Gloomhaven Classic Jobs Part III
Jun. 24th, 2024 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingIt may be worth a note here, relatively early in documenting this playthrough, that Gloomhaven's creator and community are very guarded about spoilers. While I intend to document things as I play, and I don't intend to ruin everything about the game, there will be some info a new player wouldn't generally have access to. One thing I should say is that, in a playthrough, you will not experience everything: this is a part of the game's design. Because of both randomness and the impact of decisions the players make, it is rare that different playthroughs would feel similar. Each playthrough feels personal, like it belongs to you. This kicks in more after the first few scenarios.
Well, that's the territory we're getting into here! If you're uninitiated on Gloomhaven I would gently suggest you go experience it for yourself, ideally with a friend or two or three. There are spoilers here! And they continue henceforth in this playthrough.
The three scenarios described here were played on June 23, 2024. While I've played the start of a Gloomhaven campaign four times previously, there's a lot I don't remember, and a lot I haven't experienced. I know that sometimes when someone offers to sell you something, it's just straight-up garbage. That's already happened to me once in this playthrough! But nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I bought something during a city encounter and ended up with a Curious Gear.
I thought this might be some kind of quest item or something but I guess not; White Mage paid for it (since they may be retiring soon) and I gave it to Black Mage since they had an open small item slot.
I think that may have been a good choice altogether, since Black Mage only has one other way to get around traps. It would've been handy in the Noxious Cellar!
Anyway, onto the Crypt Basement. We're beelining this for the sake of White Mage's impending early retirement.
We got a road encounter on the way where I chose to fight a bunch of thieves and thus started with significant damage. The good news (?) is that I forgot to change the difficulty back after the Noxious Cellar.
8) Scenario #53: Crypt Basement
Although you may not get the sense of it from the images, there were multiple occasions where I had really clever push or pull setups ready for Knight the Brute but then he happened to draw really strong modifiers and kill the enemy before I could use positioning against them.
A miscalculation in round 7 led to Black Mage the Spellweaver exhausting. I was really nervous that I wasn't going to pull through!
But I bunched my team together, took opportunities to push and stun, and barely made it through. We all did our battle goals, which is nice, but we didn't manage to loot the chest.
We got a city encounter where we did what was obviously the right thing, even though the negative outcome was incredibly obvious. It's actually kind of funny to me that you lose reputation for this one; I thought negative reputation was more associated with evilness.
Onto the Palace of Ice!
Again, there was a road encounter where it seemed like the right thing to do would have a negative effect... and it was a nasty one.
9) Scenario #54: Palace of Ice
This looked simple. We started by fighting some bears. We actually blew past them sort of quickly, which ended up being an asset for someone's battle goal.
Thief the Scoundrel had a few stand-out moments here, manipulating enemies onto traps, disarming others, looting the chest, and dealing enormous damage to a Living Spirit using Trickster's Reversal.
Although I read the text about the Harrowers being immune to most characters, it didn't fully register with me, I guess. Luckily it ended up that there was a situation where the two Harrowers and the remaining Ice Elemental all ended up perfectly in the AoE of White Mage's Flamethrower, resulting in them getting the wound status effect. From there I knew we could win.
There was a cool point not pictured where the two Harrower Infesters had 4-5 status effects each because of the effects of Flamethrower, Net Shooter, Staff of Xorn and whatever the other characters were doing.
With that, White Mage the Tinkerer gracefully retired and was promptly replaced in the party by White Mage Jr
Thief the Scoundrel gained level 3 and with it, the excellent Duelist's Advance card. The oddity in this is that Thief's Knack isn't thief-y enough - at least by Final Fantasy standards - and thus Thief has very little capacity to deal with traps now. We've still got Sinister Opportunity though.
Recalling the whole thing about Jekserah being a terrible necromancer, I decided to deal with her. I vaguely remember the details of events involving Jekserah - including two different possibilities - and I figured taking her down was the proper thing to do. It was the only real thread I remember being on, so Knight the Brute, Thief the Scoudrel, White Mage Jr the Tinkerer and Black Mage the Spellweaver went to the Gloomhaven Warehouse. This time, I remembered to flip the difficulty back to normal.
10) Scenario #8: Gloomhaven Warehouse
This scenario was fine. It's three different rooms with three different "feels" - a bunch of weak enemies in clusters in the first room, narrow passages with slow-moving enemies in the second, and then a "boss" in the third. The second room is interesting because as long as your characters have means to jump during their movement - which mine mostly do - there are many ways to approach it.
In the first room there was a point where I did the move where Thief the Scoundrel used the Ring of Skulls to summon a weak skeleton ally to provide a bonus to Thief's attacks. The skeleton ally also took out another enemy, so it was actually fairly useful.
The bosses ended up being kind of hard. I didn't really manage the team's positioning well enough to get them into the final room, which meant we were fighting from the narrow passages. There are a few spots where the big fellas can target the team at range and this ended up being rather harmful to Black Mage the Spellweaver. She ended up low on cards and even had to burn Reviving Ether.
I knew her last turn was imminent but she actually got some great damage in on her way out, blasting both enemies with Impaling Eruption and taking one out.
White Mage Jr wasn't doing so great at this point either, having to burn a couple of cards to stay alive. They were going to be able to rest, but could we win in time for them to make it through?
Thief the Scoundrel was left with a lone enemy, so I enabled Single Out and let Thief and Knight go to town. Thief even used her lossy Backstab for (I think) the first time.
