jolyonb

Locations Harsk tends to have a reasonable chance at closing locations involving Perception, Survival, and Fortitude, and after a few bumps, some dex-based locations too. Because his skill bonuses are not in dex though (which is only a d8 after all), he tends not to be great at closing locations based on skill rolls. His best skill, Constitution, is only needed to close two specific locations, Deeper Dungeons and Festering Maze of Sloth, and otherwise comes up so rarely that it's not really worth bumping. However, he can often have just the right card to auto-close a location by churning through his deck fast enough to get to it. Note that the Shadow Clock (only used in one adventure that I know of) is the ideal location for Harsk, as you recharge and reset your hand at the start of every turn (thanks aksFourpaws!). Other There's not much more to say about Harsk. Recognize that he takes a support role, and trick him out to do that as best as he can. He'll always be a welcome addition to any party. Even Local Heroes and Here Comes The Flood are ok if you have the Crown of Charisma, and he's fine at animal-based ally rolls. One last point (thanks aksFourpaws): Harsk's Scout Ahead ability meshes quite well with Seelah's Crusade ability. Never send a wanted boon to the bottom of the deck again! Make sure to put Harsk immediately before Seelah for best effect. If you're planning to play Harsk solo (why???), check out Longshot11's post below.

Inventory Weapons: You want ranged weapons. Note that crossbows tend to be better than short/longbows, as they add 1d8 instead of strength (only 1d6), or 1d10 for a heavy crossbow. Weapons that give a bonus on discard should be favored if you choose Sniper and Reload. Below are my choice of ranged weapons by level. This isn't a complete list of ranged weapons; I've left off any I think aren't as good as these. However, make sure that all your weapons are magical before you get picky! I've included the dice that each weapon adds, for comparison (but not including the base dex or ranged bonus). When a strength dice is added, I've included 1d6. B: Light Crossbow (1d8) B: Heavy Crossbow (1d10) B: Shock Longbow +1 (1d8+1, discard for +1d6) B: Returning Throwing Axe +1 (1d8+1, recharge for +1d6) C: Deathbane Light Crossbow +1 (1d8+1, +1d8 against undead) Start out by making sure all your weapons are crossbows, then aim for these lower three magical weapons. They're sufficiently good that I'm still using them in AD5. L1: Dagger +1 (1d4+1, recharge for +1d4) L2: Light Crossbow +1 (1d8+1) The Dagger +1 can give you 2d4+1 with a recharge, which is better than the Shock Longbow, so worth keeping an eye out for, particularly if you're just upgrading off non-magical weapons. The Light Crossbow +1 is actually inferior to the other options here, but you might find it before other weapons, and it's great to pass on to other characters who don't have weapon proficiency. L3: Venomous Dagger +2 (1d4+2, recharge for +1d12) L3: Venomous Shortbow +1 (1d6+1, discard for +1d12) L3: Black Arrow Longbow (1d6+2, +1d8 vs giants) Three more solid ranged weapons that I consider upgrades from previous levels. Be careful when you're fighting undead with poison weapons though, as they're immune to those extra dice! L5: Acidic Sling +3 (1d6+3, +3d4 on discard) L5: Venomous Heavy Crossbow +2 (1d10+2, discard for +1d12) L4 has a paucity of good ranged weapons, alas, but L5 makes up for it. If you have Reload, the Acidic Sling is well worth taking. The Venomous Heavy Crossbow is presently the best ranged weapon in the game. If you have Reload, then the +1d4+2 from discarding it for a friend is like a second sniper's shot. Armor: No heavy proficiency, and most weapons will be two-handed, so skip shields. I tend towards armors that give you a bonus to something else. B/L1: Elven Chain Shirt L1: Agile Chain L1: Shadow Chain L1: Shield of Fire Resistance (fire damage is pretty common, even if you succeed every check, and if you're using a crossbow/sling that's one-handed...) L2: Blackcloth Armor L2: Hunter's Chain L2 Loot: Snakeskin Tunic L3: Shield of Force Resistance (enchanters, boo!) L3: Steel Ibis Lamellar (My armor of choice) L4: Lesser Bolstering Armor Spells: If you've taken a spell slot, you'll typically want a cure card in here. I tend to put in the biggest cure I can find (Major or Mass being really good; note that Mass requires another character to be present to use though!) If you haven't taken Nature's Gift, then the big spells (which are harder to obtain) will just be banished, so stick with B or L1 spells that you can pick back out of the box at the end of the adventure. Items: Because you can recharge items easily, I tend to look for situational items. Scout Ahead makes items like spyglasses less useful, so give such items to other characters. B: Amulet of Fortitude B: Boots of Elvenkind B: Masterwork Tools (until adventure level 5, where everything gets too hard for the tools to overcome) C: Crown of Charisma L2: Chime of unlocking L3: Pole (in that utility role...) Note that the L3 Belt of Incredible Dexterity is not worth it, in my opinion. +1 on dex checks is too lousy a bonus for a card slot. Allies: If you took Animal Trick, stick to animals. Otherwise, stick to allies that explore, and help in other ways. You shouldn't need a healing ally. B: Archer B: Crow C: Saber-Toothed Tiger L2: Rogue Ape (note - not an animal) L3: Black Arrow Ranger (better than L5 Elven Sharpshooter) L3: Monkey L3: Evangelist (a solid choice for almost any character) L4: Bear L4: Lizard L5: Elven Sharpshooter L5: Velociraptor Blessings: This one is really up to you. I find Harsk tends not to use blessings on himself, so I like to give him utility blessings like Erastil, Gorum, Gozreh, Norgorber and the "two-in-one" blessings like Milani.

