Sonnet’s first outing

With Sonnet the Soothsinger joining the party, the Solo Bunch decided to try out a random scenario to test how she works with the party.

The Wild Crossroads.

The Crushing Alcove.

The Tribal Hallway.

Overall, it seems that the Soothsinger is quite a strong character in providing support to the party, allowing the party to make strong attacks. The downside is the limited number of special attacks. While the Attack Modifier Deck is quite strong, the Soothsinger has to use the standard attack instead to make use of it.

Also, the Soothsinger gets exhausted before the end of the scenario due to the limited number of cards. While there are a number of songs that can buff the party, changing a song will waste turns. Maybe I’ll have to be even more selective in deciding which songs to put in the starting hand. 

Retiring Tinder, welcome Sonnet

The Solo Bunch took some time out by going on a random scenario.

The first room is the Cutthroat Sewer.

That is followed by the Horrific Cabin.

The last room is the Scaled Armory.

With this Tinder, managed to gather enough gold to purchase the last one-handed item to complete his personal goal to become part of the Merchant Class.

Three spears is unlocked but we will save that for later.

With one Quatryl leaving the adventuring life, another one steps into the picture. Sonnet the Quatryl Soothsinger (Music Note) joins in the fun at Level 3. 

Other than being the singer, she has a personal quest looking for clues on events that leads to the Fall of Man.

Crypt Basement-Seeker of Xorn

With the Rift closed, the Solo Bunch turned their sights back to the Crypt of the Damned, obviously with some persuasion from Weaver. As the Seeker of Xorn, she had to fulfill her destiny.

Before heading back to the Crypt, the party spend a night drinking and gambling away, when a robed woman approached the party. She is asking for help to look for her missing daughter, who may be captured by a group called The Ravens. The party decided to help after their mission, and filed the ‘Shadows Within’ scenario till later.

On the way back to the Crypt, the party got hungry and ate some green berries. Luckily the berries were sweet and edible, and gave the party a Bless advantage for the trip into the Crypt Basement.

In the Crypt Basement, a ghostly apparition who turned out to be a warden of the place. It asked the party to hold off the advancing enemies while it restore the fragments of the staff they found in the Noxious Cellar. So the mission was simple, to survive for 10 rounds while the warden does its thing. 

Essentially, all the heroes had to do was to survive. Cray started off the turn by generating obstacles to block off pathways that may expose them to danger.

Weaver continued to be the power hitter here using her Fire Orbs to decimate 2 Elite Giant Vipers and a Living Bones.

As the adjoining rooms started to open, more and more enemies were revealed. The party decided to stay put and focus on their task, using the pillars and obstacles as cover.

Oozes!!! I hate them... three consecutive rounds of Oozes multiplying lead to an abundance of Oozes in one of the rooms, and eventually all available Oozes were used up.

While the enemies continued to multiply and advanced, the party held their own, together with Weaver’s Burning Avatar summon and Tinder’s latest addition, the Kill Bot. On the sixth round, things are still managable. 

At the 8th round, the final room opened to reveal a Treasure Chest! Hoping that it’ll contain something that aid him in his personal quest, he moved into the room. Weaver and Cray will just have to hold the fort back in the main room.


In the final round, Tinder couldn’t stay in the game with his HP down to zero. But at least he managed to use the last round to unleash his Crank Bow and Toxic Bolt, both gaining him extra HP, and thinning the enemies in the room. Getting to the Treasure Chest also gave the party access to the Storm Blade, an impressive melee weapon. Although the group is now a more ranged-focused party, perhaps it will be useful for another melee character later down the line.

As the Oozes and the rest of the enemies advanced slowly into the main chamber, all Weaver and Cray needed to do was to simply hold on... and they succeeded.

The ethereal warden finished fixing the Staff of Xorn, gave it to Weaver, and then disappeared, leaving with the instruction for them to head to the Palace of Ice in the northern mountains and unseal the tomb of Xorn.

 

Closing the Ruinous Rift

With Cray joining the party, the heroes decided to go ahead to close the Rift with Hail’s help.

Before heading out, the party met a shifty-looking man who challenged them to a game of bone dice. Tempting but the party has better things to do.

On the road to the Ruinous Rift, they found a flock of carrion birds feasting on a body. It’s the body of the brother of the man from Sleeping Lion. The party decided to bury the body and bring the chain around the dead man’s neck back to the brother.

All in all, the party gained 3 Reputation points. With 12 points, a the new Sun class will be unlocked. But first, the Rift...

The party took 2 attempts before successfully closing the Rift. In the first attempt, the party was overwhelmed by the spawning demons. It was quite fiddly to keep track of all the spawning demons but at the last round, the party either were exhausted from running out of cards or losing HP.

The second attempt was much better, with a more measured plan by trying to contain the damage by discarding cards, and blocking the path to Hail.

In the first few rounds, the party was able to kill the two enemies spawning in the rounds. But from the third round onwards when two enemies spawn each round, they could not kill faster than they spawn.

Cray’s Avalanche ability came in useful to create obstacles that blocked the demons’ path, and at times being able to cause some damage with Clear the Way and Heaving Swing.

By round 7, things are looking manageable. Although they still can’t dispatch the enemies, they could protect Hail and keep the demons at bay. From now on, it is all about just holding on.


Finally, Hail managed to complete closing the Rift. Cray ended up exhausted when it ran out of cards, but at least Weaver and Tinder managed to hold on, giving Hail enough time to do her magic.

With the Rift neutralized, the party went back to Gloomhaven to do the usual... leveling up for Tinder, gaining Enhancements for all, and looking at the new Sun class which is now available.

Thoughts: This scenario is the simplest to set up in terms of map tiles. But it’s such a challenging one, to keep track of the demon spawns. And it’s all about positioning and preventing damaging, as well as protecting Hail by keeping the enemies away from her.