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. Open a route through the dungeon and defeat the shared boss to win.
Every normal encounter begins with one draw for each conscious adventurer. This includes the first encounter: your starting hand of 5 becomes 6, so choose 1 card to discard and confirm. After any draw, choose excess cards to discard until you have at most 5. A card effect can make you draw more or skip a 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.
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. All final-row approaches lead to the same boss.
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, or a revealed hidden encounter. 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.
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 its listed value. 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.
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.
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 deals 1 boss damage and applies the displayed approach benefit. The Elder Dragon uses the standard one-card draw. Its optional whole-hand discard and redraw costs 1 damage and can be used once per round. Defeat the 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.
Lich, Demon, and Beholder discard penalties use the same choice and confirmation. A Beholder draw penalty skips your next normal draw. Read each boss’s special rule before attacking.
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.