I usually win with 5 or 6 doom, in 18-24 turns.  Played against Shub the other night and it took me 35 turns- just wasn't getting adventures that provided elder signs.  Even so, I won with only 7 doom.  By sheer coincidence (I chose randomly), my solo character was Kate Winthrop, who prevented about 8 or 10 monsters from coming out and many terror results.  Would have been a very different game with any other investigator.

One of the biggest flaws playing the game solo is the ridiculous number of trophies you acquire.  I hope the expansion introduces mythos cards (or some other mechanic) that cause you to lose all of them occasionally.  In another game using Darrell Simmons I won with 40 trophies in hand when I scored the final elder sign (without buying any).  I'm glad they got rid of the ability to buy elder signs in the redesign.

The Black Goat of the Woods is the most feared in my group.

I can't find anything in the rules about it, but that's certainly how we played it last night and it certainly rachets up the difficulty a notch.

If you're finding the game too easy, then it's a good way to tighten the screws, especially if you then apply the results of the midnight card.

You could try drawing and placing two mythos cards next to each other every midnight.  This not only doubles the rate at which mythos cards cause doom tokens, but it makes it so their is a possibility of 2 lingering effects occurring at once.  There can be some pretty nasty combinations.

Having played about a dozen times now, we've lost a couple of the games, with a few wins being veryyyyyy close to raising “he-who-shall-not-be-named”.

As with all random games … the dice (and card) gods will decide! The odds are certainly in our favour, but we've found some games have been won because we forgot the Mythos card effects (i.e. monsters at midnight, no spells, etc), the adventure card terror effects, locked dice, etc … so keeping track of what's going on across the table can sometimes allow you to win.

I doubt if many people would buy the game if it was too hard, so it always a balancing act for game designers to find that … equilibrium … to keep it challenging for us plebs.

I personally luv this game because of the whole package … storyline, cool images, cards, textures, counters, etc … luv it! AND with the expansion … well, let's see if it adds more fear to the unbelievers! … Walts