I'm having a little confusion from reading through the manual about two things:

1. When a chest is opened and items are distributed, if a player would rather have the coin instead of the item, how much coin is given? The manual notes that it is the 'value' of the card, but is this the resale value of the card (1/2 its store cost) or is it its store cost (250 for silver chest or 500 for silver chest)?
2. Also under the 'Treasure' section in the manual, the second bullet notes that a hero may pick up a treasure token or marker in the space he/she is occupying without movement cost. Chest markers are listed under the 'Treasure' section, but in the 'Movement Actions' section of the manual, it indicates that it costs 2 movement to open a chest. Does this mean there is some exception to the 2 movement cost to opening a treasure?

1. That option was actually removed in errata. Under the revised rules, the hero always gets the treasure card. If he doesn't like it, he has to carry it back to town and sell it using the normal rules.

2. Coin piles, potions, and rune keys can be picked up for free. Chests cost 2 MP to open, and cannot be opened if there is another figure in the same space.

Thanks!

One more... if heroes find a tunnel, can monsters follow them through?

Tunnel? What do you mean by "tunnel"?

Monsters can make most of the same movements as heroes, including opening and closing doors. They are forbidden to open doors leading to unrevealed areas, but a hero closing the door behind himself generally isn't safe. Only named monsters may open or close rune-locked doors, though they may do so whether heroes have the appropriate runekey or not (as long as they don't lead to an unrevealed area). Only 1x1 monsters can use staircases.

By tunnel I mean in a game we were playing this weekend there was a question mark in the 2nd section described as having a cool breeze coming from it. If one of our ranged characters went to this question mark and did some type of extended or something action (forget the term) then we could have used that space as a type of tunnel to one of two spots in the next section (instead of using a door). My question is, if we chose this to do this and use the tunnel instead of the door, could the monsters in our immediate vicinity follow us through the tunnel? The OL said they could, but I think he was guessing (and possibly wrong).

It sounds like you're probably talking about the first quest from Altar of Despair , "The Thing in the Pit". The quest guide says that when the entrance is discovered, the overlord should "remove the encounter marker from the map and replace it with a red staircase marker". Unless the quest guide states otherwise (and it doesn't seem to), after that it should follow all the normal rules for staircases, which means 1x1 monsters could move through in either direction, but larger monsters could not.

The flavor text in the quest guide also describes the passage as "a hidden staircase", not a "tunnel".

If you're playing a different quest, though, then you'll have to carefully read the rules for that quest.

You're right, that's the one we were on. Thanks for the input/corrections!!