New player, appreciate all the great help thus far provided by the community. I have a question about "defeating" enemies, and what precisely that means, as I cannot find any glossary elaboration of "defeat" to help disambiguate it.

In Passage Through Mirkwood , if players go the "Don't Leave the Path" 3B route, they need no Progress tokens but must find and defeat the Ungoliant spawn to win the quest. I have... several... questions about what this means.


(1) Does the quest immediately end while on this stage the moment that Ungoliant Spawn is killed? Let's say it's the combat phase and three enemies are poised to attack me. If the Ungoliant has a single hit point left and I resolve it's attack before the other enemies and I defend with a Gondorian Spearman (Core) and deal the spawn one more point of (fatal) damage, defeating it, do we stop there and win and determine our score without having to resolve the other enemies' remaining attacks?

(2) Does discarding an enemy from the staging area count as 'defeating' it? That is, if I played something like The Great Hunt (tFofW) to discard a non-unique enemy in the Staging Area to discard Ungoliant Spawn, would this satisfy the quest's requirement to find and defeat Ungoliant Spawn? Or does "defeating" necessitate that sufficient damage be dealt to the spawn as the means by which it is discarded?

(3) If players find a kill the Ungoliant Spawn in Step 1B of the quest, I assume they have to pull it out of the discard and put it back into play and defeat it again to satisfy 3B's quest requirement of finding and defeating the Ungoliant Spawn?

(4) What happens if Ungoliant Spawn is not in play or able to be put into play? Is the quest an auto-loss? For instance, if players completed the Side Quest Scout Ahead (tWoE) in Step 1B, what happens if they find and put the Ungoliant Spawn into the victory display as part of their reward for completing the side quest? If they end up flipping "Stay on the Path" as their 3B stage of the quest, they have no way to put Ungoliant Spawn back into play to defeat it. I assume this means the players automatically fail the quest? Would this make placing Ungoliant Spawn into a victory display basically a 50/50 coin toss for quest failure pending which 3B flips? Or maybe the text of 3B that forces players to search the Deck/Discard for a spider to put into play also allow the Victory Display to be searched? Or would Ungoliant Spawn be considered already 'defeated' because it's in the victory display?



As always, thanks much!

The more commonly used term you will see is “destroyed,” but if you see “defeated,” I assume those two words to be equivalent. Some specific answers:

1) yes, that is correct.

2) no, being discarded does not count as being defeated. And being defeated does not count as being discarded either (matters for some player card effects).

3) correct

4) the game would just be stuck in limbo until you threat out or otherwise lose. Chalk it up to limited design vision in some of the early scenarios in the game.

Quoting GrandSpleen for everything, just adding that for Number 4 you can take some ideas from the later quest The RedHorn Gate, which had a similar situation with Caradhras and made the players search also the Victory Display for the card, just to avoid similar scenarios (and in later cycles problems like these are completely avoided thanks to having key cards out of play at the start of the game and then put in play at the right time)

To parenthetically add to @GrandSpleen , re: #2… Despite being referenced a few times, I don't believe defeat(ed) is ever formally defined in the Rules Reference/Learn to Play/FAQ—an oversight. However, going back to the original Core rulebook yields the expected definition:

Quote

Any time [an enemy or character] has 0 hit points, it is immediately defeated.

Thus indeed, something like Great Hunt does not qualify for defeating an enemy.