Cards List Weapons: 5 (+1) Spells: 0 (+2) Armors: 1 (+1) Items: 3 (+2) Allies: 1 (+3) Blessings: 5 (+1) Your picks for extra cards here depend on your play style. Most of them are going to be recharged on sniper's shot anyway. Weapons: I tend to feel Harsk has enough weapons already. Spells: If you plan to take Nature's Gift, make sure to give Harsk a spell. Even without that power feat, taking a spell is quite worthwhile. Armors: I tend to avoid taking extra armors. You want to be offensive, not defensive. Losing a battle usually isn't a really bad thing, and armors are mostly useless if you're always winning. Items: Harsk is in the unique position where his hand will never become clogged with useless items. I like bumping this so that he can carry and use situational items (e.g., for autoclosing locations). Note that Harsk can donate items to another character, and get them back later, so even if he's not the one doing the closing, he can still have just the tool for the job. Allies: More explores, particularly if you have Animal Trick. Blessings: Take that one extra blessing. You can always use more blessings. Suggested priorities are that blessing, an ally or two, then your pick of allies/items/spell(s).

Powers Hand Size: Starts at 5, up to 6. Worth getting to 6 at some point. Proficiency with weapons and light armor. Nothing to select here. Scout ahead and Reconnaissance. You start with the Scout Ahead power, which is a bit of an anemic scouting power. Because it's a free scout at the end of every turn, you will find that items like the spy glass are of decreased value. But, given that it's a free power, you might as well use it. Every now and then it can be worthwhile though, particularly if you can isolate a villain. Alas, that's pretty rare. Given that Harsk will typically have at most ten turns in a party of 3, or less in larger parties, you'll actually see rather few cards in a given round from this power. Don't expect anything amazing. Reconnaissance I've found to be less useful than Scout Ahead. Knowing the bottom card of a deck is often not particularly helpful. Furthermore, once you know the bottom card, you can't make use of the power again. The only real benefit I've found from knowing the bottom card is to see if the henchman/villain is on the bottom, so that I should actively seek a way to get the deck shuffled. In my opinion, Reconnaissance looks better on paper than in reality, and the power feat is better spent elsewhere. Sniper's Shot. This is Harsk's bread and butter, and well worth bumping twice. 1d4+2 is a guaranteed +3 on a combat, which will often make the difference between making the check or failing it. Those little bumps are significantly better than just a lone 1d4. Better yet, the power is a recharge ability. That means that you'll cycle through Harsk's deck reasonably quickly, which is also a good thing. It's perfectly ok to recharge Harsk's hand down to nothing, or maybe just a single weapon. Note that a Sniper's Shot is often better than playing a blessing. Adding single dice can yield less than 1d4+2, so this ability really adds some stability to rolls (and doesn't even cost a blessing discard!). You get three power feats before receiving roles. I strongly recommend bumping Sniper's Shot twice and hand size once. As for the order? You choose. You won't go wrong. Note that none of Harsk's powers actually help him be better in combat. He's much better off helping other characters be better than he is in taking glory for himself. Roles Sniper Sniper's shot can go up to +4. Survivalist: If your hand is empty on your turn, draw something. Don't take this until you've maxed out hand size, obviously. And even then, I'm on the fence on this one. Actually emptying Harsk's hand is nontrivial, and often you'll have a card you want to keep around anyway. Besides, exploring with an empty hand is almost always