Greetings Mercenaries! 

This past week, our team has traveled far and wide to share previews and insights for everything that is coming in this campaign.

What’s new for Gloomhaven: Second Edition?

Our team was at UKGE for the first time this past week! We appreciate the warm welcome from everyone who came by to get a demo and pick up some games. We also had a first look at the starting level 1 character cards for Gloomhaven: Second Edition, along with a handful of painted previews for Miniatures of Gloomhaven. 

We will of course be sharing more throughout the campaign, but if you want to get a closer look at some of the starting characters for Gloomhaven: Second Edition now, check out Rage Badger’s video where she digs into the cards. 

Also, if you did not catch the stream, Drew Penn joined Mandatory Quest for a live play of Gloomhaven: Second Edition on Tabletop Simulator. Check out their play session on the Mandatory Quest Twitch channel.

When will we get to see more for Gloomhaven: The Role Playing Game?

The campaign is less than two weeks away, and we can’t wait to share more. This week, Isaac and team were out in Los Angeles filming a couple playthroughs for Gloomhaven: The Role Playing Game. You will be able to see these game plays during the campaign, along with rules previews, designer insights, and more. 

With the current happenings at Reddit, our team has decided to move our AMA to Thursday, June 22nd at 9am PT. Be sure to join the AMA on r/Boardgames to ask any questions you may have about Gloomhaven: Second Edition. 

Community Feedback and update for the Miniatures of Gloomhaven

This week we showed an early preview of the (Boss) Jekserah from the Miniatures of Gloomhaven. This model was one of our early sculpts and was shown as a pre-production render. We appreciate all the feedback that was shared for this iconic character. We are still in the preparation stages for our miniatures and will be re-working this model to level up its appearance and sculpt. We look forward to showing you more of the miniatures we have been working on once the project launches. 

Designer Insight - Orchid Spellweaver changes for Gloomhaven: Second Edition

Also, we asked Drew and Dennis to talk a bit about how the Orchid Spellweaver changed in Gloomhaven: Second Edition:

First, let’s have a look at how the class worked in the original Gloomhaven release:

At level 1, the class functioned as intended, with big loss actions and exciting variety. As you leveled up, powerful non-loss actions and non-loss element generation made many players use loss actions less and less. This could lead to gameplay focused on repeatedly using Cold Fire with two elements as often as possible.

Now let’s have a look at the new Spellweaver:

Here’s what we wanted to change:

1. More rewards for playing loss actions: To begin with: higher level loss actions needed to be intrinsically stronger. When you’re level 1 and you perform a loss action, losing one card is effectively the same as any other. But when you’re level 5, if you play your level 5 card for a loss action, you’ve just given up access to your strongest card. This cost needed to be offset by making loss actions after level 1 sufficiently powerful to balance this exchange. Additionally, as the class’s core mechanic revolves around playing losses, it makes sense that you’d want to give players additional bonuses they could line up to feel rewarded.

2. A revamped element economy: We spent a lot of time playtesting and experimenting with versions of this class that could only infuse elements with loss actions, but concluded that this was too potentially complex and unfun on a starting class to be worth it. In order to balance the high cost of making elements, the effects tied to consuming elements needed to be appropriately powerful to match. That could work in a vacuum, but does not work when you can get elements from allies. Playing in a party with a Spellweaver who routinely asks you “can I have your element? I can do something stronger with it than you can” is often going to be an unfun experience. Instead, we opted for allowing you access to some non-loss elements from the start, but limited to a single card. As you level up, you’ll gain access to more.

3. Some competition for Cold Fire: A fundamental issue with a card such as Cold Fire is how centralizing it is. If Cold Fire is something that a Spellweaver is meant to do, which it was in the first edition, then how do you avoid taking it? What can you even put up against it? You could cut it, but it remains an iconic part of the Spellweaver, and moreover the concept is an interesting design. In the end, through multiple attempts, we were able to make a compelling alternative to Cold Fire while keeping this classic Spellweaver card intact. Now you can make a choice between Cold Fire’s area of effect damage and crowd control, or the higher single-target/flexible damage provided by Dancing Gales.

4. Tools to make the class more beginner friendly: As a starting class with a small health pool, we added some tools to make the class more beginner friendly. The Etheric Bond Perk stops you from accidentally losing your most important card during a short rest and the Crystalline Stasis Perk helps keep you safe while going for a big loss spell or preparing for Reviving Ether.

This class went through the most iterations of all the Gloomhaven: Second Edition classes to arrive where it is today. We hope you enjoy this new take on the Spellweaver.

Thank you for reading and we look forward to the launch day for the Gloomhaven Grand Festival! We can’t wait for you to join and celebrate Gloomhaven.