u/BeanTheReddit

We did it. It took 3 years, 4 months and 14 days, but we did it. We beat Frosthaven. We played 3 player the entire way through, and averaged about one scenario every two weeks. I consider myself very fortunate that I have a couple good friends that consistently want to play.

For some background on our group, we previously beat Gloomhaven 1e along with Forgotten Circles and really had a good time with Frosthaven. It’s a testament to how good the Gloomhaven games are that we’ve played well over 600 hours of it together now. Here's my final heavily spoiler-filled thoughts about Frosthaven:

Spoilers for everything Frosthaven-related ahead:

• Realistically, most people will only play through Frosthaven once, and that means you WILL miss out on playing a majority of the characters in the game (unless you're going solo of course). I found myself watching my friends play their characters and thinking "That looks like a lot of fun, I wanna play that!" or "Oh, I bet playing that character using an alternate build would be a blast!" It led me to pick a previously played character, the Pyroclast because it looked so great. Then there's early-retired characters like the Boneshaper, which I NEED to try at later levels. BONE BALL!!!!!
• I truly believe that what the Haven-verse needs is an official ‘Roguehaven’. There are so many 'fun' items that never really get a chance to be used, because a crafted or purchasable item clearly outclasses it. I'd love to progress through scenarios with some random starting combination of characters, curated items, gold, perks, etc... Maybe you build your team by 'rolling' a random selection of 3 characters for each slot, each with a random assortment of goodies, and you've got to pick the one you feel has the most potential to survive a 'run'. Then you'd be able to level, and progress through a Slay-the-Spire-esque random overworld with scenario encounters, road events, random shops, mid-bosses, etc. In this framework, you could use any mercenaries from the entire line of Haven games. Maybe an officially released Roguehaven comes with a mini-campaign and a smaller selection of new Mercenaries to use for those just starting out? (I've seen Gripe's take on this idea, and while it does look promising, it's not QUITE what I'd be looking for.) I'll definitely be messing with the random dungeon decks and characters I didn't get to play using some ideas of my own to see if it scratches that itch for me.
• It was neat watching our town slowly be built up! The way retirements and town upgrades added campaign features and new characters throughout was very well done. Certainly more interesting than GH1e. You definitely get to a point where you've got enough resources to do pretty much anything you want. And while that's fine, I think having a more restricted selection of items (like at the start of the campaign) challenges you to find synergies and combos with whatever scraps you've got. Any new characters we started at the end of the campaign were pretty much outfitted exactly how we wanted them with the best gear within just a few scenarios. But like I said, that's fine! It's fun both ways... I just feel like I enjoyed the early/mid part of the campaign a tiny bit more than the end.
• Favorite characters? I'm a summon-nerd, and boy howdy did I love the Boneshaper. I had to fight so hard to make summons work in GH1e, but they just flowed so nicely with my Aesther buddy. 10/10, would play that self-harming starter again in any campaign. Speaking of self-harm, watching my friend play the Pain Conduit was so funny. Shielded enemies were an after-thought, and that class looked like it could pretty much do anything it wanted, bouncing from no health to full at a moment's notice. I loved my time with the Trapper as well. Manipulating enemy paths was fun with the Pyroclast, and I worried it'd feel the same with the Trap, but It was a different kind of challenge. The bottom of Dangerous Ground won several scenarios for us... Setting up for a grand finale of fireworks… man I love that card! And I will always want to play any kind of robot/mecha… The HIVE is the most fun complex character I’ve ever played, and the one where I changed my cards out the most based on each scenario. So much variety in how you can approach playing them, along with the need to quickly adapt on-the-fly when your AMD comes up with a transfer opportunity… brain bending for sure.
• Favorite scenarios? 84: What a fun puzzle of a boss! Loved it, and the kicker was that we won it on our final turn in classic fashion: Relying on the oozes drawing a Split card. What a rush! 123 - We drew this Road Event "forced" scenario right after returning to Frosthaven after botching Scenario 62 on our first attempt. But we had already set up scenario 62 for that night's session, so we decided to delay our attack on Titan until next time. For having such few enemies, we really struggled with that one, and its special 'climbing' rules. Halfway through the scenario, our Shattersong gifted me 5 blesses with Shape the Path (love that card!). Later, our Anaphi had exhausted, sacrificing herself to activate one of the pressure plates, so that left my Metal Mosaic and the Shattersong with only a few turns left to open the final room and finish off the Power Core. We got it down to 6 health but it was in "shield 2" form, so we’d only win if my Beam Axe found a 2x on my final turn. Luckily I was able to pop my Eagle Eye Goggles, giving me a great chance to hit one of the remaining Blesses in my deck, which I did. Whew! That one scenario required every bit of our teamwork, communication, sacrifice, and planning to pull out the victory. Felt so good! 100: Super fun way to kind of turn the game into a deck builder, encouraging clever use of your loss cards. Very memorable! 64: Setting this one up, I was worried, thinking there'd be too much to keep track of, but it was perfectly fine. I love the way the Haven system can be used to simulate all of these unique experiences: Dungeon crawling, river rafting, climbing a gigantic robot, and even an epic final battle / tower defense situation. My friend said it would have been cool to have the characters we met along the way play the roles of the Town Guards, or maybe make the choices we made during the three main story paths relate in some way to the final battle, but as-is, it was still a good time. Blows the water out of the final scenarios for GH1e and FC.  
• Playing like we did, sometimes with month-long gaps between games, makes remembering what’s going on in the story very difficult, if not impossible. Which is sad, because the story was well written! One of my friends was given the task to write down every named character in the game along with a quick synopsis of who they were. It really helped jog our memories! I liked the humor included, we genuinely laughed out loud often. I really appreciated the "Previously On" resource that dwarf put together: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10ZLRcVEWqyApPVo2Zxs9-fpW9XlKGr5J4wzlWWESBtE/edit?tab=t.0 My wish would be that any future Haven games have a similar reference included.
• I loved the first couple of puzzles, but many of the other ones were just too much for our group. We just didn’t have the ability to remember scenarios we’d played literally a year or more ago which contained information relevant to a puzzle section we were reading. We ended up cheating on several, using dwarf’s hint resource. Ideally, it’d be great to see something like a ‘hint’ merchant in the game… You’d be able to spend some resources/gold to obtain hints to help with each puzzle. This would end up rewarding groups slightly who were able to solve the puzzles without the hints, but give those who aren’t as strong at puzzles, or couldn’t figure out where to go at least a bit of a chance. Maybe you’d have a few hints available to buy for each puzzle, each one costing a bit more, until the final one pretty much points you to the correct solution so you can ‘brute force’ your way there, but do so within the rules of the game. I’ve read this from others, and I agree: Any future puzzle books shouldn’t be mandatory to complete the game (and 2e does this thankfully).
• We used X-haven for all but the very first scenarios we played. It’s definitely helpful, but I do see the appeal of forgoing any digital assists and keeping everything classically tactile when playing a board game. It’s an opportunity to ‘unplug’ and hang with your friends. If you organize your play area properly and assign individual tasks to your players (Player 1 is in charge of elements and conditions, Player 2 is in charge of enemy damage and loot tokens, Player 3 is in charge of enemy actions, etc…), then things get less ‘fiddley’, as they say. I always laugh when I see people complain about setting up the loot deck for each scenario. I’ve timed myself and it doesn’t take longer than a minute! Assign that to one of your players during setup! Anyway, yes, we used X-haven and it’s a wonderful program that definitely does make things easier.
• I LOVED the Trials deck. What a wonderful subversion of expectations, with the completion/reveal of each successive trial being more interesting than the last. Perfect way to spice up the later stages of the campaign, which unlocks a new and interesting way to crank up the difficulty even further if needed.
• I feel like playing with 3 players is the sweet spot. Adding another player to our group would bloat things beyond what we’re used to. And two players seems like it’d be much less interesting as there’d be less interactions between the various classes.
• Bonus #1: I captured the exact moment we landed the final blow to win the game if you'd like to laugh at us... heh... (I’m so sorry it’s vertical, I hate that, but it was a last second decision to record and I wasn’t thinking)

