Gloomhaven - Ultimate Lightning Bolt Guide

the berserker insanely fun challenging has a ton of different build paths and i am so excited to bring you this guide today on the berserker we're going to talk about though what you need to do with the berserker to make sure that you don't you know explode into a fireball and then disappear before you can get anywhere near the end of the scenario and how to make sure you don't get yourself in too much trouble and that's one of the hardest things about the berserker is yeah she can do a ton but it's really easy to get yourself into a lot of hot water so stick with me we're gonna go through all the things that make the berserker great and what you need to do to maximize your effectiveness so maybe you've played the berserker and you're having a bit of a hard time the berserker is a class where you can make mistakes and you are going to get severely punished for those mistakes she's the second most complicated class there's one other that's a little bit more complicated but she is the highest risk reward and so you can do some crazy awesome things which we're going to talk about so stick around but you can also do some things that are going to fizzle out so we're gonna make sure that you consistently as much as possible do the right things and that you don't exhaust too early and that you manage to keep your hip points at the right levels when you need them in this guide i'm going to be talking about a bunch of different ways to play the berserker and we're not going to fully go down each path those will be for separate videos but in this guide i'm going to talk about how certain cards interact with certain play styles and when you should take those cards and i think in the beginning because a berserker has such a high level of risk in play you want to start out fairly simple so if this is your first time playing the berserker and if you're not a gloomhaven vet then you can go pretty simple and you can use something like blood packed and then use non-loss attacks where you're going to suffer damaged ads done and do some other cool things and then you're gonna wait until you get low hit points and you're gonna play from the brink and heal right back up to full and then you're gonna keep going down that path be really careful with cards like glass hammer these are going to get you into a lot of trouble if you don't play them right and you should really have a good understanding of the berserker before you go down that sort of path resolute stand is one of our core cards and it can do a ton of damage for us never leave home without it it's got initiative 9 and it's going to be able to dish out some serious damage let's talk quickly about the experience do 19 damage you're gonna get three experience it does not matter if the monster has one hit point two hit points whatever it is it's based upon the damage now let's say later on you managed to hit more than one target with this card don't worry there's not gonna be any spoilers here it gets a bit tricky at that point so let's say you do 19 damage to monster one and you do 24 damage to monster two this is going to be 3 experience plus 4 experience you're not going to add the damage together which is going to be 43 and get 8 experience it applies separately per monster and then the bottom move to retaliate one it's a good solid you know bottom move card give you a little bit extra damage on retaliate and we'll talk later on about whether or not you should enhance this card or not growing rage the top attack can be fairly decent at later levels and if you've managed to save any of your stamina potions or you've got a tinkerer with you and you can do some card recovery or something like that later on in scenarios this card can hit pretty hard i mean if you can do six seven damage with you know no conditions on it it's a pretty good card and then the bottom move three if you're able to manage your health and this is one of the build paths you can have a build path where you're always trying to stay just below half health if you're doing something like that the bottom is quite a good utility card to move and do an attack however mostly past lower levels there's too many other good cards so if you're really low level you can definitely use this card but later on we're probably going to swap this out for something better strength and agony the top on this especially when you're lower levels is going to be very good for you five repeatable damage getting experience not a loss especially at low levels you're gonna use this one a lot and then the bottom the move and suffer up to three damage to add up to three move the flexibility on this card is just amazing when you need to get somewhere quickly and it's great because if you only need to move five it only costs you one health to get there and so make sure you're taking this card it's just so good for the utility aspect defiance of death another core card for the berserker the top is just a good solid repeatable attack if you're low health and you're going to be below half health quite a bit and especially if you're building for it you're just going to do a repeatable five and that's with one experience as well nice and solid not overpowered but definitely decent the bottom is where it gets really good three times you're going to be able to save yourself from dying aka not throwing away a card and this is going to help you so much it's going to allow you to hover at low health without any fear and it's