brisingre's profile

I'm definitely looking for ways to build some XP sinks into my fan expansion.

In theory anyway. Doesn't actually have any yet except possibly some expensive advanced skills.

Just bumping this to say I'm still interested: If you give me something to work with I can give the community sweet templates, maybe even a simple program to lay out cards super quickly.

It's hard to make out, but you can get enough words to tell.

During the results step of any action in which you are involved, if you revealed a card, you require 1 additional success to succeed.

Spend 7 experience points to return this.

I'm testing it with the version of Depressed we saw in a Kickstarter update. I believe it's received changes since then probably, but at the time, the Depressed state was pretty serious:

While you hold it, Curses count as -1 Star.
Spend 7xp to get rid of it.

I'll probably have to make some changes once expansions get here, but I already knew that

Rationale behind changes:

John Dolittle's character ability was doing too much work on its own. -1 and could be leveraged into a -2 discount and is enough to deal with a lot of small checks on its own. Most animals covered 2-3 different kinds, and the feathered snake gave a truly disgusting permanent -2 craft discount... All of this without using a single card that cares takes up hand or inventory space. Apart from your animals being killed by states, the cards involved couldn't even go anywhere. You got like, 2 animals and you were unbeatable.

Changing that to does a few things. It is, obviously, a big nerf. You don't get successes without drawing cards, and you don't get a discount or anything that can be leveraged into a discount. It also synergizes with the companion's shuffle ability more than it used to -- you are encouraged to go digging for 7s, which they're good at. It also helps to double down on his identity as a lategame scaling character. He now scales with both the size of his menagerie and the number of advanced skills in the deck.

The old ability has been given the Frankenstein treatment, more or less. Heavily inspired by the way Obey works, the discount has been moved to a Hold-in-hand state and the success has been moved to a Forewarned is Forearmed-style effect with some built-in recursion.

Him getting depressed when his pets die is just a flavor thing. I don't think it really affects balance dramatically, but he was too strong in the last playtest, so any affect it might have is in the right direction.

Canteen isn't getting any changes. It worked well.

Friend of Nature also isn't getting any changes. I never actually used it in my last test, and I'm pretty sure it's very weak, but not every card has to be powerful. It is comforting to have around.

Speak With Animals lost it's . This brings it more in line with the balance of other hold-in-hand cards: typically the ones that provide only apply to relatively rare or unimportant skills, and the ones that apply to super commonly used skills like Fight (in this case, Hunt and Sneak) just have the -1 and the .


I Shall Fix It! is cut entirely. I liked it, it played pretty well (a bit OP but nothing a cost increase wouldn't fix) but it just wasn't him. Dr Dolittle's answer to inventory management is that he doesn't need his inventory as much as other people so it doesn't matter if it's a little cloggy. He uses his animals almost like a second inventory.

It's replacement, Easy Living, returns part of your old character ability to you. The -1 discount seems much fairer if:
1. It's only a -1 and not easily leveraged to a -2.
2. It takes up a spot in your hand.
3. It doesn't necessarily have 100% uptime. You can pretty much keep it in your hand 100% of the time if you really want to, but most people will replace it sometimes, and you can be forced to discard it.

Animal Magnetism is also cut. I might revisit this sort of hunt-table-thinning effect as an advanced skill maybe, but I don't like it on Dolittle for a bunch of reasons.
- It isn't very thematic for him to be primarily a hunter -- it makes sense that he would be good at it, but he rarely if ever hunts or eats animals in the books. I don't think he's a vegetarian or anything, I think he's basically okay with the idea that predation is part of nature, but making him a master hunter just feels wrong somehow. I'm fine with it one 1 card (he would be good at hunting) but 2 cards makes it one of his main things.
- Hunting is one of the best strengths a character should have. It should not be an incidental second area of strength for a character whose specialty is something else entirely.
- Dolittle shouldn't have too many cards that help with specific skill checks. His areas of strength should mostly be based on what companions he has, putting too many icons on his own cards dilutes that.

Its replacement, With Some Help From My Friends, is the rest of the old character ability, more or less. You have to discard it when you use it, but it's results step so you don't have to use it until it makes a difference. I'm not sure if it really needs the built in recursion, but I think it's a fun little bonus. As with Easy Living, the main goals in moving it to a card is to reduce the uptime of the effect and make Dolittle care about his hand limit.

A is better than a -1, so to balance it out, this card has less uptime than Easy Living. 3 cards with a hold-in-hand would be too much anyway. Frankenstein, the only other character with 2, gets an extra blue card in hand to make room for it...

I should make proxies for the next version, but here's what it will be:



John Dolittle
Companion cards do not count against your green card limit.

