Ruling — Return to Dark Tower

You asked

how do i win?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Return to Dark Towerbg-256680-en-1e

There are different ways to win depending on the specific game objectives or circumstances:

**By completing the main goal and defeating the adversary:**

1. Complete the main goal.[1][2]

2. Defeat the adversary in battle.[1][3][2] (Note: To defeat the adversary, you must resolve five battle cards in a single battle [4][5]).

**By finding the relic:**

1. Complete three heroic tests to gain access to the Tower dungeon.[6]

2. Enter the Tower dungeon by taking the Quest action on a space adjacent to the Tower.[6]

3. Find the room in the Tower dungeon where the relic is hidden.[6]

4. Find the relic.[6]

**Other winning conditions:**

* If all but one of the heroes are eliminated, the lone remaining hero wins.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook · p.23 ·  LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE 

[2] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook · p.28 ·  COMMONLY MISSED RULES  ·  YOU GAIN A CORRUPTION WHEN...  ·  WINNING & LOSING 

[3] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook · p.18 · C) QUEST ·  COMPLETE A QUEST  ·  COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL 

[4] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook · p.17 ·  BATTLING THE ADVERSARY 

[5] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook · p.17

[6] RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook · p.25 · ENTERING THE TOWER DUNGEON · FINDING THE RELIC ·  HERO ELIMINATION  ·  END OF THE GAME  ·  CLARIFICATIONS 

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 72 ms · ask 3095 ms · total 3168 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 3168 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 23, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "You lose the game immediately in any of the following situations: /rightArrow When a hero would gain their third corruption. /rightArrow When you have to take a skull from the supply and there are none. /rightArrow When the sixth month ends. If you lose the game, press the 'game lost' button on the ", "headingPath": " LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": " You may spend 1 to double your move value for the turn. Once you have started to move, you may no longer double or modify your move.  Nothing on the game board stops or prevents your movement. You may freely enter and leave spaces with foes, skulls, tokens, and other heroes.  Wild Advantages can", "headingPath": " COMMONLY MISSED RULES  ·  YOU GAIN A CORRUPTION WHEN...  ·  WINNING & LOSING ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "Once you have completed three heroic tests, you have gained access to the Tower dungeon. You can then enter the Tower dungeon by taking the Quest action on any space adjacent to the Tower. Finding the relic requires you to find the room in the Tower dungeon where the relic is hidden. If you find the", "headingPath": "ENTERING THE TOWER DUNGEON · FINDING THE RELIC ·  HERO ELIMINATION  ·  END OF THE GAME  ·  CLARIFICATIONS ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Take the Battle action to battle a foe on your space and remove them from the game board. You can only take the Battle action while on a space with a foe. If more than one foe is on your space, choose one. Calculate your automatic Advantages. Open the battle screen to select a foe. Select a number o", "headingPath": "B) BATTLE · STARTING THE BATTLE · USING ADVANTAGES · APPLYING THE RESULTS ·  REMOVING FOES ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Once you have completed the main goal, you can battle the adversary. This works like a normal battle, but with three key exceptions: /rightArrow You must resolve five battle cards in a single battle to defeat the adversary. /rightArrow You may retreat from a battle with the adversary. You must resol", "headingPath": " BATTLING THE ADVERSARY ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "17 Example: You decide to battle brigands. Their status is lethal, and you have four Advantages. Brigands are a level 2 foe, so you must select two battle cards. The first card forces you to lose 12 due to skulls on a nearby building. You use three Advantages by pressing the arrow three times. This ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.029877, "snippet": "Take the Quest action to complete a quest (including the main goal) or explore a dungeon on your space. You can only take the Quest action if you can legally perform one of these two options. Quests will require you to be in a certain location, spend certain resources, use certain Advantages, defeat", "headingPath": "C) QUEST ·  COMPLETE A QUEST  ·  COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Dungeons will spawn as part of certain quests. The goal of each dungeon is to complete it by exploring rooms until you find its target room (i.e., where someone is hiding or where an item is hidden). Completing a dungeon automatically completes its associated quest. Press the dungeon button and sele", "headingPath": " EXPLORE A DUNGEON  · ENTERING THE DUNGEON · USING ADVANTAGES · APPLYING THE RESULTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 23, "quote": null, "headingPath": " LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 28, "quote": null, "headingPath": " COMMONLY MISSED RULES  ·  YOU GAIN A CORRUPTION WHEN...  ·  WINNING & LOSING ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 18, "quote": null, "headingPath": "C) QUEST ·  COMPLETE A QUEST  ·  COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 17, "quote": null, "headingPath": " BATTLING THE ADVERSARY ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 17, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}, {"page": 25, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ENTERING THE TOWER DUNGEON · FINDING THE RELIC ·  HERO ELIMINATION  ·  END OF THE GAME  ·  CLARIFICATIONS ", "sharpsignalDocId": 379}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 379 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 379 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.86891 of 595 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 12, 2026 21:08

