Tabletop Game / Gloomhaven

The Dark Souls of board games.

"Welcome to Gloomhaven!"

Gloomhaven is an enormous tabletop game developed by Cephalofair Games. Up to four players pick from the six starting classes to play cooperatively as mercenaries working in town to complete jobs, get treasure, and pursue personal quests assigned at character creation. As players progress they will gradually make the town of Gloomhaven prosper, while unlocking new scenarios, items, class abilities, and classes. The game features branching narratives, a persistent, changing world, and many secrets to unlock.

In a way, Gloomhaven could compared to a standalone Tabletop RPG campaign. Each player creates a character of a chosen class, chooses a backstory and agenda for it, and joins to a shared party - to enter some dungeons, kill some monsters, and steal their loot. The overwhelming majority of the game is Turn-Based Strategy card game taking place during while Dungeon Crawling, with miniatures on a board, hexes and all. Players enter the dungeon with a hand of cards they get to choose from their classes unique pool, with each card split into a top and bottom half. Each round a player will play two cards and perform the top action of one card and the bottom action of the other, trying to complete the Scenario's objectives before everyone is killed or runs out of cards. All players choose their cards in secret, reveal them simultaneously, and then act them out in an order of Initiative on the cards they've chosen, with the monsters actions and initiatives being determined by a combination of AI-guided rules and randomly drawn monster-specific cards. No dice are used, instead the attack values written on the cards are modified by an attack modifier deck full of various positive and negative effects that players can improve as they progress and level up. Each encounter will be set up based on the party level and number of players, since each group will be encountering scenarios at different points in time based on their decisions.

The true value of the game, though, lies in an enormous amount of Unlockable Content it provides - and not just opening new scenarios for you to complete, new monsters to defeat, or new gear to purchase, of which there is already plenty. The box contains a large number of sealed containers, which can only be opened on certain circumstances during the play through, usually on finishing some particular quest. For example, of 17 playable characters, 11 of them are hidden from players, and the only clue you have is a symbol on the box until the moment you actually open it. Unboxing these hard-earned items and adding them to the game is what makes playing Gloomhaven a truly rewarding experience.

An expansion titled "Forgotten Circles" was released in 2019, adding a new class (the Diviner), new enemies, and around 20 scenarios. The expansion requires base Gloomhaven, and the plot of it is played after completing the main story of the base game. However, the Diviner could be added into the base game without issue.

A standalone expansion titled "Jaws of the Lion" was released in July 2020. It features four new classes and 25 scenarios, plus a handful of new items and enemies. It was intended to be an easier introduction for players new to Gloomhaven, including a considerably more robust set of tutorial scenarios, which it recommends veterans skip, and a much more streamlined campaign progression. The game is a standalone experience, but the new characters and items can integrate with the original games content if desired (or vise versa). The plot of the story is a prequel to the base game and has a few character references, but prior knowledge of Gloomhaven's story is not required.

A sequel, entitled Frosthaven, was announced in December of 2019 and a Kickstarter Campaign was launched in March 2020. The campaign successfully concluded raising over $12 million (over its initial goal of $500,000). It was released in late 2022, with orders being shipped in 2023.

A spin-off titled "Buttons & Bugs", a more compact game designed by Joe Klipfel (who previously worked on a fan-made 18-card game based on this game series called Gloomholdin) and Nikki Valens (who worked on Mansions of Madness).

Cephalofair followed with Gloomhaven: The Roleplaying Game, based on the core mechanics of the base game and cross-compatible for 2023. A crowdfunding campaign for it was launched in July 2023 along with "Buttons & Bugs", multiple miniatures set and Gloomhaven: Second Edition.

Source Point Press published Gloomhaven: Fallen Lion comic book in 2020 and Gloomhaven: A Hole in the Wall for the 2021 Free Comic Book Day.

In 2019 a digital adaptation of the original Gloomhaven released in Early Access. As of October 2021 the game includes all content from the original game, including the full base campaign, online multiplayer, and an alternate "Guildmaster" mode, a more loosely structured campaign compared to the original, mostly using semi-random scenarios and featuring a unique story for each class. Later DLC included the Solo Scenarios and the Jaws of the Lion characters and campaign.

