I'll try to answer a few: 1) Needing to discard a glyph to re-roll isn't really a new mechanic but the idea of having to do this even if you just want to abort ("Fail") a mission early is (it used to be you could hit the "Fail" button at any point to give up and take the failure penalties BUT this also meant you could easily avoid many of the Terror Effects (some encounters have extra nastiness if you roll a Terror symbol). These discarded glyphs are only lost for the rest of this encounter and is not the same as when you play them onto the field to solve a case. Discarding a glyph is rarely helpful, it is just the price you have to pay if you want another re-roll. My biggest tip in discarding is to be conscious of what goal you are shooting for. If you are trying to roll a Terror symbol just remember you will NEVER get one with a Yellow Glyph. The Yellow Glyph's most helpful when just trying to get a higher Investigation total. 2) After you discard at the end of a turn you can save a glyph. What this does is lock down one of the glyphs to whatever it is currently displaying. If none of the glyphs have the symbols you need don't bother with this. The only thing to be mindful of here, once locked the glyph can not be later discarded in this round so, again, try to only lock needed symbols and use the locked glyph as soon as possible. Again, just like the discarding, this effect only lasts for your current turn after which all glyphs will be returned. 3) One of your Green Glyphs is locked! Look on the map for an encounter with a pulsating green aura. Until this encounter is cleared you will be short that glyph. This happens a lot more frequently to the Red and Yellow Glyphs which, even if you have an item that would allow them, you can't use when locked.
Thank you so much LordGek!!! I was mistaken on some rules and now it's all pretty clear!!! 1) Then I did understood clearily...but...I then can't understand why all the rage on this 'new' mechanic...seeing it has no real effect than just have you tap on a discard glyph and then press fail. What am I missing here? 2) OH!!! This I understood completely wrong!!! So basically...it's like having the Lock Glyph spell? And I can use it many times as people on the spot? Nice! So finally I understood which is the meaning of people remaining in the spot when failing and the advantage of having multiple people trying the same encounter. 3) DOH! Thanks again, much appreciated!!! I really love this game. Can't wait to play it again later!!!
1) The controversy is two fold, I guess. At the most base level it means an extra step just to quit out of a mission that they didn't used to have to do. The bigger, hopefully soon patched aspect, is that if not careful you can get yourself into a game breaking situation. If you decided to be a space cadet and when down to one glyph, lock it, you'll be unable to end your turn (you have to discard a glyph to continue and you can't discard a locked glyph). 2) Yeah, while there is no way to have another investigator in that space unless they've already failed themselves (there is no way to move to a space and not be forced into an attempt of it). It's sort of like additional lock spells except that you can only use them AFTER a glyph has been discarded (basically they only come into play at the end of a failed step where something must be discarded).
Well maybe I did not fully understood previous point 1) but I just completed a game (lost at 9-9 because of midnight, sigh!!!) where I locked on purpose last glyph...in every case the game considered the quest failed and was able to proceed...happened at least 3 times....so it doesn't seem a bug to me. But maybe I understood wrong. I'm hopelessly in love with the game and now that I understood every rule better, I'm loving it even more. I tried (succefully) to amass people on difficult spots to use them as a 'lock glyph' spell with some success...extremely useful expect ally in outer planes quests, the more rewarding ones. So far the most useful object is the clue one to me (granting 'free' glyph conjuring and glyph lock). Two things, besides future new campaign support, could elevate the game even more: 1) Make the HD version universal. 2) Add async multiplayer support (each one controls 1 or 2 characters till they die or are succeful). The game is really suited to async play...seems almost natural.
Oh, good, maybe it really was just a freak thing that happened on one random mission. I never got stuck by this glitch myself, but at the same time, I have carefully tried to avoid that situation.
YESSSSSS!!!!!! Just defeated Tsathoggua!!!! What an epic game!!!! Always on the verge of madness!!!! This game is freaking fantastic!!!! So tense!!!! Probably I'm wrong but I noticed (at least that was my conviciment and it almost never betrayed me during my games) that each character has particular 'traits' in the glyphs rolls percentages besides the skills: ie people with guns have higher 'skull' chances than scholars, who have higher parchments and magnifying glass percentages. Anyway you really feel you are struggling against almost impossible odds (perfectly capturing the p&p Lovecraft games I played ages ago) but with clever picking the right character for the right encounters and using the right tools togheter with some luck of course (or better said...without really bad luck) you can manage to do it. Barely. Azaroth, here I come!!!! The 'just one more turn' factor is amazing in this game!!!
