The nice thing is that you'll likely be taking both Contaminated and Airborne anyway on your path to Outbreak. 😎

Rugal's tips are great. Just to emphasize them a little more, I believe Airborne is the primary engine of the entire Infector deck. The fact that it can transform every single monster attack into something useful regardless of how far away the target is, or how much armor they have, or how poor your luck is on dice rolls cannot be overstated. It is kind of broken. Even when you aren't building around it, it makes rolling the dreaded X never a waste. If Airborne is the engine, Outbreak is the big payoff. On any map where you can set up a Ranged monster group to safely spend a few turns within line of sight on the heroes, but well out of reach, it is trivial to get a large number of Infector tokens on them. This is even easier on quests with more than one encounter, as Infection tokens carry over. If you focus on a hero with low Might, and follow up with an Onslaught empowered by a card like Befuddle to ensure the skill test fails, you can basically one-shot any Hero you want, when you want, on THEIR turn, which is the worst possible time for them, because they lose their turn completely even if they're revived by another hero right after. This is a very nice answer to something like an Act 1 otherwise unkillable Mage like Ravaella wearing Runeplate. The Magus deck and other deck manipulation cards like Upgrade and Refresh will help you ensure you always have your Airborne out as soon as possible. Dark Host and the other Infector cards are the icing on the cake, but focus on Airborne and Outbreak, imo.

Yeah. I don't think you're ever supposed to disallow a spawn because of insufficient room unless it explicitly says so. Just spawn as close as possible.

I've always allowed them to spawn, following the same basic rules as other monster spawns. From the Shadow Rune Quest Guide:

[EDIT] Since I had a lot of fun making the original patch to create what I felt was a more balanced version of the Lost Legends hybrid classes, I decided to look at all the hero classes in Descent and give them a design pass. I'd like to inject some new life into my game sessions and see some more variety in skills and classes chosen. Perhaps you will you find some of these ideas interesting and worth considering in your games! I had a few goals with this: 1) I looked at any skill card that I have almost never seen taken in the 6 years I've played Descent 2nd edition, and asked myself, "What would need to change for me to consider taking this?". Quite a lot of skills got improved as a result, especially in classes that are comparatively weak (e.g. Geomancer, Spiritspeaker, Berserker) 2) I looked at any classes which had received errata rulings and added them directly to the cards (e.g. Plague Cloud). I also updated the wording of certain cards to be more consistent or add clarity. (e.g. Ghost Armor) 3) A handful of cards got toned down due to being too strong compared to other cards within the class and within the game in general (e.g. Sleight of Hand, Advance, Unity). Also many cards which had no limits on tokens or stat buffs, or had no range limits now have limits applied to prevent abuse. In normal play conditions these limits are rarely reached, so their impact should be minor. 4) Some cards were completely remade (e.g. most of the Crusader class) due to the original skills being really imbalanced and/or boring. 5) A lot of cards that operated 'before dice are rolled' got promoted to 'after dice are rolled'. These skills just felt really bad to take compared to their reliable counterparts, so they just got ignored. Thankfully cards like Bestial Rage set a precedent for things like post-roll dice being added to an attack to the game. I think these cards are far more attractive now and those skills feel more impactful. 6) Many 3xp skills got buffed so that some hybrids don't totally outclass the pure versions of the classes. (e.g. 3xp Apothecary skills were terrible, so Apothecary was always hybridized to Watchman). 7) Many skills got their attribute test removed. This makes certain skills that were unsuitable for many hybrids to take due to attribute distribution more viable, unlocking more builds. Most of these skills were pretty bad when they could fail (e.g. Cripple, Caltrops) Some cards had changes that were quite subtle. Can you catch them? (Note: All playtesting I've done with these has been using Imperial Assault line of sight rules. Original Descent line of sight rules should still work okay though) I brushed up on my Photoshop skills and used the invaluable templates at BoardGameGeek to create professional versions of all these cards! I also included a new version of what I consider the weakest and most boring Condition in the game, Cursed. This condition was almost never applied by the Overlord because so many classes can outright ignore it. The new version is nastier and can't be ignored. Maybe Goblin Witchers get played now? Here is a link to the new cards: https://www.dropbox.com/s/26v7eo5m6y5qhm3/CharmyBalancePatch.pdf?dl=0 Feedback on these new versions of the cards is welcome, as are additional pairs of eyes to catch any typos. Below is the link to the source Google doc, which includes hero rebalance, monster rebalance, and some proposed game rule modifications. https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ivMZ4ZGe2XgcG4BpZRWMBgKjC4j78HPfGZXKSN8U8s/edit?usp=sharing If you'd like a link to the MakePlayingCards project to print your own professional-looking copy of the cards that are suitable for play, just send me a DM and I'll give you the link.