Frosthaven, like its predecessor Gloomhaven, is a long-running campaign game where you and a group of friends can begin as new adventurers in the land of Frosthaven before setting out to make a name for yourselves and improve the reputation of the city. When you first start the game, you'll have only six of the seventeen playable characters available to you, but as you play more and retire characters, you can unlock more. In the box (which we recently covered in our unboxing article), these characters are sealed off but in this Frosthaven All Advanced Classes Guide, we'll go into each of the Advanced Classes, how they play, and what their miniatures look like.
Before we go any further we want to highlight that there will obviously be character spoilers going forward. The characters you'll see in this article are intended to be unlocked through gameplay, there's no mention of their names or abilities elsewhere in the material. When you first unbox Frosthaven you'll be able to tell which of these characters are available from the start of the game and which are locked as the locked characters will have a sticker over the box that contains all of their class information. If you wish to investigate and explore everything Frosthaven has to offer and not be spoiled then now is your time to turn away
Frosthaven All Advanced Classes
The Advanced Classes in Frosthaven are the following:
- Humanoid: Pain Conduit and Infuser
- Algox: Frozen Fist and Snowdancer
- Savvas: Shattersong and Pyroclast
- Vermling: Trapper
- Unfettered: Hive and Metal Mosaic
- Lurker: Deepwraith and Crashing Tide
Frosthaven Pain Conduit Class
Symbol: Shackles/Manacles
Level 1 HP: 8
Level 1 Card Count: 10
Complexity: 3/5
The Pain Conduit might be the highest-risk character to play in Frosthaven. Each of his mechanics relies on him having a variety of negative effects already upon him, or having taken damage. Taking on these negative status effects allows there to be a wider number of options for him to pull off in battle, but missing an attack might result in you leaving yourself wounded with no place to go.
Some examples of his abilities are to transfer a negative status from himself to another, or even to inflict all his own negative status effects onto a target. This level of self-harm isn't just limited to himself either. Some of the potentially more powerful attacks could deal damage to an ally, but cause them to be the central focus for an AOE spread of damage. Two damage to an ally might mean you deal two damage to 3 creatures around them. Every decision made with the Pain Conduit will be a difficult one as you take risks in what is already a tough game.
The Pain Conduit's mini shows a character who is positively insane. With manacles shacked to his wrists and powerful dark magics in the palm of his hands, he's ready for battle. What might initially be misinterpreted as folded fabric, a lot of care has gone into the legibility of all of the scars that cover his body. In this pose, the character seems truly psychopathic.
Frosthaven Infuser Class
Symbol: Moon in a star
Level 1 HP: 8
Level 1 Card Count: 11
Complexity: 3/5
This class is all about activating elements in battle and maintaining them to perform powerful actions. The unique mechanic for this class is to be able to consume elements to activate Infusions. Each Infusion is a permanent buff or ability that you will apply to your character. Subsequently each time you perform an Infusion action each of these abilities will trigger allowing you to continue to scale up your character over the battle.
Some of the different boons that you'll be able to obtain from an Infusion include adding an additional movement and jump to all subsequent movements or even adding status effects like Muddle to all melee attacks. This is a class that will require a lot of planning for what order you want to activate elements and cause infusions to power up at the start of the battle. Any other classes that can create elements will be invaluable to those playing the Infuser.
The Infuser also has an interesting way of setting up elements. It won't just be that you perform an action and an element will activate, instead, you have the option to hinder yourself in one way or another to gain that element. A perfect example of this is on the Boon of the Tempest card where instead of moving four spaces, you could choose to activate the wind element and only move three spaces.
The miniature for the Infuser is another one with an incredibly impressive pose to it. Faithful to the character card art the Infuser, propelled by elemental magic behind them, is leaping up ready to swing down with their enormous sword. Gauntlets and boots have added studs for textured detail, and the Infuser's scarf trails in the breeze behind them in this action pose.
