TOPIC: Thanks and Thoughts on True Dungeon GENCON 2018

Fiddy wrote:

So, since everyone else is chiming in, here is My $0.02:

A veteran group doing a sealed pack run should be able to defeat Normal (or at least make it to Room 7) if they work well together, slide well, know their memorization, and play smart. If it that isn't possible, we've probably set the bar too high for Normal.

A veteran group that has no URs, but does have slots filled mostly with Rares/Enhanced/Exalted ought to be able to tackle Hardcore and make a good showing of themselves. Basically, people ought to be able to move on to Hardcore by virtue of playing the game for many years, without having to drop $100s of dollars on the secondary market.

Nightmare is where you ought to start needing URs and Relics to survive. Some Rares are fine, but you should at least have Enhanced/Exalted in spots that can have them.

Epic you probably shouldn't have any Rares left (barring special cases like Cham of Enlightenment). Any slot that can be a Relic/Legendary probably ought to be, and even then you might not survive.

I like the "veteran" qualifier that you use in your assessments. I don't think that a group of 10 brand-new players should be able to handily beat their first dungeon on normal. It needs to be challenging; a death (or a few) seem acceptable to ensure that the adventure is engaging and doesn't just keel over. Teamwork and good tactics make a huge difference at all levels, but especially when you have no gear.

Fiddy wrote: You could probably ask 100 of us how we view the difficulty levels and where they should be set, and you'll probably get 100 different answers.

This is probably correct. I do suspect, however, that the majority of us would agree that 3x 10-packs of tokens (even with good trading) feel insufficient for tackling hardcore. I know that some of the early discussions on this topic referenced that exact text in the player's handbook. We definitely need some clarification for what individuals should expect when making the jump from normal.

IMO, this is where some general rule-of-thumb data from the modules should be incorporated into the player's handbook. If folks know that normal > hardcore monsters generally have +2AC, hit for +2 damage, demand save rolls of +2, and have +100 health, they can assess their own builds and make the judgment.

Fiddy wrote: Basically, people ought to be able to move on to Hardcore by virtue of playing the game for many years, without having to drop $100s of dollars on the secondary market.

This! I've been playing since 2011, and had therefore spent a fair bit of money on event tickets over the years, but until this past year I could never justify spending extra money on top of that to go out and buy tokens. But I took all of my starter 10-packs and treasure pulls, and I gradually traded up until I had a solid red build. At that point I was clearly more powerful than necessary for Normal, so Hardcore was exactly what I wanted.

Non-lethal: a personality preference
Normal: playable sealed, but gets easier if you have more tokens
Hardcore: playable using only reds (i.e. achievable through trading), but gets easier if you have a few expensive tokens
Nightmare: expensive tokens become necessary at this point
Epic: !!

For anyone who feels Hardcore is too easy for you, the solution is simple: play Nightmare! Don't try to raise the requirements of Hardcore and ruin it for other people. Likewise for Normal: if it's not challenging enough for your taste (and budget), then don't choose Normal. But it's important that Normal is the default, because TD is expensive enough already; spending extra money on tokens is optional and should never come to feel like a requirement.

(As of this year I have crossed over into Nightmare territory, and am having a lot of fun there too. But I remember my roots.)

Does any one have any stats on what percentage of groups play on each difficulty?

If you play non-lethal do you not take any damage or is it just you can't die if you get to zero hit points?

I imagine people don't want to play non-lethal because they still want there to be some stakes, some challenge.

What if the term "non-lethal" was dropped and turned into something in between the current non-lethal and normal? Maybe non-lethal is still an option but only for beginner runs like Into The Viper's Pit from this year.

I think it would be great to have "normal" (with the idea of it being the new "non-lethal) be something like it would be almost impossible to die before the last room, unless you're an idiot. It would take the characters base level stats into account and how much healing is possible from character abilities and figure out basically the max damage that can be dealt before the last room. You would definitely take some damage, and you could die, but probably won't.

I've done runs on normal that ranged from not taking any damage the entire run to taking so much damage I died in room 5. Neither of those scenarios is very fun, especially going in with over 30-40 HP. Right now, personally, I'm worried about the future of normal. I would really like to be able to do runs with new & random people and not feel like I need to horde all of the healing roles as a 5th level player and/or be ready to outfit strangers with red builds just to be able to have an enjoyable run. I don't think that new people want that either.

If the first time I played, I got the impression that I needed a high level character or two babysitting the group, needed to be outfitted with reds, or had to play on "non-lethal" to have a good experience, I probably would have thought this game is not for me.

David Zych wrote:

Fiddy wrote: Basically, people ought to be able to move on to Hardcore by virtue of playing the game for many years, without having to drop $100s of dollars on the secondary market.

This! I've been playing since 2011, and had therefore spent a fair bit of money on event tickets over the years, but until this past year I could never justify spending extra money on top of that to go out and buy tokens. But I took all of my starter 10-packs and treasure pulls, and I gradually traded up until I had a solid red build. At that point I was clearly more powerful than necessary for Normal, so Hardcore was exactly what I wanted.

Non-lethal: a personality preference
Normal: playable sealed, but gets easier if you have more tokens
Hardcore: playable using only reds (i.e. achievable through trading), but gets easier if you have a few expensive tokens
Nightmare: expensive tokens become necessary at this point
Epic: !!

For anyone who feels Hardcore is too easy for you, the solution is simple: play Nightmare! Don't try to raise the requirements of Hardcore and ruin it for other people. Likewise for Normal: if it's not challenging enough for your taste (and budget), then don't choose Normal. But it's important that Normal is the default, because TD is expensive enough already; spending extra money on tokens is optional and should never come to feel like a requirement.

