In defense of Tombs of Terror

Singleplayer Discussion
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A lot of people here really seem to hate this adventure and I’m starting to get them a little BUT for me and 2 friends of mine this adventure has been a BLAST so far.

To anyone who acts like “This is terrible, I want my money back” … where were you when any adventure before this was released? They even give you a free wing to try so buying this adventure in advance (eventhough they basically told everyone what they were getting themselves into) makes it your own fault. If you didn’t like the last adventure, you should have waited and tried the free first wing.

That being said, maaaan are those new treasures busted and I LOVE them. Some of the new powers and artifacts make for some really crazy synergies like I have never seen before. My fight against the second Plague Lord ending with Reeno turning into Frost Lich and playing Pyros like 10 times in a row … super extreme!
I also think that because there are only 4 heroes this time, unlocking and trying all their stuff feels like much less of a chore.

I also never played through an entire ToT wing on Heroic yet but I appriciate how the new Plague Lord mechanic should make them much more bearable (at least in theory). I’d much rather not finish a wing on heroic 4+ times and make progress on each run than living through another Glinda Crowskin disaster.

Edit: Heroic is (as always) not about fun tho. I kinda hate how overtuned some of the later bosses get. One boss (I faced with my Murloc Swarming deck out of all possible bosses) had permanent Rush for all his minions … in a wing that constantly provides you with murlocs. That felt totally unfair and stupid.

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I’m in between, I think. There were some obvious attempts to improve on the game, per common complaints, but I’m mostly grinding my teeth at what looks like a bunch of the same lazy features.

Adventure value: You make a good point about prior adventures. This is not much different from the last two. I still think that “Well then you shouldn’t have bought it” does nothing to actually confront criticisms of the game, though. If prior fans of the game gave Blizzard money hoping to have a good time, and they didn’t, those are real if minor points against the expansion, just as your enjoyment of it is a point for it.

Combined Hero Powers: This…really just felt like the extra powers last time. Which isn’t bad, it’s just that the combined power thing doesn’t seem to add much. I’m sure there will be a few interesting ones.

Passives/buckets/Treasures: The most obvious improvement over DH is that there are a bunch of new options, and at least a handful that feel like new ideas, Rather than “Here’s Captured Flag, the same Deathrattle deviled egg, et all…, again, but we threw in a few more.” I was really impressed with that.

…I feel like I should give that more praise, but it was just a simple and welcome improvement that went a long ways, and I’m 100% with you on enjoying them. NEW CONTENT, YES PLEASE.

Complaints are tl;dr: building your game around RNG and variance, and your strategy around synergy is a bad mix. They still have the same core problem that “random” rewards just feel like punishments, sometimes. yeah, yeah, Roguelikes. But get offered mostly speed upgrades in Binding of Isaac, and with enough skill, you have a viable character that plays differently and offers a different challenge. Take a spell Passive then get offered a bunch of Minion buckets, and it’s “Have fun playing the same vanilla minion deck AGAIN. Git Psykik, bruh.”

Also, it STILL feels like too many of the buckets are just s***ty, once you figure in context. Like, that doesn’t prevent me from building a good deck, but why are there so many mediocre minions in a spell-focused class, and why are there sooooooo many secrets, and why do they keep showing up when I have a deck that clearly has no use for them? Basically: how does offering me so many options that make my deck worse, make the game better?

Bob: Still Bob, with better options. It’s starting to go down the path that buckets did last expansion: same core options and a handful of others that you’d MUCH rather see, but I won’t belabor my issues with that. Bob was a great idea, and I’m glad he’s back.

Challenge: Ugh, inciting the “git gud” crowd as always with this one. I’m just not gonna play Heroic. Not because I’m struggling with Normal, but:

  1. Because the bosses have the same “Too bad you took the Magic Rabbits power we have a boss that kills Magic rabbits” arbitrary difficulty (again, didn’t lose to bosses that spammed minions when I was offered no AoE the whole run, they were just boring to fight)
  2. The difficulty is stacked on the later bosses, and I’m already seeing the same early bosses. Facing Linzi and Wendy 8000 times, each time hoping I don’t see Haro, was maybe the most soul-crushing part of DH.
  3. Because there are no save points, and you don’t know until several games in, whether your deck is gonna have what it takes to not lose because of a lackluster opening hand.

