I think the reason it is stated as 4 facedown damage and fear is because you can discard a combination of the two (definitely a total of 4), and not exclusively just one or the other.

They did not prepare card every time They did scout. They looked card and desided that the power was not so usefull and desided to prepare none... Many times It is 99% of cases better to prepare something than none, because it thins the deck aka make it more easy to finding those good cards. Even when you allready have 4 card prepared, it is usefull to prepare a card because the one card from the prepared goes to the discard pile and not to the deck, so you can a really thin 15 card deck to 10 card deck and that is huge advantage! 4/15=26% vs 4/10=40% 
also Many player did try to attack again or try other check when They allready did have 3 success in discard pile... so only one success left in the deck. In that case it is better to move/explore or do something else that does not require skill check (unless you Are sure that the last succes is the next card (via scouting etc.)) 
Many playthrough did not use the terrain tiles to full advantage in battle maps. It makes huge difference to fight in boulder of firepit location vs. Any other! Or They did forget to use bushes to hide... 
many did forget to use characters powers. For example always gives fight inspiration to elena! When she do a check, she can give one inspiration to another hero, so you douple your inspirations! Aragorn can give her 3rd action so elena can use 3 inspiration and give each of those to another hero to reuse... noup... that did not happen in those games. They even forget to use Gimlis power, and leave Aragorn too far away to give scout boost, did not prepare card via Berovor power and so on...
they Also did time their actions Many times rounds wrong. First move your burglar far away and then do a check then move Aragorn near and five scout bonus... They often did it backwards. Move burglar near someone and lose the convert bonus from burglar 1 card and after They ruin the burglar turn... move other character away after that. Timing is essential in this game. What order you do things, what characters act first. It make huge difference in how high odd characters have in succeing their check.
they spent inspiration to non nesessary skill check and so on. So Many, Many non optimal choises that makes the game harder than it actually is. Did not change character to do check even the character doing the check first time was not wery good at it... Many Many tactical and strategigal errors.

True. The Main purpose of this game is to offer some challenge to normal Gaming croup that plays game casually.
Then there ofcourse Are people like me and Daemonos who has long history of finding combos and optimal deckdesigns. Who optimise the characters, roles and decks even before playing their first gaming sessions. (And I consider myself only semipro deckbuilder. Not competative level MTG guru)
I am sure that most Gaming croups finds the difficulty suitable. Struglin in the Beginning, having easier time when learning how to optimise their Gaming and move to hard mode when things gets too easy.
If you manage to optimise the game before the first Gaming run, then even hard mode is somewhat too easy, but I Expect that future expasions offer more difficult experience expesially when played in hard mode. This first adventure is an introduction to this game and because of that it will be easier than the coming upp adventures!
In the meanwhile we can make up house rules when needed to tinker the difficulty system. This is a co-op so house rules are a good way of making the game suit to each player croup!

True. The Main purpose of this game is to offer some challenge to normal Gaming croup that plays game casually.
Then there ofcourse Are people like me and Daemonos who has long history of finding combos and optimal deckdesigns. Who optimise the characters, roles and decks even before playing their first gaming sessions. (And I consider myself only semipro deckbuilder. Not competative level MTG guru)
I am sure that most Gaming croups finds the difficulty suitable. Struglin in the Beginning, having easier time when learning how to optimise their Gaming and move to hard mode when things gets too easy.
If you manage to optimise the game before the first Gaming run, then even hard mode is somewhat too easy, but I Expect that future expasions offer more difficult experience expesially when played in hard mode. This first adventure is an introduction to this game and because of that it will be easier than the coming upp adventures!
In the meanwhile we can make up house rules when needed to tinker the difficulty system. This is a co-op so house rules are a good way of making the game suit to each player croup!

True. The Main purpose of this game is to offer some challenge to normal Gaming croup that plays game casually.
Then there ofcourse Are people like me and Daemonos who has long history of finding combos and optimal deckdesigns. Who optimise the characters, roles and decks even before playing their first gaming sessions. (And I consider myself only semipro deckbuilder. Not competative level MTG guru)
I am sure that most Gaming croups finds the difficulty suitable. Struglin in the Beginning, having easier time when learning how to optimise their Gaming and move to hard mode when things gets too easy.
If you manage to optimise the game before the first Gaming run, then even hard mode is somewhat too easy, but I Expect that future expasions offer more difficult experience expesially when played in hard mode. This first adventure is an introduction to this game and because of that it will be easier than the coming upp adventures!
In the meanwhile we can make up house rules when needed to tinker the difficulty system. This is a co-op so house rules are a good way of making the game suit to each player croup!

What is this devilry!
Nice wights! I have always been fond of old, dirty, rusted, ripped, worn things in miniatures and movies. It gives some character and reliability to those character that have it. They have not just stayed at home, They have done something in meanwhile that has caused some wear and tear!