risk-free, as you've got no cards to discard if you fail a check! (Some villains/henchmen will hurt the party if you've got other characters present, but why would Harsk have such company? Also, some will hurt your deck, but there's not many that do so.) I'd tend to avoid this one. You have better feats to take. Reload: This one is debatable, and should be compared directly to an extra sniper's shot feat. On the one hand, it typically adds 1d4 instead of a flat +1, but this does come at the extra cost of using up a second card. Note that you always have the ability to discard instead of recharge, so if you're in a position where you can burn a few cards (like on villain battles), you can discard them anyway. The other time reload will help you is on your own battles, where you can discard a ranged weapon to get an extra bonus. However, most weapons that allow you to do this are bows, which tend to be inferior to crossbows in damage. So, to take full advantage of Reload, you will typically be using inferior weapons (note that the L5 Venomous Heavy Crossbow +2 is an exception, but this is presently the best ranged weapon in the game). Whether or not to take Reload vs the extra sniper's shot is up to you. Miraculous Dexterity: Why is Harsk using a blessing on a dexterity check? Harsk is never going to be particularly flush with blessings, especially on his turn. This seems to be a particularly weak power for him. Tracker Perimeter Search: Ok, kind of nice. No more choosing whether you want to see the top card or the bottom card. However, note that often, you'll already know the bottom card, so you'll actually only make use of this power to see maybe two or three cards per adventure. This seems to be too low-value to me, particularly since you spent two feats to get here. If you do splurge on this power, then make sure to move Harsk around a lot so that you see the bottom card of as many decks as you can. Sniper's shot can go up to +3. Enemy Lore: Giant: 1d8 against giants? This will be useful on AD3 and AD4, but for most adventures, this will be mostly wasted. Besides, Harsk isn't supposed to be doing a lot of fighting, just a lot of helping others fight. I tend to avoid. Animal Trick: This one is nice. Fill all ally slots with animals for recharging explores. Because Harsk powers through his deck so quickly, you'll get a lot of use out of this one. Miraculous Wisdom: Even worse than Miraculous Dexterity. Avoid! Both Hand size bump to 7. Well worthwhile. That's another 1d4+X each round! Nature's Gift: Gain Divine +1 skill. Note: this lets you cast spells without having to banish them, allowing Harsk to make use of cure spells! Sign me up! Make sure to take a card feat for it though, preferably in advance. Harsk is already a team player, and being able to heal makes him even more valuable. Note that Harsk will tend to not discard too many cards, so he should be able to heal other characters. It might be worth splurging a blessing so he can actually recharge the healing spell. He'll see it again pretty soon. Note that even if you don't take Nature's Gift, having a one-shot cure spell available is pretty useful. Verdict Either role is ok. Recommended powers are Nature's Gift, Animal Trick, Reload, Hand Size bump, and more Sniper's Shot bumps, in whatever order you like.

Skills Str: d6 Dex: d8 (Ranged +3) Con: d12 (Fortitude +2) Int: d6 Wis: d6 (Perception +2, Survival +2) Cha: d4 Harsk is a ranged weapon user. d8+3, while not able to get to 12, has an average of 7.5, which beats out Meri's 6.5 on a raw d12, and the spread is smaller, meaning that you can be more confident of making most checks. So, start out by bumping Dex 4 notches to help with those combat checks. Afterwards, I like bumping wisdom so that your perception and survival skills get a bit of a boost. If you decide to give Harsk the Divine skill, it will help out there too.

