Thyraxus

I already tried all the things suggested here, but I have notoriously bad luck in games involving chance. Seriously, just ask my tabletop RPG group, my ability to roll critical failures on checks that really matter (and roll high only on checks that are mostly irrelevant) is legendary. My last attempt of HCTF with Lem and Seoni (I figured, they're both diplomacy monsters and have plenty of blessings and allies for getting lots of explorations, so they're the most likely to succeed) looked like this: in the first 4 rounds, Magga ate 6-5-6-4 cards from various location decks, and I kept running into lots of junk but only a single ally the entire time (yes, I focussed on the village house first, that's an obvious choice). By the time I was done mopping up the meager remains Magga had left for me, I had encountered a whopping 2 allies in total. Argh. In all of the other scenarios I can at least compensate for bad luck with the right strategy. But in this scenario, you're more at the mercy of the RNG than in any other.

Note that the Venomous Heavy Crossbow +2 does require Weapon Proficiency, unlike all the other weapons on your list of recommendations

How the hell are you supposed to win this scenario on heroic/legendary if the villain eats up to half a location deck per turn, other than trying over and over (and over and over and over ancoverancoverancoverancoverancoverancoverancoverancoverancoverancoverAAAAAARGGGGGH) until you just're just plain dumb lucky enough to have most of the allies near the tops of the location decks and the villain not rolling a 5 or 6 every turn? I hate this scenario already on normal difficulty. On the higher difficulties, it's pure insanity.

Apparently, a comma in the "During This Scenario" text for the Foul Misgivings scenario (normal difficulty) succeeded at a stealth check to sneak one word position further right than it should be (see attached screenshot). This typo is still present in the latest version (1.1.5) which I just updated to.

Actually, unless your characters die, you do get whatever XP you earned for defeating banes at the end of a scenario - if you lose by running out of time. But you get nothing if you use the "forfeit" option from the menu. The latter distinction is rather important. If you run into a situation where you know (or think) you can't win anymore, but have already defeated a bunch of banes for some juicy XP, you have to forfeit "manually", by actually playing all the remaining turns, just doing nothing. Kind of annoying, really.

If that's the case, then everyone I ever played the board game version with interpreted that part of the rules wrong, as in to mean that you add 1 random blessing, 1 random ally and one Boa to each location individually and specifically, not that you lump them all together, shuffle them up and add 3 random cards from that lump to each location. That would be a really surprising break to the pattern of "exactly one henchman (or villain) per location" that applies to every other scenario in the game.

I have, on multiple occasions, encountered duplicate cards. And it's not just randomness, it happens in cases where it should be absolutely impossible to run into two instances of the same card. Primary example: I have, on multiple occasions, encountered two Nightbelly Boas in the same location of the "Here Comes the Flood" scenario - something which should never happen, because there should only ever be exactly one of them per location according to the rules of the scenario. And yes, I definitely defeated them, so the second Boa wasn't just the first having been shuffled back in after a failed combat check (they wouldn't get shuffled in anyway, they end up face-up on top of the location if undefeated, so this would really be hard to be mistaken). Something in the deck shuffling algorithm seems to be duplicating cards (in location decks, at least; character decks seem to be unaffected). Unfortunately, because this is so random, there are no definite steps to reliably reproduce this phenomenon. All I can say is, try playing the "Here Comes the Flood" scenario (over and over), because that is the one where it is definitely noticeable when you encounter two Boas in the same location. I believe it is not something specific to this single scenario, because I think I noticed a suspiciously high frequency of "card twins" in the location decks of other scenarios as well (more than pure randomness would suggest possible), but in those cases it's not as easily proven that they aren't just weird coincidences after all. It just happened to me again, in two locations of the same run of "Here Comes the Flood". Device type: Android OS: Android 7 (stock) Model: Nexus 6P Game version: VER-669-20161018 PFID: 37F8FE96F765266B Story mode, normal difficulty, 4 characters (Seelah, Sajan, Harsk and Ezren - but have seen it happen with other party compositions too).