https://youtube.com/shorts/s7cek12Q2tw?feature=share

• Bonus #2: Here's the spreadsheet I created to help us remember which scenarios we've unlocked and completed. It includes all of our character selections, retirements, and the timing of some random milestones when I remembered to note them:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BTsGGqfzC3-mSe2TSRAqQ9-EapFH6ogEvbr9C2bl0Sw/edit?usp=sharing

Next up, we’ll continue with Frosthaven for a bit and play some of the remaining scenarios we’ve unlocked. First on that list will be 128: “A Tall Drunken Tale”, where I’ll be popping some of the barrel aged stouts I’ve been aging in the beer cellar. Seems appropriate! Then eventually I’ll want to get us started on GH2e. I’ve been drooling over the updates to the starters. In 1e, I began with the Tinkerer, and I can’t wait for a do-over there.

I’ll end with a huge note of appreciation for all the playtesters, designers, and Isaac for creating such an amazing game. And a note of appreciation for the community here on Reddit and Discord. I’m pretty much a full-time lurker (no, not the shelled kind), and never really had to ask too many rules questions because others would helpfully have already asked them! The FAQ is wonderful, the character guides and helpful documents are wonderful, the apps are wonderful (quick shout-out to the Gloomhaven Companion app for calculating all our enhancement costs)… and my friends are wonderful for playing Haven games with me since 2/20/19. Thank you!