Just bought the game yesterday and I've thought about some things that the rules aren't really clear on.

Let's say you move your investigator to the general store and opt to buy an item. You draw the cards, but you can't afford any of them, or you don't want to buy any of them, must you then face an encounter since you didn't buy anything?

Thank you.

Got another one for you.

If you draw a mythos card that would open a gate to a sealed or closed location, you don't place a new gate and a monster there, but you must do the other effects of the card and do monster movement?

One more.

Do you grab clue tokens from locations at the end of the movement phase? Before a gate can open there.

Rexor_80 said:

It's answered in the following FAQ (emphasys mine):

Q: Why wouldn’t investigators just camp out at the Curiositie Shoppe and buy the four elder signs?
A: If an investigator shops at the Curiositie Shoppe or General Store, the investigator must purchase one of the three items drawn if he or she has enough money to do so. The other two items drawn are discarded to the bottom of the deck. This makes it significantly harder to “browse” the Unique Item deck looking for elder signs.

Please, also remember this one here:

Q: How exactly do location special abilities work?
A: The investigator may use the printed action on a location rather than draw an encounter card for that location during the Arkham Encounters Phase. When he does so, he must be able to meet the requirements ( have at least $1 to shop with , or have Clue tokens, gates trophies, or monster trophies to spend, etc.). In other words, players may not use the special ability of a location if they cannot actually resolve it.

Rexor_80 said:

As described in the rules (pag. 9, second column), every Mythos card to be resolved requires 4 steps. So, step 1: opening gate. Search the paragraph "location has elder sign" for sealed locations. If a location is closed (I guess you're not referring to a location that once had a gate and now it has not, but to truly closed locations, by effect of Mythos cards), the gate still appears. A gate replaces a location, so no probs if you have it closed for some reason.

Then you proceed with steps 2 to 4 of the Mythos card resolution

Rexor_80 said:

As described on pag 8 of the rules, under "Picking up clues".

Rexor, sorry if this could sound rude - I hope not, it's not my intention, but may I suggest you to give the rulebook another read? You're asking really basic things. It's not a problem for me (or other forumites) to answer you, but it would probably less confusing for you if you go through the rules once more!

The last one was worded badly, your reference to manual page #8 helped me find the answer. Thank you times three, Julia! Think I have everything down for a full playthrough now. For now, it's me and my brother, but we'll have four guys playing this weekend.

Rexor_80 said:

Have a nice time with you brother and your friends :-) Arkham is a great, bonding experience! And welcome to the Carnival!

Rexor_80 said:

an old woman looks at you from behind the counter and says "you have no idea my friend... no idea...". The world spins around you... Loose 3 sanity - you have just entered AH!

If you have enougn money, can you be buy more than one spell or item per visit to a shop per turn?

In a word, no. All of the shops' abilities say that you must purchase one and discard the others. So even if you're sitting on a small fortune and you pull three Elder Signs, you can only buy one.

Julia said:

I always advise newbie to keep reading the rulebook, and have offended on occasion!

The big problem with AH rules is that if you try to find the answer to your question during a game the rulebook is pretty hopeless. What I suggest you do is to read the rules when you are not playing the game. Just keep reading a section at a time and work your way through the rulebook again and again.

I found tiny parts of the rules I was playing wrong over 2 years on from buying the game!

Krawhitham said:

Yeah, this happened to me as well, and I guess most of the people playing Arkham or similar, "evoluted" boardgames had similar issues. The first time you go through the rules, you grasp the mechanics of the game and have a first image of how things may go. Then you start playing and some doubts arise, and often it's not so easy spotting in the rules the proper point.

I usually read the rules, then play some games (3-4), then I read again the rules, trying to check if I did everything in the proper way. And then, after some more games I read them again, to memorize where to find the different things I might get confused on

Same here, there's always something new to learn.

I also find it very useful to read other peoples questions (and of course answers to them) on the forum. Somethings may seem clear but this is Arkham after all.