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Gloomhaven contains examples of:

• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The most expensive item of the starting options caps out at 30 gold, but items unlocked later in the game are considerably more expensive. Similarly, enhancing any card above level 1 will cost the player a flat extra fee based on the cards level. Of course higher level cards and items unlocked later are generally more powerful (in some cases direct upgrades for earlier versions that cost more), and the rate players earn gold scales up as their party level increases.
  • Selling any item gives you exactly 50% of its original price.
• Action Bomb: The Cultist has a card which causes it to explode upon death for as long as it is active.
  • One of the Summoner's minions is just that - a One-Hit-Point Wonder that explodes upon death.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Although a party can consist of any number of characters, each scenario requires a group size between two and four mercenaries. From a real world perspective this makes sense as adding more players slows the game down and there's a limit to how many many monsters can be crammed into the limited board space, but there's no story explanation for why a party can't bring a 5th member along (or why a mercanary couldn't attempt a dungeon alone, especially after the game added solo scenarios).
  • The designer's unofficial 5 player solution is to increase the Scenario level by two to account for the extra player, although the game only contains 4 attack modifier decks, so the players will have to work out a solution for the 5th player.
  • Solo Scenario also have this issue. In some cases it's a personal quest or the character is thrown into the scenario without a chance to prepare, but in other cases there's no specific reason for them to leave the team behind.
• Arbitrary Weapon Range: Ranged attacks against adjacent enemies are made with Disadvantage ^note which means the attack draws two modifier cards and uses the worse one. In some cases, like shooting a bow for example, this makes sense, but some attacks, especially area-covering, don't have any real reason to be affected this way.
• Alliance Meter: The party has a Reputation meter which will vary over the campaign. Notably reputation can be positive or negative and a new class is unlocked at +10 or -10 reputation^note You can unlock the class through other means, however. Positive reputation will make all items cheaper while negative will make them more expensive, and some events have differing outcomes depending on party reputation.
• Armor-Piercing Attack:
  • The "Pierce" attack modifier is this, negating an equal amount of Shield.
  • The Piercing Bow item allows the player to make one of their ranged attacks completely ignore any Shield on the target.
• Attack Animal: Used by the Beast Tyrant. Consequently, it's the only playable class with two figures.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Actions which make you Lose (rather than Discard) the card they're on often fall into this category. All but one Discarded card is brought back when you rest while Lost cards are gone for the entire Scenario, barring unusual circumstances. Loss actions are more powerful, but in general you're quite limited on how many of them you can actually use without running out of cards before the scenario is over.
  • Many complex cards or combos also end up playing out this way. While they sound great on paper, getting the timing, resources and positioning just right to actually have it work out as planned is often more difficult, meaning the incredible maneuvers never actually get pulled off.
• Bad Guy Bar: The Brown Door, a seedy place known to attract ruffians, pirates, and other vagabonds. Although, the live entertainment there is second to none.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: Scenario number 60, The Alchemy Lab is on Fire for the duration, and if they players don't get out fast enough they start taking damage.
• Blocking Stops All Damage: Zig-Zagged. Shields mitigate an amount of damage equal to their value (so Shield 2 can block up to two damage). Players typically have low shield values and usually only temporarily, so they tend to be more effective against lots of weak attacks, while powerful attacks will still deal damage through a block. several monsters monsters have quite high persistent shield values, which many classes will struggle to break through. Fortunately these types of enemies tend to have lower HP to compensate.
  • Some characters do have abilities which can totally negate all incoming damage from some number of future attacks, but those are obviously rarer.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The top of any card can be played as an Attack 2, while the bottom can be played as a Move 2. The written abilities of even level 1 cards are much better and more varied, but using cards this way can be very important, especially for classes with limited movement or attacking options. Even more effective some higher prosperity items increase the value of these default actions to be 3 or 4, making them both fairly powerful and very consistent. Since the basic attack or move is also never a loss, it can prevent the character from losing a card they don't actually want to play, and can recover later after a rest.
  • Stamina potions which allow you to pick up two cards from your discard. Less exciting than a lot of other items, but pulling back specific cards at critical times and slowing the rate at which you run out of cards is remarkably powerful. They're generally considered one of the most overpowered items in the game, to the point that later printings and Word of God reduced the recovered cards by one (which was implemented in the digital game), and they're STILL very good.
• Cast from Hit Points:
  • Many enemies with abilities that summon additional enemies, such as the cultist who summons skeleton warriors, spend hit points whenever they use the ability, to avoid overwhelming the board with bodies.
  • In "Jaws of the Lion", there is an enemy, a Blood Tumor, that uses the hit points of others as fuel to power itself up.
  • The Berzerker class also has this as a mechanic, with cards that can either boost their effect at the cost of HP or are more powerful if the user is already low on HP.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: In the climactic scenario of the "Jaws of the Lion" campaign, the heroes battle the big bad, trying to bring him down before he and his minions can overrun the city. The story text that is read out following victory describes a large squad of city guards arriving just after the villain dies and his monsters succumb to No Ontological Inertia, when there's nothing for them to do except start clean-up operations (and, to be fair, make sure the heroes get paid the reward they're owed).
• Charged Attack: Many characters have setup cards which can empower their future actions in a variety of ways. The Scoundrel in particular can deal enormous damage if all their setup and positioning is just right.
  • One of the core mechanics of the game is the elemental affinity of the battlefield; there are abilities that "charge" a particular element, and those that consume that charge to power up an effect. You cannot do both on the same turn, so you have to either charge it ahead of time or get a teammate to set it up for you. Some monsters can also set up the charges and/or use these by themselves, throwing an certain element of surprise in the works.