Time to do another character. This time, I'm going to split the guide over a few posts, instead of having one long unwieldy post. As always, please feel free to post suggestions, and I'll add them to the guide. General Notes Harsk is the ranger of the party, and wins all of the team player awards. He tends not to shower himself in glory, and likes being left alone for the most part. His most important ability is to snipe in on other character's combats, and will often end up dumping almost his whole hand to do so. His personal explore rate tends to be somewhat low, because he's already used most of his hand helping everybody else. You'll probably find that by the time it gets to his turn, his hand will be empty. And that's perfectly OK. When only one location is unclosed and you have the time, you'll often plonk him down in a closed location, just so he can help somebody else out against the villain. Because Harsk can only help when he's at a different location to the combat in question, he'll tend to be alone on the map. To make the most of his contributions to the party, make sure that he actually has a party: give him at least a couple of other characters for company. As he can't help himself with his best power, he tends not to do so well going it alone.

Nice post, Longshot11. I particularly like the idea of not evading summons to get more recharges, and taking a crowbar. I'll add a bit to the guide about these. I'll also add a list of weapons to look out for if you decide to take weapon proficiency. As for Poog, he costs $25, alas...

Ok Nym, I'm seriously impressed.

I'm not sure what happened, but I recently ended up duplicating a wand of enervation too. Some bug somewhere? I'm not complaining, mind you...

I recently played through Thassilonian Sins on Legendary with Meri, Harsk, Lem, Seelah, Amiri and Seoni. Version 1.1.5.1 on an iPad. All locations were closed except for Shimmering Veils and Vault of Greed. Amiri was at Ravenous Crypts, Harsk was at Vault of Greed, and everybody else was at Shimmering Veils. The only villain remaining was Azaven, who showed up at Shimmering Veils, and faced off against Seelah. Harsk temp-closed his location, and Seelah beat upon Azaven, with some help from everybody else. I cheer, because I finally beat Thassilonian Sins on legendary! But, after a few recharges, the game didn't declare success, it moved on to Amiri's turn??? I took her to visit Harsk, who was at the only unclosed location. We'd killed a simulacrum there earlier and were down to the last few cards. I pulled out a magic spy glass, and there was some diseased rats and a wayfinder left, but that was it. I didn't have enough turns left to close this last location, and received a mission failure. I suspect that there was some strange interaction of the location power at the Shimmering Veils with the mission end condition. Shimmering Veils seems to be really very buggy, and it makes this particular mission really difficult!

cheungie: The only time I beat this on legendary, the game borked and thought "You haven't won!" after all locations were closed and I wasn't awarded a victory ( I believe I had "+4 to difficulty to acquire boons" and "One extra monster shuffled into the deck". Legendary is really rough. I think I've tried it 5 times, with one (unrewarded) success?

Here's my take on Thassilonian Sins on Heroic/Legendary. You basically only want to beat each of the villains once each, because that +5 modifier just keeps growing bigger and bigger if you defeat them and they escape. So, the idea is to try to close off the locations with the henchmen first, and then deal with the bosses. This means you want a party of at least three, so that you can have two characters temp close two locations with bosses while you beat on the third boss. I find that larger parties work better, for a few reasons. Firstly, the first few locations you get are all really tough to close (or worse, temp close repeatedly). The last few locations from bigger parties are much easier. Secondly, having larger parties means that you'll have more blessings to throw around to beat on the really high difficulty checks. The other thing that stands out in this adventure is that the ability to scout is really, really important. Choose characters with abilities to help with this, and stock your decks with cards that help. If you find a henchman somewhere in a deck, pile your characters on that deck to close it as a priority. You really don't want to accidentally run into a boss until you're ready, Meri with delay is really useful, because she can evade a villain and leave him on top. You want Meri to tear through locations as quickly as possible (save all her blessings for explores). I always start her in the location that has no spells and requires you to bury your hand to close, because she doesn't need spells, and can typically discard most of her hand on a combat check so it doesn't get buried. I like having Lem around, because he can close two of the locations that need charisma checks, and can help out on the other closings/big boss battles. Harsk is really good too, because he can deal with the constitution check close and add in bonuses to battles for everybody. Also, his scout the top of the deck ability is invaluable in finding which locations have bosses. Seelah is also really good at scouting locations by discarding the top card. If you're playing this on legendary, you're not looking for cards to pick up, so putting boons on the bottom isn't a problem. Lini is good, because she can almost autoclose some of those locations that need wisdom 12 with the help of an animal (there's three of them, I think, and they're a pain). On Legendary, Amiri is basically a necessity because she can move people around quickly, circumventing the movement restrictions. Some cards I find really helpful: * Eagle ally - scout the top of any deck * Mayor ally - see what's in a deck * Revelation quill / spyglass / magic spyglass / kohl - See what's in a deck and reorganize it * Wand of treasure finding - can let you look partway through a deck to see if it's got a boss (leave that deck be) or a henchman (go after him!) You will also need to pick and choose which wildcards you're willing to play with. I won't even attempt this mission on heroic/legendary with some sets of wildcards.