going to allow you to use resolute stand at the right times and it's just so much better than a card like immortality that grants you uh damage reduction or damage nullification when you get hit take no damage is what i'm trying to say because it only procs when you're gonna die also don't forget that you want to have some armor around so that if you do take one damage and you're at one health that you don't use a charge of this it's very important to have a little bit of damage mitigation that you can use when you're taking those little you know ping type of hits for one or two damage from the brink another great card it's gonna help us play a berserker build that's a little bit less risky if you're always hovering around low health you know that's a bit more of a risky build but if you're going to allow yourself to go down and then come back up this is the card to do that it's going to heal as much damage as you've taken and that's going to be sometimes a lot i mean i think it can go up to 25 yeah max 26 health you can heal 25 and don't forget this has range too you can target yourself you could theoretically target a friend you're probably never going to you're selfish berserker and your health is always so low that you really need to use this card for yourself but i'm just saying in theory you could the bottom you get to use as a decent move 24 initiative is okay too and then push one if you want i don't think you're going to be using the push a lot usually you want to be within melee range but if there's a trap nearby or something that can be useful as well blood pact not necessarily a core card but if you're building for it or if you're doing multi-target attacks a lot it's a fantastic card and it synergizes really well with a level eight card we're gonna talk about later as well so stick around it's it's really interesting i'll i'll go into it in depth at level eight top the attack six is pretty decent if you're at like five six health this is probably worth it especially if you've got defiance of death up so you're not worried about dying but if you're at like 20 health this card is going to be way too steep for you to play it and so sometimes it's not going to be useful i think most people are using it for the bottom and in combination with some other cards the bottom can be insanely powerful and it's gonna power up all of your multi-target attacks i use this card a lot before we get to the rest of the starting cards if you could go ahead please hit that like button it really helps me out a lot and subscribe to my channel and turn on notifications so that when i publish new content you're notified and also i've put out another video i think you're really gonna like it i've ranked all 22 of the gloomhaven classes this includes forgotten circles and it includes jaws of the lion so go ahead check it out see how your favorite classes stack up against the rest of the classes in the gloomhaven universe caught our eyes after its nerf it just isn't good enough to take most of the time i think pretty much all the time even at lower levels we've got a top action that can do more damage for us once in a while it's going to be useful if we can't get in melee range but the berserker has such a good move i don't think that happens a lot an attack one at range three targeting two wounding and creating fire is good not great though i i don't think it's good enough uh to take most of the time the bottom just know this is not going to be good enough for a loss there's so many better things we can do with the berserker i've never played this bottom ever dazing wound is a pretty good card suffering two damage to add stun is going to be a lot of utility it's going to help you manage aggro but i think that at higher levels you're not going to be taking it with you at lower levels you're going to see a ton of use from this and it's going to be probably good enough but later on you're going to be dishing out these huge multi-target attacks that are doing a ton of damage or you're going to be wrecking people with huge single target attacks and you probably won't use it the bottom move 4 is nice utility it's still a little bit above average move even for the berserker so i use it a lot for that and at 29 initiative yeah it's kind of getting to that range where i don't love it but it can help you go faster than some slow enemies furious aid [Applause] i don't think you're going to use this card a lot maybe if you're playing early on and you've got a safety building you want to make sure and keep topped up on heels but the bottom heel without a move is really going to hamper what you're trying to do as a berserker because you want to move a lot and attack a lot the loot 2 at the top can be nice but the way i play the berserker i play very loose and aggressive and i lose a lot of cards um not really a beginner way to play but that's how i like to play and how i feel the most effective and so the loot 2 doesn't normally fit in with that if you're playing a little bit more conservatively though there may be room to fire this off you know in the last part of the scenario to snag a bunch of loot bounce back really good initiative at 14. top is it can be useful with you know some other cards uh there's a card later on that's gonna add to retaliate to all of our actions so can be decent at times i think a lot of people underestimate retaliating with the berserker as you can get some really easy consistent high retaliates stick around we'll talk about that