Many of you are aware that I am a long time player of D2e. I have all expansions, and have played more than 4 dozen campaigns, and hundreds of quests/encounters.

My group has also played the 3 co-ops and RTL extensively.

So, we are well aware and familiar with all of the intricacies, the rules, various key interactions, etc.

Today, we played our first game of RTL - The Delve. Since the rules for this game consists of basically 3/4 of a page in the RTL rules PDF, we have run into some issues.

I am really looking for people who have actually played the Delve and what rulings they have made. Further, I really want citations made as to where you acquired these answers. I am really not interested in hearsay, how your neighbor plays, what Billy Joe Bob did in the last game, etc. If you have actual rulings from FFG personnel via e-mail, I would love those. If you can provide a specific citation to a rules manual, all the better - I am old and despite reading the 3/4 of a page multiple times, I may have missed things.

Assume that we are playing the game in Hard mode.

Basically, all of the questions below relate to the change over between one quest and another. In other words, what actually occurs between the time you exit one quest via the portal, and before you started another quest. Much of it deals with what is persistent across the quests, and what is reset.

1. Do the heroes get all of their fatigue back? If not, when, if ever?
2. Do the heroes get all of their health back? If not, when if ever?
3. Do the heroes get their heroic feats back? If not, when, if ever?
4. Do skill cards that are exhausted when going through the portal get reset?
5. Do familiars that are still on the board before entering the portal, get placed for free at the start of the next quest (i.e. do they stay in play)?
6. Do the heroes keep all conditions or are they discarded?
7. Do the heroes keep all tokens such as Valor, Insight, etc. or are they discarded?
8. Do the heroes keep all search cards or are they discarded with the deck refreshed?

Thank you in advance for any guidance you can provide to the above questions, and where you found the information.

The short version without digging up references is you do only what you are told. In other words leave everything as is unless instructed otherwise, it is one quest from rules perspective. Note that you are required to remove everything from the map, so you don't get to replace for free.

Long version here:

Do the heroes get all of their fatigue back? If not, when, if ever?

Do the heroes get all of their health back? If not, when if ever?

Do the heroes get their heroic feats back? If not, when, if ever?

Do the heroes keep all conditions or are they discarded?

• We can safely assume that fatigue, health, heroic feat and conditions are not restored/discarded in the upgrade stage of The Delve.
• Evidence 1: In normal mode, the app explicitly tells the player to restore 3 HP and remove one condition between stages, which would be pointless if all is restores automatically.
• Evidence 2: When transitioning into Act II, players are explicitly told to flip their Hero sheets.

Do skill cards that are exhausted when going through the portal get reset?

• According to the rules, exhausted cards refresh only at the beginning of each players turn. They do not automatically refresh between stages (or encounters; core rules p.18). Although not explicitly stated in the core rule book, we can assume that Skills refresh after a quest, as players are instructed to perform the General Setup step (core rules p. 20).

Do familiars that are still on the board before entering the portal, get placed for free at the start of the next quest (i.e. do they stay in play)?

• No, as RtL rules state "Nothing remains on the map in between stages, including familiars and special class tokens. The only exception relates to Challara, whose familiar, “Brightblaze,” is placed adjacent to her when the heroes are placed on the map of a new stage." (RtL, p13)

Do the heroes keep all tokens such as Valor, Insight, etc. or are they discarded?

• Although not explicitly stated in the rules, we can assume that all class tokens stay on Hero sheets. They represent components with are not "on the map" and therefore should not be discarded. This includes song tokens of the Bard class.

Do the heroes keep all search cards or are they discarded with the deck refreshed?

• Search cards remain as they are until transition to Act II: "Additionally, the heroes return facedown Search cards to the deck and shuffle it." (RtL, p13)

Sadgit and Bruce have got it. The negative answers are implicit since they aren't explicitly stated as positives. Otherwise, it's standard RtL rules with Delve page exceptions.

@Sadgit and others ...

Thank you for the input. We had not ever started or played Normal mode, so I obviously never saw the difference of what the app tells you in comparison to the lack of same for Hard mode.

I know this may just come across as whinging , but would it really have been all that hard for FFG to generate a more complete rule set for The Delve within the RTL PDF? It seems to me that once again, just like the FAQ, they take the easiest way out and show a complete lack of effort when it comes to their rules.

It is all fine and good for the app to be the guiding light when it comes to how you play the game, but AT THE VERY LEAST they should state the same within the PDF.

I find it funny that they actually spent the time to generate a PDF for RTL, but not for the Delve, especially since the Delve actually cost money, and RTL was free (at least for the 1st 2 campaigns).

One could argue that they could have chosen to have the app display all of the rules for RTL as well, but they didn't. I just ask that they be consistent. It really wouldn't have taken that much effort to create a few more pages of rules for the Delve, so you wouldn't even have the chance to misunderstand the process.

This usually occurs because the people who designed the game tend to make up the playtester pool, and they assume a level of knowledge that the real world simply won't have. In other words, since they know all of the rules in their head, they never take a moment and realize that others won't. This is why the game should be play tested by people that have never seen it (even if they do have a background in D2e in general), so assumptions aren't made. That type of testing would have found all of these issues in about 2 hours of play.

Anyway, I appreciate the help of the community. Thanks.