Don't Let It Die Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Setup
• Example Setup
• Day Phase
• Night Phase
• Morning Phase
• End Of Game
• DANGER! Cards
• Items
  • Starting Item
  • Tools
  • Weapons
  • Buildings
• Fire Knowledge Points
• Death
• FAQ
• Challenges
  • Challenge 1 – "Fire, HOT!"
  • Challenge 2 – "Uhhhh, how did we not see this?"
  • Challenge 3 – "Berries... Berries everywhere"
  • Challenge 4 – "Mating Season"
  • Challenge 5 – "Ice Age"
  • Challenge 6 – "Fast Food"
  • Challenge 7 – "Rival Tribes"
  • Challenge 8 – "Fruitarianism"
  • Challenge 9 – "Die Hard"
• Box Contents
• Special Thanks

Setup

• Each player takes a character mat, selects a character card, and places the card on the left side of the mat. The game is balanced for 4 characters. For games with fewer than 4 players, divide 4 characters amongst the group as evenly as possible.

(For example, in a single player game, 1 player controls 4 characters, and in a 2 player game each player controls 2 characters.)

• Place markers on the character mat that correspond with each character's card to indicate current & max Health & Stamina. The white disks go down first and mark your characters current max for each stat.

• If your character has any starting items, find the item card and place it on your character mat on either the Weapon or Tool slot. See top left of Item card for type.

• Shuffle all Hunt, Gather, Forage, Harvest and Night Event decks (separately). Place them in the play area with the Fire Knowledge Tree, Fire Die, and Day Tracker.

The Day Tracker is double sided, make sure you select the correct side you want to play before starting (Normal or Hard)

This is optional and only used to add difficulty to the game.

• Sort Weapon, Tool, and Building items by the colored dot next to item name, place to the side.

• Place the Current Day token on Day 1 of the Day Tracker.

• Place 3 wood on the Fire Pit

• Pick a character to be the first player and give them the first player token.

You are now ready to play!

Example Setup

The example setup diagram shows the play area laid out as follows:

• General Supply of Resource and FKP Tokens — a central pool holding the wood, food knowledge point (FKP), and other tokens available to all players.
• Item Stacks Sorted By Color Tier — Weapon, Tool, and Building item cards grouped into face-up stacks by their colored tier dot (e.g. Club and Flint Rock in one tier; Spear and Hatchet in the next).
• Fire Knowledge Tree (Normal Difficulty) — the branching Discovery track players unlock with FKP tokens over the course of the game.
• The four action decks (Gather, Forage, Harvest, Hunt) and the Night Event deck are each placed next to their own Discard pile.
• The Day Tracker sits in the middle, tracking Day (1–14) alongside the Dry and Wood counts for that day, with the Morning Phase reminder card above it:
  1. Remove wood from the fire pit.
  2. Increase Day Count by 1.
  3. Each character takes 1 Damage.
  4. Refill hand up to 4 cards.
  5. Trade items as desired.
  6. Pass to the left.
• The Fire Pit holds the current wood total, next to the loose bread/food token.
• Your Tribe's Collected Resource and FKP Tokens — each player's individual stash, kept beside their character mats.
• Four character mats (one per character) are arranged around the table, each showing its character card, Health and Stamina tracks, and Weapon/Tool slots.

Day Phase

• During the day, starting with whichever character has the first player token and then going left, each character takes turns spending their stamina points on the actions below.
• A character may end their turn with extra stamina, but they cannot use it on any actions once their turn ends.
• Free cost actions can be used at any time during the Day Phase.
• Once a resource has been used, it should be placed back in the general supply pile.
• When drawing a resource card, take the indicated amount of resource tokens or if a Danger! card was drawn, resolve combat as seen on page 6, then place the card face up on top of that decks discard pile.
• Resources are shared and once obtained may be used by any player.
• Once all characters have ended their turn, the Night Phase begins.

