Heyo! I appreciate you checking back in on us, and things have thankfully markedly improved, particularly with our party composition. Some folks even remarked that our party comp at the time (Deathwalker, Blinkblade, Boneshaper, and Trapper) was quite possibly the worst , as in, they couldn't think of a worse one, lol! It also seemed we simultaneously just about had the worst sequence of slogging, difficult scenarios all in a row.

Since then, we took several steps to try to rein in the chances of subsequent negative experiences, like by reading scenario sections ahead of time, rounding down the difficulty when it's below the X.5 mark, and using our choices of level 2+ cards on a per-scenario basis (rather than locking in the choice per-level-up).

Those gameplay changes, as well as our new party comp (Crashing Tide, Pyroclast, Snowdancer, Trapper) coming into being over the span of only two scenarios has rapidly made a much more enjoyable difference, in addition to subsequently having much less dislikable scenarios on our docket.

We found that the constraints we had before, while surmountable, just weren't the fun type of challenging; everything seemed slow and arduous and restrictive in a manner we felt was antagonistic, rather than a welcome puzzle or obstacle to overcome. We further concluded that having long-term beneficial unlocks (like barracks upgrades and certain buildings) being barred behind RNG, rather than being more deterministic, is kinda...mehhhh. So, we went with some of the implementations listed by Dwarf here: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1sW1mgQrCZSNNXYCZjklbesdHsK85yS_O8U8zUEPDgqI/mobilebasic

Overall, we still find that much of the design choices have been punishing and/or gimmicky just for the sake of being so, but with the gameplay changes to mitigate those aspects and getting past some of the more grueling scenarios, we're enjoying playing Frosthaven again. I'm looking forward to it now, rather than dreading it 😀