HEROQUEST - COMPANION APP discussion

[Kurgan]

Thanks seekhashem, Geekgonegiddy, and others who been reporting this on HQF discord:

3.0
HeroQuest players, this update now includes the Expansion Quest Set: Against the Ogre Horde. Now digital Zargon can guide you through these additional adventures through the World's End mountains. But tread carefully my friends, the Dirgrusht Ogres are a strong but seclusive clan. And Zargon plans to manipulate them for his own evil purposes . Your ongoing adventures await!

ATOH (10 quests; light Orange fog of war) added, wolf ally allowed for 3 or less heroes (in any of the ATOH quests, doesn't work outside of this pack). You can also hire the Ogre mercenary in any of the 10 quests (and yes, can combine with the Wolf).

But... No alternate druids. No alternate guardian knight. No rogar's hall.

You can't play custom/infinite arena battles between quests as in the physical booklet (so far only the German PDF has been released officially that we've seen), just the arenas in Quests 1-3. Apparently the items are random in these arenas though.

Maybe in 3.x? As has been suggested the main number is for a major update, while the decimal points are for the smaller updates.

Elven Cloak of Passage and Cloak of Shadows still can't pass through stone blocked squares (only white walls and closed doors).
The ROTDM elven mercenaries are still nerfed (they're supposed to be able to use items aka "use special" equipment, artifacts or treasures... unlike the frozen horror human mercs).
ROTDM mercenaries still can't get their confiscated gear back (Quest 4).

The Ogre stone doors can be passed by any character though the popup tells you to roll your "base defense" and roll at least 2 skulls. Yes, even the Wolf ally can do this (remember that Wolves can't open normal doors).

MOTM still only allows the frozen horror mercs to be hired in the group quests (no elven mercs or ogres).

[HispaZargon]

But... No alternate druids. No alternate guardian knight. No rogar's hall.

HOWEVER, audio files for Rogar's Hall can be found if you dig in the app files... so it probably means that Hasbro is planning to include it soon.

[Kurgan]

I hope so! It seems those files have been there for a few updates now but Rogar's Hall still can't be played digitally.

[SirRick]

Last week I played Quest 3: The Rescue, from FH. If absentminded difficulty was an issue of the first two solo quests, then purposeful cheapness is an issue with the third solo quest. The basic rooms are not too bad, but there is another occurrence of the Barbarian having to duel a Polar Warbear right away. This alone is another case in which the Barbarian is nearly guaranteed to die if playing a new hero. The main issue is the room in which Gothar is held. If you were to run into the room, you would most likely stumble into one of the pit traps, which inflicts damage and ends your turn. This means the Barbarian would be subject to taking 4 or 5 attacks in one round with reduced defend dice. Not good for a solo quest.

Now, most players would simply wait in the doorway so you can fight one monster at a time, which is what I did. I was still in the corridor when the last monster was defeated. Having not set foot in the room, I was not aware of all the pit traps in the room. The freed Gothar walked over to my character to join him, only to fall into a pit trap. Depending on the route the player took, Gothar likely has two more traps to walk into before reaching the exit. If you were actually playing a new hero and you made it this far, you probably don’t have a Tool Kit to even attempt to disable these traps. If you played “Into the Northlands”, then you probably have one. Even then you only have a 50% chance. It is also possible Gothar could walk into the wandering monster trap which would be very bad. Gothar’s path probably has 1 or 2 pit traps, then either a wandering monster trap or a spear trap.

I triggered the wandering monster trap and the spear trap previously, and I got lucky disarming the Southern pit trap, so Gothar managed to survive with 1 Body Point left. I am not sure if the app allows Gothar to jump traps, but it seems to allow him to search for treasure, traps, and secret doors though, so he probably is allowed a chance to try.

Today I played the first group quest, The Glacial Gate. The quest has a lot of traps, so I was thankful I brought the Dwarf with me for this quest pack. I took a lot of damage from the Polar Warbears in this quest. I had to use 4 healing potions, the Armband of Healing, and the Druid’s Life Force spell in this quest alone. I know its going to get worse, so I’m curious how many of the 100+ healing potions my party acquired since the Game System quests.

