to set up banner spear formations and tank damage. Everything just doesn't seem to work as well for me
Played about 8 missions with 2 players each one using two characters me blink blade and banner spear him with fist and bone shaper. We are loving it but it takes a long time for each mission.
Did you consider or try playing just 1 each or did you just go straight to 2 each? I'm interested if people other than solo players/streamers have tried just 2.
I'm new to the system, trying Solo mode (2 characters) at Recommended Difficulty and I literally cannot win even Scenario 1 and 2. 😕 It feels like the maps are sooooooo long, and my characters are just... slow. Inevitably, I just run out of cards and hit Exhaustion sometime around Room 3.
I realize I could lower the Scenario difficulty i guess, but it really feels so disappointing to get this kind of intro after the rave reviews I was reading. The game is more of a "bash your head against the wall, restarting scenarios several times" than I expected.
Damn really not sure if I should buy it when it releases in germany :/
So a mate introduced me with JotL and his experience is also pretty much only JotL and like 3-4 Scenarios from Gloomhaven. I played half through Gloomhaven digital now on +1 Difficulty and it's feeling very comfy on +1.
I would do a 2 player playthrough with the same mate now but he is more of the type to just take the cards that sound cool instead of really strategizing in depth which card is better (like me lol)
And obviously I wouldn't try to talk him into taking cards he doesnt want or even tell him how to play, that's not fun for anyone :p
So do you think we would manage to go through Frosthaven on normal difficulty with me having a bit more Gloomhaven experience and him only having JotL?
Since a scenario takes 2-3 hours each it gets really frustrating if you end up having to repeat a scenario after 3 hours because the game screws you over with a late minute setup change :/
FH has much better balance with cards than GH so there's a lot less "bad" or less optimal cards, so your friend should still be able to have fun without feeling like its sacrificing anything. Normal difficulty is what I would recommend as 2 players and only 2 mercs is IMO a harder experience anyway due to gaps in your party composition. This is where your friend could struggle because sometimes at 2 mercs you just need to take things that give you flexibility. In FH there is a lot more reason to change your cards between scenarios than GH. If you could play 2 mercs each then that would be ideal really as you can then go hard on one strategy with a character without leaving you with an obvious gap.
@@MandatoryQuest yeah don't think we would go for 2 each as it is even more Admin we'd have to do ^^" More monsters, more choices, more tactics. I wish the scenarios were just a tad bit shorter.
Each one is such a huge time commitment
@rigdigwus yeah FH scenarios are I would say generally a little bit longer due to the variety of styles and win conditions. The actual number of tiles and rounds is mostly the same as GH though
Maybe a silly question, but did you ever do a review of Gloomhaven or Jaws of the Lion?
I actually never did a formal review as it felt a bit irrelevant by the time I started making videos. But as a mini review I think Jaws is the best Gloomhaven product they have ever released excluding FH at the moment.
Gold seems impossibly rare this time, and yet they still include an enhancement deck. When would anyone ever have the gold to pull that off lol
I haven't even found enhancements yet :(
Enhancements are probably a very late game thing then
PQ Aesther Outpost has you waiting after the first scenario (which is unlocked as soon as you select that PQ)...do that ASAP, and the next thing ASAP.
For the outpost phase and purchasing materials. I didn't buy much in the way of materials until my first pair of characters were full decked out and getting closer to retiring, then upon retiring dumped all the material resources into Frosthaven's supply. With the second pair I was buying materials pretty much as soon as I could, mostly so I could craft the gear they needed, and was using the materials in Forsthaven's supply to build/upgrade buildings. Once they had been decked out I was spending all the money I could get on materials so I ended up with a little over 20 of each material in Frosthaven's supply after they retired. Current pair of characters are in the process of decking themselves out with gear, but since I had so many materials in Frosthaven's supply I'm pretty much always able to build/upgrade something during construction despite looting less with these characters that I did with the first four.
So basically looting has been fine for you? My thought is that while looting then building and crafting feels fun it's actually a very forgiving and easy mechanic. It doesn't really add or subtract from the difficulty of the game but it's an extra step that in GH was just given to you.
@@MandatoryQuest Looting has been easy on 3 of the 6 characters I've played...only times I've really felt I'm struggling with resources is starting the campaign, though I've always had enough to do something during construction, and when starting a new character, but only for their individual gear. Then again I have focused heavily on doing that, provided its not too inefficient, in most of the scenarios I've played. Coral and Trap seem to be struggling with collecting loot while Snowflake and Meteor were doing that with no problems at all...well...nearly...you'll understand when you play Meteor, and Boneshaper was grabbing everything that's not nailed down while Banner Spear got practically nothing. I also figured early on that if you aren't going to be enhancing cards, for whatever reason, then gold doesn't really have a purpose when retiring so spending as much as you can on purchasing materials every outpost phase made sense (so long as you keep a small supply spare if you are about to start a new building). Even doing that my Snowflake and Meteor both retired with something like 30 odd gold each.
