Yeah, so additional details.

First, yeah, new company. Nobody is especially wise! There are a couple 3s.

Second: determining whether a region is “blighted” is so very loose. It’s this close to “GM decides,” and there’s no guidance as to what fictional considerations to make. There’s a table that lets you roll dice but that’s also weird: are The Narrows blighted now but maybe not later? Even on the same path? So instead I just assume everything is blighted, and they make their rolls per the schedule determined by the map.

If I had it to do over again I’d probably do it the same way, tbqh. There’s some merit to throwing the “fuck it, blight everywhere” switch in 2951 per events in Darkening (spoilers!), but that’s when I’ll be switching on the Eye mechanism per Rivendell.

I think there’s something to be said for pushing the system to its limit, as a player. Maybe even let the first company burn to the ground as these poor naive saps play in the woods looking for treasure. This assumes the players are incentivized to preserve their next characters, which you know…not all of them are, or will be. I’m not persuaded that that’s a conscious creative decision every time.

Anyway, yeah, it feels like it’s playing out correctly. It’s brutal! But my Middle Earth is already a pretty rough neighborhood. There haven’t been any bad conflicts of expectations, at least on my side of the table. One advantage of not really knowing the Tolkien!