You’re spot-on, though, that the Plague Lord mechanic goes a long ways towards mitigating #2 and #3, there. I’ve seen people complaining about this, but it’s easily my favorite feature. I hope Blizzard finds more ways to make the opening games of a run feel less like a chore.

All in all, well, I obviously have a lot of complaints, but they’re all the same complaints I had about DH, and honestly have had about solo adventures for a while. It seems like an improvement over DH on pretty much every front, and I think lots of folks are gonna see this as their favorite after a while. And as always, glad you’re having fun!

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110% agreed. The bucket logic is still the worst part of all these roguelike adventures overall. If I’ve picked the wand that lowers all minions above 5 mana to 5, I EXPECT them to offer me more buckets with costly minions. You could have some serious good luck only to get screwed completely by 1-2 buckets offered. This HAD to change 2 adventures ago and hasn’t been adressed yet.

I also really appriciate Bob. Some of his latest options are even better tools to control the outcome (like fire 1 minions and give adjacent ones +2/+2).

That “get gud” crowd is one of the worst bunch of pricks I have ever seen on the internet and they constantly totally miss the point of what this saying was actually about. They always repeat this cheap slogan instead of actually helping you.

I agree on your points tho. I’ll try to play through the adventure on Heroic (as always) but Normal is where the real fun lies. On Heroic there is too much artificial bullcrap stacked against you to actually feel like enjoying oneself most of the time. The team behind these adventures still haven’t learned how to raise difficulty without outright screwing the player on purpose.
NO ONE EVER gave any other feedback than “bosses starting with more mana is cheap and feels wrong” and yet here we are again: Xth roguelike and the final 2 bosses still start with 3 mana.

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I think the problem with this (as opposed to other Roguelikes) is that the buckets are so siloed. Like, how does a Mage Elemental bucket synergize with a Combo bucket, or that with a Secret bucket?

And this could be fine, if the devs made an effort to choose cards with overlap and made them more common/more likely to show up if you’ve chosen a relevant bucket. There are lots of cheap Mage spells that would work with Combo, “other class” stuff that could work with Elemental. But (and this is the reason I keep calling these adventures “lazy”), this really seems like the devs just said “Okay, we have Rogue, let’s throw darts at a board with Rogue archetypes on it.”

Pretty much. I honestly hope they just drop the original 1-cost stuff, or maybe redesign how he works (another poster once suggested letting us save coins for the second encounter. That was interesting). But no complaints.

THIS. So much this. I…know I’m too aggressive about calling people out on forums. I came up in politics (that’s an explanation, not an excuse). But man, the point of complaining about bosses is so frequently not that they are difficult, but that there are better ways to make them difficult. “cheap” is definitely the word for how lots of these bosses feel.

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The bosses are supposed to be cheap with multiple attempts to beat them. The mrgglglglglglglg age was off the charts.

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By “cheap”, I think we both meant something along the lines of “arbitrarily difficult because the designers couldn’t be bothered to come up with something that could be countered by player strategy.” That’s…an even worse thing to do intentionally.

It sounds to me like you’re talking very specifically about the Plague Lord(s)? They’re a different kettle of fish, and the OP and I both really enjoyed them.

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totally agree, took a spell passive as first treasure, have not been offered a single spell, in any bucket in the next 4 buckets.

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Which is totally how not to design an adventure like this.

The idea of those bosses is that their health pool + you fatiguing (and they don’t) is what drives you to take 2-3 attempts to beat them, not some cheaply balanced tricks and gimmicks.

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The Plague Lord being the actual last boss instead of a BONUS BOSS is a very bad design.

You are saying that I only “win” a Tombs of Terror run when I defeat the plague lord? If I lose to him, I ‘lost’ the run…?

Ok, but this create so many problems:

  • Everyone will try to create a deck to defeat him first try. This means ‘early game’ treasure or treasures that give a little tempo will be ignored and the player will focus on the infinite value treasures and cards (like frost lich jaina).

  • The player can create a “main damage build” to damage the plague lord to low Health and then use his actual Hero Treasure, hero power and deck to finish the run.

  • Grinding the plague lord multiple times because you are choosing to build a fun sinergy or combo deck instead of a infinite value deck to face the plague lord is really bad.

And other things that don’t need to be mentioned. Serioursly: why the plague lord are not a Bonus Boss instead…? You fight him for 40-60 min just to defeat him and finish a single run, facing multiple bs like 90 cards and RNG hero powers.