TOPIC: Thoughts on Difficulty

Hey folks, this year I have equipped my 10 player group with mostly red builds with a few purps here and there where it counts. Our Druid will be using my ROSP & SRoEC and our Cleric will have the Ring of Greater Focus... We will have four 5th level players in the group. (Druid, Rogue, Bard, Elf Wizard)

All in all our builds are pretty beefy, however, 50% of our group this year will be the wives club - which means this is their first introduction to TD.

If this were YOUR party - would your first run be in hardcore followed by nightmare? OR would you go easy on them with a Normal and then go to Hardcore afterewards?

depends who is playing what and how much healing/PoDD i have

Fizzikx wrote: Hey folks, this year I have equipped my 10 player group with mostly red builds with a few purps here and there where it counts. Our Druid will be using my ROSP & SRoEC and our Cleric will have the Ring of Greater Focus... We will have four 5th level players in the group. (Druid, Rogue, Bard, Elf Wizard)

All in all our builds are pretty beefy, however, 50% of our group this year will be the wives club - which means this is their first introduction to TD.

If this were YOUR party - would your first run be in hardcore followed by nightmare? OR would you go easy on them with a Normal and then go to Hardcore afterewards?

Normal is likely to be a slaughter.

If your cleric is good and has the eldrich 2 piece and the divine goggles I can't see much chance of party member death on Hardcore.

I would say HC first and HC or NM depending on the group's reaction to HC

I would say Hardcore, just because the wives club part of your statement. Not going to be fun if one of your wives die in a room, and then have to walk through the rest of the dungeon as a ghost.

They going to the TD101 class?

I have attempted to write this 3 times and keep deleting it. I finally figured out that I need more data before I give my opinion.

Is this a combat or a puzzle run?
Are the wives gamers?
What difficulty would you run this on if you had TD vets using your tokens?
How well is your group at working together?
Will you have seen any of the dungeon before stepping in with the 'wives club?'

I mostly agree that Hardcore seems right to me but I think depending on the answers to questions above Normal could be correct. Granted I took 3 or 4 noobs on a Nightmare run with Mike Steele a couple years ago and we did fine. We had access to all of Mike's tokens (everyone was purped out level 5). I had already been through the dungeon multiple times. The noobs were hardcore gamers. Still if I was not confident in their skills and Mike's tokens we would have gone in on Normal (there was no hardcore at the time).

Fizz,

Introduce them right. Normal sealed + 1-2 reds.

Good job! All great replies!

I would say the most important is having fun. Being on Normal they can soak in and absorb the experience. Things likely won't be a challenge due to the way you are equipped and if you want to challenge them you can "skip" some toons turns as necessary.

Once they have had some fun you can decide how much to up the ante.

Ed

Last year I had a group that sounds like that. We ran hardcore and we either did fine or it was a disaster, depending on how you look at it.

Max treasure and no deaths = great

Three of the five newbies were so stressed from the pressure they don't ever want to play again. One girl was so overwhelmed she just started walking back across the stream without using the stepping stones. So in that respect, I regret taking them on anything but normal for their first run.

Bah. Women and TD don't mix. You should just send them off to the SPA events where they can learn how to make a chainmail teacozy. Now, I'm sure some of you are at the edge of your seats ready to complain. But, but, there are already plenty of women who play TD like Raven, or Jenny, or Kim. Well, sure, but there's an easy solution to potential abnormalities like that. You just have to not consider them women like I don't, and everything works out. Then God's in his Heaven and all is right with the world.

henwy wrote: Bah. Women and TD don't mix. You should just send them off to the SPA events where they can learn how to make a chainmail teacozy. Now, I'm sure some of you are at the edge of your seats ready to complain. But, but, there are already plenty of women who play TD like Raven, or Jenny, or Kim. Well, sure, but there's an easy solution to potential abnormalities like that. You just have to not consider them women like I don't, and everything works out. Then God's in his Heaven and all is right with the world.

Watch it Mr. Lipwig or Spike may use her heels on you!

darkangel866 wrote: Fizz,

Introduce them right. Normal sealed + 1-2 reds.

Even normal with your builds you'll be fine.

MasterED wrote: I would say the most important is having fun. Being on Normal they can soak in and absorb the experience. Things likely won't be a challenge due to the way you are equipped and if you want to challenge them you can "skip" some toons turns as necessary.

Once they have had some fun you can decide how much to up the ante.

Ed

^^ This