HEROQUEST - COMPANION APP discussion

[SirRick]

After a number of sessions I played through Quests 8-12 of SQT. Most of these quests were fairly easy and fun to play.

Quest 8, in the quest book in you find the room with the Wizard’s Staff, the book says you find this, unless you already have one. The app on the other hand says you find the staff and makes no mention of “unless you already have it”.

Quest 9, when you receive the Orc’s Bane, the app does mention the “unless you already have it” phrase, but reading the events of the quest and story, its clear you are supposed to be carrying the weapon with you. Since this team did not have an Orc’s Bane with them, I just allowed them to have a copy too. The only artifact I didn’t give a duplicate, was the Talisman of Lore, since that is supposed to be a unique artifact that has an entire quest book written around it.

Quest 10 I really enjoyed, I loved the layout for some reason. I really felt like I was in a tower.

Quest 12 was a chore. The quest itself wasn’t that difficult, but I had a hell of a time from my own bad luck rolling dice, and drawing bad treasure cards. My Knight took such a beating I had to actually use a healing potion. The quest layout was strange too. There are some secret rooms with teleporter tiles, but they lead nowhere important and serve no purpose. The only app related issue was the air currents in the corridors. When you stop moving the app prompts you to roll a combat die to either move two extra spaces, or get blown two spaces away. This was quite annoying in the app, since its hard to move your entire movement without having to stop and adjust your path, so every move the app prematurely asked you to roll the die.

Now I only have 2 quests left before I must face the dreaded Frozen Horror quest pack.

[SirRick]

Yesterday I finished quests 13 and 14 of SQT. These last two quests were a bit frustrating, but only because my bad luck in shuffling treasure cards and poor rolling trying to disarm traps. The quests themselves were not too difficult otherwise.

Quest 13: The Tower of Fire was fairly short, but frustrating. The rooms have these heat furnaces that blast heat into a room. If you end your turn in the room when the furnace is still active, you roll to see if you take damage. I had to glance at the quest book to see what happens because the app doesn’t say anything about you taking damage at all. It makes you roll a die, and if you fail it says you get blasted with heat, but no mention of damage.

I took a lot of damage from said furnaces through bad rolling. You are allowed to disarm the furnace as if it was a trap, but trying to disarm with a 50 percent chance is a waste of time in my book. I continuously rolled skulls trying to disarm it, as well as rolling skulls when taking damage from it. To make things worse, the wandering monster is a Dread Warrior. My heroes took a lot of damage before even opening the first door. After the first room, I gave up trying to search each room with each hero, because Dread Warrior wandering monsters mean business. Luckily I happen to choose the direct route to where the artifact of fire was kept. I took more damage from the furnace in that room, and after getting the artifact I decided to end the quest early. I checked the quest book to see if I missed anything, and decided to leave. In going through the rooms towards the exit, I decided to search the rooms more throughly, and my luck started to change. I managed to get 7 good cards on the way out. Its not my usual quota of 10 good cards, but I still got two healing potions from it, which is what is most important, and not bad for only exploring four rooms.

Quest 14 is rather sparsely populated, but for me it was quite the slog. Right away my heroes became trapped right at the entrance door for failing to disarm the falling rock traps on either side of it. Luckily your heroes have special powers from the elemental artifacts that give them various abilities 3 times for each hero. One of these abilities was Pass Through Rock. My Monk managed to get through one falling rock trap because I placed her on the other side after failing to disarm it. The other three heroes had to burn one of their powers just to get around the blocked passage.

When I was finally able to properly explore, the fun continued. In the first two rooms I drew 8 bad treasure cards from a fresh deck. 6 wandering monsters and 2 hazards. The wandering monster also being a Dread Warrior was the icing on the cake. I probably had to kill close to 15 Dread Warriors over the course of the quest. My Monk even would have come close to death had it not been been for their special powers from the artifacts to negate damage. My Monk was caught in a situation in which she stumbled into a trap advancing towards a Dread Warrior. I negated the damage with Twisting Torrent, and the Warlock failed to finish off the monster before Zargon’s turn. The warrior hit with 4 skulls, and my Monk whiffed her defense roll. Thankfully for the special powers in this quest she took no damage.

I decided to check out all the rooms before heading into the final chamber, to see if there were any hidden rooms or anything. The last half of the quest my luck turned a bit and I managed to get 8 good treasure cards overall, the last couple rooms I decided to search fully and got a lot of good draws at once.

Finally I went into the final room for the anti-climatic conclusion. The boss is just there by herself. A couple of heroes fell into the traps in the room which cut short their advance, but it didn’t really matter because I tried the “Talk to her” route instead of attacking. The first turn you enter the room the app lets you know you can talk to her and what you are supposed to do to resolve it, but otherwise it doesn’t initiate anything in the app so I thought you just took care of it yourself. The Spirit Queen’s character sheet allows you to decrease her Mind Points manually if you succeed in your attempt. However on the first turn, only my Knight was able to attempt to talk to her and failed. Both the Bard and the Monk stumbled into traps, ending their turn. My Warlock used a Tempest spell scroll to make the Spirit Queen miss her turn. Starting with round 2, the app prompts you to ask if you want to attempt to talk to her, then instructs you to roll a die. When the app starts doing this, the app starts decreasing her Mind Points automatically if you succeed. Oddly she only took 2 points of Mind Point damage before the app decided she was defeated (its supposed to be 3 I believe). The quest ends instantly with a nice ending that features both Mentor and Silvana voice acting.