• Choose a Handicap: Before beginning most scenarios, players draw a road event card. The card describes a situation the mercenaries encounter on the road from the town to the location of the scenario, and provides two choices of how to deal with the situation. Frequently, both outcomes will be negative, though the catch is that players do not know exactly what way they will be impacted by each choice the first time they encounter a given road event. For example, if the road event is an encounter with a rampaging bear, players may fight it, which ends with the players starting the proper scenario with a wound that inflicts damage over time, or they may flee, tiring the mercenaries and forcing them to discard some ability cards, which also act as an indirect time limit.
• Class Change Level Reset: Whenever a character retires a new one is is created. They have the option of starting out at a level equal to or lower than the town's Prosperity level, meaning that they will generally be a lower level than the previous character, but not bumped all the way down to level one either.
• Clone Degeneration: When Ooze duplicate, they first take damage, THEN create the copy, so the new ones will never be at full HP (and a low enough ooze will simply die when it attempts to split)
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: White bases for normal versions of enemies, yellow for the more powerful Elites.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Almost every boss in the game is immune to Stun and Disarm, since otherwise many parties could easily lock them out of attacking or acting at all. Most also carry immunity to a few other Status Effects, but are usually vulnerable to a few of them, bar the Archdemon, who is is basically invulnerable to any direct attacks.
• The Corruption: The Void. An area within Gloomhaven that erodes and destroys nearly everything it touches. People caught in it suffer greatly. It's the location of the final boss.
• Critical Failure: Both the player and monster attack modifier decks have a "Null" card which causes the attack to deal no damage when drawn. The Curse status adds additional null cards which are removed after they are drawn. Notably any additional effects of the attack (such as gaining experience or inflicting status effects) still occur when the attack does not deal damage.
• Critical Hit: Like above, attack modifier decks have a "2X" card in them which causes the attack to deal double damage. Additionally the "Bless" effect allows players (or monsters) to add additional single use critical hit cards to their deck.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The nature of having a wide number of scenarios and classes unlocked in a semi-random order means that many scenarios can end up being comically easy or incredibly difficult depending on the parties composition, level and equipment when they reach it.
  • Some classes designs make them more prone to playing out this way. The Two-Mini's card which allows you to swap the position of any two figures on the map or the Eclipse classes ability to stay invisible for an extended periods of time or instantly execute elite enemies in particular can make certain scenarios trivially easy. Meanwhile the Circles class can have this effect in either direction, as their summons tend to struggle to keep on scenarios with lots of movement or overcrowd small spaces, but are much more powerful in situations where the party just has to hold a position.
  • Certain Scenarios are somewhat infamous for turning out this way against the players as well. Scenario 28 can feel nearly impossible depending on what the monsters do on the first turn or two, in particular the cultists can easily summon 8-10 living bones before the part has much chance to stop them, leaving them in a first room that is very crowded with enemies. Scenario 60 can be this way as well, as the limited time window and quite punishing scenario effects can make it nearly impossible for certain parties (the players need to cover a lot of ground very fast, something which many classes are not very good at, and the scenario effect begins doing a flat 2 damage to everyone after 12 rounds, which isn't too much for higher level characters but will VERY quickly kill low level ones). Scenario 72 is also just known as one of, if the not the, hardest scenarios in the game. Many more experienced players recommend new players drop the difficulty down when attempting it.
• Cypher Language: Along the way, some messages written in this will be found, whether during scenarios, events, inside some of the envelopes, or at the end of the Town Records book (which requires completing scenario 51 and effectively the game). For all versions but the first printing retail edition, a translation key was included.
• Dem Bones: The Living Bones enemies.
• Demolitions Expert: Why, Jaws of the Lion's Demolitionist.