Hi fellow adventurers!  
I hope you enjoy the next episode in my painting series which covers the Wights...
 

They did not prepare card every time They did scout. They looked card and desided that the power was not so usefull and desided to prepare none... Many times It is 99% of cases better to prepare something than none, because it thins the deck aka make it more easy to finding those good cards. Even when you allready have 4 card prepared, it is usefull to prepare a card because the one card from the prepared goes to the discard pile and not to the deck, so you can a really thin 15 card deck to 10 card deck and that is huge advantage! 4/15=26% vs 4/10=40% 
also Many player did try to attack again or try other check when They allready did have 3 success in discard pile... so only one success left in the deck. In that case it is better to move/explore or do something else that does not require skill check (unless you Are sure that the last succes is the next card (via scouting etc.)) 
Many playthrough did not use the terrain tiles to full advantage in battle maps. It makes huge difference to fight in boulder of firepit location vs. Any other! Or They did forget to use bushes to hide... 
many did forget to use characters powers. For example always gives fight inspiration to elena! When she do a check, she can give one inspiration to another hero, so you douple your inspirations! Aragorn can give her 3rd action so elena can use 3 inspiration and give each of those to another hero to reuse... noup... that did not happen in those games. They even forget to use Gimlis power, and leave Aragorn too far away to give scout boost, did not prepare card via Berovor power and so on...
they Also did time their actions Many times rounds wrong. First move your burglar far away and then do a check then move Aragorn near and five scout bonus... They often did it backwards. Move burglar near someone and lose the convert bonus from burglar 1 card and after They ruin the burglar turn... move other character away after that. Timing is essential in this game. What order you do things, what characters act first. It make huge difference in how high odd characters have in succeing their check.
they spent inspiration to non nesessary skill check and so on. So Many, Many non optimal choises that makes the game harder than it actually is. Did not change character to do check even the character doing the check first time was not wery good at it... Many Many tactical and strategigal errors.

Maybe we will get more difficulty variation. The app would allow that easily! Here some suggestion to home usage.
easy mode:
start the game with x inspiration. Maybe Farmer Maggot did give you mushrooms and good meal before you did go after those stolen mathom items! (Start the game with hobit food trinket)
Normal
hard
nighmare:
after scenario x you can not recover every wound and horror you collect. So you start the next scenario with one/x wound and one/x horror. You have to deplete your trinket ones before you start your scenario. For each success icon XP card you have to have at least one card without success icon and one with Leaf icon.
 
 
And Yep, the game is much easier than most people seems to give merit! Most playtrough videos have been terrible by how badly They did play tactically and strategically. Is I astonished that They have not lost more often after so bad Gaming desisions! They really make their game much harder by playing badly... I hope that we will see at least one playthrough were They play wisely. These so far have not been good in showing how to play this game smartly!

They did not prepare card every time They did scout. They looked card and desided that the power was not so usefull and desided to prepare none... Many times It is 99% of cases better to prepare something than none, because it thins the deck aka make it more easy to finding those good cards. Even when you allready have 4 card prepared, it is usefull to prepare a card because the one card from the prepared goes to the discard pile and not to the deck, so you can a really thin 15 card deck to 10 card deck and that is huge advantage! 4/15=26% vs 4/10=40% 
also Many player did try to attack again or try other check when They allready did have 3 success in discard pile... so only one success left in the deck. In that case it is better to move/explore or do something else that does not require skill check (unless you Are sure that the last succes is the next card (via scouting etc.)) 
Many playthrough did not use the terrain tiles to full advantage in battle maps. It makes huge difference to fight in boulder of firepit location vs. Any other! Or They did forget to use bushes to hide... 
many did forget to use characters powers. For example always gives fight inspiration to elena! When she do a check, she can give one inspiration to another hero, so you douple your inspirations! Aragorn can give her 3rd action so elena can use 3 inspiration and give each of those to another hero to reuse... noup... that did not happen in those games. They even forget to use Gimlis power, and leave Aragorn too far away to give scout boost, did not prepare card via Berovor power and so on...
they Also did time their actions Many times rounds wrong. First move your burglar far away and then do a check then move Aragorn near and five scout bonus... They often did it backwards. Move burglar near someone and lose the convert bonus from burglar 1 card and after They ruin the burglar turn... move other character away after that. Timing is essential in this game. What order you do things, what characters act first. It make huge difference in how high odd characters have in succeing their check.
they spent inspiration to non nesessary skill check and so on. So Many, Many non optimal choises that makes the game harder than it actually is. Did not change character to do check even the character doing the check first time was not wery good at it... Many Many tactical and strategigal errors.

