Win Condition unattainable

By michaelh1142, in Discover: Lands Unknown

We just had a game of 4 player Discover Lands Unknown. It was the island map scenario 1 .

A specific item is required to advance through the game, however it appears that there isn't a mechanism to obtain that item. Maybe we didn't find it yet, but we have already investigated all the landmarks on the board. I found the Exploration card number that is required, but there doesn't seem to be a means to draw it.

We ran through the game for 5 hours, which included character that can respawn resources and it never came up. The feature tokens didn't have the number needed, either. We ended up giving up on the game as it was 1AM and there was no way to win.

Am I missing a piece or am I just confused/not handling things correctly?

As a side question... what is the correct process for gathering features, and respawning them... Should we:

1. After gathering and spending the resource, return it to the features pile?

2. After gathering and spending the resource, put the spent resource feature in a discard pile?

When respawning features should they be drawn from all available feature tokens, or drawn from only previously unused tokens? (Some have calls to Exploration cards and it seems like it can make a difference in the game)

I'm being a little vague so not to spoil, I'd be happy to provide more details if requested.

It's possible to acquire items that are not explicitly specified on the board itself. There are two exploration mechanics that you may need to do to acquire the item.

- Some items specify a word that if present in the text of an exploration card you instead may encounter a different exploration card.

- Some items contain an image that if present on an exploration card you instead may encounter a different exploration card.

I'm guessing you're running into one of those situations. As for feature tokens you should be making a discard pile of the used ones until you run out and then you can shuffle them all together and make a new pile.

I second what @kanooshka said. From what I am seeing in forums, many people are missing the keywords that are found in the flavor text. Certain items will have you look for keywords in other cards allowing you to draw a card with the next number higher, allowing the game to progress. People are skipping over the flavor text, missing the keywords, and come to a conclusion that they are missing cards or their game is defective with no way to win.

And again, used feature tokens should go in a discard pile until all have been gathered, then just shuffle and reuse.

Thanks for the replies. I think I'll play it again, solo at some point and see if I can see if I missed something.

What has thrown me off is that the exploration cards have a very clear division between flavor text and mechanical effects, so I may not have been expecting to find actual game elements that impact the game there.

Some things can be extremely easy to gloss over, for instance you have a Flashlight item that says "If you would resolve a card with the word darkness , resolve the card 2 higher instead." And you are resolving event card 50 and darkness shows up on the card anywhere, immediately return that card and take card 52.

These are me making examples and may not be real to the game, mind you.