Borissimo

I'm pretty okay with how the Rat Swarm works -- the card effect happens first, so that when the location effect tries to trigger, the card isn't there anymore. To me, this doesn't seem like an issue of priority because the timing of the effects is very clear.

Ahhh, well Rat Swarm is an interesting thing. The text of the card reads, "If you do not defeat the Rat Swarm by at least 4, shuffle it into the deck it came from." So this is working correctly. On a roll of 8-11, the Rat Swarm is shuffled back into the deck before it can be banished.

I keep getting nothing but Warrens, Shrine to Lamashtu, Prison, Desecrated Vault, and various Dungeons. I'd kill me for a good ol' Farmhouse and General Store.

I noticed that in Quest Mode, you don't get to change your characters' starting decks like you do in Story Mode. Is this intentional? I would, of course, love to throw out all those pesky Darts, Short Swords, and Potions of Hiding that clutter up my heroes' decks, but I suppose I'd also understand if this possibility were absent for balance/challenge reasons.

Crud, I don't remember what the wildcard power was! What I do know is that I tried restarting the scenario several times and the same thing always happened, so unless I randomly got the same wildcard each time (which is possible), it isn't wildcard-related. I actually ran up against the same bug in Quest Mode playing on normal difficulty. I rolled a scenario that had the power of increasing checks against goblins by 1d4. The first time I encountered a goblin, the roll happened and the game hung just as described in the OP. This time, there weren't any wildcards since the difficulty was normal. And, most bizarrely of all, after the events described in the OP, I went to play in Quest Mode and one of my characters had disappeared. I'd been playing with Lem and Valeros and gotten both to level 8. When I logged into Quest Mode and hit the Experienced tab, Lem was there but Valeros wasn't. The only connection I can think of is that the party that had lost progression in Story Mode had had a Valeros in it but not a Lem.

Beta 3 has, on the whole, been noticeably smoother than beta 2, so I have to give some props to the devs for the bug-squashing efforts! I've only encountered two progression issues so far, one minor and one major: When playing Approach to Thistletop on heroic difficulty, the game hangs as soon as any monster with the goblin trait is encountered. The 2d4 are rolled, then nothing. Thankfully, one's save file can be saved via the amazing forfeit button (yay!), and the scenario can be completed on Normal difficulty without issue. In case this is specific to me, I'm on an iPad Air with permadeath and pnp turned off. The more serious issue is that after beating Thistletop Delve on Heroic difficulty with the same party, the game hangs in the rewards screen. The gold reward animation happens, I click close, and then ... nothing. This is with a party that has beaten the scenario before, so I should not get a card feat or loot, but the arrow to proceed to the deck management screen is greyed out. Quitting the game or killing the app and logging back in takes me to the victory screen and the gold reward animation, and after that the game hangs again. Alas, this is a progression bug that even the almighty forfeit button cannot get you out of. Edit: In case it's relevant how the scenario ended, Merisiel was in the Warrens and took on both checks to kill Nualia. The first check involved 1 blessing; the second check used a bunch, resulting in a high difficulty value and a very high roll. The only open location was the Garrison, which Kyra temp-closed. Valeros, Seoni, and Pat Sajan were all in the Throne Room.

iPad air, story mode, no permadeath, no pass-and-play. I was playing a 5-character party across multiple sessions and not encountering any issues. However, after installing the new iOS update this morning, my party save file was back at Bringandoom with every subsequent level locked. The characters still had their feats and gear. I beat Brigandoom to see if I'd get the rewards twice, and I didn't. So this seems to be a partial progression loss bug: my characters are still hale and hearty and I can still play with them, but levels that should be unlocked are now locked. Correlation doesn't imply causation, so I don't know that the iOS update caused this issue, but it's the only thing I can think of that was different compared to all the other days I'd been playing with this party. Has anyone else encountered this type of progression loss?

Weirdly, this is not a bug with the digital game but rather a quirk of the physical game that the digital version captures correctly. The soldier adds a bonus do your Melee skill specifically. Characters who do not have a skill always roll a d4 when attempting a check for that skill. Since Merisiel doesn't have the Melee skill, and since the soldier's ability applies to the melee skill only, Merisiel must roll 2d4 (1d4 for herself + 1d4 for the soldier) if she wants to use the soldier's ability in combat. Edit: here's an extra clarification. Suppose Kyra has 2 skill feats in wisdom and is trying to close the woods (a wisdom or survival 6 check). If she rolls her wisdom, she'll be rolling 1d12 + 2. If recharges a Guide (add d10 to your survival check), then she'll switch from rolling 1d12 + 2 for wisdom to rolling 1d4, no skill feats, for survival, since she does not have the survival skill. Then she will add the Guide's bonus for a total of 1d4 + 1d10. Your example with Merisiel is exactly analogous to this one. What I think is a bug is that Sajan cannot use the soldier when using his hero power. By the wording of his power, he is still considered to be using the Melee skill, so he should still be allowed to recharge a soldier for it ... I think!