I had four characters doing adventure 5.2 on legendary. They were scattered around, closing heads. The last two heads to close were not adjacent to each other. When I closed one of them, the game prompted me to move to an adjacent open head, of which there were none. Forfeit and restart, sigh.

I think what happens specifically in this scenario is that it wants your characters to move away from the location where you beat the final villain. Whenever I beat this scenario, I have to double-tap on other locations to move my characters away (from an impending explosion?) before it will give me the "Scenario Completed" screen. It's a bit weird.

Yeah, I am rapidly growing to dislike this adventure. It's going to be a tough nut to crack on legendary. Also oops, I think I meant to put this in the technical support forum ;-)

Haven't seen that one, alas. The treasure chests are not kind to me on gold bordered cards, with the exception of the battering ram, which I think I've seen five or six copies of. Gold acquisition is a bit too slow for my liking, and playing local heroes with six characters repeatedly on legendary gets old very quickly.

Man, missed that. I saw "Heavy Crossbow" and said "Good!" These cards are notoriously non-standardized! Fixed now.

So, I'm playing this on heroic, which increases the difficulty to defeat villains by 5 for each villain defeated. Azaven is the last to go, and he wants a difficulty 27 constitution check to begin with? I think this is incorrect - it's not to defeat him, so it shouldn't get the +15... Also, why is this +15? I defeated somebody previously, but he escaped. So he wasn't really defeated. +15 is getting rather seriously mean...

iPad, 1.1.5, adventure 5.4 Merisiel in a 4 person party is at the Shimmering veils of pride. She encounters Ordikon, the first of the bosses. The close location box comes up, but Azaven is the portrait who is shown there. Back in the veils, Ordikon is fought.

Points well taken, aznxknight. I've edited the post to reflect your ideas. I hadn't thought of loading her up with a cure spell and ditching Zantus.

