Clarification regarding a couple of cards and gameplay in general.

[suntood]

Hey all,

We hope you've been enjoying the game. My SO and I had a blast yesterday going through our first playthrough.
We had a couple of questions that we couldn't clarify between ourselves during it, and I was hoping one of you could chip in with your perspective.

Items (or similar description):

1. When a card says "Do this while at the mine," does it mean that you must be on the mountain, or do you need to use at least one action to "Explore the mine"? For example, the item Staircase states, "Discard while at the Mine to descend to the next level." Our perspective would be that one needs to declare they will spend an action in the mine but may choose to use the staircase before or after rolling the dice. For example: "Use 1 action to explore the mine, Roll the dice, Pick your reward, Use item Staircase, Move on with your turn" or "Explore the mine, Use item Staircase, Roll the dice, ..." would both be valid moves. Meanwhile, "I'm going to the mountain to fish on the lake" does not allow the use of the Staircase. (Other items include bombs, energy tonic, etc.)
2. Bombs: We didn't really understand this one. Say you have a Cherry Bomb. You're in the mine (as above) and would like to use it. It triggers "1 Mine grid space". Do you have to roll for it? What about the Mega-Bomb? Would you have to roll three times? What if, between rolls, you fall into a staircase? Do you keep triggering the rest of them? We were so confused; just "Choosing 3 grid spaces" felt like cheating. If it is choosing, can you choose the same one three times in a row, or does it have to be different?
3. Incubator (or Shane's gift) allows you to gain an extra chicken in the coop. Say you already have the coop and two chickens and a duck. You get an Incubator. Is the item useless because the amount of animals is capped? Shane's gift says, "If you have a coop, get a chicken. Otherwise, get an egg." We had a coop but couldn't get extra chickens because there were only two. What happens in that case? We assumed the "Otherwise" and got an egg, but some clarification regarding Coop's size or a maximum of each animal would be nice. We're assuming that you can't have more animals than the animal tiles that come with the game. Found the answer for that here. If there isn't a chicken available, you get a free egg.

   Animals are limited by available animal tokens. But if you can not get any more chickens you can get an egg!

4. Wild bait: "Discard during your turn to take any or all tiles from the Fish Track." Okay, that's probably me being a mathematician and not a native-English speaker. Does the description states, "Discard during your turn to take a single tile or all of them from the Fish Track"? There is another card (which we can't remember right now) that states "Remove any tileS from the Fish Track," which we read as "Choose as many tiles as you want to remove from the Fish Track," so we aren't sure about the first. There are rare situations that we can see this interpretation affecting the game.

Epic items:

1. Return Scepter: "Before taking an action on your turn..." does it mean "Before taking any action on your turn..." or if we're doing action-action, could we do Action-ReturnScepter-Action? We are not sure if this is a "You may rethink your position defined in the planning phase" (in which case it would be useless if you are the starting player), or if this is really an "If you have an action left, you might teleport to any place".
2. Solid Gold Lewis: "Draw 5 villagers and choose any 1 to keep as a friend. Discard the others." Do we have to give the new friend a gift to keep them? If not, are we allowed to? If not, then we don't get hearts from making this new friend... right?

Events:

1. Your Pet Loves You: "If a cat, draw and keep 3 Fish Tiles". Do we draw them from the Fishing Bag? If it happens to be Trash, do we keep drawing until we have 3 Fish, or does the Trash counts towards that? If it is Trash and we're not counting it, do we discard or put it back on the fishing bag? Our point of view is that of the Festival of Ice "Ignore and redraw Trash or Treasure Tiles".
2. The Stardrop Saloon: Same as "Epic items (2)", draw villager and keep as a friend... what about my loooove, me hearts, we get none?

Villagers:

1. Shane: Same as Incubator. Answer in the incubator part.
2. Wizard: ... This was a silly joke.
3. Jas: She allows any player to donate an artifact or mineral to any space in the museum. Does the letter of the artifact/mineral have to match the corresponding letter of the space in the museum?

Profession upgrades:

1. Bomb recipe: Same as Bombs. Do we get to choose which grid space is going to be triggered?

I guess that's all our questions. Let us know what you think, thanks!

 

[niclan7]

Ran through my first game yesterday, happy to chime in a second opinion:
1. Should absolutely be declaring the mine action, not just the region. I think the Rulebook calling that section the Mountain instead of the Mine on page 12 of the rulebook supports that interpretation. Also agree that you can use that item before rolling or anything- kinda any point you wish if you were there in the first place.
2. I agree it's vaguely worded, had to double check it myself on my runthrough. I think the best application would be to choose any tile of your choice, but in the case of the mega bomb, make them separate tiles (i.e, choose 3 different ones.) If it wanted us to choose ones that were specifically adjacent or in a line, kinda like the pattern a bomb makes in the game, I think they could've specified "adjacent" on the card. Sounds really, really strong as written, but is what it is!
3. -
4. It basically says "catch as many fish right now in a single instance" as written, i.e, take whatever you want in one lump sum, then replace them all simultaneously when you finish doing so. Mass fish catching!