(As of this year I have crossed over into Nightmare territory, and am having a lot of fun there too. But I remember my roots.)

I agree with both of you generally. In my previous post when I used dollar figures I assumed that any player who had been playing for 5 to 10 years would have collected all of their tokens and transmuted them for better gear enabling them to do hard-core. The dollar figures are what I would expect as normal transmutation of 5 to 10 years of play goods To be equivalent to

David Zych wrote:

Fiddy wrote: Basically, people ought to be able to move on to Hardcore by virtue of playing the game for many years, without having to drop $100s of dollars on the secondary market.

This! I've been playing since 2011, and had therefore spent a fair bit of money on event tickets over the years, but until this past year I could never justify spending extra money on top of that to go out and buy tokens. But I took all of my starter 10-packs and treasure pulls, and I gradually traded up until I had a solid red build. At that point I was clearly more powerful than necessary for Normal, so Hardcore was exactly what I wanted.

Non-lethal: a personality preference
Normal: playable sealed, but gets easier if you have more tokens
Hardcore: playable using only reds (i.e. achievable through trading), but gets easier if you have a few expensive tokens
Nightmare: expensive tokens become necessary at this point
Epic: !!

For anyone who feels Hardcore is too easy for you, the solution is simple: play Nightmare! Don't try to raise the requirements of Hardcore and ruin it for other people. Likewise for Normal: if it's not challenging enough for your taste (and budget), then don't choose Normal. But it's important that Normal is the default, because TD is expensive enough already; spending extra money on tokens is optional and should never come to feel like a requirement.

(As of this year I have crossed over into Nightmare territory, and am having a lot of fun there too. But I remember my roots.)

Very much agree, i've friends who've spent hundreds on tickets every year and never money on tokens. I'm by local standard around here a budget buyer as i've always put more money to tickets/cons then tokens.

I like hardcore to be closer to normal to have that step. Either way really would like and i believe the overall/only agreement on this thread is for a more accurate description of what is needed/expected for hardcore/nightmare in descriptions/coaches/players guides.

Fiddy wrote:

Bob Chasan wrote:

Endgame wrote: We are forgetting a difficulty.

Non-Lethal.

Perhaps normal shouldn't be targeted for those with only 1 pack? Have non lethal be targeted at those with only 1 pack, and normal for those with all slots filled and mostly reds, hardcore for all level 5 (as level 5 alone is running around 200-300 at this point), and so on?

As a coach, I really try to recommend non-lethal to groups of 10 newbies (or even a few fairly new players) but even they will often turn it down. I don't have specific data but I would guess that few use non-lethal.

From Kirk's Post:
So my four build targets would be $5, $500, $5,000, $15,000

So combining those two, I would recommend
Non-Lethal $0 starters
Normal Mostly Red builds $100-$500
Hardcore $300-$5000 But be warned if you're on the low end of the spectrum you're liable to die early in the adventure
Nightmare $5000-$15,000 At least half of the group should be outfitted near the higher end
Epic ??????

You could probably ask 100 of us how we view the difficulty levels and where they should be set, and you'll probably get 100 different answers.

So, since everyone else is chiming in, here is My $0.02:

A veteran group doing a sealed pack run should be able to defeat Normal (or at least make it to Room 7) if they work well together, slide well, know their memorization, and play smart. If it that isn't possible, we've probably set the bar too high for Normal.

A veteran group that has no URs, but does have slots filled mostly with Rares/Enhanced/Exalted ought to be able to tackle Hardcore and make a good showing of themselves. Basically, people ought to be able to move on to Hardcore by virtue of playing the game for many years, without having to drop $100s of dollars on the secondary market.

Nightmare is where you ought to start needing URs and Relics to survive. Some Rares are fine, but you should at least have Enhanced/Exalted in spots that can have them.

Epic you probably shouldn't have any Rares left (barring special cases like Cham of Enlightenment). Any slot that can be a Relic/Legendary probably ought to be, and even then you might not survive.

I totally agree with you that a Veteran Group and/or disciplined and great sliding group should be able to do a difficulty level with fewer tokens than other groups. Even if Hardcore were scaled towards a $500 build, a high performing group might do really well with just Rares.

I npc/dmed my first Gen Con this year and only saw one Nightmare group over my two shifts. (But i was only getting every 5th group) Most groups I had were running on normal with a few hardcore thrown in. Mostly returning players are on HC and NM and most casual once-a-year or newbies are on normal.


At the smaller cons I think we see more veteran players so I see a lot more NM and HC players. Small parties (2-5) players, very new players or people with kids run on non-lethal for the most part. Some puzzles just cant be done with a tiny party (like the room 7 moongate from last year) so non lethal is a great option for these players. Most GC runs are full though so you dont see non lethal as much because the parties are full and I think a lot of them decline the option. (I mean whats the fun if -someone- doesnt die).

As for N2 I ran it on Nightmare with my group and we took a lot of damage. A looot. We were obscenely buffed however so we all lived. I did a hardcore run on N3 and did not find it challenging at all and finished the game without losing a single hit point. It felt like N2 was much harder than the other two dungeons for sure. I was throwing my heaviest attacks down right away because every round more and more environmental damage racked up. The giants retribution was also quite painful, but I noticed few parties would switch to ranged attacks after receiving damage. It required a lot more thought and tactical work than a lot of other combats for sure.