Gloomhaven Classic Jobs Part I

Okay, this might seem a bit strange. I think a bit of background might be in order, but I'll give the short version first:

I like Gloomhaven. When I decided to play this, it was really just because I felt like playing Gloomhaven and thought I may as well apply a little rule set on top of it - not because I thought this was super entertaining, super merited, or truly in the spirit of what I've done with other "Classic Jobs" playthroughs. And I will be the first to admit my approaches haven't been consistent!
In brief though, yeah: I just wanted to play Gloomhaven.

Background

My experience with Gloomhaven began in 2020, when people were first starting to get together in small groups (we said "bubbles") in the wake of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. One of my friends had purchased it, I hadn't even heard of it, but three friends and I got together roughly weekly to play. In a time of so little socialization, meeting to play Gloomhaven quickly became one of my favourite things. Beyond the game table I would often drink deeply of the rulebook and spec out build options for my first character: a Scoundrel.

We played regularly, but my friends and I were fairly spread out geographically... and then two of us moved even further away in the next two years. We started playing Gloomhaven via Tabletop Simulator. The friend who originally bought the game set up the Gloomhaven mod to almost precisely the state our campaign had been in, and we kept going. I even started a second campaign using this on my own, just because I thought it was so fun.

Then, in late 2021, the Steam version of Gloomhaven launched out of early access. We all started using that instead, necessitating starting an entirely new campaign. I was impressed at how good an adaptation it was! I played one campaign with friends and another just on my own... which means I had now started four campaigns within two years, none of which went beyond about a dozen scenarios.

A funny thing about playing the Steam version of Gloomhaven: I - like many players - found it very unusually hard compared to when my friends and I were managing it manually. I think we underestimated the impact of conscious house rules (like taking revealed coin piles at the end of the scenario if the enemies were dead) and other judgment calls when things seemed unclear. I also wonder how often we had done refreshes improperly, allowed someone to take a turn with a single action card remaining, and things like that. Once we weren't the referees, the game was harder. I note this difference about challenge because I have come to consider myself pretty bad at this game and it's going to inform a bit of what I'm doing here.

Analysis Part 1: Class Selection

The way I was going to make my trope-like "classic party" with a Final Fantasy-styled knight, thief, white mage and black mage was by identifying the classes, and then creating a full build for them based around what embodied the tropes best.

Knight: From my prior experience, there were only two classes I would seriously consider for the Knight: Brute and Sun. Both are melee-oriented tanking classes, but Sun features most elemental dependence, and I also considered it a minus that it was a sealed class. So I went with Brute.

Thief: Scoundrel. Next!

White Mage: This one I wasn't sure about: Sun, Saw, Spellweaver and Tinkerer are all functional as healers, and a lot of classes have some kind of minor healing available. Furthermore, healers as a build are generally considered a poor use of resources in Gloomhaven, with some folks saying things like, "Healing is for when mistakes happen; if you don't make mistakes, you don't need healing". It makes sense; an average heal really only negates one major attack, if that, and if anything else gave you the ability to control or manipulate that attack obviously that's better for an action economy-oriented game. Saw seemed like it might be the choice early on since healing is a serious focus for them, but it is all short-ranged and uses an unusual mechanic that didn't seem very mage-like. Cruising various forums and Reddit and such, I seemed to find consensus eventually that Tinkerer is the best healer... as bad an idea as it is.

Black Mage: I haven't seen every class in this game, but the most natural fit seemed to be Spellweaver. Spellweaver specializes in AoE damage and elemental manipulations and it seemed a natural fit, so I went with that. The one rider I needed on this decision was that I consider a Spellweaver without Reviving Ether to be pretty useless, so I decided I would force that in somehow.

With that, we've got our classes. And they end up being four of the most common and generic default classes possible. Exciting.

Analysis Part 2: Card Selection

Having established my classes, I came up with the essential criteria for each. What made an action "knightly", or "thiefy", or "white mage-like"?

