Campaign beginner guide and tips - Gloomhaven Digital

so the full release of gloomhaven digital's campaign mode is coming on october the 20th but the game will be coming out of early access and it will be all intensive purposes completed really and this is the mode that a lot of people have been waiting for but this mode is quite different to playing the guildmaster mode if you've been playing up to now or maybe if you're playing your first tabletop campaign of gloomhaven hopefully you'll find some of these tips useful in the physical and the digital version but these are my beginner tips on how to get started and to succeed well in the campaign mode today's video is sponsored by azmoday digital the publishers of gloomhaven digital if you're new here i have been covering and streaming this game for two years now since it came out into early access and they've made some major major strides in that time in bringing this game to life the biggest being the guildmaster mode update that came out last year adding 160 new missions over the course of the last year all brand new missions exclusive to the digital version of the game with the final release of the game and the release of the tabletop campaign mode they really have managed to bring isaac childress's original board game really to life here and it's turned what is my favorite ball game into one of my favorite pc games too it has full four-player co-op it has 17 unique mercenaries for you to explore just like the board game it also supports custom content and modding and map editor i think it's really nice to see those community tools included in the game too they really have done a terrific job with this implementation it's made my life much easier and much more enjoyable creating content and gloomhaven based content over the last two years so thank you so much to the devs and asthma day digital for sponsoring this video if you do really want to check out the game there will be a link down in the description for you to be able to check out the game on steam you know the drill if you do enjoy the video please consider tossing it a like and subscribing i've got lots more gloomhaven guides and content down on my channel down below and also just really helps me spread the channel and hopefully get more people to see this through the trusty old youtube algorithm i also stream regularly over on twitch at twitch.tv slash manage request every monday wednesday and sunday usually but i will be doing some more streams this coming week because well the game is coming out and it's a very exciting time so come hang out i will be streaming on the release day for the game and i will be doing long streams all over the park about a week so yep come hang out and maybe watch me play live or ask me any questions you might have live so my first tip is really to set the difficulty level correctly i really do not recommend that new players look to increase the difficulty above really normal if you've never played gloomhaven before don't be ashamed just set the difficulty to either normal or easy trust me this game is quite hard at times and is it's kind of like it's got its own unique theme and things to it the mechanisms are not the same as other games you might not pick them up quite as quick it might not be quite as obvious as to why you lose and it could lead to you being a little bit frustrated early on in the game when i think really the game does definitely drop you in at the deep end the game is at its most hardest point at the beginning of the game and this is because you don't have that much money you don't have that many items unlocked you don't have enhancements unlocked you don't even have very powerful characters you have some of the starting characters which are not as powerful as some of the unlockable ones if you are playing solo i do recommend maybe setting it to plus one difficulty setting it to hard rather than to normal this is only because you will not have to have the kind of cooperative element in the game you'll be able to choose your cards for both characters as you like if you're playing solo the game can be a little bit easier because you can sequence your turns between the two characters much easier than if you're maybe playing multiplayer in which case you might have different things that you want to do and maybe you'll cross your wires and things like that you can always increase these things at a later date so do not feel compelled to have to set it at a higher difficulty now you can always increase it at a later date once you get a bit more comfortable with the game and the mechanics next up you're going to have party composition and your character creation now when you're trying to create your party you do have to keep a few things in mind i really advise that two-player you stay away from a few kind of difficult combinations of characters unless you feel really confident in trying to go and play with these but you will generally have a harder time if you try and play these together and i will put up on screen now this is my kind of starting player matrix and which if you're playing a two-player i would try and avoid combining some of these now it doesn't mean that this isn't possible doesn't mean that you will fail every mission that you will find it very very hard it just means as a newer player you may fail more missions than not it may discourage you a little bit maybe you won't make progress quite as quick as you were hoping it is possible absolutely they are possible to play with and i've done it myself a few times and experienced players can absolutely make this work but it's just a harder time which you might not want to do at three player you open up your options much much more however i would try to avoid a few sort of bad combinations so having three all very low health mercenaries is probably not a best idea because you won't have anybody who can maybe go in as more of a tanking role i would also avoid going for like hard support builds on two characters because you might end up not having enough damage a good rule of thumb here is just to start with either the brute or