Do you remember what the monster was?

Alas, the answer is no. Paizo clarified that a card's traits are added to the check only if the card determines which die you are using for the check. If the card doesn't do that, then its traits are not added to the check. Because the Strength spell does not determine the die being used for the check, its traits are not added to the check.

Wow, what a meaty build! Reading these notes was a real morning treat. I have one question about this fix: I was playing yesterday and broke progression when Amiri tried to bury a weapon using her Rage power. The wisdom roll for the Warchanter came up, and when I tried to cancel the action, the game hung and I couldn't get back into the save file. Does the above fix to Harsk work for Amiri as well (and Lem recharging a weapon for Bard Song)?

In the closed beta, just playing for fun for a couple of weeks, I've unlocked everything except for 2 of the base set characters. This is without doing a single thing that I consider "grinding." Of course, your experience may vary depending on how you want to play the game. For more information on the f2p system, you can read this long post I wrote.

It's really interesting to see the different reactions to this news in different places. Here and on the Paizo forums, there's a lot of anger. But when the iOS Board Games blog made this announcement on BoardGameGeek, the most overwhelmingly upvoted comments were: Good for them. Beta tester feedback that's listened to? A good thing. Good! Listening to beta testers is something this space desperately needs. Thumbs up for actually listening to the testers and doing the right thing.

A few more very basic issues, with apologies if they are already known. If Ezren plays a display spell (such as Strength) outside of an encounter, he gets to use Expanded Spellbook. If he plays a display spell at the beginning of an encounter, he never gets an option to use Expanded Spellbook. If Ezren plays Dispel Magic, sees a spell, recharges Dispel Magic, uses Expanded Spellbook, encounters the spell, and acquires it, he should get a free explore -- but he doesn't. It's possible that not all of these steps are necessary to achieve the bug, but it's a pain to set up, so I didn't test all of the permutations (i.e., what happens if he doesn't recharge Dispel Magic and/or doesn't activate Expanded Spellbook). At the beginning of 1.1, Merisiel hails Father Zantus as Father Desna. So rude! You could maybe pass this off as Merisiel being irreverent ... but I think it's just a mistake. And here's one I beseech other testers for help on. Playing Black Fang's Dungeon a few times, I sometimes encountered Black Fang and didn't get an option to temp close locations. I think this happened when Ezren encountered Black Fang off of a free exploration from acquiring a magic item ... but I'm not 100% certain. Has anyone else encountered this?

Not sure if these are known issues, since they seem pretty basic, but I figured I'd throw them in here just in case: Darts and the Impaler of Thorns do not offer a chance to reroll dice when failing a combat check. On iPad Air 2, the "Ar" of "Arrange" is cut off in the help text when playing Augury, so the sentence begins "range the cards" instead of "Arrange the cards." In Foul Misgivings, if you encounter a Haunt on your first exploration at the Academy, encounter Aesha, and defeat her, the "explore now" and "forfeit exploration" buttons pop up on the map when you are choosing which location to explore with Aesha's power. If you hit "forfeit exploration," play proceeds normally, but if you hit "explore now," wackiness ensues. I fought a monster I couldn't see and couldn't play cards against, discarded my hand in damage, and got stuck on the map. I thought my progress was lost for sure, but on a whim, I tapped a location -- and Kyra actually moved there (?!). The Academy stayed open and I never got to scout a deck with Aesha, so I don't recommend this strategy if you're trying to win the scenario. Fortunately, I had Beast Mode available, so I turned it on and frickin' won anyway, but we can't expect all players to do this.

Oh, I know it's not supposed to have that. The ol' mare just seems to be behaving that way.

I wonder, for the Warchanter, if it wouldn't be better to change the text and implementation to, "Before you act, each character attempts a Wisdom X check. Characters who fail can't play weapons or use spells with the attack trait on this check." The game has a good handle on "before you act" checks with consequences. This would be annoying a lot of the time, say in a 6-player party where over 80% of the rolls are irrelevant ... but that might still be better than what the card is doing in its current state.

Wow, I didn't even think that Ilsoari might have anything to do with it, but yeah, now that I think about it, Ilsoari was present in both cases. In the first game, I resisted keeping him until I started 2.1; in the newer game, I started using him as soon as I got him. Clearly, I should have known better than to trust that conniving jackal.