Whenever you discard or banish a card with the Companion keyword, take [Depressed].

During any action where you use an ability on a card with the Companion keyword:



Canteen
4/0 Craft (-3 , -1 ) 3 Durability Serenity/Stamina

-2 and/or

Shuffle a card at random from the discard pile into the action deck.


Friend of Nature
When taking a red card would cause you to discard or banish a card with the Companion keyword, you may discard this to avoid taking that red card.


Easy Living
When in hand, During any action where you could use an ability on a card with the Companion keyword: -1


With Some Help From My Friends
During the results step of any action where you could use an ability on a card with the Companion keyword, you may discard this to apply .

When you add a new card with the Companion keyword to your hand, if this card is in the discard pile, you may return it to your hand.

Speak with Animals
When in hand: Gift, Hunt, Sneak -1/

So:

I Shall Fix It! was gone in the next version of his kit. It's cut for power level and mechanical identity reasons; he should be relying on his inventory less and his animals more.

Then I saw Amelia Earhart in a kickstarter update a few weeks ago. She has a repair kit card that just adds 3 flat durability to a stack. It has a limitation of its own, it takes up a slot in the item stack and she doesn't have great ways to discard it, so it has less abuse potential with Remember.

Still, I think it's overall better than Fix It! And I think that's interesting. You think Fix It's broken, I think Fix It's broken, but apparently SP's fine with a probably better version.

I'm not restoring Fix It! to Dolittle's kit, though. Item repair is a specific character strength for her. It isn't supposed to be for him, he should be focused on his animals.

It is surprising how few people seem to own the notebook.

You did finally get a decent answer over on BGG right?

Sorry I couldn't be more help.

1. Replay value's surprisingly good. I like it better as a survival game than an exploration game in many ways, and the different curses help prevent it becoming too stale over a few runs.

2. That depends how you define it. You can get a Game Over in 15 minutes or less (if you're an idiot and ) Most people play for 20-30 hours before they get their first win, but that's usually over 2-4 runs, generally a few 3-10 hour losses and then a 10-15 hour success. An experienced player replaying a curse, or even playing a new curse that takes place in an area they're familiar with, should be able to lift in in less than 5.

3. Keep it for sure. It's such a beautiful object. But if you have any IRL friends who bought a copy, there's no reason you couldn't play theirs when they're done with it. It doesn't have any Legacy mechanics where you put stickers on stuff, unlock envelopes, mark up or destroy cards, etc. There's no permanent changes,

4. It's complicated whether it's worth more than Gloomhaven. I've put more hours into 7C and had more fun, I think, but I love both games. I haven't come even close to finishing 100% of the content in either game after 50+ hours in each, so I don't think that's a very important factor in their relative values -- they're both more than big enough for me. It's hard for me to even estimate which might take longer to 100%. (My guess is 7C if you include expansions, Gloomhaven if you don't. Upcoming Gloomhaven expansions are likely to change this.)

But, nothing really stands up to Gloomhaven in terms of the feeling of value-for-money. Gloomhaven's a great big treasure chest full of thousands of things. It's got a million punchboards and a million decks of cards and 17 character classes and like 50 kinds of monsters and a couple of books and minis and all sorts of other things. When you open it up, it seems crazy that it was only $100-$150. It's pretty much the best value for money in gaming in terms of what's in the box, the only thing that I can think of that might compete is Mechs vs Minions.

The 7th Continent does not have that effect. It is a medium-small box very densely packed with cards. There are a TON of cards but not much else, a couple little punchboards and a few super tiny minis. You open up the box and think "This game was expensive."

They tried to find a publisher for a retail release, but never managed to get it to happen. Something about it being so expensive to print and ship that by the time everybody in the retail chain had gotten a cut the price would have to be so high that nobody would buy it. They moved to a KS-exclusive model after giving up on that, decided to just embrace the thing that brought them their first success I guess.

They pretty much think they've done what they can with The Seventh Continent I think. It's huge at this point, they're probably both running out of ideas for it and sick of it. Their next game will use the same core mechanics, but a new setting. It won't be another sequel or expansion to The Seventh Continent.

This is pretty much the last chance. There won't be a public release like Gloomhaven.

There might be a handful of leftover copies for sale from SP at some point but I imagine shipping rates would be the same. Otherwise there's always ebay.

You might be able to save a few bucks on shipping if you shipped it to a friend in the USA and had them reship to Mexico. But shipping to USA is pretty expensive too so maybe not.

That's a lot.

Ithilalqua's right that your only other option is to ship it to someone in another country and see if they can re-ship it to you.