But those extra levels have no effect on the way the game plays, at all. All you get is to watch a number increase*. Consider this: you play 3 scenarios, get to watch a number tick up, play 3 more, and watch it go up again. Or, you play 6 scenarios in a row and watch it tick up only once, without that extra tick in between. It's essentially exactly the same thing! Mechanically, the extra tick in between means nothing. Nothing at all. That second set of 3 scenarios would play exactly the same, with or without that levelup in between. It doesn't matter. The only difference is that that little pavlovian center in your brain gets tickled one additional time, when you go "yay, levelup" for a split second. But if you really think about it, it doesn't matter at all. It's about as exciting as watching the second hand of a clock move. "Yay, another second passed". Wow. What a thrill. In RPGs that extra levelup at least gives you something that affects the game in some way, even if it is minuscule. Another skill point, a handful of HP, something tangible. Something that lets you either do something you couldn't do before, or something that lets you do something you could already do, but better. Something that gives you new options. Something that has a noticeable effect on the game. Here, you get essentially nothing except a new level number*. That +1 to your level doesn't let you do anything differently. Your character is still exactly the same. You can't do anything new, you can't do anything old better than before. No change. No growth. No development. At all. In other words (and my opinion, at least): completely pointless. * yes, and those random boons. Meh.

But in tabletop RPGs a new level gives you usually something new, something solid, a permanent way to improve your character. A handful of skill points, a new ability, something that matters, that actually affects the way the game plays, however little - sometimes by giving you entirely new options, often by just making it easier to use the ones you already have, allowing you to take on new challenges. In this game, the "random boon" levels give you nothing other than a random draw of a card that you're probably just going to throw away - apart from increasing your level number by one they have no effect at all in the game other than letting you start working on your next levelup - but then they could have just made that last level last twice as long and skipped the levelup in-between and it would have changed pretty much nothing. Except for that single extra random card draw that is exactly like the hundreds you already had to go through actually playing the scenarios. It's like one extra raindrop during a thunderstorm. And that's supposed to be a reward?

I lost the Robe of Runes (not due to a bug, just due to my own stupidity when exchanging cards between the decks of characters). Unfortunately, according to the rules of the game, these "Loot" cards are special. There is no way to just randomly encounter them and acquire them that way. Of course in the board game, you could just grab them from the box, but that would be in no way be rules-legal. The only way to acquire them again is to complete the appropriate scenario again. In particular, that means you have to start a new campaign, with new characters (or at least characters that have not progressed past the point where the particular item you want is awarded). Note that this means you really have to start a new Story game. You can help speed things along by bringing an experienced character into it - with their late-game equipment and skills, they tend to breeze through the early scenarios. But you can't put them in the party for the first scenario (if you do that, the game will mark all the scenarios the experienced character has completed as completed as well, and you won't get the loot rewards for them), and there needs to be at least one fresh character in the party who hasn't received the rewards already.

