Ye Olde Inn

Edited by Moderator - HispaZargon: Messages moved from thread HEROQUEST - COMPANION APP Discussion.

Just had a first try with the App on the Trial with my 12-year-old grandson (he was controlling Dwarf & Elf, leaving me with Barbarian & Wizard), using the physical EU board and pieces – old skool. Our party is called the Gold Diggers.

In general, I would say that the App does the job, no problems locating the app (from the UK) and installing it, a few bits of feedback below, but it is good enough to use so it gets my vote, but it could definitely do with a laptop / pc version due to screen size, app size and battery life.

Physically moving the character on the screen is a little fiddly, but as others have pointed out it isn't limited to your roll or 12 squares of movement, so you can just keep moving extra squares until you get to the corresponding point on the board where your movement actually took you!

I get that there was a design decision made to not fully automate everything, presumably to ensure that you buy the physical product rather than just using the App as a stand-alone game (personally I would question that decision, charging £4.99 for the App and making it a stand-alone game seems to make commercial sense to me but that aside) but the end result it that, whilst workable, it seems a strange mixture of what the App does and what you do manually offline – not sure exactly how I would recommend that it is changed but some things stick out as clunky, not seamless

When you cast a spell, it doesn't delete them from your options, you have to track that yourself offline.

When monsters attack you the App gives you the results of their roll and you handle your defend dice and body point tracking, but when you attack Monsters you have to roll your attack dice, their defend dice and then update the body points on the App. Seems strange that when you choose the option to attack, the App doesn’t get you to select the victim and enter the results of your attack die and it could then handle the rest for your attack for you

Even though there is an option which if enabled allows you to click to end a Heroes turn, this doesn’t move to the next Heroes turn (or Zargon’s if he is next) even though the turn sequence is pre-determined

When it is one Heroes turn the App doesn’t prevent you from moving a different Hero

The fundamental rule of move then action or action then move not part-move-action-finish-move isn’t enforced, seems relatively simple to me to give a Hero the option to choose ‘Move’ or ‘Action’ and once they have done that then present them with the remaining option*

*Warning – incoming heresy – the lack of enforcing the action-move/move-action rule did make me wander how bad would it be if you allowed move-action-move but I'll pick that up in a later post!

Whilst the App does prevent you from using the same Hero to search the same room more than once, but if you don’t keep track of that yourself then it can result in a walk back to a room with a Hero who you thought hadn’t searched that room only to find that he already has ☹

The App allows you to do things like Search a Room, move into the next Room and Search that one too all on the same turn

The Trial has no traps but the Hero action to disarm a trap is still present, but searching for traps is greyed out?

I got ‘No Line of Sight’ message when attempting to use Fire of Wrath spell which I thought didn’t need LOS – could be a versions thing as the spell card for EU implies no LOS needed - UPDATE: Confirmed LOS is required under the US and new rules, not EU (makes it a weak spell!) so this isn't an APP issue

Again this could be rule versions thing but I got a ‘spell blocked’ when attempting to use Ball of Flame against a Dread Warrior but nothing on my spell card suggests that is a spell that can be blocked

Interesting you CAN cast Ball of Flame on a monster in a diagonally adjacent square – does this feed into the endless diagonally adjacent crossbow debate?

The Actual GamePlay

We actually played the Trial twice, first time the party was in trouble having used both healing spells before we even hit the two Dread Warriors (dice were not in our favour and neither was the Treasure Deck – the Trial is hard enough as it is, but keep dropping in Orcs as Wandering Monster every time you search for Treasure is a killer) and Barbarian, Dwarf and Elf all got killed in the process of clearing the Dread Warriors room. Wizard managed to finish off the last Dread Warrior which had a single Body point remaining before he bit the bullet and ran!

The Wizard then returned with some new Companions for round 2 which went much better and ended up with Verag dead and the whole party intact but having taken a beating. The Elf excelled himself as a finisher, following in after the Barbarian and finishing off a number of Orcs and a Dread Warrior - great combo between those two. Verag himself was a bit of a let down (you could say Verag got whipped - sorry), Wizard had cast Courage on the Barbarian as we entered that room and Verag fell to a single five dice blow from the Barbarian – four skulls and Verag managed to not roll any Black Shields. That aside it was good quest, especially satisfying to have one with the gods of dice and deck on our side after the previous one!

