Speeding things up and maintaining the spirit of the game ?

[InfiniteMax]

Here are some variations of game play that I've tried. Let me know how they work for you.

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Stairs: Are only found in last room on a level (no rolling for them).

Battle Hands: Separate out Screw This cards and Monsters into 2 decks.

Players draw 3 Screw This cards. Refill hand when empty.

Draw from Monster Battle deck to fill room. Monsters are stacked by highest to lowest unmodified defense number (ties are ruled by the highest attack number).

Monsters with Support:
Look through Monster discard pile (shuffle or draw from bottom) to find first matching support card and add it to the battle. Supporting creatures will develop as the game progresses.

Xykons Lair:
Contains only the safe haven plus one room. Select a number of Xykon monsters equal to the dungeon level (including Xykon). Handle Supporting creatures as outlined above.


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[Totally Guy]

Trouble with holding the screw this cards that way is that you can get stuck holding the same one for a long time before you could refill you hand, for example in a highly cooperative game you'd never get rid of "saw it coming" as the conditions of use wouldn't occur.

Also Durkon's WWTD Shtick would need changing to 1 or 2 cards. I've seen Durkon win at the endgame stage before just by resting and flipping that shtick to get a monopoly on the screw this cards.

[PMDM]

The only legitimate method in that list is the stair one. Everyone wants to move down quickly, and spending time looking for stairs is no fun.

[Leeroy_Jenkins]

The only legitimate method in that list is the stair one. Everyone wants to move down quickly, and spending time looking for stairs is no fun.

If EVERYONE commits to looking for the stairs on each and every turn (and V has the Elven Senes schtick and the find-stairs screw this cards are played), the stairs will be found quicker than requiring for all 8 rooms first to be explored.

I think I would modify that to "If the stairs are not found in the first 7 rooms, then they are AUTOMATICALLY found when the last room is explored."

[donkyhotay]

I've found the long part of the game isn't finding the stairs and getting to the bottom it's having enough schticks/loot to get into the lair. Of course if you get rid of the schtick/loot requirement then the game generally turns into 'roy-rushing-down-to-kill-xykon-and-win' since he can kill xykon faster then anyone else (especially at the early parts of the game).