There appears to be a dearth of discussion on suggestions for character development and inventory picks. I'll start one on Merisiel here. Other characters should get their own guides. Please feel free to add suggestions/comments for Merisiel to this thread. I'm not going to type out all the details here; I'll just link to this excellent document instead. General Notes Merisiel (Meri) is the rogue of the party. Because her primary power requires that she is alone at a location to use, you'll want her to be alone as much as possible. Because of this, she doesn't work so well with Lem or Valeros. I like to use Meri as a lone scout who can essentially look after herself without any help from others. She tends to be able to scout decks pretty effectively, and so can locate items for others to come and pick up. If she accidentally runs into something you want but she can't pick up, her Delay power is there to help. As she can really be self-sufficient, Meri is one of the better characters to have around, especially in smaller parties. Her main drawback is that she isn't very good at helping other characters do stuff, and she tends to be a bit stunted once a number of locations have been closed and she's forced to be social. Skills Str: d8 Dex: d12 (Acrobatics +2, Disable +2, Stealth +2) Con: d6 Int: d4 Wis: d6 (Perception +2) Cha: d6 Meri will be your trap monkey and will excel at closing locations that need acrobatics or stealth. On top of that, you'll want her to use a ranged weapon, so make sure to max out dex as you can. After that, pick whatever you feel like (but probably avoid Int). Powers Hand Size: Up to 6. Make sure to get her there as a matter of priority. Meri doesn't start with weapon proficiency, and a lot of people will give her that as her first power feat, just so she can use the fancy looking bows. However, I'll suggest that she doesn't actually need weapon proficiency, as she can use crossbows and slings without taking any penalties. The only thing she misses without weapon proficiency is the ability to discard a ranged weapon to help somebody else at a different location. However, given how few weapons she has, you should avoid doing this anyway. If you're trying to solo hard missions with Meri, then weapon proficiency will net you some more damage on average though, which may well be worth it. Her hide power is quite useful for evading summoned monsters that you don't actually want to fight. Particularly so for the Guard Tower, where you can avoid all of the thugs at the start of your turn. Beware that some barriers require you to actually defeat the summoned monsters to defeat the barrier though. This power makes Ilsoari quite a good ally for scouting, as you can hide if the demon turns up. Note that if you have a summoned monster that's an easy kill, you can use it to recharge a card in your hand to get some turnover going. Sneak attack is Meri's bread and butter. At the very least, recharge a single card on every combat check to get the extra dice. You will quite commonly discard a card for two dice, too, but make sure that you've got a way to heal Meri if you're going to do that too often. After maxing out hand size, put some bumps in here. Also note that in play, sneak attack is an important way for Meri to get turnover happening in her deck. Use it often! Roles Acrobat is the role of choice. The Delay power allows you to encounter a villain and leave them on top of that pile, essentially isolating them until you're ready to deal with them later. You can also delay a boon if you really want it but need a different skill for, allowing another character to come in and pick it up. Sabotage Barrier is kind of pointless for Meri; she stomps on pretty much every barrier anyway. Sabotage Location sounds nice, but unless you're playing a small party with Meri often, it doesn't come up much. Item Collector is kind of a waste. Are you that in love with items anyway? Inspired Dexterity is really very useful. Stock up on Dex blessings, and then recharge them instead of discarding them. Thief is a role I haven't actually played. It doesn't get a hand size bump, the one extra possible bump on sneak attack is marginal compared to Delay, Magic Expert doesn't work because Meri never recharges armors/weapons/items (except for items that are dex based anyway), and Black Marketer is wasted after you've already got the good stuff. (Thief also gets Inspired Dexterity.) Verdict: Take Acrobat, and choose Inspired Dexterity and Delay in whatever order you like, then max out your hand size again, and then keep on bumping sneak attack. Cards List Weapons: 2 (+2) Spells: 0 (+1) Armors: 1 (+1) Items: 6 (+3) Allies: 2 (+1) Blessings: 4 (+2) Your picks for extra cards here depend on your play style. Weapons: I like to bump this by one slot. Meri shouldn't lose a weapon once she's got it in her hand, but it can take a while to do that with only two weapons in the deck. Spells: Giving her a single spell is actually not that bad. Give her a cure spell, and sure it will be banished, but she'll get to pick another one at the end of the adventure. If you have an adventure that has a special requirement coming up, you can also select for it. Armors: One armor is enough. Meri shouldn't be taking hits; she should be hiding from bad combats, and slaying everything else. Multiple armors tend to clog up the hand for characters who have them, so I like to avoid getting more than one. Items: I like to bump this a few times. Items are nifty, but be wary of having your hand fill up with situational items. Allies: More explores! Blessings: Yes please. Especially