While playing quest 5 of the base set, we came across a small problem. Consider the following situation: With 4 heroes in the game, 2 heroes are in the dungeon and 2 heroes are in town. Now, one of the two heroes in the dungeon is opening the door to area 4. Thus, following the instructions of Area 4, the overlord player removes the glyph token and the stair token in Area 3. What happens if the overlord is able to kill the 2 heroes in the dungeon? Fact is that the comments to Area 4 state "If all of the heroes are killed here, the overlord player is victorious." However, the overlord player cannot kill all the heroes in Area 4 as 2 heroes are eliminated from the game and the other two heroes are stuck in town or in Area 1 or 2 and cannot finish the quest anymore as they do not have a way into Area 4. Of course, one can argue that the heroes will lose sooner or later as the overlord is simply taking his turns and his deck of cards will run out several times to reduce the number of conquest tokens to 0. This, however, does seem rather anti-climatic.

I remember some advice that all "missing" players are to be placed in Area 3 where the glyph was, yet I cannot recall whether that was an official clarification.

But the situation described will only happen in the very first attempt on that quest, since the hero players will know what´s going on in the next try.

Thanks for your answer.

To be honest, I just forgot about the removal of the glyph thing as I only remembered the special rules for being killed in Area 4. Nevertheless, there can still be situations in later games that would make things more complicated for the heroes just because of the removal of the glyph. Especially as the removal of the glyph and the stair is not necessary.