epic
1. I interpret it as the latter- before an action, just go anywhere you want, as opposed to having to be limited by just adjacent road spaces. I think having it be useless to the starting player in the alternative scenario is good reason to think this way. Now, the real followup question is, "does this allow for foraging?", and my best guess is no- you can use it to take your action basically in any two squares on the map, ignoring the road pathway, but you don't forage if that's the case.
2. I believe you don't get to give them a gift or anything- this is usually reserved to just the "make a friend" action, and this is written as if it's already resolved the "making the friend" part, i.e the part where you give them stuff and get hearts. I believe it's just to have access to another gift ability without having to go through the process of using the action, giving a resource, and making the friend in the process.
Events
1. On page 3 (the list of components), the "Fish tiles" picture includes trash and treasure, so I'd say don't ignore trash. Additionally, don't ignore treasure! "Draw" would certainly mean randomly from the fishing bag.
2. I think so :C Sounds like no hearts, taking it just as written.
Villager
3. Yes, as always- activating Jas' ability is like taking a free "donate" action without having to dedicate your action/resources/turn to it. This would still follow the same donation rules, which are always "items donated go in their corresponding slots." If you have an item in that slot already (i.e, say you are holding a B artifact but you've already donated a B artifact), you can't get anything productive out of it. Something I just want to clear up in case it's misunderstood, but donating artifacts isn't free!! You have to go to the museum and actually use the action to do it. This is something I accidentally messed up like 3 times yesterday despite knowing better. Jas' ability would save you the trouble of needing to use the action on it, freeing you up to do other things.

Hope this helps!! Not an official or anything, just a huge nerd with a penchant for reading rulebooks.

 

[suntood]

Thank you for chipping in! I loved it.

Your point of view matches exactly what I thought. I'd like to reinforce a couple of things.

2. I agree it's vaguely worded, had to double check it myself on my runthrough. I think the best application would be to choose any tile of your choice, but in the case of the mega bomb, make them separate tiles (i.e, choose 3 different ones.) If it wanted us to choose ones that were specifically adjacent or in a line, kinda like the pattern a bomb makes in the game, I think they could've specified "adjacent" on the card. Sounds really, really strong as written, but is what it is!

Bomb: I agree, and that's how we've been using it. Choose 1-3 grid spaces and explode them. I think I'd like to see it changed to something like you said. Cherry-bomb explodes only one grid space of your choice. Bomb explores the grid space of your choice, and the immediate horizontal(+vertical?) neighbors (ignoring monsters maybe) and Mega-bomb explodes the entire map (ignoring monsters maybe). This could be useful or not, depending on the map you are on.

1. I interpret it as the latter- before an action, just go anywhere you want, as opposed to having to be limited by just adjacent road spaces. I think having it be useless to the starting player in the alternative scenario is good reason to think this way. Now, the real followup question is, "does this allow for foraging?", and my best guess is no- you can use it to take your action basically in any two squares on the map, ignoring the road pathway, but you don't forage if that's the case.

Return Scepter: For the follow-up question, that would be a hard no. Don't allow foraging since you are not moving along the path. I agree with you here too :)

3. Yes, as always- activating Jas' ability is like taking a free "donate" action without having to dedicate your action/resources/turn to it. This would still follow the same donation rules, which are always "items donated go in their corresponding slots." If you have an item in that slot already (i.e, say you are holding a B artifact but you've already donated a B artifact), you can't get anything productive out of it. Something I just want to clear up in case it's misunderstood, but donating artifacts isn't free!! You have to go to the museum and actually use the action to do it. This is something I accidentally messed up like 3 times yesterday despite knowing better. Jas' ability would save you the trouble of needing to use the action on it, freeing you up to do other things.

Jas: lol, yeah. We've been stacking the minerals/artifact to donate all at once, so you don't waste too many actions. Yesterday we couldn't find the ducking Mineral H after the second half of Fall and all winter breaking geodes and looking for minerals, but we had Jas and a Gift event, so we weren't sure.

The only thing that I don't 100% agree with yet is

On page 3 (the list of components), the "Fish tiles" picture includes trash and treasure, so I'd say don't ignore trash. Additionally, don't ignore treasure! "Draw" would certainly mean randomly from the fishing bag.

but that's mostly because of the Festival of Ice card. It has the same description, "draw (?) Fish tiles," but with a parenthesis saying to throw away trash and treasures, so that is throwing me off a bit.

Thank you so much for participating, and I hope you are having as much fun as I am! :)

 

[niclan7]

Having a great time with the game so far, loving it dearly! Much appreciate the second opinion about the scepter.

but that's mostly because of the Festival of Ice card. It has the same description, "draw (?) Fish tiles," but with a parenthesis saying to throw away trash and treasures, so that is throwing me off a bit.
Thank you so much for participating, and I hope you are having as much fun as I am! :)

Regarding this, I think it supports the idea that trash would normally count as fish tiles. Think of the holiday as being just strictly better than the cat thing- the cat can bring you trash from the river (as it is a fish tile), but the festival can only give you the GOOD fish tiles (the ones with actual fish on them). If the trash and treasure weren't "fish tiles", then the festival wouldn't have to specify that they should be redrawn. Rather, since the festival is a larger benefit than the single event, they take the useless fish tiles and discard them to get better fish tiles, whereas the cat can bring you any fish tiles, even if they are trash.