The trinkets Are in lore section. Under there as party items.

I finally got a chance to play Journeys in Middle Earth last night at my FLGS, and I have to say that I was very impressed. Setup was quite quick for how many pieces are involved, which meant we got into the action right away. And the action was very tense and fast-paced! Also, while I was skeptical of having to use the accompanying app, it really worked seamlessly and added more than I thought to the thematic mood of the game (it has music and sound effects if you want them on). The app also dramatically streamlines a lot of the tedious bookkeeping that can sometimes bog down the card game, which lets players focus on the game rather than keeping track of a million separate effects and statuses.
During our game, it felt the whole time that we were racing against the clock to complete the mission objectives, and there was real and constant tension between eliminating the enemies on the board and making progress toward the objectives. It definitely felt like we constantly had to make tough choices and determine how best to use our very limited resources.
There were some epic moments of success -- like when Legolas one-shotted two ambushing Brigands who had Beravor pinned down, freeing her to secure the penultimate objective or when Bilbo slipped his dagger under an Orc Captain's armor for the kill to save Aragorn -- as well as failure, such as when Legolas finally succumbed to a pack of hungry Wargs just shy of reaching the final objective.
I also really like the way that mission completion is handled. It's not a strict win/lose outcome, but rather there are gradations of success -- depending on how many objectives you complete -- that affect the next mission. Thus you don't generally waste an hour or two on a mission just to fail and have to run it over again before you can proceed to the next, AND choices you make in one mission have major effects on what happens in succeeding missions.
So, all in all, a very good experience and it seems like you get a really good value for the $100 price tag. I would definitely recommend!

They did not prepare card every time They did scout. They looked card and desided that the power was not so usefull and desided to prepare none... Many times It is 99% of cases better to prepare something than none, because it thins the deck aka make it more easy to finding those good cards. Even when you allready have 4 card prepared, it is usefull to prepare a card because the one card from the prepared goes to the discard pile and not to the deck, so you can a really thin 15 card deck to 10 card deck and that is huge advantage! 4/15=26% vs 4/10=40% 
also Many player did try to attack again or try other check when They allready did have 3 success in discard pile... so only one success left in the deck. In that case it is better to move/explore or do something else that does not require skill check (unless you Are sure that the last succes is the next card (via scouting etc.)) 
Many playthrough did not use the terrain tiles to full advantage in battle maps. It makes huge difference to fight in boulder of firepit location vs. Any other! Or They did forget to use bushes to hide... 
many did forget to use characters powers. For example always gives fight inspiration to elena! When she do a check, she can give one inspiration to another hero, so you douple your inspirations! Aragorn can give her 3rd action so elena can use 3 inspiration and give each of those to another hero to reuse... noup... that did not happen in those games. They even forget to use Gimlis power, and leave Aragorn too far away to give scout boost, did not prepare card via Berovor power and so on...
they Also did time their actions Many times rounds wrong. First move your burglar far away and then do a check then move Aragorn near and five scout bonus... They often did it backwards. Move burglar near someone and lose the convert bonus from burglar 1 card and after They ruin the burglar turn... move other character away after that. Timing is essential in this game. What order you do things, what characters act first. It make huge difference in how high odd characters have in succeing their check.
they spent inspiration to non nesessary skill check and so on. So Many, Many non optimal choises that makes the game harder than it actually is. Did not change character to do check even the character doing the check first time was not wery good at it... Many Many tactical and strategigal errors.

Yeah that I'm complicit in this outcome is not lost on me.  It was just after having such a high loss rate, I wasn't in the best of moods so I was like screw it, I'm opening this chest if it's the last thing I do!  Then I clicked "abandon mission" from the menu and it ended it with me losing (I thought it would maybe just let me restart).  Once that happened, I decided to just start over.  Again, things are going much more smoothly now. 

I like the app myself, I didn't find it intrusive, I thought it added to the experience.
People who are critical of the game say things like it tries to be all these different things and fails at all of them, but I don't agree.  I find the sum of all the parts to be an enjoyable experience.  With the app, it's sort of like playing a video game, but you also have the hands on physical experience of a board game.  You get to explore like a dungeon crawler, and you get to manage your decks like a card game.  Or you can look at the app sort of like a portable dungeon master in a box.  I also found it added greatly to the mood, theme, and atmosphere with its music, dialogue, and effects.

i a`m one of those people that like the psysical components of a board game but also like the option to play solo most of the time , i might play once a month with some friends and even that is not likely to happen.So any combination of a good rpg style game makes me happy and i might want even more from the app ,like more voice acting ,figures on the map etc.