Looking forward to moving onto the next quest now the Elf has a Spear, the Wizard a Shortsword and Staff and the Dwarf borrowing heavily to invest in a shiny new Broadsword

Good point about battery life as a quest could take 1-2 hours (or more in some cases, especially with each player controlling multiple heroes). And players outside North America don't have to use a VPN anymore to download it?

Lee of covertnerd said he tried to use it on his tablet but it kept crashing (this was before the two updates of course). I too would appreciate a version that worked on desktops, rather than only mobile devices.

Regarding spells, in the NA rules, spells are LOS. The diagonal close square thing was only a question with regards to the Crossbow, not spells (which we always assumed were not restricted to adjacent or ranged). The EU had a lot looser targeting rules it's true. A spell would never be "blocked" under the base rules, unless there was something blocking line of sight (a figure, closed door, wall or piece of furniture) to the target.

From what I could tell, this Companion App is on the "honor system" for a lot of things, so sadly it can't be used to resolve ancient disputes about vague rules. There may even be actual errors in there about things it won't let you do, that you can do according to the printed rules but I haven't played it enough myself to really say in that regard.

Also, I may be wrong, but you might have been doing the Treasure search wrong. When I chose Treasure Search as an action, it said to draw from the deck. It gives a button for "Wandering Monster" but you are only supposed to click that button IF the card you drew (from the actual physical deck, which I hope you shuffled first!) was a wandering monster. Again, it's on the honor system, so if you click the button every time you'll get one every time, but if you never click it, you won't. Just checking in case you misunderstood the directions.

Second Quest today, just finished, using the App.

The app quit, fortunately only a few rooms in so we had to start the App again but fudged it to catch up with the board, so no disaster but not great - I suspect that might be due more to my phone than the app as it did lag on Zargon's turn when there were plenty of monsters to move

This quest is the first to have searching for secret doors and traps, I really don't like these rules in the US version any way, too clunky (but that is a separate topic) and tracking which places have been searched already is not possible within the App you have to do it offline. Problem with the rules rather than the App but then the App does track room searches for treasure, so no reason when you try to search for traps or secret door it should be able to tell you that area has already been covered

The voice over tells you that "the <insert monster here> has died", minor point but "You have killed/slayed the <insert monster here>" would be a little less passive, for all I know the Heroes just happened to be in the Dungeon during an epidemic!

I remember as a kid loving this Sir Ragnar quest more than most for a number of reasons and the point during the game today on the App when you rescue him and the alarm goes off and all the doors open and release the monsters was very cool!

That said the quest was easy, very few spells used (both healing ones of course) but pretty much nothing else except Rock Skin (wasted as he was never attacked) and Pass Through Rock on Sir Ragnar (was going to use something to speed him up but taking a short cut through rock did the trick).

On that note I cast the Pass Through Rock on Sir Ragnar on my Wizard's turn (after Sir Ragnar had already moved as he moves with the Barbarian) and the App got me to select a target, which I did and he glowed so I assumed all was well. On Sir Ragnar's turn I went to move him though a wall and no joy. I had to move him on my board and send him round the long way on the App.

When you get Sir Ragnar to the stairway the game ends instantly despite the fact you still have Heroes and monsters battling it out on the board. May be an interpretation thing but I always played to the end, i.e. Ragnar out & surviving Heroes out.

This one is nothing to do with the App but a question around interpretation of the Courage spell (this has probably been discussed elsewhere on this forum - I think over the years everything has). My Wizard considered casting the Courage spell on the Barbarian on his turn when neither of the two Heroes could "see" any monsters, but there were plenty approaching rapidly and would have been in striking distance on Zargon's turn - but we weren't sure whether the "The spell is broken the moment the Hero can no longer "see" a monster" rule would mean that the spell was broken the instant it was cast or whether it means the spell is broken the moment the Hero can no longer "see" any monsters on his turn (or at the start of his turn / or at the end of his turn) or something else. We allowed it - after all no Zargon to argue with!

Finally, the gameplay itself was good, the Elf making great use of his spear to diagonally skewer a number of monsters whilst backing up the Dwarf, and also used his Swift Wind and a Speed Potion to zip around behind the approaching monsters, who were heading down to get Sir Ragnar, and loot the chest in the room at the top right of the board.

