Play solo or cooperate with up to two friends. Choose a class and starting equipment. Each adventurer begins with an 8-card deck, a 5-card hand, 9 health, and no coins. Complete three dungeons and defeat a different shared boss in each to win. Your cards, coins, health and curses carry forward.
Your starting hand contains exactly 5 cards and is ready for the first encounter. Do not draw again when entering that first encounter. Every later normal encounter begins with 2 draws for each conscious adventurer. After any draw, choose excess cards to discard until you have at most 5, then confirm. Card effects can add draws or skip the next normal draw.
Keep unused cards between encounters. Played cards are not automatically replaced. When your draw pile runs out, shuffle your discard pile into it and continue drawing. If both piles are empty, stop drawing. Repeat doors, mimics, Slowing Hall additions, and Ambush reinforcements continue the same encounter group without another draw. Taking an unknown route also gives no extra draw. Ambush adds one goblin per player plus one extra, fought in series. Resolve each successful goblin reward immediately. No cards may be drawn when entering Ambush or during its goblin fights.
When told to discard a card, choose an eligible card in hand and confirm. If a penalty asks for more than you have, choose all eligible cards. Closing a required choice leaves it pending and play waits for confirmation. Powers that discard themselves use that named card. Dodge explicitly discards itself automatically from your uncommitted hand to prevent one damage instance.
Solo players choose an uncovered green encounter between rounds. Multiplayer parties vote for 30 seconds. The most votes wins, with a random choice among tied top routes. Change your vote before the deadline. If nobody votes, the next vote restarts the clock. Remove all encounters overlapping a position to uncover it. Revealing a covered encounter gives information but does not unlock it. Clear a top-row encounter to unlock the separate boss fight. Resolve pending extras and market visits, then use Face the boss. The cleared encounter leaves the map. Eight layouts include overlapping stacks, branching lanes and winding routes. On connected maps, clearing any linked lower card opens the next card. Open face-down cards remain unknown until chosen. Known face-up cards still need their route unlocked. Layouts and bosses do not repeat within a run.
During an encounter, Dungeon map opens a slide-out panel. Between encounters, the map fills the encounter area while the party chooses or votes for its next route.
Select cards and a skill: Strength, Finesse, Radiant, or Arcane. Each approach shows its own success reward. Roll commits your cards and resolves the attempt in one action. The chosen approach can award a card into your discard pile, coins, 1 health, a revealed hidden encounter, or 1 card drawn into your hand. If none remain hidden, a reveal earns 2 coins. Read the displayed reward before choosing. Failure applies the listed penalty.
Standard dice use d6 with advantage, d8 normally, and d10 with disadvantage. Base success is 1–3. The classic variant uses d4/d6/d8 with base success 1. Each matching skill icon adds 1 to the success range. The roll button includes card bonuses and penalties in its final die and survival range. Roll low to succeed.
To get help, offer your attack before rolling. One teammate can support with one card that matches your chosen skill. Glass sphere allows that teammate to play more support cards. Attacking and supporting cards are spent when the encounter resolves. You can also accept failure without playing cards or rolling, but its penalties still apply.
Draw rewards are available on Bear Trap (Radiant), Collapsing Floor (Radiant), Cultist (Finesse), Dart Trap (Strength), Finesse Chest (Arcane), Minion (Arcane), and Slowing Hall (Radiant). These draw from your own deck after played cards are spent.
During planning, an available power button explains its effect and asks you to confirm its cost. Clear a card from its plan before using its power. Ordinary play uses its printed skill icons. A power that destroys itself is destroyed when activated. A card that says to destroy it after play is destroyed on either success or failure.
Before committing cards, you may reveal a hidden encounter on the same floor and face it immediately, even if covered. You must resolve that encounter. You cannot switch again or bribe it. The encounter you leave stays in the dungeon. No new cards are drawn. Some enemies otherwise allow the displayed coin bribe before commitment. Paying clears that encounter without its reward or failure penalty.
Merchant events open a market with 5 shared offers. Click a shop card to buy it into your discard pile. Click one of your sellable cards to choose and confirm a sale at one-third of its cost, rounded up (minimum 1 coin). You can sell from hand, draw, discard, or kept cards. Basic skill cards, Whiff, and curses cannot be sold. Keep at least one usable card.
Cards that add 3 or more to one skill, including conditional bonuses, are rare and cost at least 18 coins. Each market has a 1% chance to offer one. Rest restores 2 health and ends your visit. You can sell before resting, but buying anything prevents rest for that visit, even if you sell it back. Use Skip purchasing or Finish shopping to leave. Each conscious adventurer finishes before the party continues. Stock is shared and does not refresh during the visit. Clear an entire floor for one bonus market after pending extra encounters. Markets give no extra draw.
New attacks, spells and familiars are reward cards. Find them in markets, through Diamond, and as victory loot: each conscious adventurer gains one new reward card after each boss. Commit them normally; their printed success effects apply automatically to the card’s owner, including supporting cards. During boss fights these success rewards wait until victory. Draw effects never draw during an Ambush. Fireball is a rare, expensive reward destroyed after use.
After the first and second bosses, resolve any hand-limit choice and recover before the host selects Enter dungeon 2 or Enter dungeon 3. A fresh map and a different boss await. Decks, unused hands, coins, wounds, equipment and curses persist. Boss damage and powers reset. You draw two at the first encounter of later dungeons, just like other later encounters.
At 0 health you become unconscious. You stop drawing and do not lose cards automatically. Between rounds, a conscious teammate can confirm destroying the next 2 cards from their own draw/discard piles to restore 1 of your health. These are drawn in pile order and permanently removed. Other healing can also restore your health.
Each conscious player attacks the boss once per round in player order. Each successful attack removes 1 segment from the boss health bar. The bar shows how many successes remain to win. Approach rewards accumulate for the attacking adventurer and are only applied after the boss is defeated. Every boss round starts with the normal 2-card draw, including the first boss round, unless an explicit effect reduces or skips it. The Elder Dragon’s optional whole-hand discard and redraw costs 1 damage and can be used once per round. Defeat the third boss to win. If everyone is unconscious, or any adventurer loses every usable card, the expedition is lost.
Bear Trap discards 1 chosen card and skips your next normal draw. Fire-breathing statues discard 2 chosen cards. Harpy destroys 1 chosen Equipment card in hand. Rust Monster and Spinning Blades explicitly destroy played cards. Mage and Skeleton Mage damage scales with the stated icons to a maximum of 4. These destruction and discard penalties are separate from damage.
Each boss announces a power that triggers once after the party’s attacks, whether those attacks succeed or fail. The powers rotate each round. A killing blow ends the fight before the power triggers. Dragon powers scatter cards and scorch supplies. The Lich drains draws and spreads grave dust. The Demon tempts and terrifies. The Beholder cycles through eye rays. Powers may force chosen discards, limit the next starting draw, add clutter or change next round’s rolls. Roll penalties name their source above the main action bar and expire after that round.
Clutter is a zero-skill card placed on top of your draw pile. It occupies a normal draw and counts toward your hand limit. It can be discarded normally or played and destroyed after that roll. Clutter cannot be sold. A Beholder failure may separately skip your next starting draw. Required discards use the normal choice and confirmation.
The library includes five curses, but normal expeditions do not currently award them. If owned, Decay adds a separate chosen discard when you lose health. Madness forces the top draw-pile card into the first encounter of each normal round. Deja Vu repeats the first resolved Enemy or Trap next normal round. Unlucky Charm adds 1 to die results. Irrational Fear prevents advantage.
These are the current online rules. The original rules draft ↗ and original card workbook ↗ are historical references and may differ from this version.