by Orion3T
I have been playing as OL with my teenaged kids, and although it's been great fun things are looking pretty rough for them.They have 1 character each - Syndrael as a Knight and Avric as a Disciple. They won First Blood and Death on the Wing. I won A Fat Goblin, The Masquerade Ball, and most recently The Overlord Revealed.
In terms of wins v losses that doesn't seem too bad, they have 1 relic, I have 2 plus a bonus XP for Fat Goblin. However they have struggled to find any cash, partially due to me being evil and blocking them with monsters, they never seem to have enough time to risk trying to get the treasure and as a result have not made very much gold to spend in the shop. I made 1 bonus XP plus Bones of Woe, and most recently the Shadow Rune.
I won the last 2 with relative ease, despite deliberately not playing many OL cards just to keep things interesting.
Gear they have acquired:
Shield of the Dark God, Crossbow (found in a Treasure chest on First Blood!), Leather Armor, Iron shield, and 125g in the bank.
My concern is even after the interlude they didn't manage to buy any new gear; Syndrael is still using her starter weapon and is just not the damage-dealer they need her to be!
We were discussing how to remedy this - for starters we are planning to replay the interlude now they know how the quest works and can perhaps win it plus get both treasures. But this might not be enough as the Shadow Rune won't really help them, they will really just be denying me of it.
I also wondered if we should try sticking with Act I monsters.
Another idea I had was to 'reset' it and beef them up by letting them use the Epic Play rules for the first quest of Act 2, so they get 500 gold minus the cost of the shop items they have acquired so far, which gives them 500-300 = 200 gold to spend on any items from act 1 or 2.
I actually don't feel this is because the quests are imbalanced, in fact I think they had chances to win all 3 of the quests they lost, but had a combination of bad luck and being the first time they tried the quests. Usually afterwards we could discuss where they went wrong. That said, I'm very wary that this game encourages the snowball effect and being trounced every time will sap the fun for them.
Anyway, opinions would be welcome. Are things only going to get harder for them and we should take remedial action now to keep it fun? Or will things pick up quite quickly for the heroes in Act II?
Cheers.