1. Forage (Draw a card) for Berries or Fiber — [ Cost 2 Stamina ]
2. Gather (Draw a card) for Wood or Rock — [ Cost 2 Stamina ]
3. Hunt (Draw a card) for Meat, Bone or Hide — [ Cost 3 Stamina ] (Requires Any Weapon Item Equipped)
4. Harvest (Draw a card) for Wood or Rock — [ Cost 3 Stamina ] (Requires Any Tool Item Equipped)
5. Investigate Fire (Roll Dice) (FKP Tokens) — [ Cost 3 Stamina ]
6. Eat Food. 3 Berries or 2 Meat = +1 HP; 2 Cooked Berries or 1 Cooked Meat = +2 HP — [ Cost FREE ] Exact amounts only. Applies only to the character that eats.
7. Add Wood to the fire pit. (Once added, cannot be removed for use.) — [ Cost FREE ]
8. Place Fire Knowledge Points. — [ Cost FREE ]
9. Trade with Neighboring Tribe — [ Cost 1 Stamina ]
   • Exchange ANY combination of 3 Resource or FKP tokens for 1 non-cooked Resource of your choice or FKP token.
10. Cook Food — UNLOCKED ON FIRE KNOWLEDGE TREE — [ Cost 1 Stamina ]
    • Once unlocked from the Fire Knowledge Tree you may spend 1 Stamina to Cook 1 food token. (Reverse side of raw food tokens)
11. Craft Item — UNLOCKED ON FIRE KNOWLEDGE TREE (Weapons, Tools, or Buildings) — [ Cost 3 Stamina ]
    • Once unlocked from the Fire Knowledge Tree you may spend the required resource cost and 3 Stamina to Craft the Item.

Note: Only ONE building can be crafted per game.

Night Phase

• After all players have completed their Day Phase actions, draw a Night Event card.
• These cards create obstacles to interfere with your group's progress, including weather, predators, and rival tribes, and can drastically change your priorities for the next day.
• After drawing, read and follow the instructions on the card. Remember that all players' resources are pooled, so if, for example, a card requires you to discard half of any resource, that means half of the entire group's supply, both raw and cooked unless the card says otherwise. Always round up any situation that involves a fraction.
• If a night card is drawn and does not apply to your group, discard and ignore the event, then continue on to the morning phase.

Note: If a night event card causes you to discard wood from the fire pit, you may still add any available wood from your group's resource pool before the morning phase.

Example Night Event cards:

• You awaken to a stampeded herd of mammoths as they race through the camp. Each character rolls the Fire Die. On a blank, you don't react quickly enough and take 1 damage.
• A rival tribe snuck into your camp and tried to steal your meat! Roll the Fire Die and remove that many meat tokens from the group's supply.

Morning Phase

After completing the Night Event, the Morning phase begins. Go through each of the below actions in order, then begin a new Day phase.

1. Remove (Wood Count) Wood from the fire pit.
2. Increase Day Counter by 1.
3. Everyone takes 1 damage from the night.
4. Everyone refills their Stamina to its max count. (Unless otherwise indicated by a night event card.)
5. You may freely trade Tools and Weapons between characters before the Day phase begins.
6. Pass the first player token to the left.

The Wood Count on the Day Tracker is the amount of Wood you remove from the Fire Pit every morning. It increases as the days progress (1 Wood on Days 1–3, 2 Wood on Days 4–6, 3 Wood on Days 7–9, 4 Wood on Days 10–11, 5 Wood on Days 12–13, and Day 14 is Game Over).

End Of Game

The game is played by repeating in order, the three phases previously explained. During these phases you will trigger winning or losing by the requirements listed below.

You WIN when you unlock the Fire Starter discovery on the Fire Knowledge Tree before night 14.

You LOSE when at anytime there's 0 wood in the fire pit, when all members die or when night phase 14 comes and you have not unlocked the Fire Starter discovery.

DANGER! Cards

When Foraging, Hunting, Harvesting or Gathering you may encounter predators or other wild life attempting to kill you. Below is a list of the Danger! cards you'll find in the decks:

• Beast — 1 Life, Damage 1
• Saber Tooth — 1 Life, Damage 2
• Boar — 2 Life, Damage 2
• Bear — 2 Life, Damage 3
• Mammoth — 3 Life, Damage 3

After drawing a Danger! card, you must resolve the combat before taking any non combat related actions like Eating, Crafting, Trading, etc.

Resolve combat as follows (unless a skill or item says otherwise):

1. If you have no weapon OR you have a weapon but its Damage is less than the Danger! card's Life, you lose Health equivalent to the card's Damage.
   • Example: with no weapon equipped, drawing Saber Tooth (1 Life, Damage 2) costs you 2 Health. With a Sharp Stick (Damage 1, Range 1) equipped against Boar (2 Life, Damage 2), you still lose 2 Health since the weapon's Damage is less than the card's Life.
2. If you have a weapon with 1 Range and its Damage is equal to or greater than the Danger! card's Life, you take 1 Damage and receive meat equivalent to the card's Life.
   • Example: a Rock Knife (Damage 2, Range 1) against Saber Tooth (1 Life, Damage 2) costs 1 Health and grants 1 meat.
3. If you have a weapon with 2 Range and its Damage is equal to or greater than the Danger! card's Life, you take no damage and receive meat equivalent to the card's Life.
   • Example: a Spear (Damage 2, Range 2) against Boar (2 Life, Damage 2) costs 0 Health and grants 2 meat.