Don't some (most) of the levels in the quest mode seem rather pointless? I mean, not the ones where you get power/skill/card feats, those are the meat of the game, the ones where you can really grow and develop your characters. I mean the "random boon" ones. Let me illustrate: imagine a guy, working at the candy factory as a candy inspector. All day, every day, he sees tons of candy and can eat as much as he wants of it (for quality control purposes, of course). And then, when Christmas finally comes around, he's looking forward to what nice gifts his loved ones have for him, and what does he get? A candy. Not even a bag of them, just one piece of candy. Of the same sort that his factory makes. And probably even the sort that he likes least. That's the kind of feeling I have on every levelup in quest mode where the reward is a random boon. I mean, I already have spent a lot of time digging through dozens, if not hundreds, of random cards to get there, and what do I get? One more random card. And most probably just another piece of junk like a Dull Shortsword, or yet another potion that nobody except a Drunken Master would even give a second thought about giving up an item slot in his deck for to keep it around. I understand that this parallels the story mode, but there's a difference. Yes, in story mode, there are scenarios where the reward is a random boon. Perfectly understandable, the game can't hand out a permanent ability increase on every scenario (otherwise the characters would become too strong too fast, so the game balance and possibly the core mechanics would have to be radically different, or the adventure path would have to be a lot shorter), but there these rewards are on top of what you already get: that is, advancing the story, progressing into the next scenario - that is a reward all on its own. But in quest mode, your reward for, say, level 13, is that you get to watch the game increase a number. Plus you get (probably) another Battered Wooden Shield to toss on the pile with the other junk you picked up from the previous scenario. And you earn the right to start working on your next level. That's all: a meaningless increase to a (in this context) meaningless number (since mechanically, unlike typical RPGs where each level usually has something new to add to your character, the new level makes no difference at all) and one more card to throw away. That's what Diablo would have been like if you had only gotten new attribute points to distribute on every 5th levelup, and the other levels in between had done nothing to any of your stats and instead had just "rewarded" you by adding another 'cracked sash' to your inventory (even then, at least in Diablo you could sell those for a gold piece or something...). Seriously, I have already played 8 characters to the level cap, and not one of them got a random boon levelup reward that was worth keeping around. I don't really know what is in store for the future of Quest Mode, but I really wish there was a way to make (all of the) level ups really mean something again. Either by revamping the advancement (reduce the number of levels by cutting the number of useless "random boon" levels - maybe to somthing like 5-8 per tier, but increase the amount of XP to reach the next one so it still takes roughly the same time to reach the level cap) or by increasing the chance that the cards you get really feel like a reward (like, only give out treasure cards, which are inherently kind of cool, even though some of them are still kind of underwhelming, or let the player pick his own cards from the set, or at least a small selection of randoms). Or both. Sure, I don't think anything like this is going to happen. But I can still dream, can't I?

I've been comparing the roles for Lem and have been wondering - is there any reason to actually pick Charlatan over Virtuoso? I just don't see it, Charlatan seems to be almost strictly inferior in every aspect. I mean, what does Charlatan get that Virtuoso doesn't? A passive bonus of +2 to acquiring allies / defeating henchmen / defeating villains - each of those costs a power feat individually. Compare that to the Virtuoso's ability to simply add his inspiration buff to himself on any check for bonus of (initially) at least 3 and up to 7 (assuming you invested into both upgrades before picking a role, and let's be honest, you'd be a fool not to) at the cost of only one power feat and a recharge (which is not actually that much of a cost, as it also helps you cycle your deck faster) - that's a clear win for the Virtuoso in my opinion. An automatic recharge of spells with the Mental trait - there are not that many mental spells in the game, and they are usually of the evasion variety. You'd probably not have more than one of them in your deck anyway for very specific tactical situations (especially in quest mode, where not defeating a monster means lost XP). So this ability won't fire often enough to be really worth a feat. And when playing Lem you'd be usually rather discarding the spells that really matter on purpose for recovery anyway - and the Virtuoso can do that twice per turn (at the beginning and the end). I just don't see the point. Hand size 8 - that's really the only objective advantage to this role (although it also makes you a little more vulnerable when a combat check goes terribly wrong, so it's not completely without drawbacks either) So, with Virtuoso Lem can buff himself and can recover cards from his discard twice per turn - both awesome abilites that make his already high utility skyrocket. What would be a good reason not to pick that role - other than maybe the desire for a bit more variety, or to challenge oneself on purpose?