• Disc-One Nuke: Depending on the order of unlocks many classes can end up feeling like this. The Eclipse class or Three Spears class Nightshroud and Quartermaster, respectively in particular are somewhat infamous for this. Fortunately the retirement system means that they will eventually move on rather than sticking around forever.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu??: The world of Gloomhaven has its fair share of eldritch monstrosities. By the end of a campaign the heroes will most likely have killed at least a couple of them. You're required to kill three of them to End the Gloom and fight the Final Boss.
• Digital Tabletop Game Adaptation: The game has received a full PC game adaptation, which it was well suited for as it has many elements that are about as close to a Turn-Based Strategy video game as a tabletop game could get.
• Dual Boss: Depending on the route they take, the players may have to encounter it. It's the two giant Inox Bodyguards featured on the box cover image above.
• Dungeon Crawling: Each scenario has a couple of paragraphs of set up and conclusion and city/road events happen around each scenarios, but the bulk of the game is strictly fighting monsters, collecting loot and upgrading your characters. Many of the scenarios don't take place in an actual dungeon, however.
• Early-Bird Boss: The Bandit Commander is fought very early, in Scenario 2, so it will usually be encountered by level 1 players with no perks and only starting items. Its health scales with the number of players, meaning it may have two or three times more health than any other monster in the first two scenarios, and depending on its actions you may find yourself getting overwhelmed by swarms of undead very quickly.
• Enemies List: Several of the personal quests require killing specific lists of enemies. This can be killing many types of an enemy like Bandits or Vermlings; one of each enemy type like slaying undead or demons; or killing a bunch of Elite Mooks. One literally requires the player to slay twenty different types of enemies.
• Elemental Powers: The game has an Elemental Infusion tracker, which certain actions will charge and other actions can expend them within the next two rounds. The Spellweaver in particular counts, as it is able to generate and consume a wide range of different elements, and most of her abilities have an elemental flavor to them. The unlock-able class the Elementalist obviously counts as well, producing and consuming a wider range of elements than any other class.
• Escort Mission: The player is required to escort Hail, an Aesther in a mission to seal rifts. This happens in both the main game and the Forgotten Circles expansion.
• Enemy Mine: During a late-game quest, the players can actually strike an alliance with some Sun Demons, glowing humanoid shapes of sunlight, in order to unlock a scenario. The demons actually propose the quest, on the grounds that humans cannot live without the sun. Several other scenarios also involve monsters acting as allies for that scenario. Forgotten Circles has a Rift event in which you can rescue a bandit, who will fight with you on the next round.
• The Exile: Craghearts, due to them being Muggle Born of Mages among other Savvas people.
• Experience Points: A rather non-conventional example. While the leveling in the game is completely straight, the characters receive experience not for defeating monsters, but by using specific abilities which provide it along with their main purpose. Usually though, these effects require some specific condition to trigger, like making an attack while under an effect of a certain Element of nature, or even losing the card that was played, meaning that you can only gain experience this way once per scenario.
• Evolving Attack: Most cards can be enhanced once the required achievement is completed, improving their values, adding status effects or other various benefits. These are permanent effects in the form of stickers that are placed on the cards which not only effect the current character, but any future characters of the same class. The Digital version (by virtue of not using physical cards and stickers) reworked this system, making it so enhancements don't carry over between characters of the same class, but are generally cheaper across the board and can be sold.
• Fetch Quest: The first quest the players are given is to acquire some scrolls, a large number of future quests include being hired to go get find something from a dangerous location.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: The starter classes include the Brute (fighter), Spellweaver (mage) and Scoundrel (thief). The other three can be interpreted as their crossing variations - Cragheart is a frontline Magic Knight, the Tinkerer provides support from behind as both a mage and ranger, and the Mindthief is a mostly melee-oriented single-target Fragile Speedster. Of course, every class is only a template, which usually provides several possible directions to shape your character in.
