I looked it up. We played Frosthaven Scenario #1 in April, 2025. So it’s been a mere fourteen months since we started our adventures, and the last of our starting characters has retired.
Once Kasul figured out our best scenario path to get the two robotic bolt throwers was to head to the ruins of the ancient civilization that once thrived in the area, at least until their machines overthrew their fleshy masters.
And that is what we’re seeing as we near the Ancient Spire — scurrying automatons that are just carrying bits of animals and Algox to… something somewhere, avoiding us.
So let’s get the crew assembled:
Our challenge for the day: Gain a curse on any rest. We… forgot. It wouldn’t have been impactful, as I was the only one who rested (a short rest), and most of my turns was creating and moving traps. I only attacked twice in the whole scenario.
Scenario effect: Quaggoth and Vermlings excepted, everyone else couldn’t use items the first turn. Trapper is a Vermling, Blink Blade is a Quaggoth, Drifter ignored scenario effects, so only Crashing Tide was affected.
Blink Blade: Needs to kill two Robotic Bolt Throwers
Crashing Tide: Needs to kill fifteen Ancient Machines
Drifter: Needs to complete twelve Challenges. This is #3, I think.
Trapper: Needs to kill ten Living Dooms, Living Corpses, and/or Ice Wraiths. There are none in this scenario.
I also need to kill those things (when they do show up) with an Abyssal Axe. I was supposed to find the blueprint for this, craft it, and then use it, but honestly I don’t know where the blueprint is. I just made the executive decision that I just happened to find the Abyssal Axe in a gacha machine or something and now I have it.
Okay, I looked it up. Apparently I should have gotten the blueprint in the envelope for the new personal quest? And then made potions to craft it? Anyway, didn’t do it. I bought the game. I make the rules.
So, onto the scenario itself.
As we approached the ancient spire, we noticed that it was in two levels; a busy floor with a higher balcony level and a back room behind the balcony. An elevator connects the floor to the balcony, but the elevator can only be used by characters once. The balcony can fire ranged attacks anywhere on the floor, and the same goes the other way.
A chaos demon, the Chaos Lieutenant, the only non-machine in the area, saw us approach and did a long, long, LONG monologue, then jumped up to the balcony and hid itself in the back room along with its treasure. Unable to have any normal path to any of us on the floor, it would not activate until someone took the elevator to the balcony.
Spoiler alert: We never did. We did a dirty trick instead.
Continuing with the scenario, the rules were that Ancient Machines would spawn, three at a time, every even turn. The other enemies on the bottom were the aforementioned Robotic Bolt Throwers. These could shoot two or three (for elites) characters at a range of 5, which meant every character was going to be attacked several times per turn, and this would hurt.
We let the Blink Blade guide us; we wanted to be sure they got the kills they needed. The Blink Blade also had a Translocation Rod, an item that would allow swapping two normal or two elite monsters. We’d determined that the Chaos Lieutenant was not a boss mob, but a normal elite, so after their two kills, Blink Blade swapped an elite bolt thrower with the Chaos Lieutenant, which solved two problems: it took a deadly bolt thrower out of the game, and saved one character the deadly crawl to the back room, the entire time targeted by every bolt thrower left alive on the floor.
My job was to set traps, so I made sure the spawning Ancient Machines were weakened when they spawned. When I got pierced by too many thrown bolts, I had to retreat a bit.
Crashing Tide set up massive AE combos; Drifter did point DPS, Blink Blade just went for broke the entire time, and… I got the Lieutenant kill by pulling it into one of my deadlier traps.
So we missed the treasure chest, unfortunately. Blink Blade retired and unlocked the Enhancer building, so we can now upgrade our cards — or we could, if we had the materials to build it. We’re terribly short on metals. An outpost event had us being attacked by some sort of deadly critter. Our guards held them off, but now we don’t have any guards for awhile, so we’re hoping for no more attacks until we get them back in fighting shape.
We’ve unlocked Frozen Fist and Infuser, and of course all the starters aside from Drifter are available. Drew chose Infuser, and so we’ll have fun figuring out that class next time we meet. And I have to paint it by then.
Next time: we head for the basement of the Ancient Spire, where we will meet (among other mobs) Living Dooms, which I need to kill for my new personal quest. The Abyssal Axe is well suited to dealing with their innate shields, so it should be fun. I may need to fiddle with my loadout a little to get more attack cards in the mix…
