I never fully got until how both of these IAP Campaigns added a number of unique mechanics into the mix like amulets and supplies. Cool stuff!
I am really enjoying the new campaigns. My investigators continue to die miserable deaths in Alaska, though, so they are not having *quite* as much fun as me.
I take it you did not finish any of the two new campaigns yet? Well, you got farther than I did. I only jumped to Alaska once right at the start, to see how things look. Seems you will need alot of supplies (40+) to make it through. And to be honest, I spent a few hours with the new campaigns, and the nintendo hard difficulty really strained my patience and enjoyment of the game. Currently, I simply have no idea how I can win any of them. Any tips are most welcome.
The "Very Hard" seems like no exageration for this new campaign. I too have no idea what is a good amount of supplies would be before starting off for Alaska (clearly 7 wasn't cutting it). To be honest there are a few random events in Alaska that grant supplies as well as one of the tent's wheel spin landings worth 5 supplies, so you could luck out and extend things a bit once low on supplies). I also am loving the "Icy Wind" mechanic of Alaska as it really keeps you on your toes. There is no longer any, "Sure I only have 1 heart left but as failing this encounter would only result in the loss of sanity so I can still take a pretty safe risk by jumping in here". My favorite teamsize is 2. Less to micro-manage and at least somebody can have your back if the chips are down. As I'm also the lover of RANDOM, I tend to start each campaign off with the game choosing a random 4 investigators and from that lot I need to choose the best 2 (some characters are either not that compatible or might have a power that would must not serve any purpose on the given campaign). While I still wish each campaign had its own leaderboard, there is a little balance to the scoring since the tougher campaigns will tend to go on MUCH longer so that even with a loss you could score better than a win in the game's 1 Normal difficulty campaign. I love the variety of investigators' powers and have to believe there is some sort of asymetrical balance to them (I can only imagine the better statted ones have weaker abilities), but, wow do some of those abilities seem comparitively underpowered! Like here is an investigator who's power kicks in every turn and here is another guy who, if the moon is full on a tuesday MIGHT get a minor tweak in his favor.
Warning! I can't recall if that was already brought up here or only on one of the BGG threads, but there is a situation you really need to be careful about in this game, no matter which campaign you choose! Never lock (via spell or focus) the final glyph after rolling it! If you are playing normally there isn't any reason you would ever need to do this but, if in a little fit of spacey absentmindedness you did, you'll find yourself in a game breaking situation. Since you can't discard locked glyphs but NEED to discard something to end your turn, you can setup a situation that will force you to abandon your current game!
Is this a new change? I don't remember ever having to discard before I failed. Regardless it's a terrible mechanic, why would you be forced to commit an action before acknowledging that it's not possible to complete a task?
While it does sound potentially sloppy in its execution, this was clearly put in to stop Terror Effect Avoidance abuse. You essentially need to finish a turn before you can quit out.
Just got hit with the forced to resign flaw I was playing the Cthulhu campaign and had to give up an entire game while in Ry'leh... I've dropped my rating for the game from 5 stars to 1 star on iTunes and left a review. Not happy at all.
While I can understand your frustration, is dropping the rating immediately really a good way to handle this? Mistakes happen in software development just like anywhere else. And while I personally believe in rigorous testing (I work in a software company), and sometimes really wonder how we could not catch bug X before release, I know how easy it is to miss things, especially on the edges. I would like to ask you to consider the following: Put your rating back to 5 stars, contact the developers and explain what happened (a good issue description is worth gold!). If they react and tell you they will check and fix it, all fine. If they do not react, *then* you have a reason to lower your rating: Lack of customer support, and most likely an unwillingness to address issues in their game (as implied by their lack of response).
I beat the Tsathoggua scenario, but it took a few tries. Given how many monsters were spawning, I ended up taking investigators that had monster-related bonuses. I still have no idea which investigators to use in the Ithaqua campaign. The glyphs are getting locked so quickly that I haven't really had enough time to make much of a push. It is definitely living up to the "very hard" rating. Hopefully I'll make some headway this weekend. Ia Ia!
It isn't a bug, they chose to redo how failing a mission works. It's the same as the newest update of catan where they reordered the resources, nobody asked for the change and yet they implemented it anyway without doing the most basic of testing. I've been playing this game for almost a year and loved the way it worked. Now they change an integral part of the game. I had some friends over and we were all extremely pissed that an hour and a half of our time had been wasted because we just couldn't progress any further. I have a reason to lower my rating when a dev ruins my game. I, nor anyone else, have an obligation to privately submit emails and wait to hopefully hear back. If a bad review gets enough votes as being useful it will be stuck to the top of their AppStore reviews, THAT gets devs off their asses. Check the AppStore for Catan and you'll see my scathing review is the most helpful on both the iPhone and iPad version. Not 24 hours later they were on the forums ready to make changes.
Same here, I finished Tsathoggua just a few hours ago, thanks to the very helpful hint from LordGek, that he uses only 2 investigators. For whatever reason that never occured to me before... and now it worked right on first try. I did not see that many monsters in the Ithaqua campaign yet, so bringing characters with monster-related bonuses is maybe not neccessary. Currently I have Sister Mary quite high on my list, because she can ignore locked glyphs. And the guy that can do numbered tasks in any order seems to be quite helpful, too.
I have to admit I do not like the new mechanic either, simply because it needs a few more additional clicks. But I have not lost what sounds like excellent progress because of it yet, so I guess I am more lenient here. About getting devs "off their asses": I think that depends alot on the actual person(s) . I have encountered developers on every end of the spectrum by now: From super helpful, responsive, and reacting quickly, to folks that would not lift a finger no matter how big the shitstorm or how well-justified the complaint, just because "it is their game". Let's just agree to disagree on this subject
Oh, and question: I checked Catan on my iPad Appstore (because I wanted to see your style of "scathing review"), and all I see are Dutch reviews. Is there any way to get something like an "all countries" view of the reviews?
I think the easiest fix is to allow one to discard locked dice. Perhaps they could add in a confirmation bit like, "Are you sure you want to discard this locked die?" but then at least this would never be an issue.