• Fixed Damage Attack: The Retaliation effect work like this, dealing a certain amound of damage to the attacker irrespective of any Shield or protection they may have. Many Cragheart's abilities also deal it, sometimes even to its own allies.
• Gadgeteer Genius: The Tinkerer. Their ability deck is alchemy and engineering themed, and they utilized many wacky gadgets and mechanical servants to defeat enemies and aid allies.
• Good-Guy Bar: The Sleeping Lion, the player's home base, is an inn and tavern. And the proprietor doesn't appreciate it when people start fights or cause damage.
• Hold the Line: A few scenarios involve holding out for some number of turns. Specifically Scenario #27, the Ruinous Rift forces you to hold out for 10 rounds while Hail seals off the rift.
• Hub City: Gloomhaven. After each scenario (unless it is directly linked with another one) the party is required to return there. Shopping, leveling up, city events and retirement can only take place there, and numerous scenarios are set around the city as well.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Due to the way Line of Sight for ranged attacks work, a shooter only needs to see, like, a target's heel with their own heel, and nevermind how many obstacles are between them, such as bookshelves, rocks, or columns - they'll still land a perfect shot without any disadvantage.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: Treasure chests contain a range of things, from gold, items, item designs, and side scenarios. It makes sense that intelligent enemies would have treasure, although the fact that they're storing blueprints for items or treasure maps can be a bit odd. Why animals and unintelligent monsters have treasure chests in the first place doesn't really make any sense though.
  • This can be considered a simple convention, since at least in one case, the chests represent some naturally growing herbs that you are supposed to gather. The Treasure Chests simply represent something valuable, not an actual treasure chest.
• Interface Spoiler: Even the players who avoid spoilers with the most diligence would find it hard to miss that two of the miniature boxes have the same symbol and are labeled 1/2 and 2/2. At that point, it's easy to deduce that something is up with that class.
• Invisibility: A status effect that removes opponent priority from whoever has it. Meaning, said opponents will not move toward or attack said character during the time it is active, essentially treating them as an impassable obstacle. Still, an invisible character (or monster) may get damaged by the Area of Effect abilities, which were aimed for someone else.
• Jack of All Trades: The Cragheart is this of the starting options. Ranged attacks, Melee attacks, healing, status effects and obstacle creation/manipulation are all available to the class early on. It generally avoids Master of None status by specializing in Splash Damage and Area of Effect attacks.
• Karma Meter: Every party has its own Reputation, which changes depending on their event and scenario choices. Generally speaking, being good provides less immediate profits, but improves the prices of the city merchants. Villainy, on the other hand, makes the items more expensive, but in return regularly provides you with options to steal, rob, and plunder to your heart's content. When the group becomes famous or infamous enough, even more benefits will become available.
• Legacy Board Game: Gloomhaven is a dungeon-crawler/RPG that's also a legacy game. While the rules remain the same, there are some legacy elements like destroying cards and putting stickers on the board or cards.
• Level Scaling: Scenarios scale to the parties level by a formula of half their average level, rounded up. This both allows scenarios to be completed in different orders and means that characters with significant level differences can play together.
• Low-Level Advantage: Many monsters don't gain their stronger abilities until higher levels. For example Flame Demons gain ranged retaliation at higher levels, and high level Oozes will poison on every attack. Sometimes this can mislead players into thinking a monster they encountered at lower levels will be similarly easy, when the higher level version of it is actually far more dangerous.
• Manipulating the Opponent's Deck: Some attacks have the Curse effect, shuffling a Curse card into the target's modifier deck. When drawn, the Curse card nullifies all damage from the attack modified by it, and is then removed until the next time a Curse is applied. As all monsters share one modifier deck, even a monster that wasn't hit by the attack that applied the curse can have their attack nullified, including bosses who cannot be hit by Curse directly.