And really finally, the App does need to use better attack logic, nothing complex but even selecting which Hero to attack (when more than one is available) based on who is weakest or closest to death or something rather than just attacking the strongest would be an improvement

The Courage spell is broken when he no longer has a monster within his line of sight (revised 2021 edition clarifying "no longer see a monster" from 1990 NA card) but the "next time he attacks" implies it doesn't run out instantly/wasted just because there are no monsters in the room at the time of casting, because he has yet to attack. As long as he can still locate a monster in LOS, he can keep attacking with the bonus.

So we can confirm it attacks the nearest strongest hero... in terms of most body points? Everybody knows you target the Wizard and get rid of him first!

I agree the variables for Zargon's tactics would be a huge improvement. Could have generic difficulty levels and then custom difficulty.

The Gold Diggers tackled Melar’s Maze yesterday evening successfully without loss.

And I just noticed that KK and ROTWL are now available with my version of the App / locality, result!

There was something of a comedy moment with the very slow mummy advancing along the very long top corridor towards Tyris the Elf who was determined to stand his ground and use his crossbow chipping away at the monster until eventually Gilius the Dwarf’s patience ran out and he stepped passed Tyris and finished the Mummy off.

We changed the Heroes order of play due to the mention of traps in the Quest intro and decided to use Dwarf, Barbarian, Elf, Wizard order hopefully increasing the chances of disarming more traps, I think the theory was sound but as we typically split up when the paths divide into Barbarian & Wizard combo (that I control) and Dwarf & Elf (controlled by my lad – 12 years old) and most of the traps were hit by my group it didn’t make much difference – Gilius the Dwarf managed to fail to disarm the falling block trap despite his bonus but he did prevent Axel the Barbarian from stepping into the pit trap located behind the second door in the room at the bottom, although Axel did end up at the bottom of a different pit and ironically this was the first game of using our new pit rules of 2 attack dice rather than an automatic 1BP loss and Axel’s cursed dice of course produced both skulls – not sure exactly where that sharpened stake ended up but 2 lost BP indicates it wasn’t comfortable!

Both of our big hitters in this Quest – Axel the Barbarian and Gilius - seemed to be using cursed dice for their attack rolls for at least the first half of the Quest, with an unusually high number of failed attack rolls or at least minimal skulls blocked by armour but our two back up attackers made the most of the opportunity for some effective back up, diagonally spear attacks and crossbow from Tyris and Blaze the Wizard had another good game picking off weakened monsters with some good rolls on his shortsword (taking some risks as his usual stone skin was lost half-way through due to a pit trap incident costing him 1BP) and igniting a Mummy and finishing off the Gargoyle with his fire spells – although I did later reflect whether a Gargoyle should be fire-proof?

Unusually Blaze ended the game without using his courage spell, first time ever, as Gilius and Tyris were blocking the door to the end room, whilst Axel and Blaze were late to the party, and with no other way to contribute Blaze used ‘Pass through rock’ to get Axel into the room, taking the Mummy by surprise from the rear (can you surprise undead?) but leaving Blaze twiddling his thumbs outside.

Again, Quest was fun but didn’t feel challenging, our Heroes still have a few Healing potions between them, Axel found another one in his first room search and a half-filled one later, and the Quest ended with another long walk out – I think some of these Quests need a secret door exit located in the Objective Room.

Between Quests
Gilius had a storming game for treasure in terms of coins getting the 144gc from the chest and another 75gc dotted around the Dungeon, he also found the Talisman of Lore and magnanimously exchanged it with Blaze the Wizard for a Healing Potion (seriously that Dwarf is so tight he squeaks) the end result being that Gilius is now well on his way to purchasing his coveted Battle Axe (and once he gets it, will be handing down his Broadsword to Tyris for 100-150gc, they are still negotiating…)

Under my new rules Blaze now having the extra Mind Point delivered by the Talisman, enables him to start to purchase spells from the fourth set (Air – he has Fire and Earth already – with Tyris taking Water) and called in his loans – one reason why no one else was doing much spending this time – purchasing the Genie spell for a bargain 400gc.

Next up … Legacy of the Orc Warlord ... the saga continues

It let you change Hero order? I thought that was something you couldn't change... then again I only played it several versions ago...

Or were you just skipping turns to equate to "a new order" rather than Barbarian, Dwarf, Elf, Wizard, Druid/Warlock/Bard...

We are just 'manually' letting the Dwarf go before the Barbarian as whilst I think you can choose the Hero order when you first set up a group I couldn't find a way of doing it with a group that is already set up.

