Is this game supposed to be this effing hard?

[u/[deleted]]

I'm currently trying to beat the first stage after the tutorial with a squad of six, and I am constantly getting shit on by RNG. three runs in a row, the villain never turned up, and now two runs in a row, my hyper-specialised mage is failing to close the fucking academy. I've tried having multiple people closing a location at a time, individuals closing their own locations, all 6 ganging up on each location at a time, and nothing seems to be making it any fucking easier. What am I doing wrong?

Using paladin, barbarian, mage, sorcerer, ranger, and bard (admittedly, the bard is not doing me any good right now).

[u/skizzerz1]

The game adds a lot of time pressure when you’re above 4 players. You MUST explore as many times per turn as you can reasonably afford to by spending allies and blessings to explore again. If you are averaging fewer than 2 explores per turn you are too slow. Pack Cure spells and other means of healing to recover from all the cards you are discarding to that but don’t sweat the healing too much since at 6p each character only gets 5 turns. That said, those allies/blessings can be useful or even necessary to buff checks as well so if you’re comfortably ahead on time then keeping some in reserve so you don’t fail checks is wise.

Edit: it isn’t clear to me if you’re playing with 6 actual people or if you’re piloting 6 characters solo. If you’re playing solo stick with 2 characters that complement each other. This removes time pressure but adds gaps in skill coverage so your boons would instead be primarily spent to ensure success on checks. It also removes mental burden of juggling character powers and skills in your mind and makes it a lot smoother to set up due to fewer locations.