• Mass Monster-Slaughter Sidequest: A number of quests have the goal of killing some number of monsters to end the scenario, although it isn't always a side quest. For example, an early quest requires you to kill a number of Inox warriors equal to five times the party's size.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Most of the classes have some unique elements that make them stand out although the unlock-able two-mini class, called the Beast Tyrant is perhaps the most unusual. As the spoiler-free name suggests, this class has two miniatures to represent it rather than one. The figures represent the Tyrant and its Bear companion that is automatically summoned at the start of each scenario. The Bear acts as a normal summon would (moving and attacking each turn, controlled by the AI), and the Tyrant has a number of Command cards that allow them to directly control the bear in addition to its automatic moves, meaning the player must choose between controlling the Tyrant and the Bear each turn.
• The Medic:
  • The Tinkerer is the healing class of the starter options. It also comes with numerous other supporting abilities and status effect inflicting attacks to support the party.
  • The Sawbones unlock-able class is a medic as well. Unlike the Tinkerer, the Sawbones is flavored as a medic to boot, including the ability to pass out medical packs that allies can use to heal themselves. Plus, of course, the option to stab enemies with syringes and slash them with a bone-saw.
• The Minion Master: Of the six available classes Mindthief can be used like that - she possesses several rat-themed summons in her ability deck, and a number of actions that interact with them somehow, although the unlockable classes Summoner and Beast Tyrant is an even better example of the trope.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: The very first quest given to the player characters is rather simple and unassuming, but it quickly grows into something more sinister.
• Mook Maker: Enemies spawning each round appears in a numerous scenarios. Scenario number 26, the Ancient Cistern is probably the clearest example, featuring devices that spawn enemies until the players deactivate them, but both enemies and scenario effects do this quite often.
• No Experience Points for Medic: Mostly averted. Experience is mostly gained in combat, but not by killing monsters. Some is gain by completing a scenario, but the source players can actually influence is from card effects. Healing, attacking, moving or even looting can grant experience depending on the card in question. Classes can have significant differences in experience gain, however, so it's still entirely possible to have a specific character who ends up lower level over time, it just won't necessarily be the medic. In fact, probably the class with the best experience gaining in the game, the Music Note/Soothsinger, is a support class.
• No Hero Discount: Averted. The player characters are mercenaries, so while everyone charges them full price by default, a positive reputation will cut the cost of any goods the players buy, while a bad reputation will cause vendors to jack up their prices. Certain events will have better outcomes with positive reputation (although the opposite is also true).
• Non-Lethal K.O.: Player characters don't die upon running out of HP, they just "exhaust".^note They will retain any experience, gold, and items found from the scenario, but nothing else. Well... not unless you want them to, according to the manual, in which case a character is retired without resolving its goal.
• No Points for Neutrality: The game heavily encourages the party to go fully good or bad. Positive repuation automatically reudces item prices, + or - 10 reputation unlocks a class and 20 will unlock new events, and several road or city events will also give the party and extra reward if they have high or low enough reputation. The party isn't punished for remaining neutral, but there's no reward for it either.
• Not the Intended Use: A quirk in combining the resting and damage mitigation rules allows players to rapidly exhaust themselves. You play two cards on your turn as normal, then at the end of the round you short rest, losing one card at random and getting the other back. However you choose to take 1 damage to randomly lose a different card, and then lose an additional card from your hand to negate this one damage, losing 2 cards from your hand a turn. Generally this is pretty useless since exhausting is not a desirable outcome, but since certain personal quests and battle goals require running low on cards or exhausting, players might still occasionally do it at the end of a scenario
• Now, Where Was I Going Again?: Scenarios are unlocked in an intertwining web, often times including multiple plot threads running at once. Sometimes an unlocked scenario is still unavailable to the party as it has another requirement they haven't completed, making tracking exactly what you can or can't do quite difficult. Even if a group is making progress reasonably quickly it can easily be weeks or months real time between unlocking a plot line and actually resolving it.
