Gloomhaven Ultimate Mind Thief Guide

in this guide i'm going to go through tips and tricks and strategies to really unlock the full potential of the mind thief items are important to every character but because there's going to be spoilers in them what i've done is i've organized them by prosperity level from one through nine so my recommendations on what items are going to be good with the mind thief kind of come at the end watch all the way through and watch all the way up until the prosperity level you're currently at if you could please go ahead and like this video subscribe to my channel and turn on notifications so that when i publish new content you're notified and also if you could please go ahead down in the comments comment on whether you like the build comment on whether you don't like the build both are great i love to hear that feedback so you're supposed to be in the front you hardly have any health let's address the elephant in the room how are you actually supposed to make this work well there's a few different strategies and the first is managing your initiative so this the mind thief has great ability to manage initiative great fast cards and great slow cards so what you're generally going to do is you're going to use a go fast sorry a go slow go fast approach and so you're going to come in you're going to let everybody else go the rest of your teammates the monsters and you're gonna come in and you're gonna attack this is like a first turn strategy then the second turn you're gonna go really fast and you're gonna attack and then you're gonna get out of dodge and so the monsters are gonna focus they're gonna target on people that are closer and so you'll be able to get in get two attacks and get out of the way um this doesn't always work some monsters are quicker than others and they may beat you to the punch most of the time you know there's only going to be one set of monsters that are faster than you um that being said you should have a safety valve and so i'm talking something like shield or being able to go invisible so that when you do get yourself in trouble and you get hit that you can generally you know save yourself from dying by you know going invisible getting out of the way with movement or using shield something along those lines the next thing i want to talk about is augments augments are not a loss card and so to increase longevity you actually may want to reuse them so for example you're almost always going to play the mine's weakness in the beginning because it's awesome and it's overpowered especially early on if you're a level one mind thief and you're not using the mind's weakness start using it right now so you're going to play the mind's weakness and then when you rest you can actually put that in the discard and pick it up and play it again this is actually going to increase your longevity a little bit so let's talk about the mind's weakness every melee attack it adds plus to attack early on at level one and you know even later on this is the most powerful card the mine thief has it's kind of crazy but yes a level one card is the best card the majority of mine thief builds center around this card there are some other things you can do but you've got to build very specific specifically for them so my recommendation is that you always use the mind's weakness and you should be playing it on turn one very very consistently and so turn one you want to go slow let your other allies take that aggro set yourself up with the mind's weakness so that all your future attacks are much more powerful don't go don't leave home without this card hoping you're liking this mind thief guide so far before we get any further i would ask again that you like this video and that you subscribe to my channel turn on notifications so that when i publish more guides you're gonna get notified and i've also created another video and it's gonna rank every class in gloomhaven forgotten circles and jaws of the lion so go check it out i'm gonna put a link up top here and go find out where your favorite characters rank and how good they are versus all the other characters in the game after the mind's weakness we've got scurry scurry is a great utility card it doesn't look that powerful on paper but a move 3 on the top is going to allow you to do a lot of cool things it's going to allow you to change positions and attack at the same time and the mind thief actually has quite a few bottom attacks that you're going to want to use and so it's great for getting in there attacking top and then you know using a bottom attack as well the next one we're going to talk about is frigid apparition when you've got the mind's weakness up this is a repeatable five at level one i mean it doesn't get a lot more powerful that than that and if you've got ice up you're going to be able to stun as well this is another must take card especially early on with the mind thief the next we've got perverse edge perverse edge is great control when you're in close and attacking you're going to be able to stun somebody and it's a repeatable stun at range and it makes ice feeding into frigid apparition so these two cards have great synergy i basically never play the mine thief without them because they're so useful even at high levels a bottom stun repeatable that's going to produce ice is actually going to be really good for you fearsome blade is what i would call a semi useful card it but it doesn't have great initiative the top attack two with with the mind's weakness is four it's not bad it's a it's an attack four with a push three it's going to be reasonably useful for you you know pushing monsters into traps and that sort of thing but the initiative does hold it back 27 is not really good enough for the mind thief for that reason i usually leave it behind the bottom of fearsome blade move forward attack two that's not really going to be good enough for a loss as well next we've got parasitic influence the