later and then the bottom move three heal oneself super handy great utility to move through and heal you're gonna be able to get rid of wound and poison you're gonna be able to keep yourself topped up you're going to be able to you know mitigate the one damage per turn loss from blood packed and then there's also a really cool enhancement on this we're going to talk i pretty much always take this card with me unbridled power is a very interesting card so let's talk about the top first the top attack too stun decent if you've got fire around we're talking attack 4 stun that's fairly strong but it's weird with the berserker i'd rather just be killing things i actually don't use this card a ton i mean at lower levels you're probably going to use it because it can help you manage aggro and you know two damage and stun with the potential to go higher with the fire is is pretty good but later on i'm definitely not taking this card the bottom though is really interesting at lower levels you can combine this with some healing and make yourself a super tank i mean at level one if you can get yourself up to 26 hit points i mean nothing's going to be able to touch you and you can pretty much run around with impunity later on it does not do a lot for you though so you'll definitely be leaving this card behind after you've moved through your first few levels glass hammer the other side of resolute stand can be very powerful but it is a very risky card uh the initiative is great so you can go in head you can go ahead and get a huge smash in but it's going to take you right down to one hit point and then you've got to make sure and get something like death of defiance up and so if you do use this card one you must have death of defiance with you two you must have from the brink with you so that you can heal back up afterwards unless you're deciding that you want to stay at one hit point but this card only take it if you have a good understanding of how you're really going to play your berserker because it's a card that can cause you to burn out real fast lose a bunch of cards because you got yourself down to one hit point and didn't account for you know a bunch of enemies that are fast moving in and hitting you at your one health before you could get death from defiance up numb the pain top is okay sometimes it's gonna be useful to you know give up two health for one shield if you're gonna get hit a lot i mean you should be trying to manage your aggro somewhat though if you're taking four or five hits even the berserker is going to get into trouble sometimes the bottom of this card though is amazing moving and being able to stun is extremely powerful because you're going to need to move a lot anyways and so the stunning is just an extra bonus even at later levels i'm taking this card with me 99 of the time at level two we've got break the chains and we've got reckless offensive break the chains used to be better what you're seeing here is a first addition where it did three damage that got nerfed down to two because of that not nearly as good as it used to be and i always like pushing versus pulling you know probably ninety percent of the time a lot easier to push into traps than to pull into traps the bottom though is quite good especially if you're playing a build where you're staying below half health it's just a six move with a potential for eight move that's gonna get you anywhere you need to go so pretty decent for that and then we've got reckless offensive the top of reckless offensive you're hitting three enemies with this you're doing 15 plus damage no problem throw blood pact on there you're above 15 damage you know pull a couple attack modifiers you're easily 15 to 20 damage it's a very very good card i absolutely love it don't forget you have to be adjacent there's no range on this and then the bottom in a retaliate build can be quite good as well everybody seems to hate that you take one more damage but it's actually not that bad when you can dish out retaliate to all every single time you're attacked combine that with a couple other cards you can get to a really high retaliate level we'll talk about that a little bit later on at level two though i'm going with reckless offensive 100 of the time at level three we've got fatal fury and we've got spiked armor fatal fury top is quite good especially when you've gotten yourself to low health at level 9 if you do this you can kill any normal enemy at 12 hit points or less almost always when you're at one hit point you're going to be able to execute any normal enemy i mean there's only going to be a few out there that can take that hit especially good for you know any enemy that has a lot of shield you're gonna be able to deal with any normal shielded enemy really easily the bottom is really good too when you use it with something like blood packed and seeing red this is gonna be attack four move one attack four i mean as long as you're below half health very powerful card the move in the middle gives you a really good utility allows you to position and use a great top attack as well so if you're doing some sort of you know multi-target attack you can position with the bottom and do a ton of damage and then do a huge aoe fantastic card spiked armor the top doesn't get nearly as much love as it should i mean if you have reckless offensive bottom out and you're playing this and resolute stand you're gonna be able to move in and have retaliate seven retaliate seven is pretty good on melee enemies