I don’t think we’ve really found a direction in Frosthaven yet, several scenarios in. Frosthaven, the wintry outpost, has forged a temporary peace with the Algox. We’re supposed to be helping it shore up its defenses, but instead we’re taking the momentary ceasefire as an opportunity to do some exploring.
Most of our exploring is based on our own character goals. The goal for my character, the Banner Spear, is to become more experienced. Kasul’s character, the Boneshaper, actually does want very much to improve Frosthaven, so his character and mine are fairly sympatico. Ally’s character, the Doomstalker, wants to ride various transportation alternatives. Drew’s character, the Blink Blade, wants to kill crabs and robots, and so that leads us to this scenario, The One With The Crabs. (Robots is on the list).
It’s important to plan out the retirement, as many Frosthaven improvements are locked behind character retirements, making it important to keep hammering away at them. Mine is still some ways away.
In this scenario, we travel to a series of watery caves where three varieties of Lurkers await us. Normally peaceful folk, something has stirred them up, and we’re here to see exactly what. After negotiations break down, we’re forced to kill them all. Working against us is the scenario effect: everyone got a -1 card to add to their encounter deck, to simulate the cold wetness of the caves.
In the first room, we face Clawcrushers and Warriors. Unlike the straightforward bashing we enjoy with the Algox, Lurkers are much more ready to buff themselves up and inflict status conditions to supplement their somewhat weak damage.
I opted not to use any banners in this first fight, as it’s a huge pain to keep them moving with the party. I have a mastery point that triggers when I summon a banner on my first turn and stay within range 3 of it the entire scenario. That wasn’t going to happen on such a large map as this. I did, however, summon my Reinforcement in the hopes it could take some hits for me. Unfortunately, the Blink Blade rushed ahead to tank. I found out later his scenario goal was to never end a turn adjacent to another character, so he would find himself usually out ahead of the party.
My scenario goal was to never take a short rest. Nice, in theory, but when there’s as much fighting as in this map, not really an option to just take a turn off.
By the time we reached the door to the second cave, we were suffering from poison and wounds; I dropped my healing banner to pep everyone up and dragged it later with us to keep the passive healing flowing. Next room was more warriors and some ranged types. The Blinkblade did his best, but the pressure to stay out of the group for his scenario goal meant he lost cards. He spent his final move triggering the trap in front of the door.
Ally’s Doomstalker lasted a little longer. Using her shadows, she was able to do nasty things to the red casters and do well more than half the damage of the boss in the third room before similarly exhausting herself. It was up to me, my Torch Bearer, and Kasul’s Boneshaper skeletons to finish it off. I did manage to pull it through one of the traps in its room.
I had a picture of the boss, but it didn’t come out well for some reason, so exactly what it was will remain a mystery. It did drop a mystical rock that urged us north. It went on to mention that we could build a boat, or just explore the coast, which was very helpful — more help than you would normally expect from a rock.
The chest contained a blueprint for a shovel, which will allow us to destroy destructible terrain. Ally perked up at that; her Jaws of the Lion character was all about destroying terrain, so I see a shovel in her future.
All of us leveled up to level 2 at the end. Drew got his goal of killing crustaceans. Ally’s character wanted a boat ride, so we chose that branch to add to our list. Drew figured the Blinkblade can help with the boat trip before heading back to robot fighting and retirement, so boat ride north is next.
Ally had to get home (we had a late start), so we’ll do the Frosthaven outpost events at the start of the next session.
I have a lot of mini painting to do for the next scenario. Just trying to stay ahead of our progress.
