Tips & Strategies (14)

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Tips & Strategies (14)

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7
Knight-errant
Cooperative Game Explorer
Amateur Advisor
Gamer - Level 6
22 of 23 gamers found this helpful
“Know your time limit!”

Remember that it takes just as much time to get to the dragon’s chamber to get out FROM the dragon’s chamber. If you see that you’re spending too much time dealing with the dungeon’s pitfalls and monsters, don’t be afraid to just take what you have and leave. It’s more important to leave the dungeon with something than to be trapped inside with no way out.

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6
Canada
I'm a Real Person
Treasure Map
Video Game Fan
21 of 22 gamers found this helpful
“Keeping Score”

Around the “castle” we like to keep score.

– We track the name of who made it out
– how much treasure (this includes gold, potions, rope, etc.)
– and who played them that time

It is fun to see if we an beat their own best score or who can get the highest score overall.

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7
Knight-errant
Cooperative Game Explorer
Amateur Advisor
Gamer - Level 6
22 of 24 gamers found this helpful
“One BIG reason to go to the catacombs...”

While the dungeon itself is perilous, the catacombs can be even more so, with more monster encounters and lethal traps. But there’s one prize that makes it all worthwhile…an enormous diamond worth 4,000 in treasure points. If you find the diamond, immediately move to the exit, if you can; more often than not, just having the diamond alone will be enough to win you the game, should anyone else escape.

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7
Knight-errant
Cooperative Game Explorer
Amateur Advisor
Gamer - Level 6
22 of 24 gamers found this helpful
“No first turn deaths”

On the rare occasion, a character can die outright if they encounter something like a blade trap or a bottomless pit on the first turn. This means that a person who was enthusiastic about playing the game will be sitting out the game while everyone else goes on. That’s no fun.

Players can institute a house rule that a character doesn’t fatally die within a certain number of turns at the start of the game; at the group’s behest, the actual penalty could be the loss of a turn or taking half of your character’s overall health in damage.

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6
Canada
I'm a Real Person
Treasure Map
Video Game Fan
22 of 24 gamers found this helpful
“Swinging Blade trap alternative”

If you find this card a little too deadly, you can use an alternative method to give you a chance at living even if you fail the Test Armor roll.

The card currently says: Test Armor. If you fail, you are killed!

Alternative: Test Armor. If you fail, roll 2d6 and loose that many life points.

It is still deadly, but might give you a slim chance to keep delving deeper or getting out with your life.

I have used this rule myself, especially when introducing the game to new people. It helps to keep everyone involved longer.

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8
Grand Master Grader
Guardian Angel
Advanced Reviewer
Rosetta Stone
21 of 23 gamers found this helpful
“Know when to leg it!”

DungeonQuest is like a psychopathic Deal Or No Deal. One of the greatest abilities you can have walking into the dungeon, among knowing how to kill skeletons and dodge traps, is knowing when to quit.

Keep an eye on what other players are doing and how much treasure they’ve accumulated, and from where. The likelihood is everyone will be heading directly to the treasure chamber and rightly so. But you’ll all likely gather a tiny piece of loot from searching rooms, and if the route you’ve taken is unbelievably convoluted and tough to traverse through in a race against the sun setting, then it might be best to turn back and claim a win on the tiny trinkets you have. If others seem to be gathering huge amounts of treasure and know how far to push their luck, you might have to grit your teeth and gamble, but if not, you can always just run!

Survival is tough in DungeonQuest, and even if you make it back with small gains, others will likely succumb to greed and fail.

Yes, you won’t have a lot of money to your name. Yes, you may be brandished a coward by your friends. But hey, you’ll be alive…and able to afford a Twix at the very least.

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8
Detective
Stone of the Sun
22 of 25 gamers found this helpful
“2d6 Combat”

I happen to be among those who utterly despise the combat system and its rock-paper-scissors mechanics. So here is a 2d6 die variant to help this flawed classic.

Combat
Roll 2d6, add the results of both dice together, add modifiers, and compare the total to the table below.
5 or less: Character loses 1 LP.
6-7: Character and monster lose 1 LP.
8-10: Monster loses 1 LP.
11+: Monster loses 2 LP.

