Ye Olde Inn

Should the expansions be played with starting equipment (from scratch)? Or should you carry your equipment across expansions?

At first glance it seems like you should keep your equipment (gold etc) between expansions, because some quest books even give you a reward for completing the quest book. On the other hand, I made a spreadsheet ( http://mepem.com/pemcode/?p=1150 ) and it looks more balanced to start each quest book from scratch. Otherwise the expansions are too easy.

The Frozen Horror Quest 1 gives the Barbarian (crossbow, longsword, shield) which suggests that you’re starting from scratch. Wizards of Morcar Quest 1 looks difficult, but keep in mind that those 13 chaos warriors only have 1 Body in the European version.

So on the one hand, the game is too easy if you carry equipment across quest books. On the other hand, it makes giving the heroes rewards at the end of a quest book seem very silly.

Try Kellars Keep or the Witch Lord with starting equipment. Your eyes will go like

You're supposed to keep it.

That said, don't play vanilla Kellars Keep, rather play a fan variant.
People stop playing HQ in Kellar's Keep.

Wizards of Morcar is a meat grinder, too. Don't go there with starting equipment.
Against the Ogre Hordes, I tried once with starting equipment. No chance.

Which expansion is the most difficult to do with starting gear? And why?

To be honest, I haven't tried it but I suspect they are not impossible (or absurdly difficulty).

I revert to my favourite example here, the Trial.
Play it with a beginner's group, you will lose in
average 2 heroes. With luck only one, with bad
luck up to all of them.
Play it with a 4-dice-Hero-Group, you will lose
no one and find that it is a bit on the easy side.

But Heroquest depends strongly on luck, too.
You can survive the Trial with a beginner's
group without losses.

That means that playtesting helps only
so far, so I can't tell you by experience.

Very hard question to answer, and I certainly don't have the time to test it. I would say they would all be very, very hard with basic Heroes. Having played them all, I know from experience that when my brother's Barbarian, who was well equipped and with an extra Body Point, played the Frozen Horror solo quests, he died quite quickly. I decided that it was too tough for one Hero, and allowed him to take the Wizard Balash, who he had just met in 'A Growl of Thunder' and was a basic Wizard.

Introduce DAMAGE

"Bought Weapons are broken when rolling black shields equal to their strength."

The original idea was ALL black shields but this had issues with potions and in defence due to +1's adding together. So i changed it! Now taking a potion to boost an attack or defence increases the risk of breaking the weapon. A +1, shield, helmet etc is 3. If you have both and roll 4Cd6, 3 Black shields will result in damage, discard 1.

A hero would always revert to their starting weapon, which could be considered dull anyways or stat which ever way you choose to see it..

Definitely allow heroes to keep their equipment between expansions. That's a big part of the fun; a veteran hero taking his skills, experience and loot into a more challenging adventure to see if he can succeed once more.

One or two out of four of heroes could be brand new and have a chance to survive the expansions, but if all four are new the entire party will die before they can get very far. It depends on the particular expansion of course, but all of them can be brutal in their own way.

pemcode wrote:Should the expansions be played with starting equipment (from scratch)? Or should you carry your equipment across expansions?

An answer can be gleaned from p.23 of the NA Instruction Booklet:

Wizard: Since there are so few things that you can buy from the Armory, it would be wise for you to save your money. Other powerful magic items will be offered for sale in future Quest Packs). You may wish to spend your money on those items.

Is it just me or did I already answer to this exact same thing on a duplicate thread of this?

Yes you did - And so did I.

TMU wrote:We have played so that you keep your equipment to the next expansion. Of course if you let the players use all their equipment at any time, it will become OP, we have limited e.g. weapons to two per quest. So the player is carrying a weapon in his hand and one on his back. If a new weapon is discovered, he needs to either toss one of the old weapons or give one to some other player to carry.

Goblin-King wrote:Keep the equipment.
Sure the 13 chaos warriors only have 1 BP, but you can't kill more than a couple of them each round, meaning quite a few of them get to hit the heroes back. This kills unprepared heroes!

I'm locking the other topic and putting in a link to this one