I must be on a roll Azathoth went down at my first try (should I had failed my last encounter, I would have failed the adventure...maybe I had one more chance). I defeated him (it?) 'buying' an Elder sign because there were no more on the board (just plenty of monsters); we were both at our last mark to victory. More than 1 time I was on the verge of projecting the iPad towards the window...tbh luck is a factor but not that much as I thought after reading the thread. I always played with a party of four, balanced. Both the last ancient ones were defeated with everyone still alive...I even noticed I unlocked some new characters and I have a full row of locked ones that I didn't noticed before...how do I unlock them? Well...how are the expansions? Which one should I get first?
You can simply tap on the locked ones and it will tell you how to unlock them. The only catch being that there is a bug in this latest expansion that, although it will tell you that you just unlocked the investigator associated with that Alaska mission, she'll still be locked/unselectable. Many people have mentioned this so it seems certain an emergency fix is already in the works if not waiting in Apple's approval quene by now.
Both are extremely difficult but I would say Cthulhu, it's like a normal adventure in most aspects. Ithaqua is very different and requires saving supplies in the first half before moving to the second. So you could end up putting yourself in an unwinnable situation.
Oh, just noticed....By winning the vanilla game you unlock just 1 characters, the others are all specific to the expansions. Do you have any advice? Which should I buy first? (I noticed both are very hard).
The Cthulhu campaign is awesome. Freaking awesome. I feel like a complete idiot to have waited so long to get this game, I love it. But the added mechanics in the campaign...the new story content, the investigative part, the new encounters...well everything...awesome. It's much harder than the vanilla games for sure too. Now I do the first part almost automatically...my last game I was soooo close to succefully end it...so close... Fantasy Flight Games is my new top dev for board games (at least solo ones...too bad the game is not async too).
Sigh. Cthulhu campaign spoilers ahead. Spoiler I did the perfect game up to Cthulhu itself...then I attacked him like 15 times before realizing how dumb I am....I had so many resources I could buy like 10 clues per characters. I realized it too late, and I was defeated. I was able to be in front of Cthulhu himself (very last numbered stage in Ryleh) 6 times with 4 glyphs...sadly I'm not that lucky...a skull NEVER appeared. I'm sure I'll beat him next time!!! AMAZING, simply amazing.
Realize having the money is one thing, but do you think Cthulhu would have waited patiently the 40 turns required to gear up your little Blue's Clue Bus?
Well, I managed to resist tons of turns anyway...to try 15 times the final quest I had to try, being defeated, regain sanity points, rinse and repeat. I'm pretty sure if I started immediately to pack clues I would have succeeded. Well, I'll try today for sure...but another 'perfect game' will be hard to repeat.
I really hope you will like it as I do. I even dare to say that the expansion elevate it on a whole new level. To me it feels almost like a little RPG with permadeath and without explicit dialogues....now I have consolidated my party, I know their skills out of the bat and I really enjoy taking them in these dangerous adventures. I know that if the dev will put out new campaigns, I'll buy them for sure. Something I really like, that keeps me always on my toes, is the fact that encounters are, if failed, progressively more difficult...it's almost the exact opposite of a normal RPG...and while I never played the original boardgame it really captures the feeling I had when playing the actual p&p game. Sure, luck is a factor (as it is in every permadeath game...RPGs included) but after many games I feel that good luck is a factor (aiding you) more than bad luck being a factor in preventing you to succeed. It never occurred to me that multiple unfortunate glyphs showing up made the game frustrating or impossibile. If I relied to chance for an encounter, I know I was just desperate and probably I will fail. I learnt to rely the very least possible on chance, and to try encounters with the max possibilities avaible...even if this means waiting in the boat for 1 turn or 2 (obviously the fact that time inesorably goes on doesn't help ). Anyway, Cthulhu beware! Mary is coming after you!
Too true! Nothing beats the sense of exhilaration you feel when the LAST glyph come rounds to that needed Terror symbol in an encounter, if failed, would kill your current investigator!
It takes some understanding but once you start to get to grips with how things work it is truly brilliant, I'm glad I trusted your enthusiasm. Not disappointed
