Leviathan Wilds has a special place in my heart!  It actually had to go up on Kickstarter twice to get funded originally!   It did well the second time it went up, but it was touch-and-go whether this would do well enough to fund on Kickstarter!  Luckily, it did!  Leviathan Wilds (the base game) was on my #3 on  Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2024 and was #3 on my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2024!

When the Deepvale Expansion went up on Gamefound, I was pretty much all in!  Leviathan Wilds has gone over great in my groups, both with gamers and people who don’t usually like cooperative games!  See our original review here!

Let’s take a look!

What Came In The Mail?

The Kickstarter actually came with three major pieces; deluxe components, upgrade kit, and the expansion itself. See above.

Deluxe Components Pack

The Deluxe Components pack upgrades a lot of cardboard tokens in the game and a few other things.

What’s in here? See above!

The Rage Track upgrade is now dual-layered.  This pack may be worth it just for this?

There’s a metal coin for the Gambler.

This is the silliest upgrade; the marker tokens are now CLEAR red plastic instead of OPAQUE red plastic!

The tokens go go from cardboard to acrylic.  I love acrylic tokens, but can you tell the difference between the two above?

Similarly for the mushrooms: acrylic tokens are nicer, but it’s hard to really tell the difference.

The upgrade I didn’t expect: the dice! I thought the original dice (left) were great, but apparently they don’t work for color-blind people, so the dice on the right are easier to distinguish!

Oh ya, and a nice wooden first player token (Sage the turtle!)

Do you need the Deluxe Components?  Not really!  They are great, and I am glad I have them (partly because I like the game so much), but you would do just fine with the base components.  Decide for yourself.

Upgrade Kit

What’s in the upgrade Kit envelope?    Basically, errata and upgraded cards for upgrading from v1.0 of the original game to v1.1!

Interestingly, the Gambler token (wood) is also included!  So, you can choose the wood Gambler token (here) or the Metal one (from the Deluxe Components)!  So silly to have both.

There is an upgraded rulebook:  It generally looked the same, but it had an extra 4 pages:

One pack of cards just replaces some cards that needed updating/fixing.  See the “new” card has the left up-arrow in the lower left corner.

I am actually chose to keep both rulebooks, but labelling the v1.0 rulebook clearly! See above!

How many times have you wished you had another rulebook while playing?  Now I do!

The upgrade kit is what you expect: a slightly better rulebook, a few replacement cards, and yet another Gambler token.

Deepvale

THIS is the cool thing!  It’s just more content for Leviathan Wilds!

There’s a new book with 7 new Leviathans!

The Leviathans here are maybe even a little creepier than the original Leviathans!  See all 7 above!

There are, of course, new Rage decks for each Leviathan.

There’s a new Climber: Edge.  (I joked there should also be a Bono Climber as well.  No one laughed.)

There’s also a new class called Harvester.

The Harvester has a die that keeps track of “when can I get the double-sided action card”.  This is a fairly new, if not particularly novel, new class.

Basically, this Harvester card sits on the side, and you have to “work” to get it, but it’s pretty cool!

This is a just a “more stuff” expansion! New Climber! New Class!  And 7 New Leviathans!

Solo Play

Like before (see our original review of Leviathan Wilds), I still prefer playing Leviathan Wild’s solo mode by playing two-handed: ie. play two climbers and alternate between them.

The new first player token makes it a lot easier to keep track of whose turn it is when playing solo!

The very first Leviathan doesn’t seem that hard, but I barely lost on the last turn! I couldn’t get out with the key!

Basically, the opening Leviathan is already a little harder (Level 2 difficulty), as you have to take care of all the crystals AND get out with the key!

I lost with one turn remaining …I couldn’t get out of the cave even though I removed all the crystals!

Still, good times.  This is a great game and I feel like I had to be smart about using my resources and knowing when to push forward.  I am still learning how Edge works, but he’s a great addition.  This is still Leviathan Wilds solo.

Cooperative Play

I told my friend Teresa that I barely lost the solo game, so we had to play it again!

And unfortunately, we still lost playing 2-Player!

The first Leviathan is a level 2 difficulty, and it’s the easiest of the bunch!  Every other Leviathan is a difficulty 3 or 4!  Oof!  These Leviathans are harder!

Nothing broke.  The game still works famously cooperatively. This felt like the same Leviathan Wilds I played so many times with my friends at Dice Tower West, RichieCon 2024, and game nights!

Choice: One Box or Sleeves?

You have a choice to make with this new expansion!  You can either:

1. Put all the new content into the original box
   or
2. Sleeve your cards, but have to use both the original box AND the expansion box!

I was tempted to put all the new cards and items into the original box, but once I sleeved the game, there’s NO WAY the expansion can fit in original box.

Yes, it was kind of annoying.

So, if you sleeve (and you want to keep the original inserts), you need both boxes.

Oh well.  I chose to sleeve the game because RichieCon 2025 is coming up, and Leviathan Wilds was such a hit at RichieCon 2024, I thought I’d make sure it stayed in good shape! So, I have to have both boxes.  I don’t think anyone will play it so much at RichieCon 2025 that I’ll need both boxes, so I’ll just take the original box.

Conclusion

If you like Leviathan Wilds, this is just more stuff for it!  Although the Deluxe Component Pack is cool, you probably don’t need it unless you love the game like I do!  And the Upgrade Kit is “nice to have” (fixing some cards) but again you don’t really need it that much.

The new content from the Deepvale Expansion is just that: new content to extend the life of the game!  Again, it’s not strictly necessary (only one new climber and one new class), but having seven new Leviathans will really extend this game for you.

The new expansion, although not really that necessary, is still nice to have.  There’s plenty of content in the original game and … you probably can be happy with all the stuff in the original game.  Still, I am glad I got this.  Solid expansion: more stuff I like.