Frosthaven Frozen Fist Class
Symbol: Fist
Level 1 HP: 10
Level 1 Card Count: 8
Complexity: 2/5
The Frozen Fist is the very definition of a Tank but in fitting with Frosthaven style there is a catch. The Frozen Fist's main goal is to get the card One With The Mountain out asap and let it sit continuously active. This card will mean that at the end of a turn you can take damage to recover one of the cards you played that round. This damage starts moderate, with a level 1 card damaging you for 2hp, but as it scales up you might be losing 5hp for a level 6 card.
This ability allows for your smaller hand of 8 to last longer allowing you to discard only one card at a time, assuming you have the HP. What makes this more powerful is that One With The Mountain also gives you permanent Regenerate so you could recover a level 1 card every two turns and provided you aren't getting hit you'll just get to continue persisting.
The rest of the Frozen Fist's cards are pretty standard with a healthy mix of melee and ranged attacks, movement, and healing. A few attacks also give him the ability to lay out hazardous or icy terrain, but not to an incredible degree.
The Frozen Fist's miniature is an imposing one, being one of two minis to have a double wide box. With a broad Algox frame, this mini will tower over some of the others you've seen so far. This larger frame also allows for far better detail showing off the snarl on his face, the cracked ice layering their fist, and the fur texture across their body.
Frosthaven Snowdancer Class
Symbol: Snowflake
Level 1 HP: 8
Level 1 Card Count: 11
Complexity: 1/5
The Snowdancer is a support class through and through with a wide variety of tricks up their sleeve. The Snowdancer will be able to directly support other party members by healing them when they're down, but a lot of the Snowdancer's support ability comes from how much they can push and pull opponents.
Manipulating the enemy position on its own isn't much, but when you can push enemy monsters into a variety of traps or hazardous terrain that you can set up it becomes much more powerful. This can be paired further with the abilities of other classes to be able to cause havoc among the opponent ranks.
The large downside is that there aren't any of the big hard-hitting moves that you might see some of the other classes be able to utilize. This is a good class if you feel you enjoy controlling the positions of battle, but aren't wanting to spend too much time in the spotlight.
The Snowdancer's miniature is gorgeous. While the text on their character card references their grace and ability to "move with the winds and snow" you really get that from this mini. At their feet wind and ice spiral up while they pose intricately. Even with the gaping mouth and three-horned skull, there's a beauty to this mini's movements.
Frosthaven Shattersong Class
Symbol: Cracking Rock
Level 1 HP: 8
Level 1 Card Count: 10
Complexity: 3/5
The Shattersong is a Savvas, a being of pure quartz, that can harness the power of resonance and frequencies to become more powerful. Features on the Shattersong player card you'll see that there's a spot for your Resonance Tokens. These Resonance Tokens directly influence how much you can do damage, support your allies, or interact with the environment.
In the level 1 cards alone Resonance Tokens can be exchanged 1:1 with the amount of damage you can deal, with the amount of additional movement you can grant your allies, or can allow you to disarm traps. If you thought the base Gloomhaven had enough resource management with the limited cards in your hand the Shattersong will fluctuate between being one of the weakest or strongest characters.
Depending on how the player anticipates the moments to save up Resonance Tokens and when they want to unleash them all could shift the tide of battle. One of Shattersong's later abilities even allows you to let other players pick cards back up from their discard pile. The Shattersong is particularly well equipt for supporting the party whether it be to buff their movement, stack on defense, or wait in the wings ready to stop someone close to dying.
The miniature for the Shattersong perfectly mirrors its image. You see a gaunt figure with spindly limbs made of nothing but craggy rocks. I would hazard a bit of caution when maneuvering this mini as its limbs are just so thin, but that might also just be me being extra cautious.
Frosthaven Pyroclast Class
Symbol: Fireball/Meteor
Level 1 HP: 8
Level 1 Card Count: 10
Complexity: 3/5
If you CAN stand the heat then it's time to start more fires. As the Pyroclast your whole bag of tricks will be around not only dealing direct damage to your opponents but in creating lava hazards all around the arena. At any time the Pyroclast can have up to six hazardous tiles around the arena, from here you can use abilities to pull your opponents or have other party members push them into fire. Some of the Pyroclast's best abilities even allow them to damage in a certain space and hurt present enemies, while setting up traps in empty spaces.