Items

• Weapons, Tools and Buildings are obtained by performing the Craft Item action for 3 Stamina plus the resource cost of the item, located in the top portion of the item token. After discarding the required resource tokens, take your selected item and choose to either equip it immediately by placing it face up on your character mat or leave it un-equipped below your character mat.
• Even when not equipping the item yourself, you cannot trade the item with another tribe member until the next Morning phase.
• There are 2 of each item available. If an item gets destroyed or lost during the game, you may not re-craft that item.

At the start of the game the only item you can craft is a Club. As you unlock Discoveries on the Fire Knowledge Tree you can unlock up to 3 different Crafting tiers, represented by the colored circles: Crafting 1 (yellow), Crafting 2 (blue), Crafting 3 (red).

Each tier unlocks the ability to craft new items. Match the colored icons located at the top left of items with each tier to know what items you've unlocked.

You can only have 1 Weapon and 1 Tool equipped at a time (unless a skill says otherwise).

You can only change your equipped Weapons and Tools, or trade them between players, during the Morning phase. (An exception is when crafting a new item. You may unequip your current item, and equip the newly crafted item. This only applies to the character performing the action.)

Starting Item

• Club — Cost: 1 Wood. Damage 1, Range 1, -1 Max Stamina.

Tools

Tools will help in obtaining resources and allow you to draw cards from the Harvest deck.

Tool	Tier	Cost	Effect
Bag	1	2 Fiber, 1 Meat	Take 1 Fiber when you draw a Berry Card.
Pick Axe	1	2 Fiber, 1 Meat, 1 Bone	Take 1 Bone when you draw a Rock Card.
Hide Armor	1	1 Fiber, 2 Meat	Ignore all damage from a Danger! card, once per day.
Carving Knife	2	2 Fiber, 1 Bone, 2 Hide	Take 1 Bone when you draw a Meat Card.
Bone Scythe	2	2 Fiber, 2 Bone	Take 1 Fiber when you draw a Fiber Card.
Bone Armor	2	1 Fiber, 3 Bone, 1 Hide	Ignore all damage from a Danger! card, twice per day.
Hatchet	3	2 Fiber, 1 Meat, 2 Bone	Take 1 Meat when you draw a Wood Card.

Weapons

Weapons will help you survive encounters with Danger! cards, providing meat when killing them and preventing some, if not all, damage taken from skirmishes. They also allow you to draw cards from the Hunt deck.

Note: If a character skill allows you to equip multiple weapons, you may choose to add the damage together and use the lowest Range of the two, or just use one weapon instead.

Weapon	Tier	Cost	Damage	Range	Notes
Sharp Stick	1	1 Hide, 1 Rock	1	1
Rock Knife	1	1 Fiber, 2 Rock	2	1
Sling Shot	2	1 Fiber, 1 Meat	3	2	Must discard 1 Rock each use.
Spear	2	1 Fiber, 2 Rock, 1 Meat	2	2
Bone Club	2	1 Fiber, 1 Rock, 1 Meat, 2 Bone	3	1
Bow and Arrow	3	2 Fiber, 2 Rock, 1 Bone, 1 Meat	3	2

Buildings

Buildings, while expensive, are special items that have beneficial effects for the whole group. Once unlocked from discovering Crafting 3, you may perform the Craft Item action as described above to craft the building of your choice. Place the building next to the fire pit.

IMPORTANT: The group may only build 1 building per game, so choose wisely!

All buildings cost 3 Fiber, 3 Rock, 2 Meat, 2 Bone.

• Shelter — You do not take the 1 HP damage during the morning time phase.
• Cooking Hut — Gain an additional +2 HP when eating food.
• Stock Hut — Your resource exchange rate is only 2-to-1 (instead of 3-to-1) on Trade with Neighboring Tribe actions.
• Planning Hut — Twice per day, when drawing a Forage, Gather, Harvest or Hunt card, draw two and pick one. The extra card is discarded without being used.
• Knowledge Hut — When performing the Investigate Fire action, take 1 free FKP Token. (Can only be used once per character each day.)