the crack carp and then just build a team around one of those two mercenaries then you're pretty much always going to be set at four player you can pretty much do whatever you like the only thing i would stay away from is having scoundrel tinkerer mine thief and spell weaver all four of the kind of low health mercenaries to begin with just because you might not have an out and out tank and you might have some trouble splitting that damage and somebody might end up having a bit of a rough time some common pitfalls that people fall into when creating a party is either not having enough control elements or maybe not having enough damage elements control elements are things like immobilize disarm stun muddle these things allow you to perhaps mitigate some of the damage that the enemy does but also just stop the enemy from maybe taking turns occasionally and that is a big big deal in gloom haven these abilities are very very strong so you should always look out for anything that says the word stun on it anything that says the word disarm especially if they are non-burn cards definitely prioritize these kinds of abilities and if you are finding that you are dying quite a lot perhaps you're not killing things quick enough as well so having a lack of damage or a lack of control these two things really do add up and that's usually what i find when people say that they're having a bit of rough time is they're either not using these tools effectively or they just don't have enough of them to be able to control the flow of the enemies in the scenario if you are playing two-player co-op then i would really recommend that after you get a little bit more kind of comfortable playing two mercenaries then maybe you actually take on an extra mercenary each this is where the game can really kind of shine because at two players i find that the game is a little bit under tuned it's a little bit awkward your party composition options are not quite as good however at three and at four player you can have pretty much any options that you like so you could just have one of those players maybe take on an extra one i when i play solo always play with three mercenaries this is because it gives me the perfect combination of of choice of options so i don't need to worry so much about my party composition i can build a party using the pieces that i want to quite often and also it doesn't extend the dungeon length to be really really long for me so dungeons perhaps take a long long time to do playing solo or perhaps you get really kind of overwhelmed by the number of options and things that are going on so if you're playing solo i kind of recommend that you maybe go up to three mercenaries i think that's a really nice sweet spot if you're playing two player i would consider maybe taking on one extra mercenary each so you're both playing with too so now that you've chosen your characters and your party composition you're going to create your characters and you're going to get your personal goals now these are your life quests if you like that these characters have they want to try and do and that will retire them which will unlock a new character and all of these are completely unique all of them are different there's not one single quest exactly the same the rewards however may be the same so there are multiple ones for each character class that you can unlock they're different but they still unlock the same thing so it might be worth discussing this a little bit with your team to make sure you don't pick the same one most of these are fairly straightforward however this is also a really good opportunity to decide whether or not you're going to go for a positive or for a negative reputation run what i mean by this is that you will be given options during road events during city events to make choices either you know good or bad and if you decide to try and do a negative rep do like an evil play through then you will actually unlock the eclipse class at minus 10 rep and if you chose to do positive then you actually unlock the sun class at plus 10 rep so for this purpose really i would say decide between yourselves what you would like to do would you like to go for a positive or would you like to go for a negative and just ensure that nobody takes a personal quest to unlock whichever one you're gonna hopefully unlock anyway using your reputation game i will say that in general it is much easier to gain and maintain a positive reputation in the game that it is a negative one sometimes the options are presented it's very very obvious which is the positive one but it's not always obvious what is the negative one because perhaps the repercussions are not exactly what you think it's going to be i would say that most personal quests on average take around about 15 scenarios to complete now some of them that will be very obvious that they only take around 15 scenarios to complete other ones might not so you might get some that say only complete four missions but these will be in a very specific place on the board and actually until you unlock more missions in those locations you're not going to be able to complete them so the game kind of keeps them behind a bit of a gate for this reason i actually kind of recommend that if you have the option to have a very straightforward one to begin with then just take it if it's just kill x or do y so many times they are very easy for you to control as a player you have personal control over achieving those however the ones that are like complete mission this in this location can be quite difficult because if you don't have that mission you're not going to be able to do it right make sure that you pick an actual life goal that feels achievable for your character that may be a bit difficult if you've never played the game before but if you're playing a support character then stay away from the kill ones will be my general advice and the loot ones are generally a bit harder to do as well unless you're playing a melee style character i'd say the melee style characters usually have a better chance of looting just because they move into enemies positions