First Light content has been already leaked via HeroQuest official app, so I have already analyzed the difficulty of First Light campaign using my preliminar model.
BEWARE, THERE ARE VERY EXPLICIT SPOILERS AHEAD
I have estimated that Total Difficulty of the campaign is 60100 DPs, 10 Quests in total. Here you have the results I obtained for the rest of official expansion packs under HQ21 rules, for comparison purposes:
1.- The Frozen Horror (9 Quests): 169040 DPs
2.- The Mage of the Mirror (9 Quests): 136336
3.- Rise of the Dread Moon (9 Quests): 114416 DPs
4.- Jungles of Delthrak (9 Quests): 99184 DPs (Average value of the 10 posible combinations of quests)
5.- Against the Ogre Horde (10 Quests): 93487 DPs
6.- The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness (10 Quests): 64954 DPs
7.- Spirit's Queen Torment (14 Quests): 62284 DPs
8.- Return of the Witch Lord (10 Quests): 61980 DPs
9.- First Light (10 Quests): 60100 DPs
10.- Basic Game (14 Quests): 60012 DPs
11.- Kellar's Keep (10 Quests): 56842 DPs
12.- Prophecy of Telor (13 Quests): 55864 DPs
We can see that according to my model, First Light has mostly the exact total difficulty as the Game System campaign, however in terms of average difficulty per quest, the difficulty ranking of each quest pack would result in the following, being First Light average difficulty close to Return of the Witch Lord expansion:
1.- The Frozen Horror: 18782 DPs/quest
2.- The Mage of the Mirror: 15148 DPs/quest
3.- Rise of the Dread Moon: 11442 DPs/quest
4.- Jungles of Delthrak: 11011 DPs/quest (Through the most difficult quests path)
5.- Against the Ogre Horde: 9349 DPs/quest
6.- The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness: 6495 DPs/quest
7.- Return of the Witch Lord: 6198 DPs/quest
8.- First Light: 6010 DPs/quest
9.- Kellar's Keep: 5684 DPs/quest
10.- Spirit's Queen Torment: 4449 DPs/quest
11.- Prophecy of Telor: 4297 DPs/quest
12.- Basic Game: 4287 DPs/quest
... and online official quests ranking:
1. Online Quest -1 - Rogar's Hall (1 Quest): 9480 DPs/quest
2. Online Quest 1 - Forsaken Tunnels of Xor-Xel (1 Quest): 6523 DPs/quest
3. Online Quest 2 - Into the Northlands (1 Quest): 5315 DPs/quest
4. Online Quest 3 - Knightfall (1 Quest): 5027 DPs/quest
5. Online Quest 0 - New Beginnings (1 Quest): 3719 DPs/quest
And here you have a chart where you can see how the difficulty is being increased through Quests of First Light campaign:
The following chart shows a comparison of how difficult are the quests of First Light campaign compared with the ones from Game System campaign, all shown in chronological order attending to their corresponding parallel stories:
Really interesting to highlight that First Light story is fully compatible with the end of Game System one, I mean you can start the Game System with a party of Heroes, play its first two Quests and rescue Sir Ragnar, after that you can start playing First Light with the same party of Heroes, skipping Quests 3 to 12 of the Game System, and once the ten quests of First Light have been played, such party may come back to continue the story of the Game System by playing Quests 13 and 14 to defeat the Witch Lord. Of course the end of GS is much easier than the end of FL, but this hybrid alternative would avoid any story continuity gap if such group of players would like to play also KK and RotWL after First Light.
Combining GS Quests 1-2 + FL Quests 1-10 + GS Quests 13-14, the results for such combined hybrid campaign would be these ones:
- TOTAL DIFFICULTY (14 Quests): 76573 DPs (difficulty between TCoPD and AtOH according to above ranking)
AVERAGE QUEST DIFFICULTY: 5469 DPs/quest (difficulty between SQT and KK according to above ranking)
Here you have another chart with the difficulty of all released HQ21 quests and expansions up to now, ordered in the official chronological order defined by Hasbro:
And here the same chart but also adding the missing legacy classic EU quest packs adapted to NA stats and rules (Wizards of Morcar/Zargon and The Dark Company):
Well, with all the postprocessed data in hand, I think the overall difficulty of FL is clearly more challenging than GS, but not in excess. In the other hand, I love the story and how it can be inserted in the already existing lore and basic campaign. I really think Stephen Baker did a great job with this expansion, it will give us fresh air and an awesome alternative for newcomers to the game.
And finally, as always I would like to remember that this Difficulty Model is still a preliminary version with lots of limitations, so its results may not be as accurate as we would like to.
The current version of this model only considers the number an type of Monsters and number and type of Traps potentially found by the Heroes in each Quest. This model does not still consider the rest of matters of the game which could affect to the difficulty, like very special events or abilities, if the heroes can visit the Armory before the quest or not, how many aids the Heroes find (companions, potions, artifacts, etc.), Wandering Monsters, how many gold they find, how powerful are the spells of each spellcaster (the model only accounts the number of spells), etc.
The aim of this model was only trying to give a quick idea of how difficult is each quest and quest pack in those terms, but always looking for simplicity (at least on this stage of the project).
I wish you will enjoy this data.