Legacy of the Orc Warlord

Interesting twist at the start, as we automatically split into our usual pairs to explore pressed by the importance of locating our equipment, but with hindsight it may have been a better option to stick together due to our reduced effectiveness through a lack of said equipment.

This led to a heroic rear-guard action carried out by Gilius the Dwarf and Tyris the Elf* having opened the central room without yet recovering our equipment, which bought sufficient time for the relief force of Axel the Barbarian and Blaze the Wizard to locate the missing equipment and take over.

*To be fair the Tyris was using good placement combined with the diagonal attacks of his spear to assist the Gilius whilst remaining at little risk himself, heroic and/or pragmatic.

This activity resulted in the Tyris having to use his healing spell on Gilius, followed a turn or two later by Gilius swigging his own Healing potion. The closest to a Hero death since The Trial and a useful reminder of the importance of your equipment

Once we recovered the equipment all was well with the world and the quest continued as usual, fun but not challenging.

My earlier debate around the possibly overpowered Axel the Barbarian under the effects of the Courage spell in the final room situation didn’t raise its ugly head this time, but only because Axel under the effects of the Courage spell having slaughtered an Orc, was neatly sidestepped by Blaze the Wizard who killed Grak with his shiny new Genie spell, so either way it appear that the final Boss is destined to die in a single hit from the Axel – Blaze combo.

Gilius The Dwarf just watched much of this epic final battle (at least a very brief single turn epic) under the influence of a Tempest whilst the Tyris picked off a Goblin by squeezing a shot with his crossbow along the diagonal between the “frozen” Dwarf and the door frame.

Treasure flow ‘rivers of gold’ seem to have slowed to a trickle at the moment so no between quest activity.

I’m considering implementing the ‘Berserker’ option for the Barbarian for the next Quest (inspired by recent posts around the Trollslayer Hero elsewhere on the forum) and also the Courage rule change that I dismissed earlier. Detail for both below, and thoughts always welcomed.

Berserker Barbie

Problem: HQ uses a Treasure/Gold represents XP that can be spent on better equipment which gives you enhanced effects. This is the equivalent to advancement is other games, however the Barbarian starting with the Broadsword (3AD) leaves him only one step up to the Battle Axe (4AD) in EU rules [US Rules give something of an additional ‘half-step’ with the Longsword] before he reaches his maximum attack strength.
Solution: Whilst I have merged the EU and US equipment to a certain extent meaning that I have weapons from both including Longsword, Hand Axe, Spear which is a general improvement giving more advancement steps through weapons to Heroes, the Barbarian starting with a broadsword still skips most of those steps and leaves him 1.5 steps from max – Longsword & Battle Axe. Changing the Barbarian’s starting weapon to a shortsword, rectifies that but he then loses his best attacker of the party theme. So, inspired by the optional Hero Type – Trollslayer and his Berserker ability, I have decided to give that to the Barbarian and reduce him to a starting weapon of a shortsword.

Berserker: As you attack an opponent you fall into a battle rage, sacrificing your own safety to press home frenzied attacks. Whilst in this state your attack strength increases by 1 extra die, but your defensive strength reduces by 1 die. This state ends when, at the start of your turn, there are no monsters visible to you.

Courage Spell Review

Courage too strong? – in the base game at least potions tend to have an instant or “when you next …” single action only effect whereas spells that have similar effects to potions tend to have a potentially longer period of effect, until certain conditions are met, on the other side potions tend to be more powerful but short-lived (example US rules Rock Skin +1DD lasts until wounded, Potion of Defence +2DD but next defend only), so it doesn’t make sense to limited the courage spell to a single action or it becomes the same as the Potion of Strength so I would suggest just restricting it to one extra attack die rather than two.

Could also be used to cancel/dispel Fear spell?

EDIT: I have subsequently found and added to this thread Courage

Bareheaded Warrior wrote:Latest update from the Gold Diggers (my new Hero party using the App) - I'm beginning to feel like I should have started a new topic for this thread, but I'm not sure how /whether I can now extract these bits from this thread into a new one without duplication!

Yes, this thread would be better for general info about the App. Anyway, no problem, I can create a new thread for you and move all your related messages there. Please tell me the title* you want for the new thread and which one is the first message on this thread you want to move there (I guess it is this one, isn't it).

* Title suggestion: Companion App Experience by Bareheaded Warrior.

Yes thank you. Original post is the one that you identified. I think there was a reply or two from Kurgan also.

My preferred title would be "Companion App Experience courtesy of the Gold Diggers" if that fits!