Overall, I enjoyed this quest book. The quests were fairly easy and fun to play, which is nice for experimenting with new rookie heroes, or as an alternative start for a full group of players. One aspect I really liked was the female voice acting for Silvana in the app. She is the one leading you through the quests as Mentor normally would. The actor’s voice for general narration is great, but when she switches to talk as Silvana directly she sounds a bit overdramatic, almost like a former porn star trying her hand at voice acting. This is not a criticism of any kind. It gave Silvana a bit of an emo or goth vibe as she is lamenting over the fate of her former apprentice, so it fits the character perfectly.

One last note, I noticed a number of people suggest using alternate artifacts in place of the duplicate artifacts found in this quest book. I just kept everything the way it was, but for the elemental artifacts, you could just consider giving them alternate names for a simpler solution. Mentor tells the heroes to hang on to the elemental artifacts, so they are special because they are needed to enter the towers, so you might want to consider something like this:
Armor of Earth (same as Borin’s Armor)
Cloak of Wind (same as Wizard’s Cloak)
Water of Life (not a Dune reference, but if you want something different, there you go. Its just a consumable item so it doesn’t really matter if you change it or not)
Spellfire Ring (a Fire Ring already exists from KK, so you could have it be this, but since the ring comes preloaded with a Ball of Flame spell, you could alter this artifact to be a ring that allows the wearer to cast Ball of Flame once per quest. Something to consider if you want something different instead of the Spell Ring).

[Alby87]

It's subtle, but the Dwarf can turn off the furnaces with 5/6 dice results... because, you know: they can be disabled like a trap (and if other heroes have the kit, great!)

[SirRick]

Today I started my long anticipated/dreaded foray into the Frozen Horror quest pack. I began with the “Into the Northlands” online quest. I used my Barbarian who experienced the GS, RotWL, and PoT. He is fully equipped mainly using the Spirit Blade, Borin’s Armor, Shield, and Helmet. He also has an Armband of Healing, Talisman of Lore, and a bunch of healing potions of various kinds. I also used Snowdasher, using the Wolf mini and card from the AtOH expansion.

Despite all of these things, my Barbarian nearly died twice from Yeti hugs. The app seems to just have the Yetis behave normally instead of attacking only with their “Meaty yeti fists” as suggested in the quest notes. The app was also rolling really well for these monsters (and later the boss). The first Yeti I encountered rolled 3 skulls, and I blocked 2, but was grappled. I took 4 Body Points of damage from hugs before Snowdasher finally managed to slay the beast. The second Yeti, thankfully did not land any hits, but that one also rolled 3 skulls on one of its attacks. The final Yeti in the boss room rolled 3 skulls two turns in a row. I blocked one set, but got hit on the second. Thankfully Snowdasher killed it before its turn came up. After the Yeti was taken out the boss also hit me with 3 skull attacks two turns in a row. I was saved by the Armband of Healing. He only lasted three turns, but he did fight viscously.

The hugs are very deadly in a solo quest, even for well equipped heroes. Even with Snowdasher’s help, I still almost died twice from Yetis. Since the hero can take no actions, I ruled that a grappled hero can’t drink any potions, and with the killing blow, dies instantly. I know drinking potions is not considered an action, but it doesn’t make sense for the Yeti to hold off for a second while the hero slams a potion before resuming their death struggle. I would say the Armband would still function in this circumstance since it works automatically. I find it comical that Yetis would be allowed in the original solo quests, or that there is no way to break out of the hugs by yourself. I am glad the app does incorporate a hug break maneuver (if you turn the option on). I think the same mechanic should be allowed even in group quests. I seem to remember that the original draft notes for this pack did have some way to break free, but I am not sure how it was implemented. The suggestion of only allowing the Yetis to attack with their meaty yeti fists seems lame, so my suggestion would be to have Mentor give the hero the Spiked Shield before starting these solo quests. That way, you have a legit reason why the Yetis can only use normal attacks.

The many Ice Gremlins posed no trouble. In all encounters, I just stood in the doorway and shot them with my crossbow until they died. They were trapped in the room and couldn’t run anywhere with their stolen goods. When the app has a gremlin steal something, their turn ends, unless they started their turn next to you, then they move away. The quest book seems to suggest that gremlins run away immediately after stealing, which sounds like they could run up to you, steal, and then run away at their full movement on the same turn. I will just let the app do what it wants, but with an in-person game, I am not sure how I would implement this.

The slippery ice tiles seem like they could be deadly since a hero who falls is not allowed to defend. If this occurs in an area with monsters, they could get any number of free hits on you, which could be concerning in further quests.