for attacking you you can do a ton of damage you know three hits on you that's 21 unblockable damage you're never gonna complain about that yes you have to take three hits but it can be powerful in the right circumstances and then the bottom of spiked armor is very good move to attack to target all adjacent enemies you're going to be able to get a ton of work done with this you're going to be able to move in attack all jason and his enemies with the bottom i love both these cards at level 3 i'm mostly taking fatal fury but we may get to spiked armor as well let's talk about that in a little bit at level 4 we have flurry of axes and we have shiny distraction flurry of axes is a massive room clearing aoe attack you can easily pop off for 20 to 30 damage if you're going into a room with four plus enemies it's gonna do a ton of work for you great burst damage and yeah you're gonna have a good time at level four if you're playing on scenario level two you can clear a room like this with a couple buffs throw a blood pact in there attack modifiers whatever else you can easily get this up to six or seven damage on four to five enemies you do the math it's a lot and then until you do that it's giving you a move five really really good for you getting around the battlefield and then shiny distraction initiative eight that's gonna be our best initiative the top i don't think you use the top a lot the berserker is a killing machine it's not a thief i i mean you do need some money so you know loot is handy once in a while but i don't loot a lot with the berserker i prefer to just go in and do some serious killing the bottom though on this card is really good gaining advantage in all your tax make sure you're not going to miss on something like resolute stand and it's really important not to miss on resolute stand or glass hammer hey you want to go from 26 health to one and then miss yeah the gloomhaven game might end up on the ground at that point in time and then everybody targeting you gets disadvantaged as well that helps with survivability and then producing fire i mean that's just a bonus on top at level four though mostly i'm taking flurry of axes i love that burst damage even though shiny distraction is quite good or i'm going back and taking the other level 3 card i didn't take and that's probably just as good as flurry of axes because level 3 is so powerful at level 5 we've got seeing red and final fight seeing red the top is eh it's okay four damage is still not really enough for me the shield one does help for survivability at times but i don't use it a lot 22 initiative is okay and then the bottom if you're doing a half health build or you're planning on staying at low health this is a very good card to really push your damage up and combine that with blood packed and you're getting plus two to every attack that's going to help you a lot over the course of a scenario final fight i love this card and i love it because it's so thematic it's just so thematic for the berserker who's just this crazy girl who goes out and you know she's berserker killing things and she just goes so hard that she kills somebody and then just drops you know covered in blood full of arrows and axes and whatever else love it for that it is actually quite powerful in the top the bottom it sucks for the beginning of the scenarios and that's kind of the problem with this card is that in the first third of the scenario it's not going to be very useful for you most of the time once you get up to two or three move and if you can use fire you've got two or three move and three attack that's gonna be decent but you're gonna be using your fire for other stuff sometimes so i love the card but i'm mostly going with seeing red or i'm going back and picking either the level three card i didn't take or the level four card and i think you're probably going to do that more often than taking either of these level five cards unless you know you're doing a seeing red blood pack type of build at level 6 we have unstoppable destruction and devil horns unstoppable destruction top where you can ignore shield values can be quite useful in very high scenario levels about 25 percent of enemies have shields so yeah i can do some real work for you because those really highly shielded enemies are a massive pain the bottom of this card though even though it doesn't look cool it's actually very very good for the berserker berserker relies on a lot of good strong loss cards and you're going to have a specific plan where you're not going to want to lose probably two or three loss cards like you can't lose them especially early on so if you short rest you have a potential for losing cards that you're really going to need later like you can't lose resolute stand you've got to have resolute stand near to the end of a scenario so you can go and destroy somebody and you can't afford to lose it and then it's going to heal you which is going to help you manage health and also depending on your item picks you can refresh all your items without having the long rest this is really going to help you with the tempo of the berserker because long resting as a berserker and doing nothing yeah not not the funnest thing to do berserkers don't usually rest and so this is going to allow you to go crazy keep the right cards heal a little bit and get back all of your spent items so if you're planning on taking this card make sure that you're taking items that are refreshed after a long rest and then we've got