On top of these combo moves you can do with your party members the Pyroclast is also able to use a number of abilities that can be powerful on their own, but also come with some kind of drawback. Some of these are pretty powerful like the ability to heal 5 hp, but then your next three moves you have one less movement available. Other abilities that have this risk and reward mechanic however are not as useful. No matter how you slice it doing -1 on all your attacks four times in a row just to get a single attack that's double damage does not check out.
The Pyroclast really shines at higher levels where he's able to explode his hazards dealing damage with pierce to all enemies in a 5-hex range. For many of the scenarios that you'll be setting up this could deal a massive dent into half of the battlefield.
The Pyroclast artwork shows a charred figure with fists glowing of flame. The spikes on his pauldron glowing red hot with intensity. Unfortunately for the mini so many of these environmental effects and ambiance are not able to be shown. Instead what we get is a bald man wearing shoulder spikes. The Pyroclast is an impressive figure in ways that the mini just might not be able to replicate out of the box.
Frosthaven Trapper Class
Symbol: Open Beartrap (Circle with four lines through the edges)
Level 1 HP: 6
Level 1 Card Count: 9
Complexity: 4/5
The Trapper is all about controlling the field. Included in the character pouch are five positive and five negative traps, but there's no real limit to how many of each trap you can place down letting you control the flow of battle. There are some addendums to the monster AI included that regardless of positive or negative a monster will steer clear of the Trapper's spaces for as long as they can.
The Trapper's level 1 cards only include two that can do any kind of special damage, while the rest are all about laying out one, two, or even three traps onto the battlefield. This class will require a lot of careful coordination with your teammates as for as many traps can be set out you don't have much in the way of being able to push your opponents into them.
There's high risk and high reward in this as later action cards will let you remove the fly status from some creatures, and even combine multiple traps into a single trap that deals the damage and status effects of all of the traps it was made for. If played well this could mean doom for an otherwise powerful enemy
The Trapper miniature shows off the diminutive form of a Vermling covered in a wide-brim hat and layered in pelts. While his spear slung over his shoulder might look intimidating what's more terrifying is the giant bag of traps and other equipment he drags by his side. With so many details going on in the clothes and bag, this mini does get a bit muddled and difficult to see which is a shame, even if it's so perfectly modeled after the character art.
Frosthaven Hive Class
Symbol: Patterned Diamond
Level 1 HP: 8
Level 1 Card Count: 11
Complexity: 5/5
Hive has a lot going for them with a hand full of different summonable machines. When you first start a scenario with Hive you'll get to bring out one of these summons, but instead of it being its own being you'll be able to use it to change the "Mode" of Hive.
This mode change will provide a constant boon for Hive throughout the game so as the tides of battle shift you might also want to change up your mode. For example, the Armored Tank Mode can give Hive a constant shield but will limit their movement, alternatively, the repair drone gives you health with each turn but you can't fire your ranged weapons as far.
When you aren't using one of these machines as a Mode change you can summon them to the field as their own unit. Launch an assault on your opponents as you flood the battleground. Each of these machines doesn't have the greatest health, and healing them up could be complicated so it's a lot of assault power but without proper resource management, you could end up running out of ammunition early.
Hive's miniature has got to be one of the coolest ones in the box. This kinda large blocky frame is perfect for the medium. From a distance, each design element from his twin blades to his jetpack is extremely legible. His ready-to-attack pose doubles down on the onslaught that's sitting in his deck.
Frosthaven Metal Mosaic Class
Symbol: Drill
Level 1 HP: 10
Level 1 Card Count: 9
Complexity: 4/5
The Metal Mosaic is a large Unfettered with a powerful drill arm and large fist. The core mechanic of the Metal Mosaic relates to the huge engine in its stomach. The Metal Mosaic has a pressure gauge that you will need to keep an eye on throughout a campaign. With four stages ranging from Low, all the way up to Over.