Anyway, I survived the online solo quest, and have three more to go. Over the course of the quest book, I will tell you where I distributed the extra artifacts. I determined this some time ago, mostly replacing existing items with artifacts best matching the item.

When I resume the group quests in the app, my other heroes will the the Dwarf, Monk, and Druid. All of them have seen action and are fully equipped. My God have mercy on my soul…

[Kurgan]

I was challenged about a feature in 1.72 wherein ADVANCED GOBLINS were said to be able to "pass through" heroes, according to a post on reddit. I don't know if this was ever possible but I never personally witnessed it.

However I did extensive testing in 2.3 and it doesn't seem to ever occur. I went to GS Q2 (Rescue of Sir Ragnar) and toggled on "monsters attack weak" and "advanced goblins" and made sure to sandwich the goblins between two heroes of equal BP with spaces in between. I even tried to entice them to "cross over" to attack a hero on the other side with far fewer BP, but the goblins never tried to move and only attacked the heroes that were close by despite having enough squares to reach the ones on the other side.

So my conclusion is IF they were allowed to move through heroes, that this was corrected in some subsequent update. Then again I've never seen monsters attack through walls either and that's something that has been frequently reported in the past (specifically monsters with diagonal or ranged attacks) at least prior to 2.3. Could that have been fixed as well?

I predict we'll see ATOH added in a couple of weeks (alongside the quest book PDF), I wonder what else might be added or changed? It's kind of fun to hunt down the changes, but I also long for the days of an actual "change log" of issues addressed like many other programs out there. At the very least we can count on support (and most importantly the ability to download from the official servers) until December 30, 2026. Still, fans probably should back up the files as best they can just in case.

I would so love to see Rogar's Hall finally added, and the ROTDM guardian knight. I don't know what the hold up is with those unless they are simply not allocated enough man hours each update to put out more than a certain number of things (so they prioritize the newest official release). Pure speculation.

That reminds me, does anyone have a backup of the Video from the Haslab campaign where Stephen Baker narrates the opening text from Prophecy of Telor? It was on the old Avalon Hill crowd funding page but seems not to have been saved by archive.org's version. Since he's not the voice actor in the app... (and I've actually heard the files are in there for the default mentor actor reading out the text).

[Alby87]

Talking about the app and the Frozen Horror... do your app glitch when a monster should leave the gameboard? The polar bear from the "Into the Northlands" or the Gremlins after they have stolen something. Everytime this happens, I can only close the app, reload, kill the monster I know will leave, and start again the turn of Zargon.

[SirRick]

I did have that issue with the old polar warbear who tries to run away. The app didn’t really know what to do with it. It moved in the corner of the next room, and then had a couple turns moving back and forth one space. On the third turn of this when his action came up again the game wigged out and started flashing weird colors. I had to forcefully shut down the app and start it again. I found I lost 2 turns, and had to replay them, but this time I just auto-killed the bear so things wouldn’t crash. The bear never got close to leaving the board.

Gremlins stealing stuff was fine, I never had any problems, but they never had a chance to try and run out of the room, since I was blocking the door. Maybe if they get a chance to get away it causes problems? I suppose I’ll find out later.

[Aki]

Yes the app crash when Gremlin go out of sight, remove manually

[SirRick]

This morning I played through Quest 1: Xanon Pass from the FH quest pack. Unlike the Into the Northlands quest, these solo quests disable the Yeti hug attack. The quest also does not allow you to bring the Wolf companion you. I did anyway, and just improvised implementing it into my session.

If the hug attacks were not disabled, my fully equipped Barbarian, loaded with artifacts would have perished, even with the help of Snowdasher. When I got to the Yeti room, I got one lousy damage on the Yeti, the Wolf rolled 1 hit, but it was blocked. At this point I had already taken some damage from hazards and lucky hits from wandering monsters, but I still had 4 or 5 Body Points left. The Yeti hit me for 3, I blocked only 1 or 2 with 6 defend dice. For study purposes, I considered myself grappled so I could see how many times I would “die” playing the game with the normal mechanics. The Wolf, still needing to inflict 4 BP of damage to free me, rolled nothing on its attack. The simulated hug brought me down to 2 BP, the Wolf missed again, and the hero was brought down to zero. The Armband of Healing brought me back up to 2 and I started playing normally again. I defeated the Yeti finally with only 1 BP left. Under normal circumstances my Barbarian alone has about 20 healing potions from his previous adventures, so it would be very hard for him to die. The threat of Yeti hugs and instant death situations presented in this quest book can circumvent normal healing practices, which is worrisome.

I got lucky and killed all the Ice Gremlins with one attack. They died before they could ever get a turn, so I didn’t experience any issues with the app freezing or crashing so far.

I look forward to more “fun” in the remaining solo quests.

I absolutely believe the lone hero should be gifted the Spiked Shield from Mentor or the Tribal Elders before starting any of the solo quests.

For this quest I had previously decided to insert the Ice Queen’s Spear in the room you find the Longsword, and the Spiked Shield in the tomb you would normally find the normal Shield.