top augment can be swapped for a quick heal when you've been using the mind's weakness and you've gotten yourself into a bit of trouble and there's no other options so you can quickly swap that in and do an attack and heal and if you've got a bottom attack or two then you can heal for a little bit more so it's you know it's kind of a safety valve i don't take it a lot the bottom range for move somebody one is okay the utility is there to push somebody into a trap or move them into a trap but still not super powerful into the night is a good card for attacking when you're in close so this would be along the go fast strategy so you go fast you go slow and attack you get in you go fast you attack again you go invisible so great strategy for keeping yourself in the fray but not taking damage the next is empathetic assault the top is quite good on this as a power move right it's range four range five sorry attack four producing ice two experience and to loss so if you've got you know somebody who's in the back that you need to kill and you've got some melee enemies blocking you it's a great card to pull out you know when you really need to just be careful of exhaustion because the mine thief you know only has nine cards you do have to be careful about exhausting and the back or sorry the bottom is great utility move to heal two is super handy for the mind thief and at initiative 11 this is a great card to take because you're going to be able to use the move to a bunch and heal to a bunch of times and then you're going to be able to use the top when you really need to pull it out feedback loop is just not gonna be as good as mine's weakness it sounds great that you're getting shield on melee attacks and it can be handy in situations but nine times out of ten the mind's weakness is gonna be better because most of the mind thief attacks are pretty weak without the mind's weakness you know we're talking one two three attack tops and so you're going from you know a general attack of four or five with the mind's weakness out to two or three with you know when you've got feedback loop even though you've got shield it's much better to get in with the mind's weakness dish out a bunch of damage and use movement and shield or invisibility to get yourself out of trouble versus trying to stand in there and tank it's just too risky and so it's not worth it the bottom move forward jump with a muddle if you land in the hex you're at it doesn't synergize well with the mine thief because generally you're going to want to move around to position yourself away from aggro and so if you have to end up back in the square you started it's not really that great the next we've got submissive affliction submissive affliction has terrible initiative the bottom is good utility the top works bettering better with withering claw uh poison and metal um so if you're running a withering claw build this card becomes more powerful and withering claw is not bad i still don't think it you know dan puts out the damage that mind's weakness does but if you are using withering claw you know that poison and muddle into attacks then you're putting conditions on people and submissive affliction can generally be a four or five attack the bottom of submissive affliction is generally okay but the problem is that if you've got allies out there and let's say you go slow and one of your allies kills one of the monsters now you've got two monsters left and one hex in the middle the card becomes useless because it doesn't have any range on it and it's only a two attack it is okay when you've got you know enemies who have retaliate the effect is actually magnified because they're going to retaliate against the enemy that attacked them so if you're fighting retaliate enemies this has more use the next is withering claw and again withering claw looks good and it can be good in the right build but generally the mind's weakness is going to outperform it the bottom target one adjacent enemy and then move three is actually pretty useful though so generally i use it for the bottom and not the top because if you've gone slow and then you've gone fast the next round and you're in the fray you can immobilize the guy you've attacked and then move out of the way so that he's stuck there so you know controlling melee enemies with his card is you know it works pretty well the next we've got gnawing horde and i i don't generally take this um the salmon isn't great summons without range die too fast especially on higher levels like at level one this card is okay but once you're you know up and past four or five the enemies do too much damage they're gonna come in and they're gonna make mince meat out of this rat and he's not gonna last very long and the damage output you'll be lucky if you get four damage out of it and he will tank a hit or two but still it's not worth it um and then last of the starting cards we've got possession don't ever use possession it's too situational the initiative is abysmal i mean it's almost as bad as it can get 51 is completely brutal um attack six for a loss and you've got to use it on an adjacent ally i mean it makes no sense at all with the mind's weakness and um frigid apparition you're doing a repeatable five with a stun i mean there's no comparison i don't even know how this card got through quality control um and the bottom one ally within range three can perform before move doesn't make any sense at level 2 we've got hostile takeover first hostile takeover is a pretty decent card good utility not super powerful doesn't synergize well with the mind's weakness but on its own it can be quite useful for controlling aggro and things like that because it's quick and because you can immobilize so you can you know blast it off immobilize a monster and you know keep it out of the fray it also does produce ice which does synergize well with some other cards like frigid apparition so you can use your stun and stuff like that the