Each of your action cards might have a different default ability, but then depending on where your pressure gauge is you'll get additional abilities. Steam Armor might only give you a shield, but if you're High or Over pressured then you'll gain even more shield, experience, potentially damage yourself, and lower your pressure gauge.
The Pressure Gauge doesn't just force players to be thinking about their next move, but their next two or three moves as they try to figure out what they can do at the moment, and what that will set them up for next. There's also a fun element of flirting with the devil if the kinds of powerful attacks you can muster up when in the Over range deal higher damage but also take on damage yourself.
The miniature for the Metal Mosaic is interestingly adorable. With spindly legs hulking around a pot-bellied robot with massive weapons all over it's almost reminiscent of something I'd expect to see in a Studio Ghibli movie. A lot of detail has been taken to add various elements to the chassis including little wires, ports, joints, and grills. It does a lot to get across the impression that this isn't some shiny futuristic machine, but truly one of the Unfettered. There is some warping on the base which means he doesn't stand exactly flat, but a bit of bobblehead action almost makes him more endearing.
Frosthaven Deepwraith Class
Symbol: Seaweed
Level 1 HP: 8
Level 1 Card Count: 10
Complexity: 3/5
As a Lurker you'll get to go for the kill in almost any situation, and be rewarded handsomely for it. The main mechanic of the Deepwraith is the Trophies that they collect from their enemies. The Deepwraith is able to earn a token if an enemy dies from certain conditions, or if you kill it yourself. These Trophy Tokens can then be spent to power up your attacks or to inflict further status effects on your opponents.
A core part of this class is to build up the Trophy Tokens and then spend them to cripple your enemies and earn more tokens. This class definitely requires other players at the table to understand what situations you're looking to get, but with a lot of fast movement cards, and attacks that hit multiple targets if your friends can set up the kill you can definitely put a monster down.
At later levels, you'll be able to move and attack repeatedly more often. Being able to attack twice in a turn while moving three times between attacks lets you zip around the field dealing finishing blows where you can. You'll also get opportunities to earn multiple trophy tokens at a time giving you more options.
This Lurker miniature is terrifying and fascinating all at the same time. Each leg is in a different position, with some posed slightly higher giving the feeling of movement frozen in time. It's impressive how finely detailed the different bumps and growths are across the hard exterior of this creature. Raised claw ready to strike down the miniature gives the sense of fast movement and quick strikes in posture alone.
Frosthaven Crashing Tide Class
Symbol: Algae
Level 1 HP: 10
Level 1 Card Count: 12
Complexity: 3/5
The core mechanic of the Crashing Tide is to also have a series of boons on yourself to be able to scale up in power. Unlike the Infuser who scales up for the entire scenario the interesting part of this mechanic for the Crashing Tide is that these boons get returned and shuffled when you rest.
There's a benefit to this in that you'll have more cards in your hand and you'll take longer to get exhausted, but you might get tired of having to repeat upgrades or acting forgetting which ones are active. Each of these is referred to as a Tide action.
It's interesting to see how the Crashing Tide and the Drifter seem so similar but the Drifter aims to keep their boons active for the entire scenario, whereas the Crashing Tide can read the flow of battle and see where a boon for a permanent shield might be useful in comparison to inflicting Poison on attacks.
The Crashing Tide can go full out with its Overwhelming Wave ability where it can begin playing three cards in a turn. The requirement still needs to be met of having one bottom ability and one top ability, but the third card can be either. This could be an excellent move to rush your opponents at the end of the battle but will lead to faster exhaustion.
The miniature for the Crashing Tide is far more intimidating than that of the Deepwraith. Where one was built for speed the Crashing Tide is better equipt for puffing up its chest. As it rears up its torso showing off the hard shell on its head and massive claws it will tower over most minis in the game. All of the extra texturing on the shell to represent moss or other underwater life adds a really nice asymmetrical look to the mini as well.
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Andrew has written Video Game and Entertainment news, reviews, and guides for 10+ years. As Senior Content Manager, he assists in creating and editing… More about Andrew
