Searching for treasure ... US vs. EU

[Nicodemus]

That sounds like a serious omission then. Are they still around somewhere on the internet? I admit that I didn't look around yet, but if anyone has them available, I'd say it's worth it.

Consider my interest more than piqued!

Well, timing would be good then if I finish volume 3

[clmckay]

I think I have every HQ thing stashed away.

Here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/m6xtfh9oup8p ... Lr1oa?dl=0

This is everything I have that Nicodemus did. I'm presuming he won't mind if I share it?

I don't know how long I'll have the space to spare in dropbox, so grab it while you can.

I long ago had a plan to remake all his cards into the "modern" card template for high resolution printing. I kept holding off for part 3. If part 3 comes, I'd be happy to do that project for old times sake.

Chris

[Nicodemus]

I long ago had a plan to remake all his cards into the "modern" card template for high resolution printing. I kept holding off for part 3. If part 3 comes, I'd be happy to do that project for old times sake.

That would be a massive help as I'd very much like to update everything to at least 120 or 300 DPI.

[clmckay]

I long ago had a plan to remake all his cards into the "modern" card template for high resolution printing. I kept holding off for part 3. If part 3 comes, I'd be happy to do that project for old times sake.

That would be a massive help as I'd very much like to update everything to at least 120 or 300 DPI.

Keep us posted. I'll be happy to do the cards.

[Anderas]

I like the discussion. I posted similar analysis of the NA version over on oldscratch's site in 2017, but included just about everything that could be counted, gold, items, artifacts, secret doors, traps, etc.

Pertinent to the conversation is this excerpt from my post over there, which is relevant to NA version and rules (no furniture searching) plus all expansions:
To account for the Treasure deck we need to keep track of 1.) how many treasure cards there are, including growing the Treasure card deck once we get to an expansion with added treasure cards, 2.) how much gold there is to find when one complete exhaustion of the Treasure deck before cards are shuffled back in and the deck is remade (assuming you are strict and keep the deck static between Quests), 3.) how many rooms there are to search per Quest, and 4.) how many pits there are per Quest, which can also potentially be searched. Once you add up rooms, or rooms+pits you can calculate how long it will take to cycle through the Treasure deck. As soon as you've cycled through once you can assume that the maximum gold has been found -- if you allow Gold/gems/jewels, etc to go back in.

So here's what cycling through the Treasure cards looks like:



Note: Base = NA HQ, KK=Kellar's Keep, ROTWL=Return of the Witchlord, WOM=Wizards of Morcar, ATOH=Against the Ogre Horde, EQ=Elf Quest pack, BQ=Barbarian Quest pack, DC=Dark Company from Master's Edition, TGOTH=The Gathering of the Hordes, TDOTT=The Destruction of the Tomes

And here's how much gold the party can find during the course of adventuring, including all gold listed in the Quest notes, rewards for completing Quests, and gold from cycling through Treasure deck (with and without taking pits into account). The "*" on the chart is the Quest where the notes say the Heroes lose all of their gold. WTF. Always thought that was brutal, but in the big scheme of things, as long as they've been spending most of it on potions, they can potentially earn a lot more. This is the maximum though, in reality it'll be less.

This posting is just great! I was thinking about how to put the right number of gold coins in a quest, and here we have the ideal orientation.

At the end of the base game system, the heroes have more or less 4 dice of equipment, and they found 5 000 crowns; and cycling the treasure deck, 7 000 crowns on top.
I think the "treasure deck cycling" is in reality not done in all this exhaustiveness; also the deck is not static between the quests (one shuffles the cards back, right?),
but this chart is a good hint for how many coins there should be generally.

[Maurice76]

I think the "treasure deck cycling" is in reality not done in all this exhaustiveness; also the deck is not static between the quests (one shuffles the cards back, right?),
but this chart is a good hint for how many coins there should be generally.

I also pondered this. Treasure Deck cycling can't be based on exhausting the deck, as Hazard cards are always returned to it.

So how does this mechanic work? I would assume the Treasure Deck is "reset" between each quest, for all practical purposes.

[Nicodemus]

For the purposes of trying to calculate treasure you have to make a decision one way or another how to explicitly deal with the deck.

The N American rules say to draw a "random" treasure card and that the deck must be shuffled each time before a card is drawn. It also says any Treasure is returned to the deck after each Quest but hazards and wandering monsters are replaced immediately. This greatly increases the odds of negative cards being drawn late into a Quest when there are fewer good cards left randomly distributed among the bad cards. Doing it this way increases the changes of finding very useful items like Healing Potions, etc. but the random element also means the Treasure deck only has a certain probability of being exhausted of treasure each Quest, importantly, only in quests with rooms equal to or greater than the number of good treasure cards. This also requires Heroes to card count to some extent because if they've drawn all the good cards during a given Quest there's no point searching for treasure anymore until the start of the next Quest.

Anyway, working with probabilities is fine, but not so useful to figure out how much gold Heroes can attain as the probability stacks each Quest. We could calculate this, but it wasn't my idea of fun. I do have my spreadsheet with all of the rooms and pits recorded as well as how the Treasure deck changes with expansions... so it could be calculated. With the per-Quest probability factored in the plot would look like the one below, except that the early Quests would be better defined and as the Heroes progress the uncertainty in the upper and lower bounds would deviate exceptionally giving a very wide distribution with a "<" shape, with the large majority of parties somewhere right in the middle.


In general we stick with the original rules, but Treasure is one area that we've changed slightly to make it predictable... but this also makes getting some treasures harder. This is also the method factored into the treasure plots above. So here's how we do it:
1. Treasure Deck is shuffled and the card order is set, we don't shuffle again (until condition 5a or 5b).
2. Each time a treasure card is drawn it's drawn from the top of the deck
3. If it's gold it gets recorded and set aside and if it's permanent treasure, like a potion, it goes to the Hero inventory
4. if it's a hazard or wandering monster it is dealt with and gets set aside as well (technically not returned to the deck)
5a. When the last good treasure is drawn from the deck, regardless of how many treasure cards are left, and the end of the Quest the Treasure deck is rebuilt with the hazards, wandering monsters, gold, and consumed potions.
5b. Alternatively, during a quest, if the last card is drawn from the treasure deck then all of the hazards, wandering monsters, gold, and consumed potions are returned and shuffled in immediately to remake the treasure deck.

If a Hero has a potion in their inventory like the Heroic Brew it's not available until it has been consumed and the treasure deck is rebuilt.

So if you don't know where treasure is located in the deck you can at least calculate that with X cards in the treasure deck, after you've completed X rooms (assuming your Heroes search every nook and cranny they can) then the treasure deck will be remade and Heroes will have access to all of the gold again.

I don't know this for sure as it would have to be calculated, but I have a sense that rebuilding the Treasure deck after every Quest and shuffling before each draw still increases the rate of gold accumulation and significantly increases the number of potions the party will have.

~N

Edit I should hasten to add that I could make another plot with Gold values from Quest notes alone (i.e. you find 85 Gold in a room, or you get 200 Gold for completing a Quest), as I have those recorded as well.