Knight: Knights are all about attacking and defending, really. There was a significant plus for having Shield on a card's action and a similar one for Attack values, that kept rising for higher attack values. Final Fantasy-esque knights do not attack at range, so that was considered a negative. Anything that specifically changes a target or otherwise draws aggro gets a big bonus. I decided a knight should be slow, so Initiative over 60 was a minor point. To minimize loss cards somewhat, those were all given a -2.

In the end, the 10 knightliest action cards a Brute has access to ended up being: Crippling Offensive, Frenzied Onslaught, Unstoppable Charge, Devastating Hack, Skirmishing Maneuver, Trample, Immovable Phalanx, Overwhelming Assault, Warding Strength, and Shield Bash. 5 of these are also in the Brute's starting hand.

Thief: Final Fantasy thieves are about speed and stealing. Unfortunately for Gloomhaven, certain things they might do like spontaneously turning invisible or manipulating a trap don't really weigh in. Emphasis was put on high movement, loot, and especially low and especially high initiative values, plus, as a support character that is fairly helpless on their own, a bonus for anything that benefits from adjacency with allies. Again, loss cards get a -2.

The 9 thiefiest action cards a Scoundrel has access to ended up being: Backstab, Flanking Strike, Gruesome Advantage, Open Wound, Sinister Opportunity, Duelist's Advance, Flurry of Blades, Long Con, and Cull the Weak. Only 3 of these are in the starting hand. Notably, Smoke Bomb didn't rank well for a thief, which is an incredibly useful card, and essential for a lot of builds.

White Mage: Now this is freaky. Contrary to nearly every fantasy roleplaying-inspired property ever, there's no real designated healer, and it's quite possible to build a tinkerer with a focus on AoE attacks. But this tinkerer is a white mage! They gain points for cards without Attack or Loot actions, for cards that grant or consume the light element, for things with range, and for Heals (obviously) where higher values count for more. Hand size relating to stamina also meant there was a lighter bonus for any card that restored other cards. Sadly, the tinkerer doesn't really do a lot of bestowing positive status but there are some minor buffing effects and those were counted somewhat.

The Tinkerer has a lot of cards! The 12 white mage-iest cards available ended up being: Curative Aerosol, Stamina Booster, Restorative Mist, Reviving Shock, Micro Bots, Reinvigorating Elixir, Energizing Tonic, Volatile Concoction, Chimeric Formula, Auto Turret, Flamethrower and Noxious Vials. The last three probably don't seem like they belong but somehow they met a few of the criteria when a lot of other cards didn't. Six of these twelve cards are in the Tinkerer's starting hand.

Black Mage: First things first: I gave a large, arbitrary bonus to Reviving Ether because I didn't really want to play without it. Cheap. Right. The rest of the bonuses were for high Attack values, high Range, having AoE, granting or consuming elements, or inflicting negative status effects. Healing was considered a negative. I set up these criteria and then, well, I wasn't thrilled with the results.

The Spellweaver's 8 black mage-iest cards ended up being: Reviving Ether (forced), Living Torch, Inferno, Cold Front, Chromatic Explosion, Cold Fire, Fire Orbs, and Impaling Eruption. Only 3 of these 8 are in her starting hand.

This analysis is, in my opinion, resulting in pretty bad builds... and I guess that's sort of the point. It's a strange sort of analysis because each of these cards are being considered in a vacuum without any regard for other cards, items, scenarios, or anything that could be synergistic. I already wrote above that I am bad at this game, right?

Consequently, when I started, I wimped out and picked house rules that mostly favoured me, the easiest difficulty to start, and I also gave my team 100 gold each to start (mimicking the 400 GP you start with in Final Fantasy). I've played the start of a campaign 4 times previously and I just want to sail along for a bit; this is not a "pure" playthrough.

Gameplay!

