Draw a line

Your delvers stand on the dungeon floor. Relics fill the rest.

Draw a path of three or more matching relics. It may begin anywhere on the board, but it must pass beside one of your delvers — that is the only rule about where a line can go.

Two delvers beside the same line? Tap the one you want first. They stay chosen until you pick another.

The delver dashes

That delver joins the line and dashes to the far end of it. Draw the same line the other way round and they finish somewhere else — where you end up is your choice, not the board’s.

Ward, Vial and the dash all land on the delver who moved. Picking the line is picking who benefits.

What the relics do

Blade — strikes a foe once for every cell of the line beside it, so bending the line around something hits it twice.

Ward — block for the delver who moved. Block is spent before hit points.

Ember — scorch every foe on the floor, wherever they stand. About half a blade each: it wins on a crowd and loses on one.

Vial — mend the delver who moved.

Coin — take gold. Gold is score, and a five-match pays an extra purse.

The hall answers

Surviving foes step toward the nearest delver and strike the weakest one within reach.

While you draw, foes the line will hit are ringed in red; ones only reach or a weapon’s zone catches are ringed in blue.

Every creature is vulnerable to one weapon and shrugs off another, so who rides a Blade line changes what it does. Resistance is never immunity, and Ember ignores weapons entirely — nothing is unkillable because the right delver is down.

Six weapons, six shapes

The Delver starts on a dagger and earns the rest from chests. Tap him to change weapon — free at the stair, but mid-hall it costs the turn and the hall acts while he rummages.

• Dagger — the weakest thing in the game. It is what you replace.
• Sword — stacks hardest. Bend the line and it pays the most.
• Hammer — never stacks, but hits the whole 3×3 around every cell of the line. The only diagonals in the game.
• Bow — fires four ways from where the line ends, stopped by the first thing it meets. In the Lancer’s hands it pierces straight through.
• Spear — the Lancer’s own. Reaches one cell further, through an empty square. A far hit lands once.
• Staff — the Emberwright’s own, and the only one that casts. It spreads rather than stacks.

Your party grows

You find delvers bound in the dungeon — the Lancer on floor 4, the Emberwright on floor 7. Both daily modes hand you the whole party from the first hall instead.

A captive cannot fight and opens no lines until you land a dash on a cell beside them to cut them loose, and a hall will not finish while anyone is still tied up.

If a captive dies, the hall starts over. Foes will strike them if they get there first.

Every delver has a verb

Two casts a floor, between them:

• Mend — the Lancer patches somebody up to full. Once a floor, and never herself.
• Veil — the Emberwright puts a delver out of reach for three turns.
• Open a path — when a delver is walled in, force one. It kills whatever is in the way.

Every kill levels the delver who landed it: more Blade damage, and Ember every third level. Who rides the line is who gets stronger. A delver who goes down stays down — only Rally the fallen, bought between halls, brings them back.

Chests and gold

Every hall holds a treasure chest. Open it the way you free a captive — finish a dash on a cell beside it.

A weapon icon on the lid says what is inside before you spend the turns walking there, and whoever opens it gets it — so the question is who should go.

Gold buys upgrades between halls, and every floor gives each delver +2 maximum hit points. Longer lines pay a chain bonus on top of the relic: four is a Long line, eight is Unbroken.

The way out

Two of the four modes end a hall with a door instead of a staircase. Stand a delver beside it and they walk out; the hall is done when everybody has.

The door is barred until the hall is finished with you — cut the captive loose, or take the chest, whichever that floor happens to hold. A door you could walk straight to would make everything else in the room optional.

Four modes, two questions

Tap any relic, delver or foe on the board to read its card.