bottom is a good emergency situation kind of card where you use it and you know you take a turn from a monster and you may use it against an enemy so not too bad can definitely be useful in the right situations wretched creature is absolutely wretched it deserves its name it should just be called wretched card okay maybe a little bit harsh but the monstrous rat is not a good summon it's going to die quite quickly you know past level four level five it's gonna die on the first hit and so sometimes it's going to get no damage and so you don't want to lose a card for that i would basically never play this card the move three at the bottom use dark to curse whoop-dee-doo at level three first off we've got brain leech brain leech is a decent card it has a bottom attack with a strengthen which can be pretty useful when you're really going to stay in the fray use a bottom attack use a top attack the top is okay healing and damage and the initiative again fairly decent at 16. next we've got silent scream and it's basically just a better parasitic influence and generally i would only use this card when i've gotten myself into trouble and i need to heal and damage be damned i'm going to swap this card out for mine's weakness have a new augment up and i'm gonna use it to heal because i think that i'm probably gonna die or have to lose cards if i don't uh the bottom move three push two and use ice it's it's okay okay utility uh generally i'm gonna be using the ice for stunning instead though so for level three we're gonna pick brain leech most of the time at level four we're starting off with pilfer pilfer's one of those cards that can get you a ton of cash and if you manage to get in there and and don't get killed you're gonna come out with a lot of loot and you're also not stealing it from your friends so they're not gonna hate you as if you were a scoundrel it also has a great bottom loss card with the mine's weakness this is automatically going to be attack 8 and 3 move pair this with a couple other mods you can get in there and do a ton of damage and then you know with a good attack you're gonna have a really strong round so generally i i use this card when i really need to output some serious damage mid to late game next is cranium overload cranium overload is also a great card it has super fast initiative at five and also it can do a lot of damage in the right circumstances so it's gonna kill an enemy and then you're gonna do it to attack and just remember that this is all counted as range on the card it looks like the second set of attacks after the first kill are melee but they're not you can go check out the faq it is ranged attacks it's all considered range attack so your augments don't count but still a good card and then bottom move five is really strong paired with initiative five so at level four you can take either depending on how you feel and even later on you may actually come back to level four and take the one you didn't take level five we've got mass hysteria and mass hysteria on first glance is one of those cards especially if you're just starting out in gloomhaven that looks really good on paper but it's actually not nearly as good as you think because it seriously impacts your longevity you know having two separate augments up and then having them sit there and you either have to leave them out and have you know seriously impacted longevity or each turn your rest you're gonna have to put them in your discard and then replay them and so it's actually not nearly as good as you think the top attack is okay in the right build it does hit a lot of targets but if you have any shielded enemies around it's it's not going to be a great card it does produce ice though which helps us with you know frigid apparition next we've got frozen mind frozen mind if you build around the stun can actually replace mine's weakness you can turn the mine thief into a control build and if you've got some good damage dealers around you it's actually going to be quite a powerful build and it's going to keep you safe a lot too because you're going to be up in the fray but you're going to be stunning a lot of people and so as long as you've got good damage dealers with you this can be quite a powerful build on the bottom we've got force an enemy uh to move to again you can move them around into traps and stuff so at level five if i've decided to build around the stun i'm taking frozen mind if not i'm pretty much taking the other level 4 card that i didn't take last time at level 6 we've got corrupting embrace and it's a fantastic card the top with mine's weakness is going to be an attack 3 poison and then because of the poison it's going to be an attack 4 model so you're going to have a 7 damage attack and you're going to be muddling and it's not even a loss card very powerful card because of the two attacks next we've got the bottom which is a move four jump and poison all enemies move through and then create dark again this is amazing i very often love to play this card first turn the bottom of this with mind's weakness so you go slow you play this and if you've got boots you know you can add a couple move to that you can poison the entire room and then everybody else is going to be doing an extra damage to each of the monsters it's going to help you mop up super fast and with mine's weakness you've now poisoned every enemy so you're going to be doing plus three damage on every single attack in two-player especially this is extremely powerful and i generally start out with this move a hundred percent of the time if i'm level six next we've got another great card in dark frenzy and you know if you've got ice and you've got dark up and you've poisoned somebody i mean this is a repeatable nine damage attack it's it's a very good card and it's gonna give you some experience and you don't have to lose it and so you can keep playing it over and over again the bottom has a ton of utility too you're gonna be