I did the math on doing that from the US and it isn't even close, it's almost $50 for the first shipment to the US and then Fedex quoted me like $500 on the second shipment from the US to South Africa.

But it seems like Australia or something could be a better bet.

There are services that do this if you don't have any international friends, but obviously they're making a cut, so that's even less likely to save money.

I think, sadly, you may be stuck

I believe 1 big sleeve pack and 1 small sleeve pack will let you sleeve everything yes.

I'm sure SP will be able to help you. That said:

It sounds like you have enough extra to pick up the last few expansions, which could be nice. It sounds like you're already getting the more important curse ones (WGUMCD from Rookie, the other 3 from explorer bundle) but you could pick up the other 5 small boxes with some of the extra pledge

Worst case, you can wait a few months until these forums and BGG fill back up with people kicking themselves for not backing when they had a chance and asking if there will ever be another chance and sell your extra pledge, probably for more than you're paying.

One of the kickstarter updates I think? Maybe just a comment on kickstarter.

There wasn't much more detail than that.

I'll pretty much never spend more than 1 card to do it, but if I can do it for 1 card or less I try to stop them building up.

My policies on individual states are a lot like Ithilalqua's

Paranoid is usually free to drop, you just have to remember it's there.

Tired I usually wait until it drops off for free from a camp or use Obey! on if frankenstein is in the party. I never spend cards on it.

Frightened tends to stick around a while.

Injured pretty much lasts until I get splint and then I treat all the injuries in the party.

Bloody doesn't really give you any agency in whether or not to drop it -- there are almost no locations where you can swim without unloading the map, and unloading the map to go somewhere you don't want to go just to drop a bloody is never worth it. Bloody is the most detrimental state in the game and you should drop it if you can, but you don't really get to make that call.

Terrified is as good as permanent.

Poison relies on a Notes card to drop, I try to get that Notes card as quickly as I can and once I have it I drop poison pretty quickly.

Hungry and Frozen pretty much don't happen to me but I would drop both as soon as convenient.

Nauseous tends to last forever unless i have the Notes card for it, but I don't prioritize that one.

Frankenstein's Monster is permanent, technically that's a state.

One time I got Posessed, which didn't last long, but I don't remember what it actually does so. (BGG promo card.)

If we can purchase an extra base game, I probably would.

I split my initial pledge with a friend, but we're enjoying it enough that we'd both like to own a copy.

Those decisions sound reasonable.


is the XP grind. It is generally thought to be best-played alongside another curse, any other will do.

I don't think that's an error. It could be, but I don't think so.

It's pretty common for cards around transition areas to use the fog type of the area you came from.

Often, as is the case here, this leaves spaces that can have different kinds of fog depending on the direction you explored them from.

I mean, 'cheating'. It works under the rules, you're allowed to do as much or as little of it as you want. It's your game, it's just up to you.

A big part of 7c is discovering new strategies, some of them will make the game less fun if you use them. It's 100% your call how much you exploit them. There's a much bigger grey area than infinite combos, it wouldn't be possible to patch away all the bullshit you can do no matter what.

For example,

Another example of something cheesy that not everybody agrees on the use of is the save feature. There are several places where you can save repeatedly to loot a treasure table, for example,

Once I've spent some time with the expansions I'm going to try to make the most efficient/broken route I can to do every curse at once as quickly as possible. Stuff like this features pretty heavily in that route. I don't recommend doing some of the more game-breaking stuff like the infinite combos on your first casual playthrough, but really it is up to you. They make the game pretty easy, but it's always been pretty easy.

That works as you describe I think. Don't have my cards in front of me.

Even without the full infinite, searching your deck at a terracokus for free with scholar is one of the most powerful things you can do. As long as there is a remember in your deck it gets any card you want. Being able to do that repeatedly basically whenever you want to sculpt your hand is ridiculous on its own.

There are alternatives to some individual parts. You can use Splint + Medical Examination instead of Raft + Restful Sleep, for example.

That is not the only infinite combo in 7C. There's another one with Dark Side that's much easier to set up -- you just have to have Dark Side in hand on a space you can sleep repeatedly for free. (You can set up on the main camp with 2 characters so you can cooperate on the sleep check and make it a 1/1 instead of a 2/0, which is covered entirely by the discounts on the camp. At some of the other sleep spaces you can do stuff with Raft or Obey, but that is the easiest way.)



I think of them as being like cheat codes. Most people don't want to cheat in a solitaire/co-op game, and it doesn't really hurt those people that it's technically an option. If you're the kind of person who would use a secret god mode, because you think the game's too hard or just because you think it's cool that it exists and you want to see what it feels like to be overpowered, then it's good for you that it exists.