Here's one I noticed: in the Scenario "Foul Misgivings", when you encounter a Haunt henchman, you're supposed to roll a D6 + the number of encountered Haunts to determine whether to encounter the villain Iesha Foxglove. But when you encounter the first(!) Haunt, you're already rolling with a +2 (instead of the +1 it should be for that one Haunt). I suspect that this is because of the other scenario power that applies a stacking penalty to checks for every Haunt encountered - the game gets confused and somehow adds this penalty to the roll for Iesha (even though according to the rules it is not really a 'check', just a 'roll'). This doesn't really break the game, but throws off the balance of this scenario a bit, because you are likely to encounter Iesha (who can be a very hard encounter for some of the characters) much earlier (or more often) than originally intended. Take as an example one character doing this scenario solo: on the first Haunt encounter, you roll D6+2 vs 5 (+1 for the Haunt itself, +1 from the penalty) instead of the correct D6+1 vs 5, which means you now have a 66.7% chance to encounter her instead of 50%; and on the second Haunt, you already roll D6+4 (+2 for 2 Haunts, +2 penalty) against 5, meaning you're now guaranteed to run into her, when under the actual rules of the game you should still have 1-out-of-3 odds of avoiding her altogether.

When you encounter Nualia with the "Blood in the Sand" wildcard power active, if she deals 2 or more damage with her initial "before you act" power, BitS is triggered and you have to bury one of the discarded cards - even though that should not happen, since the description of BitS says "if you discard more than 1 card as damage from a combat check...", and the damage Nualia does on encounter is not the result of a combat check, it is automatic. So that alone should probably already be considered a bug (either the description of BitS is wrong or the implementation). But it gets worse. So after you bury one of the discarded cards, the game makes you do a combat check against her - even if there are other characters in the same location that should be dealt her automatic "before you act" damage first! A combat check should only happen after all characters have been dealt her initial damage. But there is one, and this combat check is apparently actually a "fake" one, because whether you win or lose has no effect at all on the outcome of the encounter. But it gets worse. After the "fake" combat check, Nualia deals her auto-damage to you again. The game doesn't roll a d4 for this, it just deals the same amount again as it did on the first roll. Note again, this does not depend on whether you've won the combat check, you take this damage no matter what (oddly, though, BitS does not trigger this time). Only then play progresses to the next character on location to be dealt Nualias auto-damage. And the same thing happens again, i.e. if the damage roll is 2 or more, be forced to bury a card, do a fake combat check, be dealt damage again, on to the next char etc. Now, it is bad enough that being dealt double auto-damage has rendered the scenario nearly unwinnable by stripping your characters of most if not all of their hands (unless you were extraordinarily lucky on Nualia rolling lots of 1s, or prepared specifically for this particular situation with hands full of Sidheron Medallions or Amulets of Life or Armors)... ... but it gets even worse! Because after all characters on location have been dealt this double damage hand-stripping humiliation conga, play returns to the active character and (s)he will be unable to do anything. Nualia sits face-up on the location deck, you can tap her to examine her, but there is no valid action possible, no way to interact with anything - your only option is to forfeit the game and start the scenario over (and over and over) until you get one without BitS so you can actually complete it. The usual workarounds (exiting to the main menu, restarting the app, etc.) did nothing to resolve this. Technical details: What device type are you on? Android What version of the OS are you running? Android 7 (stock) What model is the device? Nexus 6P What is your PFID#? PFID-37F8FE96F765266B Is pass & play on? No Is permadeath on? No Tutorial, Story Mode, or Quest Mode? Story Characters in Party: Lem, Lini, Valeros, Merisiel Location of each character: all 4 on "Deeper Dungeons" Turn Order: Lem, Lini, Valeros, Merisiel Scenario & Scenario Difficulty: Thistletop Delve on Legendary If on non-normal difficulties, which wildcard powers are in play? Blood in the Sand (obviously) and Driving Rain What card was encountered when the issue occurred? Nualia (obviously) Did the issue occur on the first explore or a subsequent explore? on the first encounter (no subsequent explores possible) What was its resolution? No resolution other than Forfeit Did other characters aid the check? No Was the encounter a Horde? No

Well. That sucks: A treasure chest just dropped the Sunburst spell, but it wasn't added to the card vault - it's just gone. And no, I certainly didn't salvage it by accident. Haven't had anything like that happen to me before.