The Devourer Below thoughts
Just played through The Devourer Below for the first time yesterday.
We paused our session half-way through and resumed a day later. In between sessions, I discovered through general obsessive-internet-reading-about-AH that this is widely considered the worst scenario ever printed (or at least up there). Which surprises me a bit, because I don't know that it's *that* bad.
I mean, yes, we lost. But We did get to Act III and get one clue placed on it. It doesn't strike me as completely undoable. If we'd managed to take our four cultists in Midnight Masks instead of three we'd have had one extra turn and one fewer cultist to deal with.
And there are two alternative win conditions! OK, the "beating the boss in combat" one isn't very good. It's basically 100% impossible unless you explicitly cheese it (and I think even that would be hard to do reliably with one (original 2016) core set), so unsatisfying either way. But the sacrificing Lita one is essentially fine, especially as it's clearly a lesser victory.
Some thoughts:
* I do think it is especially tough one player. I had a second playthrough of NotZ solo and got completely destroyed in TDB. This was the more suprising because I found the other two secenarios, if anything, easier solo. I think there are a couple of reasons solo is super-punishing. The way the locations work means you have to move to wood, collect clue, move back to main path, move to another wood location... Two (or more) players can save a lot of move actions splitting up. This dynamic exists in most scenarios to a degree, but it's especially punishing here because unrevealed Woods locations connect only to the Main Path- in, say, Midnight Masks you can move from one location straight to the next unrevealed one.
Secondly, the enemy spawns are not respectful of player count. The Monster that spawns on the back of Agenda 1 is one monster regardless of player count. The cultists that get dropped in as you move into Act 2 are also not scaled in any way. Contrast this with the Ghoul Priest (health linear with players), or even the Masked Hunter (health increases with player count). There's also no other player scaling (like the starting acolytes in Masks).
Finally, the scenario really demands you be good at succeeding on multiple attribute tests. Will is critical for some of the Treachery cards; you obviously need Intellect to get clues, you definitely need either Combat or Agility; many locations require you to use different attributes to get clues; and you need Will or Agility to finish Act 3. This is easier with more players. By contrast, The Gathering really only demands Combat (or Will if you're going spells), and *some* way to get a clue or two from a shroud 4 location; while Masks is really mostly about Intellect (although you will need to deal with the Masked Hunter somehow).
* Cheesing it by focussing solely on combat is probably easier solo, since the big bad's health really does scale with player count and it engages everyone anyway.