• One Size Fits All: Any class can buy and equip any item, although some items may not give much or any benefit to a particular class or character. In particular several of the Solo Scenario rewards only work with the specific mechanics of the class that unlocks them, but anyone can buy and equip them once they're unlocked. Some items, like heavier armor and helms, add negative modifier cards to the decks, and melee-type classes like the Brute can unlock skills to negate these, but other characters can still wear them at the cost of their penalties.
• Only Shop in Town: All items are simply bought from the pool of available items with no mention of specific shops selling them. Enhancement which becomes available after the party befriends Hail the Enchantress in Scenario 14 is all specifically preformed by that character.
• Optional Boss: Scenarios 79 and 81 are side scenarios which contain optional bosses. In fact it's possible that a party won't even unlock the ability to fight them at any point in their campaign. There are also a number of bosses which are along the critical path but not required to complete the main story.
• Our Demons Are Different:
  • There are several different kinds of demons, one for each of the elements. They're more along the lines of Elemental Embodiment than traditional demons in terms of concept and appearance. They are often summoned like traditional demons though, and come from another world.
  • The Valrath are closer to traditional demons in appearance (Red skin, horns, tails), and were quite militaristic in the past, but these days, they're actually one of the most civilized races, known to prefer solving problems through diplomacy rather than violence. As a result, they often become merchants or politicians.
• The Paladin: One of the unlock-able classes: Sunkeeper is very much like a Paladin with holy attacks and righteous fervor. Of course, depending on Personal Quests, this person can be anything but devout. One of the Personal Quests is "Light-Bringer" which is similar to a Paladin, in which the player must use an undead-smashing axe to kill different undead with it. Another one is "Law Bringer" in which the player must defeat Bandits or Cultists who prey on the innocent. Naturally, both of these personal quests unlock the Sunkeeper class.
• Party of Representatives: The six starting classes include: Human, Orchid ^note essentially a cave dwelling, crystalline Elves, Savvas ^note  Rock people with a clear glass chest. As they master a certain Element of Nature, a core appears in the chest denoting it, Vermling ^note small, barbaric rat-people. Typically disliked by other races, although some more intelligent ones integrate into normal society, Inox ^note large nomadic Horned Humanoids, a cross between an Orc and a Minotaur, and Quatryl ^note A small, delicate race with a penchant for mechanics and intricate work. Later races featured in unlock-able classes include Valrath^note  Demon-like in appearance (red skin, tails, pointed ears), they are actually known to generally polite and well spoken, often becoming merchants or politicians., Harrower^note Worm That Walks. Not necessarily evil, but unsurprisingly make other races uncomfortable. and Aesther^note  Translucent humanoids who exist between planes of existence.. As a general rule, every intelligent race of the setting gets represented not by one, but two playable classes, of different genders if applied, which are usually designed to be Foils to each other. Multiple expansions more than double that number.
• Permanently Missable Content: The branching choices during the campaign may - or rather, will - completely prevent you from reaching some scenarios - or even block out the ones that you already unlocked, but haven't visited yet. Unfortunately, without spoiling the storyline, there's no way to know about this beforehand.
• The Power of the Sun: The Sunkeeper. And for villains, Sun Demons.
• Randomly Generated Levels: Two decks of cards are included for this, one to decide the room and the other for its contents. These may be used for the occasional scenario that requires them, such as Foggy Thicket (though specific ones to select from are listed in the special rules), or for free-play maps.
• Random Number God: You will be praying to one with an every Attack you make, except instead of the classic rolling of the dice, Gloomhaven uses a deck or cards with modifiers which, at the very least, includes an equal amount of bad and good ones (Critical Failure and Critical Hit included). Not only this balances things out a bit, since even if you keep drawing penalties, you're bound to run out of these sooner or later - but as your character advances and upgrades, you get to modify this deck by adding, removing, or replacing the cards that you don't want to see there with ones that you do.
• Rat Men: Vermlings, natch.