devil horns and in this picture you're seeing this is the first edition again nerfed only does three damage plus a wound and making fire repeatable three hecks that's all it is still a really good card very powerful and then the bottom attack four now not five is great for close-up burst damage i think i'm taking devil horns more often than unstoppable destruction but really you cannot go wrong at this level and then what we're gonna take we're gonna talk about how that interacts with our next level here at level seven at level seven we have burning hatred and we have careless charge burning hatred top if you've got fire can output some pretty decent damage the bottom move 3 wound though is great wounding 2 3 4 enemies is really really good really strong careless charge top pretty good you can take out the biggest elite threat and you can move up and shove them back into a trap or something like that and then immobilize them you know effectively stunning a melee enemy just be careful you're not around all your allies and wounding them not a nice thing to do but pretty good for control and then 20 initiative is is okay as well and in the bottom you're immune to all negative conditions this card is very situationally powerful and it kind of makes it a little bit tough to take because you know if you're in a scenario where you're getting poisoned all the time or you're getting cursed like there's you know tomorrow then this card is going to be awesome but if not it's not going to be that good i think i take burning hatred more than careless charge also a lot of times i'm going to go back and pick a level 3 card i didn't pick a level 4 credit in vic or even at level 6 if you took devil horns you could easily go back and pick up unstoppable destruction for that bottom where you can pretend a short rest is a long rest at level eight we've got bone breaker and we've got vengeful barrage vengeful barrage is one of our most interesting cards and it's very complex so on the next five sources of damage you're going to perform an attack 3. and the cool thing about this is is it synergizes with blood pact and seeing red and stuff like that so if you have those two cards out you're doing five attacks at five damage very very powerful and it procs on damage not attack so blood packed you take a damage you're going to use a charge and this is where this card gets tough to use is that you've always got to make sure that you're adjacent to an enemy when you're ever going to take damage or you are going to waste a charge of this so you know sharpen your pencil drink a big coffee before you're going to play this make sure that you are alert and on your game because it can be so easy to waste this card that being said it can be extremely powerful when played right and if you want to get into some crazy slap fight with somebody who's got retaliate right you attack they retaliate this card procs they retaliate this card procs until somebody's dead so make sure you're not doing it against some super tough elite who's got three or four retaliate and then he's gonna retaliate you into the grave or to you know throwing away half your cards but use correctly this top can be amazing and thematically i absolutely love it and the bottom is actually really good too move four add plus one attack to all your tax this round you're gonna have to pair it with something fast though because the initiative at 38 is you know not super great but it's actually going to allow you to push your overall damage up as well so you know you use the bottom for the first half of the scenario and then when you really want to get into it you throw the top on and you start putting out some serious burst damage and then bone breaker it's gonna get not talked about as much top is solid but i still think we have better things to do i'd rather flurry of axes or use reckless offensive or something where i'm doing 15 plus damage like i think five damage for the berserker per turn at this level not gonna cut it the bottom is really interesting though it's attack three range four target can no longer fly so if you drop a flying enemy onto a trap or an obstacle they're going to suffer the effects of the trap and the obstacle they're going to take damage equal to trap damage so you know you can get some pretty decent work out of this fairly situational but at range 4 there's quite a bit of utility there that being said i'm taking vengeful barrage pretty much a hundred percent of the time at level nine we've got the maw of madness and immortality the mall of madness the name that's why i used to call my ex-girlfriend kidding kidding i'm joking okay moving on the mall of madness is great aoe when i say aoe adjacent multi-target does not hit everyone in the room does not have any range you must be adjacent but it does muddle so it's going to help you you know not take as much damage and it's got great initiative at 10. then it's going to allow you to heal as well this is going to be great for managing your health and then the bottom you can suffer up to five damage so that means you can attack with this bottom between three and eight damage range three immobilized be great for keeping a nice strong elite melee enemy out of the fight eight damage is pretty solid for a bottom you do have to take five for it though but still pretty good immortality also a great card just be careful you're not taking it with blood packed i mean blood pact is gonna use a charge with this so be really careful it's one of