once Inspired Dexterity kicks in. Suggested priorities on one more weapon, then blessings/allies, then items and maybe a spell. Inventory Weapons: You want ranged weapons. Crossbows and slings tend to not require weapon proficiency, and often do better than bows anyway. You don't want to discard a weapon if you can avoid it, because who knows when you'll get it again. Here are my choice of ranged weapons by level. Your first goal should be to get magic weapons, and then start being picky about which ones you have. I've included the dice that each weapon adds, for comparison (but not including the base dex). When a strength dice is added, I've included 1d8. B: Light Crossbow (1d8) B: Heavy Crossbow (1d10) B: Shortbow +1 (1d6+1) B: Sling (1d4, good for ancient skeletons at early levels) C: Deathbane Light Crossbow +1 (1d8+1, +1d8 against undead) L1: Dagger +1 (1d4+1, recharge for +1d4) L1: Flaming Shortbow +1 (1d6+1) L1: Frost Sling +1 (1d6+1) L2: Light Crossbow +1 (1d8+1) At the lower levels, the standout weapons are the Deathbane Light Crossbow +1, Light Crossbow +1, and Dagger +1. The Frost Sling +1 is good for those Ancient Skeletons. Other weapons on this list can stand in as you look for better stuff. L3: Venomous Dagger +2 (1d4+2, recharge for +1d12) L3: Venomous Shortbow +1 (1d6+1, discard for +1d12) L5: Acidic Sling +3 (1d6+3, discard for +3d4) At the higher levels, these are the weapons to keep an eye out for. The Venomous Shortbow +1 is included because it's strictly better than some on the lower-level list, but I'd prefer the dagger or sling in most situations. If you take weapon proficiency, then consider the following: B: Shock Longbow +1 (1d8+1, discard for +1d8) B: Returning Throwing Axe +1 (1d8+1, recharge for +1d6) L1: Longbow +1 (1d8+1) L3: Black Arrow Longbow (1d8+2, +1d8 against giants) L5: Venomous Heavy Crossbow +2 (1d10+2, discard for +1d12) With the exception of the Longbow +1 that simply replicates the effects of the Light Crossbow +1 for Meri, all of these are slightly better than their contemporaries on the previous list. I'm not sure that the slight advantages are worth the power feat though, and Harsk in particular will also want these bows. Armor: No heavy proficiency, and bows are mostly two handed, which precludes shields (although some light crossbows are one-handed, as are slings, so you can opt for a shield if you have lots of these!) B: Magic Shield B/L1: Elven Chain Shirt L1: Agile Chain L1: Djezet Skin L1: Shadow Chain L1: Shield of Fire Resistance (fire damage is pretty common, even if you succeed every check) L2: Blackcloth Armor L2 Loot: Snakeskin Tunic L3: Shield of Force Resistance (enchanters, boo!) L3: Steel Ibis Lamellar L4: Lesser Bolstering Armor L4: Reflecting Shield L5: Spellward Shield Items: Spyglass/Magic Spyglass/Wayfinder Thieve's Tools/Masterwork Thieve's tools (The MW version becomes much less useful around L5) Crowbar (Allows you to close all those locations that need a strength check, and helps with a bunch of obstacles too! Could also sub Portable Ram, but it's much harder to recharge) Crown of Charisma (auto-acquire allies, auto-close some locations, auto-defeat some bosses!) Staff of Minor Healing Samisen (basically the only thing Meri can do to help other characters other than blessings) Luckstone/Greater Luckstone Belt of Incredible Dexterity Pole (I always love me a 10-foot pole...) Ring of Protection Amulet of Fortitude (auto-close some locations, auto-defeat some bosses!) Allies: Father Zantus is good, as Meri needs healing to keep her big sneak attacks going, and she's often alone and so won't have healing from others. If you've got a cure spell in her deck, then you can probably forgo Zantus. Ilsoari Gandethus works really well with the Hide ability Otherwise, the crow, monkey and eagle are favorites of mine. Blessings: Stock up on blessings/favors of Erastil, maybe one blessing of Milani or blessing of Calistria Locations Meri excels at the following locations: Guard Tower (hide from the summoned banes!) Prison (the location power is nifty for Meri) Warrens Wooden Bridge Glassworks Junk Beach Mill Courtyard (Meri is about the only character I want in the Courtyard) Other The biggest issues I run into when playing Meri is that she often ends up with a hand full of stuff that doesn't have much turnover. This means that she only gets one explore per turn, and can get slow and bogged down. Don't feel guilty about ditching some stuff to get some turnover going if you need to, particularly if you can get a summoned monster (guard tower will get you two recharges against a bandit for an easy combat roll!). This is also a reason why you should prioritize getting some more allies and blessings in your deck.

Yup, everybody at the same location. Why else would you play the Shaman? ;-) Edited to add: It gave me a "Select a character at this location" prompt, so all the characters were there!

Ah, you're probably right. I was expecting damage, not deck discards.

iPad, v1.1.5 At the Vault of Greed on story mode 5.4. Seoni encounters Azaven. She flunks her constitution check badly, and I'm expecting 1d4+1 cold damage. Instead, I got a card discarded from the top of my deck, which is the success result.

I'm at the Vault of Greed in story mode in the quest 5.4 on the iPad, v1.1.5. Seelah, Seoni, Harsk and Lem are present (no other characters in the game). Harsk plays the Shaman ally. I expect each character to recharge one card from their discard pile, per the text on the card. Instead, up pops a prompt asking me to select a single character to heal a single card.