Resolution 2020: Tainted Grail The Fall of Avalon play through

Beor took the opportunity while in Kamelot to prepare a smoke bomb. As he was running low on food he then travelled west to some hunting grounds, using the smoke bomb to avoid his first encounter with the Fore-Dweller.

In the hunting grounds he encountered a hammerbeak which he was proud to defeat in combat.

Beor then travelled east, up the coast to Broch Cruach where he searched the Brochs for treasure.

Beor was then able to travel west and activate Bundorca’s menhir. The elder of the village asked him to help resolve a dispute with neighbouring Falfuar over their shared menhir, but Beor could not afford to linger with the Fore-Dweller chasing him.

The next day Beor reached the Tombs of the Order where he handed Excalibur’s Scabbard over to the Knights that were camped there. They were ungrateful as it seemed had the scabbard arrived earlier recent events at the Tombs might have played out differently. Still, they rewarded Beor handsomely for his trouble.

Beor looked around, but could find no information regarding Neante…

If this weeks write up appears brief it is for two reasons which are interlinked. The addition of the Fore-Dweller mechanic, which chases you every day and triggers a very hard combat encounter when it reaches you, left me frustrated by the end of the game session and also meant that I could never afford the time to explore and therefore stripped most of the story out of the game.

After reviewing the game rules I realised Beor can escape the encounters with the Fore-Dweller at the cost of an action point and by suffering an opportunity attack (which is an insanity point for the Fore-Dweller). This meant Beor lost an extra action point and gained an insanity almost every day. This very quickly became debilitating.

I actually attempted this scenario twice – in the first attempt I engaged the Fore-Dweller in an attempt to kill it early, but I lost the fight and realised the Beor was not strong enough yet to stand a chance of winning. I therefore reset the chapter back to the beginning and tried again, this time avoiding the Fore-Dweller as best I could. This is virtually impossible given how small the revealed areas of the map are at any given time.

Gathering the resources to activate the menhir was a challenge but I was able to do so by deliberately seeking purple encounters to get magic rewards and searching the Broch’s for wealth.

Arriving at the Tomb’s added a final nail in the coffin for tonight’s game. In order to progress with my main plot and find Neante I must have 2+ caution. Beor currently only has 1, which means I am locked out from progressing until I find and then spend more experience to boost that stat.

The day after I arrived at the tomb the Fore-Dweller caught up with me again. I was now insane, dieing, had only one day’s food left and a bad weather event caused another point of damage. I lost the dial toss and Beor died.

I’m not sure how to restart the mission next week. I am tempted to restart from my current location at full health, no insanity and go from there. The Fore-Dweller I will change to move like a normal guardian – it will be a threat but not constantly harassing me so I can take the time to explore more. The game is challenging enough without being attacked almost every day.