Over the weekend, my gaming group played FoD, and I believe we were playing a rule quite incorrectly. When in a city, if a player doesn't want to heal or trade, the only other choice is to resupply. The rules say the player can take an event and/or (depending on city size) another event or item. When we were playing, we were always picking up another event card (even when the hunters were fully stocked, and didn't need further bonuses). Rereading the rules carefully, it seems as if we were playing incorrectly-- that you could, if you wanted to, move to a new town and do nothing at all, thus depriving Dracula of potentially another of his event cards.

Yes, it is not compulsory. One of the tricks to the game is not to draw events if you don't think you need them, as you don't want to give extra cards to Dracula.

Once you've been in the situation of closing in on a cornered Dracula and then one of your hunters, with 3 excellent event cards already, decides to draw another event because he can , and ends up handing Dracula the dreaded Evasion card .. then you'll recognise the importance to this little piece of strategy.