able to move three attack three range three and so you attack melee and then you move three out and you attack with that you produce ice you're out of range you're out of aggro range and the monsters can focus on the rest of your teammates at level six it's a pick em i generally go with corrupting embrace first but level seven which we're going to talk about here shortly isn't that great so i would say most of the time i actually take both level 6 cards at level 7 we've got vicious blood and vicious blood is one of those cards where if you don't build around it it's not going to be very good so it can actually be a super powerful card if you've completely built around the retaliate portion if not do not take it the move to attack two on the bottom is decent but generally you're gonna have better things to do psychic projection is one of the worst cards and at level seven it really makes me sad because it's pretty much it you know the bottom two cards that and possession i would say are the two worst cards heel five shield one stunned self is brutal for the mind thief the mind thief is all about movement going slow and fast positioning and stunning yourself does not fit in with that i don't know how this card even happened i hate it so much there's one thing you can do with this card though that can actually make it powerful so mass hysteria attack one range for target four you've already got the mine's weakness up so that's going to be an attack three range for target for that can be quite powerful but you've got to have that exact card combo so in that case it actually can be useful but because of the top i'm not using this card very often at level 8 we're starting out with shared nightmare it's got good initiative but it's not a great level eight card initiative seven is going to help you a lot move five use ice for one shield can occasionally be useful the move is good the shield generally i find that i'm going to want to use ice to stun for the most part with the mind thief and then the top is attack 3 range 4 target 2 you know consume a dark to add poison and curse it's a pretty solid card level eight though i would say it's you know middle of the pack and below and then we've got domination one adjacent ally may perform attack four and the attack gains the effects of your augments again you've gotta be adjacent and it's basically even if you have the mind's weakness a repeatable six attack but you need to be adjacent so it's worse than you know other cards i wouldn't take it you've also got force one normal early enemy within range five to perform its turn this round um and attack its enemies so a decent safety valve there at initiative 13 it's okay but generally i would take an earlier card over this one you know if you haven't taken your second level six card i would take that but if you do have to choose normally i'm choosing shared nightmare here at level 8. at level 9 the mind thief gets the short straw a little bit um level nine is not very powerful for the mind thief phantasmal killer is a decent card you can kill one normal target but you've got to have dark up and generally i go with mine's weakness over this even later on or you know another card that i've specifically built around like vicious blood um the move to loot one invisible self on the bottom is pretty good but the initiative on this card is kind of a pain so you've got to pair it with something fast many is one it's not a good card the rat king's attack is based upon his health he doesn't have range and if you play this at high levels he's going to take one attack and then his attack is going to be terrible he's not gonna last that long even with nine health salmons need range or they need some sort of shield or something that can keep them alive a little bit longer the bottom of this in a four player count game can be powerful because if you're you're near all three other characters they can add plus three to all their attacks and if you've got somebody who's hitting multiple targets like your spell weaver you can do a lot but generally it's a very situational card and that's why i don't like it so level nine you know i would take phantasmal killer 90 of the time over many as one or i would take another lower level card that makes more sense for my build perks are fairly straightforward i like to start with the plus two ice one because i like to be able to produce ice next i get rid of all the minus ones or get rid of four minus ones swap those out and then the next is i get rid of the minus two for the plus zero i generally try to stay away from the rolling modifiers especially the model one and things like that uh and the really the only one i go with is the rolling stun there's a lot that can be said about enhancements and i could get really far into the weeds here but i'm going to stay with a few recommendations that you will be able to accomplish with a reasonable amount of gold because the problem is with enhancing higher level cards it ends up costing so much that only a hardcore dedicated player who plays the class a lot is really going to be able to enhance higher level cards so the very first card i'd start with is scurry plus one attack on scurry it's not gonna cost you a lot and it's gonna you're gonna use it a ton you're gonna get you know three or four extra damage every scenario out of this next is perverse edge add some range on that make sure that stun you know at three range it's going to be much better than a two range much more utility for you to stun and then move in and then frigid apparition just add an attack and then you if you had plus one attack you've got a repeatable six attack when you have mine's weakness up that you can consume an ice for a stun and that's gonna be really great for you at prosperity level one i'm taking a cloak of invisibility because it's a nice safety valve for when you get yourself in trouble and you may not be able to get out via movement or somebody else