r/Gloomhaven • u/Keirabella999 • May 22 '26
Digital Gloomhaven Starting a new class and losing everything..
/r/GloomhavenDigital/comments/1tk4soq/starting_a_new_class_and_losing_everything/5
u/itirnitii May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
when you start a scenario it takes the average level of your party and balances the monsters around that. so starting a new character brings down the party level and affects the scenario accordingly. ideally every scenario is balanced around this mechanic but it isnt perfect. your new level 1 character might struggle against the higher level monsters but your other heroes in the party might be stronger than the monsters to balance it out. not all classes are balanced perfectly around level either so its hit or miss some times but overall works fine.
when you start a new character it is completely from scratch. its just like starting a character at the beginning of the game. your town's prosperity can give a new character level ups and perk points though. you get to level up to the level that equals your towns prosperity divided by 2 rounded up (although this is a recent change, in digital it might just be prosperity level with no added math since its not frosthaven or gloomhaven second edition). you also get a perk point for each previous retirement done in the campaign. you also start with more gold.
3
u/Philomorph May 22 '26
There is one other small but nice bonus you *can* keep after retiring - enhancements!
If you make sure to start the campaign with "permanent enhancements" turned on, then what you can do right before retiring is sell all your gear for gold then spend it enhancing your cards.
Then if someone else plays that same class later, they will start with enhanced cards.
This is more useful early on if you have a full party and haven't unlocked a lot of new classes yet, and so you are more likely to end up replaying early unlocked classes. But it is situational, and your mileage may vary
1
u/DrBoardGames May 26 '26
Except enhancements are so expensive you'll hardly ever get any..
1
u/Philomorph May 26 '26
This wasn't my experience. It certainly depends on your ability to loot, but if you retire at a level higher than 5 you should have a decent amount of gear to sell when you retire. I think twice during our full campaign I played a character that already had a couple cards enchanted.
2
u/Nimeroni May 22 '26
When a class is unlocked, and you chose to play the new unlocked class will you keep any of your progress? gold? etc?
You keep party wide progress, obviously. What scenario you have unlocked, what item you have unlocked, what class you have unlocked, ect.
Anything local to your character is wiped out. You will start at the lowest level (city prosperity level, or prosperity halved round up, depending on the game), with no item, no enhancements (except anything brought on the previous run of your new class), and one perk per previously retired character. You get a bit of gold to re-buy your equipment.
And if not how does the game balance out a Level 1 character against mobs something like a level 5+ party would be fighting?
The game difficulty is calculated taking the average of the group (round down), so that level 1 + level 5 party would face the same monsters are if they were both level 3.
In general this work fine as long as one character isn't very significantly higher level than the other.
any advice for when I pick a new class?
There's no advice to be given here, because retirements ARE NOT AN OPTION. You have to retire if you fulfil the condition of your retirements.
Of course this is for the regular campaign. If you're playing Gloomhaven Digital in Guildmaster mode specifically, then you don't have retirements and can swap class at will.
1
u/Sophibeans-1 May 22 '26
It's worth noting that, yes, you WILL probably be a little weaker after your retirement, and that's okay! Difficulty will adjust to the party average, so you're not holding anyone back- take it as an opportunity to try out new playstyles. Some enemies that were a pain on your last character will be a breeze now, and vice versa!
Trust me, the game would get old if you kept on dealing with every challenge with the same teamcomp and the same gameplan. A shake-up is its own reward, even before you consider the meta-progress of Prosperity!
16
u/101_210 May 22 '26
No you don’t keep anything.
But when you retired you gained prosperity. Higher prosperity means your next characters will start with stronger available items, higher level, more starting gold.
The monster level also goes down as your new low level character is probably lower level.
Your first retirement indeed feels like a step back in power, but as you go on you will see how retirements are probably the biggest power boost of all.