I generated my mercs... named Knight, Thief, White Mage, and Black Mage. I bought some items (but really not that many... so we've saving some gold) and did my first city encounter. I gave some consideration to how my team was going to play from a roleplaying perspective; it's true that Gloomhaven rewards a party that is either good or evil, and not in between. I decided since these are the Final Fantasy-esque light warriors we were going to be as good aligned as possible where the choice was clear.

There would be some cases, like this first one, where it would cost us.


1) Scenario #1: Black Barrow
Despite all the study, I remain fairly bad at this game. I did well at the first scenario (which, again, I've played several times) but every so often I would still mentally prepare myself to take two top actions or something stupid like that.

I opened both doors here pretty quickly. No real problems. I had some kind of flashy way of using an enemy to set off one of the traps. Later, the archers would lay a few more but not enough to get in my way.
  

And we won! That was all I played on day 1. Next, I went directly to the Barrow Lair since shopping wasn't going to benefit me at all.

2) Scenario #2: Barrow Lair
 
I didn't take any more screenshots of the Barrow Lair scenario, but it wasn't too hard. I really wanted to pummel the Bandit Captain because I remember my first time playing this and him opening all of the doors and flooding the room with beefy monsters. He only managed to open one door. That's great, really, except that it means I didn't get one early treasure chest here.

I decided in terms of quests I was going to beeline unlocking the Enchantress. It's important to me to have access to enhancements because I expect to have to retire my characters repeatedly as I play and enhancements will be nice to carry through - a way I can spend early money to make things a little nicer and easier in the future. With that, for my third scenario, I headed to the Crypt of the Damned after forming a union or something.
 

3) Scenario #4: Crypt of the Damned
The Crypt of the Damned was a nice place. The first room went very well. I realized the alternate skins available for all four of my characters made them feel a little closer to the class they were supposed to be acting as.
 
This scenario has a bit of an easy feeling to it in the first two rooms, but I think that's because it's sort of long. There are three doors/four rooms and some new-for-my-team elemental enemies that can be a bit tricky. I revealed and fled from the Earth Elementals to focus on the Air Elementals, which was great.
 
I don't think I was being super strategic, but there's something to be said for having opposite elementals active at the same time. Sometimes their elements that are active can sort of counteract each other. Anyway, the Earth Elementals slowly wandered over right around the time we were done in the larger room, and it worked out great. Thief the Scoundrel looted both chests... one of which was a trap.
 
I noticed that the Victory! screen at the end of the scenario really told a story. Thief and Knight are dealing a lot of damage and White Mage is dominating the healing game.


Finally, for now - although really I've been doing like one scenario per day when I can play - I did the Ruinous Crypt. One of my characters has a personal quest of completing four crypt scenarios so they may be retiring a bit early! When that happens I'll just make a new instance of the same class. I won a pie eating contest, which is pretty good. I've done quite well with perks thus far.
 

4) Scenario #5: Ruinous Crypt
I made my dumbest play to date here, with the Spellweaver approaching the left room and taking damage from multiple Living Bones that gave her 5 damage with 1 HP left... when her only remaining card was Reviving Ether. Yuck! I had to burn it. Regardless, she made it through the rest of the scenario although she hardly held the spotlight. I had White Mage restore her discarded cards for some extra stamina and she had a few long rests. It was a bit of a close call but it worked out.
 
We got the chests here, too, but they were just money. And we won!
 

The next place I intend to take the team is the Frozen Hollow. It's not a linked quest, so I needed to go back to town.

It turns out that Knight, White Mage, and Black Mage all levelled up!

Knight the Brute has gained Juggernaut, and will stop using Skewer.

White Mage the Tinkerer has gained Stamina Booster, and will stop using Toxic Bolt.

Black Mage the Spellweaver has gained Icy Blast - one of my absolute favourites. She will stop using Frost Armor.


Gloomhaven is a thing that has come and gone for me a few times over the last few years. I wasn't planning on streaming this or making videos, just idly playing when I feel like it. Consequently, updates may be irregular, or, um, non-existent. We'll see!

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