very regularly whereas ranged will quite often like to stay in one place and just sort of stand off enemies a bit more there's only a couple of these that i would actually stay away from that i would advise that you don't go for first one being any of the three spears unlock quests so three spears is a unlockable character i think it's best unlocked later on in the game anyway finding the cure and vengeance are the personal quests that unlock envelope x now envelope x has not been implemented in digital so these have been reworked i've been finding the cure unlock sun instead so again maybe one that you want to avoid anyway because you might be going for a positive rep run one that i would actually really recommend taking if you do get it is the seeker of zorn personal quest this is because at the beginning of the campaign you're going to have access to a lots of crypt missions that are actually part of the main story missions so you're going to be able to very quickly and easily make progress towards that particular personal quest and the quest line is actually quite good and it's a very thematic questline it leads to some really good situations and really good scenarios and the character that you unlock is i would say a little bit of a step above basic characters but it's not um really really complicated so it's powerful but it's not particularly complicated it'll be a little bit of a step up in difficulty but it won't be that much it would be quite a good character for a newbie to unlock so now you have your characters your parties and your personal quests now is a good time to talk really about city events and road events which are two kind of key different things that happen during your playthrough you must resolve a road event every time you travel away from gloomhaven now these are usually about 50 50 whether or not they can help you or hurt you it really depends on the outcome and the car that you draw sometimes you will get linked missions which allow you to continue straight on to the next mission without returning to gloomhaven this avoids you from having to do a road event to the new location but it also stops you from going to the city and resolving the city event which you can only do one once per visit to gloomhaven and i actually think that you want to be doing as many of these as possible because the city events are actually much more beneficial compared to some of the road events which can hurt you and it's the way that you have the best chances to push up your prosperity push up your wealth level perhaps gain some gold there are some really good things in the in the city event so i actually encourage players to ignore linked missions and actually return to gloomhaven every time when you are choosing between the options that you have make sure to pick ones that actually play to the strengths of your party or reflect your reputation that you may have already earned because the game actually does take these into account if you are a certain character who is good at doing a certain thing so for example the scoundrel could be quite good at stealing things because that's what that character does they're very good at looting then if a event came up that asks you to steal something if you have the scoundrel on your party you're much more likely to succeed by doing that option and it is a binary you either succeed or you do not succeed there is no dice rolling going on here this is not a game that has randomness in that respect so if you don't have a scoundrel in your pie and you don't have anybody who can actually do this or it will be proficient maybe with the abilities to try and do it and sometimes it is better to actually go with the option that does nothing just because otherwise you won't get the penalty for getting caught so just bear in mind that the characters that you have in your party can actually affect the outcome of all of the events when you retire a character or add a new character for the first time you also add unique events into these decks so again another reason to keep going back to gloomhaven to resolve these events is that you have the opportunity to bump into an old mercenary and perhaps get something cool or a cool event will happen so definitely do this and keep in mind that every time you retire a character you will be adding new events to these decks which could come up later and yeah offer some unique story also if you're playing digital this might not be obvious but in physical it is but a lot of the events are actually one time only and then they are torn up they are never seen or played again definitely think about the way that you're going to respond to events because it might be your only opportunity to do so and then once it's gone it is gone however there are some repeating ones that will come back and you will see them again and again and again keep an eye out for these because there will be usually a correct response in order to get something good from it also there are some repeating events that specifically change a few small details on the events to try and throw you off now specifically this is to do with colors i don't want to spoil it or anything like that but just keep an eye on things like colors when you are bumping into some of these events that might seem a bit familiar but actually maybe they're not quite as familiar as you think if you do want to see a list of all of the possible road and city events i will link my google docs down below where i've actually added them i'm creating this kind of spreadsheet with all of these different tools and resources and lists and things in that you might find useful while playing the game there's some spoiler stuff in there some stuff i don't really recommend that people play and use first time whenever you're playing the game for the first time i don't necessarily recommend that you use this information but it is a nice way for you to maybe check what might have happened if you'd gone the other way and to see how the game is really figuring these things out and and why they are working the way that they are working so it's just a good reference