I agree that building, much more so than crafting, is fun but its mostly due to discovering what the building leads to (I tend to focus things that 'reward' a Section number) and yeah it doesn't really affect the difficulty, though having certain buildings wrecked cos you didn't improve your defenses certainly would affect the difficulty.
+ I definitely share the sentiment that the game wasn't entirely optimized for 2p. There are a few scenario that are too gimmicky or flooded with enemies that feel more appropriate for either bigger party or for a different party composition. It does get a bit frustrating when you constantly feel "The scenario obviously says I can do this... but only if I had the right characters".
+ I agree with the calendar getting annoying at times. Maybe you don't like the current character so you do the scenario to at least complete a retirement goal... except that you have to wait for the next calendar section to finally show up so retirement takes even longer.
+ Overall I do like Frosthaven but I'd like to see some rebalancing for 2p. (This is just the impression I got, it might be a me problem though, I started playing the Xhavens only at the beginning of the year so I am by no means a veteran)
I get the feeling that haven games will just never be perfect at 2P. If they want to keep creating complicated and interesting scenarios its only going to get worse. The only thing I can think of is to actually change the map or scenario conditions at 2P and not just change the number of enemies, but that's an awful lot of work. The inspiration system is a nice addition but really just a gimmick so you don't fall behind with no other real purpose. I'm sure they know what the most common number of players is (I'm assuming 3 or 4) and have created the game with that in mind then retroactively added things to support 2P.
I don’t think you can keep things tense and interesting at 2 player AND keep it perfectly balanced for any composition.
I actually think it’s fine the way it is right now. BUT you need to put in a little effort before the scenario starts analysing the map - enemies and objectives. Then adjusting your card pool accordingly.
Random thought - what if you could allow one card swap in during the match for 2 player? That might help with the lack of flexibility.
@Danny F For sure, there's no way the game can be properly balanced for 2p but also for everybody else (like MandatoryQuest said, the main focus is probably 3-4 players). As I said, the problem might just be with my skills ( I'm having a blast with the Deathwalker right now). I should clarify that overall the game is fine. My main gripe is with the overly gimmicky scenarios but, as you said, planning ahead usually compensates for that.
@@dannyf1168 That could work, or you could just encourage people to create more characters but only play 2 each scenario. Treat it a bit like a roster of characters where you select the best for each scenario instead. All characters on your roster still get some XP per scenario so that they all stay at similar levels.
Waiting for Polish version of Frosthaven
Hope you aren't waiting too long 🤞
SPOILER. My friends and I are about 80% of the way through. Doing a 3 player game. I like the game a lot. I didn’t think I would be a fan of the outpost/building, but it is fun. SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER….just wish it was a little more obvious on how to unlock characters. We still have 2 characters we haven’t unlocked this late in the campaign. Favorite character I played so far is the Pain Conduit. I also wish the masteries were a little more relevant. Only getting a perk point for completing one seems really meh given how hard they are to complete isn’t really worth it.
Say shackles instead of the classes name, that way your using its icon name and not spoiling its actual name.
Agreed. I think the mastries should have really focused on "hey have you thought of trying out this build"? Not some impossible hoop jumping at level 8.
I'm pretty disappointed on how MUCH they nerfed the Stamina potion. Recover 1 level 1 card and it's unrecoverable. I understand it needed it nerfed but I think they took it too far. They could've not restricted it only to a level 1 card and IMO that would've been nerfed enough.
There might be a better one later (I haven't found it yet if there is) but I actually think its a fine change. It means they can give you powerful cards at higher levels without worrying you'll just loop them constantly. It being unrecoverable hasn't come up for me yet because I haven't seen any ways to get lost small items back yet anyway.
I think its fine. With the nerfed version. When I take stamina potion its because my character REALLY needs it. 9 card class. My favourite is actually the one that does 2 damage - explosive? Early game that's pretty clutch.
Anyone else heard from MQ lately? Last time I saw him was late and he was concerned about his Green Screen because of the Infuser’s card colors. MQ you still out there and OK?
I'm here and all good thanks! Just been busy with my day job :)
That’s a long winded way to say the game is better at 3 or 4 players. I can only play 2. Playing with 3 is too much on my own and had a great time in GH. I imagine FH will be more or less similar whenever I decide to start my campaign.