taking aggro next is the boots of striding we're going to use that to help us maneuver more and so you can also pair it with corrupting embrace so that you can poison more enemies so yeah you want movement with the mind thief early on and this is going to change later but i won't spoil anything if you're not at the higher prosperity levels i like to start out with the warhammer if you've got a multi-attack card then you can stun a couple enemies with it and it's gonna be pretty useful and it also pairs well with a stun build potions are generally a pick em but i'm gonna start most of the time with stamina potion because the mind thief only has nine cards at prosperity2 i like to take the empowering talisman because i like getting back consumed items it makes me feel good and i generally like to get back things that i'm not supposed to get back so in this case you could use it on the warhammer use that twice or you could use it on my next pick and this is generally going to replace the war hammer because it's only a one-hand item and so you can pair this with something like a poison dagger or something like that and so this item is the battle axe so you turn your one target into two targets pairs amazingly with frigid apparition and the mind's weakness it's gonna be two five attacks and you're gonna be able to stun um my next pick is stun powder again control so that you can keep the mind thief out of danger and so you're gonna use this when you feel like you're in trouble and you're not gonna be able to take an attack or you can't get yourself into the right position and then a minor mana potion is another potion at this point in time that can help because you can create ice with it you know help you that stunning at prosperity level three there's not a lot there is the long spear and it could technically replace the battle axe but generally because it's two-handed it's not better so i would stay with the battle axe and another hand item at prosperity level four we've got a major stamina potion and this is just in addition to your minor stem helps with that longevity so it's always a good pick no matter what build you have no matter what you're doing volatile bomb you can use this with perverse edge for a great multi-target aoe stun at this point i would take voldebalm and i would ditch on the other hand item that i have whether it's a poison dagger or whatever else it is because having that aoe stun is is amazing and you can get it back with empowering talisman and use that volatile bomb again at prosperity 5 we're just upgrading our boots of striding and using the boots of dashing they're just better more movement no reason to have the boots of striding unless you're strapped for cash and with the mind thief you probably won't be and then the next pick i have for this is ring of haste and this is a great pick for any build for really any class because it's going to allow you to become more powerful in a faster time frame so it does impact longevity but it's still better to use it than not because you're going to be you know attacking more or acting more versus the monsters and so it's a balance of power shift at prosper 86 the most interesting item is the reaping site and it's going to allow you to turn one of your single target melees into you know a big aoe attack it could potentially replace battle axe and voldemort but i'll still probably stay with battle axe and mulder bomb unless you're not using you know much ranged attacks at prosperity level 7 we've got the ring of brutality and it pairs really nicely with the ring of haste having these two out means you're basically going to be able to play two extra cards in the round it's going to allow you to attack a lot it's going to allow you to be super mobile it's going to make you really powerful and it's really the only way you can make an insane retaliate build with the mind thief work using vicious blood and you can attack four or five times in a round using ring of haste and ring of brutality and you can easily have over 10 retaliate with some items and some other stuff so later on it can get crazy at level eight there's an interesting pick here and it's the cloak of phasing and this is especially good if you're running with a craig cart because you can end your turn on an obstacle and you can become invisible and you can also fly i mean that's super handy for getting over traps and and getting yourself out of trouble and that sort of stuff so really interesting pick here especially if you have a craig heart and then we've got doom powder and doom powder you're just going to use for control it's a straight upgrade to stun powder at prosperity level 9 we've got the boots of sprinting they're just a straight upgrade on the boots allow you to move further help with that mobility next we've got balance blade and i love to play battle axe with balance blade not together but as separate hand items balance blade is going to give you an automatic attack for no matter what that's going to be great for the mind thief with mine's weakness you're gonna just have a attack six whenever you want next is the halberd we can use the halberd as well it's a pretty good pick because it's gonna make all your melees range too so you know depending on how you're playing that can be really good as well and then we've got the second chance ring and again it just gives you an extra turn i mean it's going to be really helpful well we've come to the end and i hope this guide has really helped you unlock the full potential the mind thief please if you can like the video comment on anything that crosses your mind and please subscribe to my channel and turn on notifications so that as i put out more content you're notified

Channel: Neural Net Games

Views: 8,558

Keywords: board games, table top games, gloomhaven, Mind Thief guide, starting class, strategy

Id: IBU5UoMwW60

Length: 30min 46sec (1846 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2020