I noticed a few app related issues while playing this quest. When finding the Snowshoes of Speed the text was misspelled “Snowshoes of Speech”.

I noticed some different wandering monster behavior, which is likely from the 3.0 update. Its still unclear reading the rules if wandering monsters are supposed to move the turn they appear. It could certainly be interpreted that way, but I always took it to mean on Zargon’s next turn. The app eventually started having wandering monsters move away after their attack which is incredibly annoying. Since the monsters started doing this, I usually have one hero blocking the door so they could attack and run out the door. While I haven’t played a lot of quests featuring multiple wandering monsters, this is the first time I have seen one move up to attack me. The first monster attacked and moved away. The second monster then stepped forward to take a swing. I rolled badly and took 5 Body Points of damage from these two attacks alone. Usually my experience is if a wandering monster can’t reach its target, it does nothing until Zargon’s turn.

The next issue was the Ice Gremlin trapped in the cage. I refused to let the gremlin free and walked up to it and one-shotted the bastard. With each new hero to step into the room, they get the same message of the Gremlin asking to be released. Also when you start your turn in the room he still asks to be released. I also noticed the cage doesn’t prevent a hero from moving through it. I had to look in the quest book to see what was supposed to happen if you let it go.

The last thing I noticed is not an issue, but a change from previous versions. Now to disarm a trap on a chest, you have to be adjacent to it. Previously you could just tap the chest when not anywhere near it to try and disarm.

[Kurgan]

According to Avalon Hill's rules if I recall correctly... yeah, Wandering Monsters are only allowed to attack the hero who triggered them (or the Knight if he used "Knight's Challenge" skill)... they can only move on Zargon's turn. Now if Zargon's turn comes after the hero's turn where the Wandering Monster(s) attacked, yes, they do get to attack again.

After triggering a Wandering Monster trap, the hero is not supposed to be able to use anymore of his movement (even if he has squares left) but he is allowed an action if he hasn't already (so he can attack back or cast a spell, for example).

That's odd about the disarm... I believe you're supposed to be on top of the trap square normally. We always had the hero stand on top of the furniture to disarm it, but I suppose putting the hero adjacent to it is another popular choice. By default the App allows any character to pass through a treasure chest, which I thought was the reason they allowed that (even without "intangible furniture" toggled on).

[SirRick]

In previous versions of the app i had a hard time figuring out how to disarm traps on chests. I would move the hero on top of it and nothing would happen. Eventually I discovered you tap the chest when not standing on it, which means you could disarm from a distance somehow.

I played Quest 2 of the FH before 3.0 was released, and there was one particular treasure chest in the top right corner surrounded by traps. I was able to disarm the chest trap and collect the treasure without having to move and deal with the other floor traps. Since playing Quests 3 and 4, I can’t do that anymore. They probably changed that to give floor traps next to treasure chests more meaning.

[Kurgan]

v3.1 was added today... 324 mb update. The text on the app store just repeats what it said for 3.0 though so not exactly sure what is new. Bug fixes for ATOH?

No Rogar's Hall/ROTDM Knight variant...

[SirRick]

Today I completed Quest 5: The Deadly Depths from FH. I survived. This quest was horribly designed and needlessly long, as it uses EVERY room on the board. The quest when oddly smooth for most of it. One of the Ice Gremlins in the corridor got away with one of my Potions of Defense, and I can say the app did not crash when it left the board.

The ice sculpture room would normally be very deadly, but when they came to life, the Barbarian had enough movement left to go back into the room with the other heroes. I set up a gauntlet so all my heroes could gang up on one monster at a time.

