Tobold's Blog
Saturday, December 26, 2020
 
Gloomhaven character unlocking

Gloomhaven is a great game, it isn't by accident that it has hogged the number 1 spot on BoardGameGeek for 3 years now. Gloomhaven has an excellent combat system, and well designed scenarios. My wife and me have played maybe a quarter of the campaign up to now, both just retired our first character. And all the scenarios we played were exciting, with us not being sure whether we would manage to win. The reason that the scenarios work so well is that they are mostly scripted, and there is not much randomness in the combat in Gloomhaven.

So it is somewhat curious that the character unlocking system feels very random. The first character I unlocked was a healer, which is such a bad choice for a 2-player game that I rather played another starting character than the one I unlocked. My wife had more luck on the first unlock, but had to choose between two (random) options for the next unlock, both of which (doing "crypt" scenarios, killing "bandit/cultist") would have been brilliant as starting cards, because there are a lot of crypts with bandits and cultists among the first scenarios. Meanwhile one of the cards we didn't choose for the first unlock was about killing oozes, and we only came across oozes in one scenario up to now.

In other words, unlocking characters based on a random condition is really hit and miss. While you can choose between two cards, you don't know which conditions are easier to fulfill than others, and you don't know what class you will unlock (unless you look up spoilers on the internet). And there isn't even a relationship that the harder to fulfill conditions result in the better character classes to unlock. Playing the campaign in a group, it is completely possible that one player ends up retiring his character and unlocking his next class way after everybody else, and then is disappointed by finding that unlock is a class that isn't very good, or he has no interest in playing.

I was lucky insofar as both of the personal quests to retire and unlock a new character were about collecting or spending gold. There is gold in every scenario, so those quests are always possible. And in the unlikely case that I would play through the campaign a second time, I would know much better which personal quest conditions are easier and which are harder. Without a bit of knowledge, or spoilers from the internet, the Gloomhaven character unlocking system to me feels to much based on luck.

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- posted by Tobold @ 5:41 PM Permanent Link
Comments:
The character unlock is the glaring weakness in gloomhaven. Ideally you'd unlock a new class after about the same number of scenarios (not exact, it would be boring if everybody unlocked at the same time), but the current system is so wildly variable and dependent on what branch of the adventure tree your group chooses. My first character (brute) played something like 25 scenarios before retirement (all the way from 1 to 9), while another player in my group was almost ready to unlock his fourth at that point! Additionally, the first character will almost always take noticeably longer than the rest.

They're aware of this and taking a good look at it for Frosthaven. I'm hopeful that they'll get something that works better.
# posted by Blogger Ulrik : 26/12/20 21:37
 
I suppose we got lucky, in that our 4 player group all retired within about 5 scenarios of each other, and now we're all playing our second character, and are within 1-2 levels of each other. But then one of us could have retired again about 4 scenarios into his 2nd character, but chose to delay it (it was fully under his control). Something unmentioned by the post is that potentially substantial power disparity of characters in the party being up to 6 or 7 levels apart.

Not all the unlocked classes are sexy or popular, and I'm having fun playing a different starting class instead. I find some of the class mechanics are so complex that I'd rather stick with a simpler class. There is still a ton going on to try to keep track, especially with 4 characters.
# posted by Blogger Perkus : 26/12/20 22:10
 
The good thing about a 4 player group is that some of the more "support" style characters work a lot better in a large group.

And yeah on the power disparity, in today's game, the last one before my wife could retire her Brute, she was level 5 and I was level 2, which was a bit tough. Next game we will both be level 2, and that is a lot more pleasant. Although I have to say with a higher level character, and the enemy level being higher, the coin and xp rewards were nice for a level 2.
# posted by Blogger Tobold : 26/12/20 22:59
 
@Ulrik: Did you pledge for / pre-order Frosthaven? I looked at $240 bundle, because I knew I would need the organizer. But then I thought, even with the base building and possible improvements, Frosthaven will still play very similar to Gloomhaven, and I haven't run out of Gloomhaven yet.
# posted by Blogger Tobold : 26/12/20 23:03
 
@Tobold oh forgot to answer (I struggle to log in on my phone, so couldn't just write an answer when I saw your question)

My Gloomhaven group kinda died out around prosperity 5 or 6, I'd guess about 2/3rds through the campaign? It wasn't my copy, and I'm still keen on it, so when the Frosthaven kickstarter arrived I thought it was a perfect chance to start a new campaign, probably with some changes in the group (or an entirely new group).

Since I would have to start over to play anyway, having a fresh campaign and updated rules (especially for retirement!) seems valuable.
# posted by Blogger Ulrik : 30/12/20 12:12
 
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