How to Play Rylio

Each quest is a self-contained adventure ending in a overlord. Defeat the overlord to win the quest, then carry your grown deck, gold, gear, and faction standing into the next. You never lose to the Darkness itself — only if all your heroes Fall.

1. Choose your hero.

The Core Box has Elaris (Ranger) and Kael (Knight). Each starts with a 10-card deck and 3 stamina. Optionally splash a Trade — Hunter or Blacksmith — to flavor your build.

2. Lay out the road.

Set the Quest and build its Journey — a path of Dark nodes (fights) and Light nodes (events, rests, merchants, warbands). Read the Quest's intro aloud. Set the Darkness dial to its starting value.

3. Shuffle and draw.

Shuffle your 10-card deck and draw 5. Your deck grows as you draft new cards from the fights you win.

4. Fight, round by round.

• Roll intents — a d6 for each enemy shows what it will do this round.
• Your turn — draw 5, spend up to 3 stamina playing cards, then discard your hand. Reshuffling your deck mid-fight feeds the Darkness, so a lean deck is a hungry one.
• Enemies act — they do what they telegraphed.

5. Reach the overlord.

Clear the road's fights and face the Quest overlord — which arrives wearing every Memory its elites fed it. Defeat it to win.

It carries over.

Your deck, upgrades, gold, gear, and faction standing persist across the whole campaign. Your hero is something you build over hours, not rebuild each run.

It remembers.

When an elite survives your opening, it remembers you — and feeds that memory to the overlord. Beat the elites fast and the overlord arrives clean; let them learn, and it wears every lesson. The overlord is a record of how your quest went.

It costs.

Every time your deck reshuffles, the dark grows. Thinning your deck makes it sharp but hungry; a fuller deck holds the dark back longer. Every choice feeds the dial.

Darkness is not a timer you race — it's a difficulty dial from 0 to 18. You never lose to it, but the higher it climbs, the harder the world fights back:

• 0–3 Dusk — the light still holds.
• 4–6 It Stirs — elites learn sooner.
• 7–9 It Reaches — enemies arrive armored.
• 10–12 It Hungers — reshuffling costs you more.
• 13–15 It Wakes — every enemy hits harder.
• 16–18 The Long Dark — the overlord seeds curses each round. A crucible — brutal, but still winnable.

Push it back at Rests and shrines. Feed it for power if you dare. Manage it, and decide how hard you want the dark to become.

Minions swarm and Normals bring a single nasty trick — but the danger lives in Elites and Overlords. At half health they Learn, flipping to change the rules mid-fight. And every elite that survives you feeds a Memory to the overlord. The dark remembers. How it remembers is a mystery the campaign answers in time.

• Fights give gold and let you draft a card (reveal 3, keep 1).
• Elites also send a Warband — a faction detachment that fights alongside you for the quest, then moves on.
• Overlords drop a rare card and a relic.
• At Rests, heal, upgrade a card forever, or push the Darkness back.
• Merchants sell cards, potions, and gear, and will thin your deck for a price.

Pledge to a faction — The Crown, the Verdant Kin, or the Wandering Folk — for lasting power and the rare cards that can make the dark forget.