tool and sometimes it's nice to just see what could have happened maybe if you went a different way next up let's talk about looting and prosperity looting is very important in the campaign mode it's the biggest power spike really that your character can receive getting xp is great but as you get xp the enemies will level up around you as well as your party level goes up the enemy levels go up till they sort of scale along with you however items that doesn't really matter you can be a level one character with all of the best items in the game extremely powerful potentially and the enemies are still at that base level of the party level that you're playing at so it's very important for you to prioritize getting loot early on start amassing some gold and then you can really start to buy some impactful items that will make things a lot easier for you also once you unlock enhancements they are very expensive and in digital they are not carried over to future characters of the same class so this means that if you do actually want to enhance something you're going to have to legitimately save up and enhance it the regular way you're not going to be able to retire your character and maybe dump a load of gold into it to make quick progression in unlocking extra items i do really recommend donating to the temple of the great oak whenever possible for every 50 gold that you donate as a group to the temple you will be able to increase the prosperity level by one it only takes four prosperity to unlock the first level so it doesn't take that long really to do and you unlock some pretty decent items at the first level and then it's five after that and you unlock some better items and then it sticks after that you unlock better items again it is a really good way of progressing the game not to mention that if you retire those characters actually come in at a level equal to the prosperity level if you like so if you were to manage to get the prosperity level up to three and then you retire your new characters will all come in at level three which can really help certain classes out because they don't have the strongest level one sets of cards they actually get much more powerful as they level up and so certain characters i don't really recommend playing at level 1 one of them being the triangles character so getting that prosperity level up and certainly make things a little bit smoother for you if you are playing multiplayer and you are got your own gold it might be tempting for you to hoover up all of the colds and not give any to your allies so that you can buy cool stuff yes there are certain characters that are very good at that like the scoundrel however spreading money out across everybody will help everybody improve and everybody can then get maybe an additional item that then can help them out although it feels like sometimes you're against the other players in terms of getting loot because you really want it and only one person can get it actually it's a much better idea to spread the loot out a little bit more evenly let everybody get some items and also then everybody will have enough gold maybe to donate to the temple because only one character can donate each time so if you've only got one person getting all the loot you're only going to be donating one time every time you go back to gleamhaven so sharon is caring folks so try to share that gold around and finally my last little bit of advice is to just have fun and really get into the spirit of playing the campaign the story is quite good and engaging there's lots of side quests to do you don't need to worry about rushing through the story that's going to miss a lot of the different content in this game you definitely want to explore the side quests otherwise you're going to end up leaving a lot of stuff unfinished and undone and you won't actually get most of the characters unlocked or many of the items unlocked so i do really encourage people to fully explore everything that the game has to offer and just play it like an rpg if you would think that your character would do something then go ahead and do it and i think that that's a really easy way to approach the game especially to do with the events that will usually result in in good results for you and doing what you want so hopefully you now feel ready and prepared to start your gloomhaven campaign if you are looking for people to join you if you're looking for multiplayer people to play with then i really recommend joining our discord server i'll put the link down below there are many people in there a very knowledgeable about game and people looking for other people to play with so maybe you can find a group there there are no lobby systems in this game so there is no way for you to just find a pick up and play group because it is a game that is best played with the same people over multiple multiple play sessions so it kind of makes sense that there is no lobby however that does mean you're going to have to bear groundwork if you don't have a set of friends already willing to to play and finding those uh finding those people to play with so either join our official discord or you can also join the gloomhaven official discord which is also a very good spot to try and find people if you did find any of the information useful please consider tossing the video a like and subscribing also i stream regularly on twitch twitch.tv slash manage request pretty much always gloomhaven nowadays so come hang out ask me any questions you might have about the game there okay then so all that's left for me to say is i will catch you guys in the next one thank you so much for watching bye i think so yeah [Laughter] that's the blessing isaac at this point can we get your approval to add an additional attack modifier deck for allies in the digital version

Channel: MandatoryQuest

Views: 34,449

Keywords: Gloomhaven, Gloom haven, Digital, PC, Board game, boardgame, Steam, MAC, Co-op, Indie, Digital board game, Tutorial, Tips, Tricks, Primer, campaign mode

Id: Rsk965k5OT4

Length: 20min 44sec (1244 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 19 2021