Fire Knowledge Points

• Fire Knowledge Points (or FKP) are earned by performing the Investigate Fire action to roll the Fire Die and taking that many tokens.
• During the day phase, any character can use a free action and spend FKP to unlock Discoveries. To do so, place any earned FKP tokens on a Discovery on the Fire Knowledge Tree. Once a Discovery has the required amount of FKP tokens, as indicated in the top right, it is unlocked. Stat changes are applied immediately.
• +X resource Discoveries are triggered from matching resource card draws only.

(Once a Discovery is unlocked, replace the stack of FKP tokens with an Unlocked token by flipping an FKP token over.)

• Before placing FKP tokens on a new Discovery, you must first unlock all discoveries leading to the new one, indicated by gold arrows. For example, at the beginning of the game, using the Normal Fire Knowledge Tree, the top left Warmth 1 Discovery is the only Discovery you may spend FKP tokens on. Once Warmth 1 is unlocked, you may start spending FKP tokens on Warmth 2 and Cooking 1.
• If a discovery has 2 arrows leading to it, like Fire Starter for example, both Discoveries must be unlocked prior to placing FKP tokens on the new one.
• You may keep your FKP tokens with your groups resource pile as they can be used for trading actions, you might also want to save them and use them later.
• There are 4 Fire Knowledge Trees included, Easy, Normal, Normal+ and Hard. Easy is recommended for your first game, but see if you can beat them all!

Discoveries affect the entire group! When increasing Max HP or Stamina, your current values do not change. Neither value can ever exceed its maximum.

Death

• When a character reaches 0 HP, they are incapacitated and un-playable.
• Can only be brought back if the rest of the group spends 3 cooked meat to feed them. Incapacitated members retain all of their items (Equipped Weapons and Tools) but their Unequipped items are distributed amongst the rest of the group.
• Once revived, they start with 3 HP and return to play at the end of the next Morning phase.
• Revival mechanics override skills that restrict meat eating.

FAQ

1. Do I get any Meat if I kill an animal and die at the same time? No.
2. Can I have more HP or Stamina than what fits on my character mat? No, you may only have up to 10 of each.
3. Can I share resources? The entire group's resource pool is communal, so you can share resources between characters at any time during the day phase. You can only trade items, however, during the morning phase.
4. How does eating food work? You can discard 3 Berries or 2 Meat to regain 1 HP, or discard 2 Cooked Berries or 1 Cooked Meat to regain 2 HP for yourself.
5. Are the resource decks done once they run out of cards? No, you take all the discarded cards, shuffle them and place them back as the new deck.
6. Can I shuffle the remaining cards of a deck anytime? No, you may only shuffle the cards when the deck runs out.
7. Can I eat even though it's not my turn? Yes! Any of the free actions can be used at any time during the day phase, regardless of whose turn it is. You can only use them during the day phase, however.
8. Do Thunk, Grub, and Tara get their bonus resource regardless of what card is drawn when doing the associated activity? Yes, whenever they spend stamina on the action from their skill, they receive 1 of the corresponding resource tokens.
9. Can Tara gain her bonus stamina from eating just 1 berry? No, you must eat the same amount of berries as required to gain HP: 3 raw or 2 cooked.
10. Can character skills be used when it's not their turn? As long as the skill doesn't require spending stamina or taking damage to activate, then yes, their skill counts as a free action and may be used out of turn. But again, only during the day phase.
11. What happens if I run out of resource tokens? There are only 8 of each resource token. If you already have all 8, you can't have any more.
12. What are the black cubes for? They are used for you to keep track of various skills with the "once per day" restriction.
13. Why don't 'Rival Tribe' Night Event cards specify cooked or raw? When drawing those cards, cooked and raw tokens are treated as the same when determining which ones get stolen, always remove cooked tokens before raw tokens.
14. When a max token moves does it affect the current value? Only if your max token is reduced, since you cannot have more of a stat than your max value. When your max token increases, your current value stays where it's at.
15. Do extra slot skills increase your total number of slots to 3? Yes.
16. How does Atouk's crafting ability work? He has to spend at least 2 resources when crafting an item. So he can use it on an item that costs 3, but it would only remove 1 cost, making the total cost 2. You pick which resources are ignored.

Challenges

After mastering all of the Fire Knowledge Trees and beating the game multiple times, you may develop a big head, or inflated ego. These extremely hard challenges are here to put you back in your place and will offer experienced players more ways to play! Pick a challenge below and obey the special rules for a new game. Challenge rules override any conflicting base game rules. If you manage to beat a challenge, tweet a pic to @DontLetItDieBG with the hash tag #DontLetItDieChallenge showcasing your tribe selection, difficulty and prehistoric victory to the world!