I had the exact same problem! As with you, it happened so fast that I had no idea why. I definitely remember that it was Tangletooth in a game with Kyra and Merisiel, and Tangletooth got shuffled back into the deck even though I defeated it. Do you remember what your check value was? Maybe (wild shot in the dark) Tangletooth has something going on like the Rat Swarm, where if you don't defeat it by a high enough value it is undefeated.

It seems like the most contentious item is the roll button. People have attempted to make objective arguments on both sides, but what it boils down to is this: Some people are annoyed by having to touch + swipe; others are not. Now even if the people who are annoyed are objectively "wrong" somehow, no set of reasoning or facts will cause their annoyance to disappear. If 50% of the game's players are annoyed by the swipe-to-roll mechanism, then ignoring them is a bad idea, because then you have half your players experiencing a pain point every time the dice are rolled, which is something that happens a fair amount in this game. Now if the proportion of annoyed players is more like 5%, then ignoring us is fine. I agree with Deekow that conducting a survey on this issue is a good idea, because what's at stake is a (potentially) large proportion of your player base developing a negative association with the single most frequently performed action of the entire game.

Allowing the player to swap characters across parties presents an interesting challenge. Either you make all the player's parties share the same box, or you let the player cheat. The first is really awful, so the devs chose the second. I was a bit weirded out at first, but, honestly, it seems fine. There's no competitive element to this game, so who cares if people cheat? For that matter, you could cheat in the physical game. If I wanna roll d20's for all my stats in my home game, who's A) gonna stop me, and B) care? So, yeah, if someone really wanted to, they could have a Harsk with five Returning Throwing Axes +1. If it makes the game more fun for them, why not? The only thing I think Obsidian needs to watch for is what happens when they implement multiplayer with strangers. If I'm logging into a multiplayer game, I don't want to join forces with a Seoni with four Father Zantuses. I'm guessing that Obsidian will implement a simple "character readiness" test that will disallow players from joining multiplayer games with any character whose deck could not be built with cards from a single box.

The wildcard powers for heroic and legendary difficulty are new, as are the cards found in chests.

I described here a bug that killed my progress through story mode. After hitting the bug again today with a new party, I took care to write down more information surrounding the bug, in the hopes that it will help quash it. Short version: after encountering and acquiring an ally, the scenario gets stuck. Quitting and coming back reverts to the latest check, but no matter how the check goes, no further progress is possible and the save has to be abandoned. Long version: iPad Air, Facebook login, no pass 'n' play, no permadeath, 2-player storymode, Merisiel and Kyra K & M finished 1.3, got their power feats, finish building decks (Kyra was missing an armor and took Chainmail), and go straight into 1.4. Kyra goes to Treacherous Cave. M goes to Goblin fortress and uses Ilsoari, finding a Troubadour. Ilsoari's roll doesn't trigger. M encounters troubadour, rolls high, pick him up, and the game reaches the "dead state" -- I can examine things, but the "end turn" and "optional discard" buttons are greyed out, as are all my cards in hand. Hand is: Staff of minor healing Blessing of Calistria Thieves' Tools Blessing of Torag and the newly acquired Troubadour Here's where things get a bit more interesting. If I quit, come back, and use M's power to evade the check, I break out of the encounter and can continue play! Kyra's turn goes normally. On M's turn, she encounters and kills a Xulgath -- and the "dead state" is back. However, if I quit, come back, and fail the check against the Xulgath, the game proceeds! I moved M to the Woods and the problem followed her -- beating a barrier brought on the dead state. Unfortunately, I foolishly used a crowbar against the barrier, so when I quit and came back in the game, the check I was at was the recharge for the crowbar -- there was no way to evade or to fail the check against the barrier. Thus, my progress in that game was halted before I could check whether I would have been able to skip turns till I lost the scenario and thereby shake the dead state. From encountering the dead state twice, here's what I've learned: - It's not scenario or adventure dependent (I had it in 1.3 and 2.1) - It's not character dependent (M and K both got it) - It may be brought on by acquiring an ally (this was the same both times) - It is "shaken" if the encountered card is shuffled back into the deck, but not if it's acquired or (as a boon) banished - Once "shaken," the dead state sticks to the character who contracted it and will follow them to future explorations and even future locations - Besides the absence of the optional discard and pass turn buttons, the game works perfectly normally - If you can't shake the dead state, you lose your progress in that save file and the ability to use those characters permanently I hope at least some of that was helpful in the eventual quashing of this bug!

Well hey, that's amazing! I had no idea.

Yes, I am heartbroken to wait 4 more weeks, but years from now, when we're all playing Mummy's Mask on our hologram TVs, we're not gonna care about those 4 extra weeks back in 2016 that we waited for the dev team to finish the game. Looking forward to build 3!