With my Bilbo  and Aragorn company its getting better. Still learning.. It became clear that the biggest problem for Aragorn is that he took to much damage and fear cards that resulted in a Last Stand. The real problem for him is that he can not get rid of these cards easily. (See also CodyMax's screenshot above..) The skill cards that can remove or prevent damage and fear are cards with in bold "Guard xx" and "Rest xx". I looked to all the skill cads of him being a captain and there were only a few. ("Rest" is in general very rare) I selected these kind of ability cards as the extra skill cards earned by skill points during the adventures as a captain. (Instead of the strike ability cards) Then I realized that I also changed Aragorn's role twice as a Guardian and could choose cards like "Desperate Defense" (with Guard 1 or Rest 2) I always concentrated on the card text on the skill cards but now the skill deck is more based on the bold ability at the bottom. During the next journey it went immediately better just by concentrating to prevent (Guard) and discard (Rest) damage and fear. Aragorn has also the "Banner" card and he will get inspiration when Resting or Guarding. Also I changed the way how I handle the prepared cards. First I hold cards for these special moments but now I use them as much as possible each turn. By frequent scouting the prepared cards gets back quickly anyway. I have still to see how this strategy works but after two journeys its getting better.

There's no way you should have that much damage or feat on the first turn, and especially not just from some goblin scouts (and the darkness from the cave).
You do know that you begin each adventure / scenario with:
No Damage/Fear at all (fully healed) No Inspiration A single Weakeness card in your deck It sounds like maybe you are carrying over the Fear/Damage from the previous adventure?  I don't think it would be possible to suffer that much Fear just from 3 goblin scouts and the Darkness step, even if you provoked the goblin scouts twice AND were attacked by them in the Shadow phase.

We are experienced boardgamers having played S&S, Mage Knight, Descent and other similar games.

So we run a 2 player game through all the missions of the game on hard mode.

Starting the campaign seemed to be challenging as it required good planning and preparing. As the story went on we noticed our heroes and decks became more powerful, as they were supposed to, but sadly we found the game difficulty scaling problematic. As we were able to literally demolish a troll, a boss and his guardian (will not refer for spoil reasons) - Only Aragorn with 2 attacks killed both of them and Beravor alone killed the troll. 

So a nightmare mode from FFG tweaking some things would be welcome.

We would like to see stronger enemies and weakness cards to actually have a negative effect that triggers when you draw the card - and be able to negate it somehow (maybe with insp tokens). 

I want to hear your thoughts.

Each enemies Are handled in groups of one of more figurines. So in this case Yes. They should have moved together. So when app informs you to put one to x figurines to one area, keep that Group separate to other groups, so you know that those figurines works together. One reason app tell you to put a banner to some groups so that you will know what Group is what when there Are forexample several groups of ruffians.
darknes is small armoured head figurine is some indoor/cave map tiles. It is Also possible that whole Gaming area is in darkness, then you see it by having the same helmed head in the top left corner of the app. It is Also possible that the app instruct you to put some darkness tokens (helmed head token) to some areas. Those areas with that token Are considered to be in darkness.
 

I really wanted to like Bilbo but I had a bad experience with him in the 1st chapter whereby the first threat event resulted in him making a last stand (second turn I believe!) and he failed it. Being the only character with a 3 damage limit is pretty rough. 
 
Compared to using Bilbo, Legolas is a breeze, but maybe I'm just not used to playing Bilbo. In my two games right now I've got a team of Elena (burglar/ hunter) and Aragorn (pathfinder/ Guardian) who beat the first 8 chapters. And a team of Legolas (hunter / pathfinder) and Aragorn (musician) who beat the first 4 and barely lost chapter 5 due to Aragorn dying.
 
Our reflection from the loss is multifaceted:
1) should've saved the inspiration for the last stand test rather than trying to avoid one at all costs. The damage last stand was ironically triggered by a fear card from the darkness step (we had survived the combat just barely )
2) we could've waited with some of our actions before charging ahead. Our threat meter was close to 50 by the time we found the well leading to the cave with the lake. But our inspiration was nigh depleted, and we needed better prepped cards too. Our rationale was to try to minimize darkness checks but I think we should've waited. 
3) Our musician had no healing songs and we had no way of healing damage (or guarding) from earlier encounters. The harp heals facedown fear. Legolas could heal with Immortal, but not Aragorn
4) the weakness of the Aragorn / Legolas team is spirit. We both risk taking lots of fear in darkness steps, and although the forlindon harp helps heal the fear, some fear cards spill over into damage. The result is we need more damage prevention or healing overall, because of our team composition.
 
So although we lost, I'm not too upset. Losses teach you more about the game than wins do. If you're not learning from your losses, than something's wrong.

Farmer Maggot is a monster if you Mess up with his mushrooms and crops!
🤣

Farmer Maggot is a monster if you Mess up with his mushrooms and crops!
🤣

Farmer Maggot.