Nothing too crazy happened, but near the end of the quest the 20ish wandering monsters I had to fight were taking its toll. These were from the wandering monster traps, and draws from the treasure deck. Also the Gargoyle bent the Barbarian over his knee and spanked him a few times. He kept rolling 3 or 4 black shields on the majority of his defense rolls. Over all I had to use 5 (or maybe 6) healing potions. All but one were used by the Barbarian. The Dwarf had to use one traversing the Icy River on his way to the exit.

I still have yet to hire mercenaries, I just fail to see how they would be useful in this quest pack. Another reason is I am not sure how the Icy Rivers are supposed to work. I am not sure if you roll for damage once per turn, or for each individual space. Either way the rivers and Ice Vaults would likely kill off most of your mercenaries. I have been playing it as once per turn, since each space seems really cheap, especially with reduced movement speed.

Edit: Upon reading the actual quest book, it seems you have to roll for damage on each space of an Icy River. With bad rolls you could get your entire party killed just trying to get through this obstacle. Very, very poor game design. I know these were not tested, but come on. What were they thinking?

[Kurgan]

If the Icy river is 3 squares long, then you are using up 6 squares of movement to traverse it, and you would roll 3 times (potentially taking 3 damage if you rolled three white shields!). If you instead took it as the entire tile is just one roll, that's much easier, but not literally what the text likely was intended to mean (yet I don't think they meant you'd roll 6 times for each actual square you move since it takes 2 to cross each square on the 1x3 or 1x8 tile).

Yes that one was a slog for sure! Two heroes can get protection from the Icy rivers with artifacts and others can use potions of Warmth (which restore up to 2 lost BP from cold damage).

If you take the rules strictly as written the Mercs don't get to use or have potions used on them (unlike the ROTDM elven mercs) but you can use spells on them. The worst is losing someone to a chasm with two black shields in a row (only if you were lucky enough to have brought the Elixir of Life and/or Flashback spell with you to reverse it, or potion of airwalk I suppose... better to bypass the room with some pass through rock ability). But yeah I see what you mean, how could you know you'll have one of these to worry about?

12 mercs are a little expensive but with the Warhorn of Command (Into the Northlands) you can rehire them (if they survive) at half price. That's many more attacks, but yes a swinging axe trap failed roll can kill a scout.

Now if you decide to allow Mercs to be given and use potions, you should be much better off.

[SirRick]

Today I finished Quest 6: The Frosted Path from FH. This quest was much less torturous than the last one. There were still a fair number of cheap tricks, long hallways, and lots of traps on the other side of a door. The quest went fairly quickly at first, but the second half manages to wind you through every room on one side of the board.

The cheap tricks of note are a particular dead end corridor with 2 Yetis, a later corridor with 3 Ice Gremlins, and a number of wandering monster traps featuring 2 Dread Warriors each.

Without the Spike Shield, the Yeti corridor is almost guaranteed to kill two heroes regardless of experience, unless they are really lucky defending and running away.

The Ice Gremlins are basically guaranteed to steal something. The quest book says at the start of Zargon’s turn if the heroes can’t see the gremlin, it gets away. Since the other gremlins block line of sight, they are much more likely to get away in a single file corridor. The gremlins are quite tough to, so its hard to kill them fast enough.

There were a lot of traps on the other side of doors in this quest. I got so sick and tired of it that I am allowing my heroes a chance to jump a space if I want to. There were also a number of slippery ice squares. I had trouble figuring out what die roll result in what each time I stepped on an ice square, because it seemed to change with each attempt. I figured out that the app automatically assumes you are going to jump a known space with ice on it. Things made sense after that. If the ice is revealed, the app asks you to jump. If you fail to jump, then you have to roll again to see if you slip.

I noticed a couple other app related things as well. The Ice Vault room doesn’t mention the Armband of Ice, but this is probably an oversight.

The other thing was the enemy Crossbowmen were cheating during my fight with them. They were completely ignoring line of sight and firing through multiple targets to hit my characters. I just ignored these attacks.

Overall I have to use 3 healing potions and both of the Druid’s healing spells. Not too bad thanks to the Spiked Shield.