With these strong tactics from the frontliners, we won! But White Mage Jr did indeed exhaust just before the end of their first scenario.
This allowed a couple of things for us to do in town - someone gained a level - but I had to stop playing fairly quickly so I'll do that next time. We might pursue Jekserah, or maybe we'll get pulled in some other direction.
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Well, that's the territory we're getting into here! If you're uninitiated on Gloomhaven I would gently suggest you go experience it for yourself, ideally with a friend or two or three. There are spoilers here! And they continue henceforth in this playthrough.
The three scenarios described here were played on June 23, 2024. While I've played the start of a Gloomhaven campaign four times previously, there's a lot I don't remember, and a lot I haven't experienced. I know that sometimes when someone offers to sell you something, it's just straight-up garbage. That's already happened to me once in this playthrough! But nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I bought something during a city encounter and ended up with a Curious Gear.
I thought this might be some kind of quest item or something but I guess not; White Mage paid for it (since they may be retiring soon) and I gave it to Black Mage since they had an open small item slot.
I think that may have been a good choice altogether, since Black Mage only has one other way to get around traps. It would've been handy in the Noxious Cellar!
Anyway, onto the Crypt Basement. We're beelining this for the sake of White Mage's impending early retirement.
We got a road encounter on the way where I chose to fight a bunch of thieves and thus started with significant damage. The good news (?) is that I forgot to change the difficulty back after the Noxious Cellar.
8) Scenario #53: Crypt Basement
Although you may not get the sense of it from the images, there were multiple occasions where I had really clever push or pull setups ready for Knight the Brute but then he happened to draw really strong modifiers and kill the enemy before I could use positioning against them.
A miscalculation in round 7 led to Black Mage the Spellweaver exhausting. I was really nervous that I wasn't going to pull through!
But I bunched my team together, took opportunities to push and stun, and barely made it through. We all did our battle goals, which is nice, but we didn't manage to loot the chest.
We got a city encounter where we did what was obviously the right thing, even though the negative outcome was incredibly obvious. It's actually kind of funny to me that you lose reputation for this one; I thought negative reputation was more associated with evilness.
Onto the Palace of Ice!
Again, there was a road encounter where it seemed like the right thing to do would have a negative effect... and it was a nasty one.
9) Scenario #54: Palace of Ice
This looked simple. We started by fighting some bears. We actually blew past them sort of quickly, which ended up being an asset for someone's battle goal.
Thief the Scoundrel had a few stand-out moments here, manipulating enemies onto traps, disarming others, looting the chest, and dealing enormous damage to a Living Spirit using Trickster's Reversal.
Although I read the text about the Harrowers being immune to most characters, it didn't fully register with me, I guess. Luckily it ended up that there was a situation where the two Harrowers and the remaining Ice Elemental all ended up perfectly in the AoE of White Mage's Flamethrower, resulting in them getting the wound status effect. From there I knew we could win.
There was a cool point not pictured where the two Harrower Infesters had 4-5 status effects each because of the effects of Flamethrower, Net Shooter, Staff of Xorn and whatever the other characters were doing.
With that, White Mage the Tinkerer gracefully retired and was promptly replaced in the party by White Mage Jr
Thief the Scoundrel gained level 3 and with it, the excellent Duelist's Advance card. The oddity in this is that Thief's Knack isn't thief-y enough - at least by Final Fantasy standards - and thus Thief has very little capacity to deal with traps now. We've still got Sinister Opportunity though.
Recalling the whole thing about Jekserah being a terrible necromancer, I decided to deal with her. I vaguely remember the details of events involving Jekserah - including two different possibilities - and I figured taking her down was the proper thing to do. It was the only real thread I remember being on, so Knight the Brute, Thief the Scoudrel, White Mage Jr the Tinkerer and Black Mage the Spellweaver went to the Gloomhaven Warehouse. This time, I remembered to flip the difficulty back to normal.
10) Scenario #8: Gloomhaven Warehouse
This scenario was fine. It's three different rooms with three different "feels" - a bunch of weak enemies in clusters in the first room, narrow passages with slow-moving enemies in the second, and then a "boss" in the third. The second room is interesting because as long as your characters have means to jump during their movement - which mine mostly do - there are many ways to approach it.
In the first room there was a point where I did the move where Thief the Scoundrel used the Ring of Skulls to summon a weak skeleton ally to provide a bonus to Thief's attacks. The skeleton ally also took out another enemy, so it was actually fairly useful.
The bosses ended up being kind of hard. I didn't really manage the team's positioning well enough to get them into the final room, which meant we were fighting from the narrow passages. There are a few spots where the big fellas can target the team at range and this ended up being rather harmful to Black Mage the Spellweaver. She ended up low on cards and even had to burn Reviving Ether.
I knew her last turn was imminent but she actually got some great damage in on her way out, blasting both enemies with Impaling Eruption and taking one out.
White Mage Jr wasn't doing so great at this point either, having to burn a couple of cards to stay alive. They were going to be able to rest, but could we win in time for them to make it through?
Thief the Scoundrel was left with a lone enemy, so I enabled Single Out and let Thief and Knight go to town. Thief even used her lossy Backstab for (I think) the first time.
With these strong tactics from the frontliners, we won! But White Mage Jr did indeed exhaust just before the end of their first scenario.
This allowed a couple of things for us to do in town - someone gained a level - but I had to stop playing fairly quickly so I'll do that next time. We might pursue Jekserah, or maybe we'll get pulled in some other direction.
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