![]() ![]() This locks us out of very high-level gear, because the designers put very high intelligence and faith requirements on a lot of gear that really shouldn't require those stats. We always end up having to make due with the gear we have, which often means that we don't get to level a character to take the greatest advantage of that character's strengths. Since the treasure deck is so large, the odds of getting a particular piece of equipment for your build is very low. Why couldn't the designers have just condensed the range of stat values? Or added one or two extra tiers and scaled down the cost to make leveling more granular? Often, a character's relevant stat may be one point too low to equip a useful weapon or piece of armor, but leveling that stat increases it by 7, 8, or 9 points, which just feels like overkill. This is exasperated by the weird leveling system for character stats, and by the asinine stat requirements for many pieces of equipment. Stat requirements for gear can be obnoxious, often leaving you one point short of using a desired item. Some sessions end up being ridiculously easy because you get an early Claymore (for free) in an "easy" encounter treasure chest while other sessions end up forcing you to struggle to grind out enough souls to cycle through a third of the treasure deck before you can find something that you can realistically use, then grind some more to acquire the souls necessary to level up enough to meet the equipment's stat requirements. So much of the game comes down to whether you get useful treasure drops. The box says the game takes about two hours to play, but you might spend two hours just grinding for equipment before even getting to the mid-game mini-boss. Some sessions absolutely require a lot of grinding, which adds significantly to the length of the game in the most tedious way possible. While grinding was always an optional annoyance in the video game, it seems to basically be the core mechanic of the board game. After resting at the Bonfire, you can go back through the rooms and re-kill all the enemies to farm souls. Weakness: grindingĪ less-desirable aspect of Dark Souls that is translated from the video game is the grinding and farming. Because of these limitations in the board game, there is absolutely no sense of progress from dying repeatedly in an encounter! Dying repeatedly kills the pacing and enjoyment of the board game. Thus, a trademark strategy of the Souls video games was making suicidal loot runs. You might get better weapons, could farm utilities like firebombs or status cures from the enemies, or might get consumables souls that you could spend at the bonfire to level up. The fact that you kept any loot when you died in the video game meant that you still had the potential to advance your character, even if you get stuck dying repeatedly in the same place. You also can't open treasure chests until the encounter is won, which means you can't make suicidal "loot runs" either. If you die again before reclaiming your dropped souls, all those souls are lost.Īs I understand the rules, you can't leave an encounter once it's started, so you won't be making any "soul runs" to pick up your souls and then run back to the bonfire. ![]() ![]() The deeper into the dungeon you died, the more you have to fight through in order to reclaim your souls. ![]() If any one player dies, the whole party "dies" and is transported back to the Bonfire. Just like in the video game, if you die, all your souls are dropped on the floor where you died. Trying to conserve resources can lead to a lot of deaths. Despite the lack of health attrition, the desire to conserve as much resources as possible for the upcoming boss fight pressures the players into riskier play. Nevertheless, the Bonfire mechanic is probably the one mechanic that is most successfully translated from the video game source material. ![]()
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