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE 	p.23	0.048916 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 COMMONLY MISSED RULES  ·  YOU GAIN A CORRUPTION WHEN...  ·  WINNING & LOSING 	p.28	0.047123 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	ENTERING THE TOWER DUNGEON · FINDING THE RELIC ·  HERO ELIMINATION  ·  END OF THE GAME  ·  CLARIFICATIONS 	p.25	0.046696 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	B) BATTLE · STARTING THE BATTLE · USING ADVANTAGES · APPLYING THE RESULTS ·  REMOVING FOES 	p.16	0.032258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 BATTLING THE ADVERSARY 	p.17	0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)		p.17	0.030769 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	C) QUEST ·  COMPLETE A QUEST  ·  COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL 	p.18	0.029877 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 EXPLORE A DUNGEON  · ENTERING THE DUNGEON · USING ADVANTAGES · APPLYING THE RESULTS	p.19	0.029851 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 27 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE 	p.23	#1	0.048916 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 BATTLING THE ADVERSARY 	p.17	#5	0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	ENTERING THE TOWER DUNGEON · FINDING THE RELIC ·  HERO ELIMINATION  ·  END OF THE GAME  ·  CLARIFICATIONS 	p.25	#3	0.046696 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	B) BATTLE · STARTING THE BATTLE · USING ADVANTAGES · APPLYING THE RESULTS ·  REMOVING FOES 	p.16	#4	0.032258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	Sequence of Play ·  INDIVIDUAL TURNS  ·  MONTHLY QUESTS  · Taking Your Turn	p.12	#9	0.029412 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	C) QUEST ·  COMPLETE A QUEST  ·  COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL 	p.18	#7	0.029877 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)		p.17	#6	0.030769 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 COMMONLY MISSED RULES  ·  YOU GAIN A CORRUPTION WHEN...  ·  WINNING & LOSING 	p.28	#2	0.047123 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 LOSING THE GAME  ·  WINNING THE GAME  · COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL · DEFEATING THE ADVERSARY ·  GAME SEEDS  ·  APP ICON GUIDE 	p.23	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 COMMONLY MISSED RULES  ·  YOU GAIN A CORRUPTION WHEN...  ·  WINNING & LOSING 	p.28	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	C) QUEST ·  COMPLETE A QUEST  ·  COMPLETING THE MAIN GOAL 	p.18	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	 BATTLING THE ADVERSARY 	p.17	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)		p.17	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Return to Dark Tower — Rulebook (corpus doc 379)	ENTERING THE TOWER DUNGEON · FINDING THE RELIC ·  HERO ELIMINATION  ·  END OF THE GAME  ·  CLARIFICATIONS 	p.25	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 72 ms · first delta 1826 ms · total 3168 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 72 ms · ask 3095 ms · gateway work 3168 ms · total 3168 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2961
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 182
tok/sec: 139.9 tok/sec — 182 output tokens in 1.301 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 18s ago)
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 308), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.