Challenge 1 – "Fire, HOT!"

• Tribe Members Allowed: Gronk, Atouk, Ayla, Vog, Grub.
• Difficulties Allowed: Normal, Normal+, Hard
• Special Rules: Your tribe members are not very smart, instead of rolling the Fire Die, spend 3 Stamina to take 1 FKP.

Challenge 2 – "Uhhhh, how did we not see this?"

• Tribe Members Allowed: Any
• Difficulties Allowed: Easy, Normal, Normal+, Hard
• Special Rules: It took your tribe a while to realize the fire was important, start the Day Tracker at day 5.

Challenge 3 – "Berries... Berries everywhere"

• Tribe Members Allowed: Nibna, Tara, River, Grub
• Difficulties Allowed: Normal, Normal+, Hard
• Special Rules: Your tribe just migrated to this valley, the plants here break apart when touched, but, at least it makes gathering berries easier. All Fiber tokens are now treated only as Raw Berries and cannot be cooked. You may NOT perform the "Trade with neighboring tribe" action.

Challenge 4 – "Mating Season"

• Tribe Members NOT Allowed: Atouk
• Difficulties Allowed: Normal, Normal+, Hard
• Special Rules: The valley is teeming with predators this time of year. After dealing with a Danger! card, place it face up on the top of the deck it was drawn from. It is drawn the next time someone spends stamina to draw from the deck. Discard as normal after second draw.

Challenge 5 – "Ice Age"

• Tribe Members Allowed: Any
• Difficulties Allowed: Normal+, Hard
• Special Rules: Extremely cold weather has descended upon the valley. All actions now cost +1 stamina. A tribe member takes 1 damage when Gathering, Foraging, Harvesting or Hunting, unless they have Hide or Bone armor equipped.

Challenge 6 – "Fast Food"

• Tribe Members Allowed: Any
• Difficulties Allowed: Normal, Normal+, Hard
• Special Rules: Everyone is getting sick from the food they gathered yesterday. It seems there's something in the air making the food go bad. Your tribe must discard all Berry and Meat tokens during the morning phase.

Challenge 7 – "Rival Tribes"

• Tribe Members Allowed: Any
• Difficulties Allowed: Normal, Normal+, Hard
• Special Rules: The local tribes in the area are at war! They have their eye on your fire and a firm grasp on their spears... The "Trade with Neighboring Tribe" action is not available. When you draw a 'Rival Tribe' Night Event card, everyone takes 2 damage.

Challenge 8 – "Fruitarianism"

• Tribe Members NOT Allowed: Nanuk
• Difficulties Allowed: Hard
• Special Rules: The valley predators have migrated to new lands. Remove all Danger! cards from the 4 resource decks. Everyone takes +1 damage during the morning phase due to the lack of protein.

Challenge 9 – "Die Hard"

• Tribe Members Allowed: Any
• Difficulties Allowed: Hard
• Special Rules: Discovery text abilities are not available. Berry and Meat tokens may be used in place of Wood in the fire pit, but the amount of Wood they represent is based on how much HP they heal. For example, 3 Raw Berries would represent 1 Wood. Every Discovery must be unlocked before placing FKP on Fire Starter.

Box Contents

• 56 Resource Tokens
• 40 Fire Knowledge Point / Unlocked Tokens
• 37 Resource Cards (Forage, Gather, Harvest, Hunt)
• 27 Night Event Cards
• 4 Character Mats
• 17 Character Cards
• 4 HP Markers
• 4 Stamina Markers
• 8 Max HP & Stamina Markers
• 8 Skill Used Markers
• 33 Item Cards
• 2 Double Sided Fire Knowledge Trees (Easy, Normal, Normal+, Hard)
• 1 Double Sided Day Tracker
• 1 Fire Die
• 1 Fire Pit Card
• 1 First Player Card
• 1 Current Day Marker
• 1 Player Helper Reference
• 1 14-Page Rulebook

Special Thanks

Don't Let It Die has been a passion project of mine over the past few years, which couldn't have been made without the help and support of family, friends and you, the fans! Below is a list of people who helped me during this process and I offer my most sincere thanks and appreciation for everything everyone has done to help make Don't Let It Die, one of the best games it could possible be!

• My loving and supportive wife, Leigha.
• My parents, Curtis and Dana.
• All of my family members.
• Kyle McCarley
• Donnie Krueger
• Adam Chan
• Jason (Basil)
• Liam (Lum)
• Sparklin Labs
• And all the fans who have supported me throughout the creation process!