After a disastrous fight against the swine king that cost me my whole team, my best trinkets and all the gold I had, I decided to restart.
Now I reached the first year mark with no deaths and all veteran bosses except the Siren and Crew dead. All my guys are either 4 or freshly arrived at 5.
To celebrate I decided to take my brand new level 5 guys on a champion adventure to the Cove (I needed to do it here in order to flush the Siren out...). The only dungeon available is a long run so I had little choice. I prepare my guys, spend all my gold upgrading their best skills to max level, buy a shitload of supplies and am left with only 3k in the bank. Basically the stakes couldn't be any higher.
Right outside the first room I encounter a Collector, the first one in about 30 weeks and maybe the 3rd or 4th in this campaign. The fight goes well and I manage to kill him quickly although his 2 highway men minions manage to bleed my arbalest and bring her to deaths door, thanks to 2 crits in a row and a zero heal from my occultist. At this point I was thinking: "If this is the first fight wtf can I expect from now on?...". In the end they all survive although my occultist is left with half heath.
I literally move 1 square further and get ambushed. My party was surprised and my occultist is left in the front position. First attack gets him to deaths door. In what can only be a couple of desperation moves, I manage to bring him back and keep him alive with the arbalest. By the end of this fight all the party had 60+ stess and 2 deaths door penalties. I had only moved two tiles in a corridor between the entrance and the first room, in a dungeon with 20+ rooms...
After this curious start I get some lucky fights and crits, manage to keep the stress balanced and the hp up. Later my helion is also brought to deaths door in a random fight due to my own fault (I admit I was too greedy) and another zero heal.
In the end I come out with everyone alive with minimun stress, 36k gold and
2 full levels.
What seemed doomed to fail so early became one of the greatest victories I ever had in this game.
PS: Fuck the giant crabs.