Dungeonquest Catacombs -- worth it?

Recently, I introduced my group to Dungeonquest and everyone seems to be loving it. I was curious if the catacombs expansion is worth tracking down or not. Does it add a lot to the gameplay?

It has some cool room cards, like the band of Snotlings that you must squash before they regenerate too quickly and overwhelm you, but the main Catacombs mechanic, plus the Catacomb deck are pretty boring. You basically go underneath the main dungeon, drawing a catacomb card each turn that's "empty" about half the time. If you draw stairs, you pop back up in the dungeon, distance equal to the number of turns you spent underground, with a random offset causing you to veer to the left or right...Don't know if I explained that well.

It's cool to have the option to circumvent the main dungeon if you're totally boned, but it somehow needs more pizazz.

Have you tried Heroes? It adds a bunch of new characters, I think they are awesome, some say they are unbalanced, but this is flippin' Dungeonquest so who cares!

CATACOMBS makes the game practically impossible.

I actually don't really care for that expansion since it kind of takes away the directness of the core system and adds on a kind of dumb subsystem for the catacomb. It's kind of fun, and I do like how ruthlessly brutal it is, but most folks I've played with try it once and never want to use it again.

HEROES is better...a bunch of new soon-to-be-dead heroes.

Hey wow, NeonPeon and I said pretty much the same thing.

If you enjoy yelling "This is bullshit!" repeatedly, get Catacombs.

The horde of Snotlings was always fun when I was a kid.

Heroes is essential. Azoth is a badass.

I played DungeonQuest for the first time in years recently. I went through 7 empty rooms, ran into some snakes, and was killed instantly.

I hate DungeonQuest.

mjl1783 wrote:

If you enjoy yelling "This is bullshit!" repeatedly, get Catacombs.

That seals the deal --- I will probably start looking for it. DungeonQuest is the kind of game that is more about the ridiculousness then the game play. Last game, two players were almost out when "Wizard's Curse" was drawn. Everyone died.

Yeah, but CATACOMBS sort of butts up against the line between "ridiculousness" and "not funness". Like I said, it's kind of a subsystem bolted onto the game and it doesn't really have the same feel as the base game. And it seems like it slows the game down a lot.

Part of DUNGEONQUEST's greatness is how direct it is, how stripped down it is...I don't think it needs anything else. Other than the HEROES stuff, which is more of a seamless upgrade.

Personally I don't think either expansion is particular "necessary". The base game is lots of fun on it's own.

I do like the extra dungeon cards and tiles from the Catacombs expansion. The base game can get a bit samey and those cards help a lot, and the Amulet deck spices up player interaction a bit too. But the catacombs themselves are really, really boring. Basically, if you drop into the Catacombs, you'll spend most of the game doing nothing because most of the Catacomb cards are "empty rooms". When I play, I usually leave all the Catacombs stuff mixed in but we make entry to the Catacombs strictly optional - just ignore effects that dump you in there on purpose. Toward the end of the game, if you're stuck in a dead end with no way out, a quick trip into the Catacombs as a last ditch escape attempt can actually be quite fun.

I'm not as keen on heroes as other players here, it seems. Four of the heroes are identical to those in the base game and are just chaff. Of the others, 3-4 are just too complex for the game: I actually think Heroes is rather less streamlined than Catacombs and can be very clunky to run. The remainder are good though: I'm particularly fond of the Chaos Warrior whose magical helm is supposed to scare the monsters away but more often than not ends up eating his own head.

In short, no, neither of them are worth it, especially given the prices they command as OOP items. If you play the base game and love it, and still love it twenty games in then perhaps revisit this question.

mjl1783 wrote:

If you enjoy yelling "This is bullshit!" repeatedly, get Catacombs.

The horde of Snotlings was always fun when I was a kid.

Heroes is essential. Azoth is a badass.

I played DungeonQuest for the first time in years recently. I went through 7 empty rooms, ran into some snakes, and was killed instantly.

I hate DungeonQuest.

HAHAHAHA!!!!

DQ IS THE BOMB!!!

I'm not as keen on heroes as other players here, it seems. Four of the heroes are identical to those in the base game and are just chaff. Of the others, 3-4 are just too complex for the game: I actually think Heroes is rather less streamlined than Catacombs and can be very clunky to run. The remainder are good though: I'm particularly fond of the Chaos Warrior whose magical helm is supposed to scare the monsters away but more often than not ends up eating his own head.

Oh, no way. Just about the only enjoyment I get out of the game comes from the expanded characters. The duplicates of the original characters were BS, but I've always had way more fun playing the game as the ninja, or the girl with the dragon than I have playing the brown shirt guy, or the knight guy.

You're right about them adding a little more rules overhead, but the game base game is so simple, I think it handles it easily.

I've played DQ about 50 times or so --- just looking for a little variety. The amount of emptiness in Catacombs is a little offputting, so i might just look towards the heroes expansion.

Considering there are 12 "Heroes" characters, I don't mind the duplicates.

When I was 14 my best friend had Dungeonquest with all expansions and I loved it and rated it the greatest game ever. When discussing games with my wife about 10 years ago I realized that this fitted her requirements for a game we could both play and found an incomplete copy on ebay that had the catacombs and the 11 of the extra hero cards but not the miniatures.

When playing again something felt wrong and my love for the game wasn't the same. Upon seeing comments on BGG that Catacombs wasn't the best I stripped it out and suddenly the game I loved was there again. I can't quite put my finger on why I feel it detracts from the game but it does. My guess is that it adds complexity without any benefit for this complexity.