• Revolving Door Casting: Due to the nature and the rules of the game, most characters will leave the party sooner or later, while the others will join it in their stead. Moreso, you can even rotate the cast of players from mission to mission, as the party represent an ever-changing group of mercenaries, most of whom are in this for a short time, depending on their own personal agendas.
• Rock Monster: The Cragheart is a Savvas, a type of sentient rock person. Gameplay-wise it acts as something of a Jack of All Trades class with a wide range of options including stomping around the battlefield with area-of-effect damage, throwing rocks at enemies, healing allies, and creating, destroying, and moving obstacles. The players can also meet, fight, and unlock other Savvas as well.
• Saintly Church: The Sanctuary of The Great Oak, which in addition to being a temple, are also healers. The player can donate money to the church and will gain two Bless cards in their deck if they do ^note A Bless when drawn doubles the damage of any attack.
• Save-Game Limits: The campaign is structured much like a video game, including scenarios to complete and scenarios unlocked upon completion of earlier scenarios, unlockable character classes, and upgrades for characters and the setting. Much of what is done in-game is recorded in some way such as by marking or applying stickers to the board or removing seals from boxes, so there isn't any practical way to restore the game to an earlier state.
• Self-Duplication: An ability of the Ooze, though it costs HP.
• Sidequest: The game contains a few random scenarios which are periodically unlocked as loot in no particular order, plus a number of other scenarios unlocked via city/road events and personal quests. These don't directly connect to any of the main story lines, but do give out gold, exp, items, or personal quest progression that help the players.
• Situational Damage Attack: Both Scoundrel and Mindthief regularly use these. The former heavily relies on positioning, flanking, and backstabbing, while the latter may deal increased damage for every Status Effect on her target. Most abilities that use the Natural Elements charges also qualify.
• Soul Jar: One mission has a boss which must be defeated by attacking an altar that cycles along six different locations in the map as part of the boss's special actions (each shift summoning a different enemy as well).
• Status Effects: Some statuses (stun, immobilize, disarm) work exactly as expected, while others make sense once you read how they work, but aren't as immediately obvious (muddle, curse). However poison and wound work the exact opposite way a minority of players might expect, as poison acts as a Damage-Increasing Debuff, while wound deals Damage Over Time instead, supposedly through bleeding - or, in some cases, burning.
• Timed Mission:
  • Every mission is automatically turn limited by game mechanics. Each turn every player must play 2 cards or take a rest to recover their discarded cards, losing one discarded card for the remainder of the scenario as a result. The players will have their hands slowly shrinking over time and must complete their objective before losing them all.
  • Several scenarios also give the party explicit timers, such as scenarios that end in success in a certain number of turns, or an npc who automatically advances forward, forcing the party to keep up with them.
• Turn-Based Strategy: Turns are taken with order being decided by the Initiative on the cards played by the players and the cards drawn from the monster's decks.
• Uniqueness Rule:
  • Though players can create multiple mercenaries of the same type (much easier in the Digital Tabletop Game Adaptation), only one of each type can be in the party at a time.
  • Mercenaries cannot equip more than one of the same item, though Exact Words are in play—for example, while you can't equip two Major Healing Potions, a Major Healing Potion and a Minor Healing Potion is okay.
  • Certain actions will cause you to Lose the card they're printed on, preventing you from recovering that card when resting.
  • Most Small Items, and certain weapons or armor, are "consumed" upon use, rendering them unusable until the end of the scenario, though certain cards or items can restore them for another use.
• Walking Spoiler: Every group will be unlocking and completing the game in different orders and possibly missing out on some content entirely. Any discussions of content beyond starting classes, items and the first scenario is absolutely covered in spoiler tags. Fortunately the majority of the community is highly diligent in avoiding spoilers as a result. Still, it can be tough to discuss a game where even two players who have beat the game have the potential to spoil things for one another.
• Weakened by the Light: One of the Dark-based enemies has a card that has them consume any available Light energy and place a curse card in the enemy attack deck.
• You All Meet in an Inn: The player's base is at The Sleeping Lion, which functions as their office.

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