those cars where you can easily waste charges on little amounts of damage and so make sure you've got some shield and some other stuff to mitigate small amounts of damage so that you don't have to waste a charge and then the bottom moved to shield to self and then use fire for to retaliate very very good utility you could definitely use this in the first half of the scenario and then switch over to immortality and then you put this with spike armor on the bottom of reckless offensive and you're looking at retaliate8 with shield 2. you're going to be able to do some work with that i can guarantee it go absorb a bunch of aggro and stand there and retaliate like a madman mad woman sorry retaliate retaliate like a mad woman and then allow your friends to just you know go arrange do whatever go ham do a lot of work without having to worry about anything because you're taking all that aggro i think i take immortality more but you just can't go wrong here it depends on how you're playing all right coming up we've got enhancements but before that go ahead do me a favor please hit that like button it really helps me out a lot and subscribe to my channel and turn those notifications on so that when i put out new content you're notified so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to add strengthen to the bottom of bounce back and we're almost exclusively going to use bounce back for that bottom strengthen it's going to help us out a lot it's going to allow us to attack with advantage when we're using glass hammer or resolute stand because we don't want to miss when we're attacking with those you cannot afford to pull a miss when you're using a card that has that much risk attached to it especially glass hammer hey lose all your hit points and then do nothing not a good scenario next we can also strengthen resolute stand the bottom you won't get quite as much use out of it but still really good you always want to attack on advantage if you can and then reckless offensive the top plus one damage that's gonna output a lot more damage it's going to allow you to you know do more on average if you hit three targets every time it's plus three damage every single time that's putting in some good work perks for the berserker the first one i like to take is ignore negative item effects so that you can wear armor without having all those negatives and then next you've got to be really careful because rolling modifiers can cause you to miss more often and so you've got to be really really careful that you're not missing on resolute stand or glass hammer if you're using it so i actually prefer to stay away from the rolling modifiers and just remove cards and you know add in some things that don't roll however if you do want to take the rolling modifiers don't remove any cards you want to have a larger modifier deck so that you've got less of a chance of hitting your miss if you're rolling through a bunch of cards so depending on how you're playing you can go with either one of those strategies but don't mix and match too much and don't go with a small deck and have some rolling in it you're gonna roll yourself into misses far more than you would like to okay items healing healing healing and healing take as many healing items as you can and take some arm or two that's why i like to ignore the uh negative item effects take armor take healing so that you can help manage your health i hate taking turns off with the berserker to heal that's why i don't like using the bottom heel and that level one card can't remember what it is right now make sure that you've got healing items so that you can heal and just keep plowing through enemies next if you do take unstoppable destruction though try and take items that spend i know a healing potion isn't a spend item but for a lot of other stuff you can take spend items and this is gonna allow you just refresh your item set every time without long resting it's gonna be really really helpful now right here we've got a level three prosperity spoiler and it's so important to the berserker i want to talk about it so here's your one second to hit pause if you don't want to hear it maybe two seconds long spear this turns resolute stand and glass hammer into almost game breaking attacks because you can hit two targets and you can refresh it so you can use it for each one and you're going to be able to do a ridiculous amount of damage um you know 40 50 damage at higher levels on two targets and it's gonna allow you to do some pretty serious things i would always always always take this for my hand items and because it's a prosperity level three you should have access to it for a long time that's it berserker is awesome i hope you've enjoyed this please make sure and comment below i want to hear about your experiences with the berserker what you did what you didn't do make sure and comment and thank you so much again for watching the video

Channel: Neural Net Games

Views: 8,985

Keywords: board games, table top games, lightning bolt guide, berserker guide, gloomhaven, gloomhaven strategy, gloomhaven best class, gloomhaven best characters, gloomhaven tips, gloomhaven too hard, gloomhaven too easy, gloomhaven tactics, gloomhaven worst class, gloomhaven worst character, gloomhaven unlockable class, gloomhaven secret class, gloomhaven unlockable character, gloomhaven secret character, gloomhaven help, gloomhaven best game

Id: FeKMdvMnGyI

Length: 34min 8sec (2048 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021