TOPIC: TrueGrind ... what to expect

If I get this right, I leave my treasure finding necklace at home for the +2 arm necklace and plan on some potions and scroll works from the casters in the party? Plus, I should plan to lurk into a group rather than just buy two tickets for our two equipped characters in our party. Anything else?

Skill checks aren't used for the sake of time. You just do the max damage. There is no training room. I didn't know that at first and it threw me.

Lode

Damage here is often significant, two things I would highly recommend are the cloak of shadow skin and a ring of evasion. Evasion is the ONLY reason I survived my only grind.

Assuming you enjoy the combat rooms of TD, the biggest thing to expect is to have fun.

Eric and his assistants do a great job running Grind, and Eric does a great job of coming up with crazy ways of challenging us.

My suggestions:
- think about defense (AC, saves, and special things like the previously mentioned Cloak of Shadowskin and Ring of Improved Evasion) more than offense. There are more monsters facing the party at once than in a regular dungeon run, so you are more likely to be attacked more often

- Consumables, consumables, consumables. Not just for yourself, but bring along some for your cleric or wizard to use too. Just make sure to keep them somewhere easy to get to.

- gear tokens - you never know when one of these might come in handy

- environment - Eric likes to make the environment more impactful tokens than it usually is in the dungeon, so that the tokens that protect against environmental effects are more useful. So pay attention to whatever tokens help out with the current year's environment. But beware, Eric likes to bring in environmental effects from previous years as well...

Incognito wrote: Finally, teamwork and tactics is often crucial. There have been plenty of tokened out players who have been devoured because they couldn't work together or adapt to a monster's strategy. And there have been lots of players with relatively few tokens who have succeeded because they exceled in this area.

I second this. Tactics aren't something you really need to worry about in the main dungeon, where everyone is wailing on one combat board... but in Grind, tactics are a significant part of the game.

This starts in the Coaching room - Do you actually assemble a good mix of classes? Do you have enough Healers, do you have a good Tank, do you have some guys who can deal out DPS? Are there builds specializing in Ranged, and builds for Melee? Do you have someone with a really good To-Hit (preferably equipped with a Cestus of Sundering)?

Once you get into the Grind room, and face multiple combat tables, do you foolishly put all the healers on one side of the room and all the fighters on the other? Because that's just asking for trouble if a chasm opens up in the room, splitting the party.

When facing monsters with special powers or defenses, do you bring the right players to the right tables to attack them? Having the cleric with a blunt weapon trying to bash in the Plant monster, and the Rapier-wielding Fighter attacking the Skeletons, is a poor choice.. but I've seen that sort of thing happen. Communication is important, so the party plays to its strengths.

Having access to a variety of consumables is also important. Grind is a TD anomaly in that we actually encourage players to take their bags into the dungeon. We're all in one room, so you can take your backpack in, and set it in the corner for an hour. We've usually got a table specifically set aside for players to lay out binders & token organizers. And, if you *remember* you've got a token to deal with a specific problem (Paralysis? Petrification? Curses? Disease?) you can grab it - and then make sure you use it on the *right* player, or the one with the best chance of helping others return to the fight.

Oh, and protect your Bard. Monsters have been known to target the Bard, to remove the +2/+4 bonus. Or remove the Instrument. Or the limbs which are playing it. Grind monsters are nasty that way.

Raven is a much better source of information then I, I was unprepared as I got pulled from the foyer as a last second replacement. Without my evasion I would have been a casualty instead of a survivor, I will be bringing consumables the next time I go on a grind, and this list will be my guide. Also raven did a great job running grind. Thank you!

Lodestone (KH) wrote: Skill checks aren't used for the sake of time. You just do the max damage. There is no training room. I didn't know that at first and it threw me.

Lode

But Eric might surprise you, I didn't even think he had a wizard's planar chart until.... BAM!



But yes for typical parties he's not going to waste time with it.

OK, I did see it hanging in there, but never saw it used.

Lode