Character Special Abilities
Challara and Brightblaze: When she has 8 or more wounds, she suffers a -1 to her combat dice rolls.
Hugo the Glorious: Does an extra point of damage on a result of 10+.
Krutzbeck: Gets a +2 on all combat rolls.
Tatianna: May re-roll dice in first round of combat and keep the better result.

Escape Checks
1. When a character wants to try and escape a monster, both the character and the monster roll one die. The character adds his Escape Value. The Monster adds his Hunt Value. Reroll all ties.
2. If the character wins, he escapes as per the rulebook. If he fails, the monster inflicts Hunt Damage and the character must enter combat.

Character Escape Values
I calculated these by averaging the values on the Power Cards.
Brother Gherrin – 4
Challara – 3
Hugo – 2
Krutzbeck – NA (must always fight)
Lindel – 3
Tatianna – 3

Monster Hunt Values and Hunt Damage
I calculated these by averaging the values on the Power Cards.
Demon – 5, 4
Golem – 4, 3
Skeleton – 2, 1
Sorcerer – 3, 2
Troll – 3, 3

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8
Grand Master Grader
Guardian Angel
Advanced Reviewer
Rosetta Stone
21 of 24 gamers found this helpful
“High Scores!”

To counter the somewhat cowardly strategy I put up here, we printed out a basic high score table listing players, the hero they played as, the total amount of treasure they have accumulated and the amount of spaces the sun token has moved on the sun track at time of escaping.

If you die, you don’t get to write anything down on the table of fame (although perhaps we should make a graveyard sheet for the unfortunate…).

However, if you manage to escape, no matter how much treasure you have, you’re placed on the high score table! In case of a tie on the board, the player who managed to escape the quickest (The player who leaves the dungeon with the least amount of time passed on the sun track) takes the higher rank.

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6
Canada
I'm a Real Person
Treasure Map
Video Game Fan
“Catacombs...”

Don’t be afraid to go into the catacombs. You might find yourself trapped in one area, but the catacombs may be the escape you need. Take a chance and go for it…you may climb out near an exit or close to the Dragon’s Treasure.

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9
Miniature Painter
Rosetta Stone
Advanced Reviewer
BoardGaming.com Beta 1.0 Tester
22 of 27 gamers found this helpful
“Revised combat”

There is a revised edition for this game now really streamlining the combat. It replaces the monster and hero decks with three cards for the monsters and three for the heroes.

You can just download and print the new cards at
http://voiceofe.com/2014/04/dungeonquest-revised-edition-is-coming-should-you-throw-out-the-old-edition.html

The new mechanic just reinforces the paper / rock / scissor mechanic that was already there, just made ridiculously convoluted by the decks.

You could always just do paper / rock / scissors if you would like. Ties give each player a wound. The cards offer a little more variety, but our group just ended up shuffling them and revealing one blindly anyway.

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6
I play purple
Petroglyph
Baron / Baroness
22 of 29 gamers found this helpful
“Avoid the tears of the Step and Die syndrome”

What we do to avoid the first turn death is to roll the dice at the start of our game. Each player then gets that many turns where they are unkillable. It might be one, it might be six. No matter because you’ll end up ripped to pieces later anyways, but at least you didn’t explain the combat system for 15 minutes for no reason.

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6
I play purple
Petroglyph
Baron / Baroness
22 of 31 gamers found this helpful
“Catacomb usage”

Get down to those catacombs ASAP. Use them to pop up either in or very near the Dragon’s Lair. Then in the unlikely event you get out uncharred, use them to get as close to an exit as possible. Plus there is the potential bonus of finding that Huge Diamond while you are down there. Of course you could end up as food but hey, this is a dungeon crawl, right?

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6
USA
I'm Completely Obsessed
22 of 33 gamers found this helpful
“new way to fight”

my group think that cards battle is too much for the kind of game it is so we use die instade… there are many ways to do it some you can check out from fantasy flights site

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6
Tasty Minstrel Games Fan
AEG fan
Mage Wars fan
“That Litte Key”

Since the 1st player doesn’t rotate during gameplay, we use the little key (1st player marker) to cover the stats on the monster card. That way, everyone can at least see the face of the monster who will most likely take those last few hitpoints you have left.

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