Return to Dark Tower FAQ
180 questions players ask · Updated Nov 8, 2026 · Full rulebook
Setup, App and Tower
- What batteries does the Tower need, and can I use rechargeables or swap them mid-game?
- Do the skulls fall out of the Tower when I change the batteries or leave the seals on?
- How do I get the skulls out of the Tower after a game?
- Does it matter which way the Tower faces on the board?
- Does the Tower rotate when I switch it on?
- Does every player need a phone or tablet?
- Can I pause a game and resume it later? Can the app hold several saved games?
- Can I undo a mistaken Advantage, battle choice or skull drop in the app?
- Is there a timer on dropping skulls, or can I drop several quickly?
- The app quit and I dropped an extra skull. How do I fix the count?
- What is different in Gritty difficulty?
- Do I have to tell the app which heroes are in the game?
- Is the adversary on the board at the start of the game?
- I tapped Next before noting where the adversary moved. Can I find it again?
- What does the game seed include, and does it include the player count?
- Are the battle cards in the app random?
- Who gets the main companion at setup, and do I get its bonuses?
- Can Nimet be the main goal in a cooperative game?
- Can I use expansion heroes in a base-game-only play?
- Can I shuffle expansion treasures into a base-game-only play?
- Why does the south kingdom's virtue use grasslands rather than deserts?
- Are there special rules for two players, and must we sit opposite each other?
- Can I play with five or six players, or solo?
- In a 3-player game, do dormant kingdoms get setup skulls?
- Where does my hero start?
- What if I run out of foe tokens when one needs to spawn?
- What are the advantage tracking tokens for?
- Can I look at the backs of foe and companion cards?
- Does the game adjust its difficulty to how well we are doing?
- What is the Raging Foes event in Gritty mode?
Turn Structure and Trading
- When during my turn can I trade with other heroes?
- What can I trade, and with whom?
- Can I trade with another hero in the middle of a battle or quest?
- Can heroes on the same space pool their Advantages for one battle?
- Can I spend a potion before I would be forced to lose it?
- Can I use a potion or other item before my Banner action?
- Is the Banner action mandatory, and can I save it for later?
- Who goes first each month, and does the first player change?
- When I spend or lose gear, treasures or potions, where do they go?
- In what order can I move, take a heroic action and Reinforce?
- If an effect says to spend something I do not have, do I take a corruption?
Movement
- Do I have to use all my movement, and when do I decide to double it?
- Do foes, skulls or other heroes block movement or actions?
- What is the difference between moving, placing and entering a space?
- Can I use a potion to move a hero or foe out of a battle in progress?
- Does crossing a river cost extra movement, and can I move along the river?
Cleanse and Heroic Actions
Advantages
- When are Advantages calculated, and what happens if I gain or lose the item mid-battle?
- Do my Advantages apply to each battle card or are they shared across the whole battle?
- Do I need to track which item or virtue each Advantage came from?
- Can I add Advantages mid-battle with a potion or treasure, such as Zaida's +3 wild?
- Which Advantages can I use in a battle versus a dungeon?
- Do terrain Advantages (like +2 Wild on mountains) apply when I explore a dungeon or finish a quest?
- Can a conditional Advantage be used more than once if its condition is met repeatedly?
- When I use an Advantage from an item, is the item spent?
- Is there a cap on how many Advantages I can use?
- How do Advantages count toward a quest that needs Advantages?
- Can Wild Advantages count as any type?
- What counts as one battle, and does a per-battle effect trigger on every card?
Battle and the Adversary
- Do I have to battle a foe on my space or one that spawns onto it?
- Can I retreat from a battle?
- How many battle cards must I resolve to defeat the adversary, and does progress carry over?
- If the last adversary card gives me a third corruption, do I lose? Can I absorb the last cards with corruptions?
- Can foe-removal effects like potions, treasures or lamps remove the adversary?
- Does removing a foe with an effect count as defeating it?
- What are critical hits and the red cards in a battle?
- When a battle card says 'lose X or lose Y', can I pick the one I cannot pay?
- When a battle card makes several heroes lose something and some cannot pay, who gets the corruption?
- How does an improved Shadow Wolves card that removes another wolf work?
- Can I improve the Corpse Cloud battle card?
- If the foe card and the app disagree on a battle effect, which do I follow?
- How does the Orek lethal event work when Oreks are in several kingdoms?
- How many skulls does the Gaze Eternal card place per glyph?
- Can the Oakstone Bow battle the adversary from an adjacent space?
- Can I use the Lamp of Darkness to remove a foe in the middle of its own battle?
Quests and Dungeons
- Is the one-corruption limit per quest or per room in a dungeon?
- Does movement limit how many rooms I can explore in a dungeon?
- A dungeon room says to lose warriors unless I have a potion. Do I lose the potion?
- Must one hero meet all of a quest's requirements, such as the final Azkol's treasures goal?
- What does the Break Grigor's Ensorcellment quest need in Advantages?
- Does removing a Mormo without battling it give the quest item for Hakan's main goal?
- What do ambush tokens do in Miras' Laying the Trap goal?
Reinforce and Haggle Die
- Can I take the free Reinforce effect and also pay for the enhanced one?
- Can I roll the Haggle die on any Reinforce, including moving a Siege Tree?
- If the Haggle die cancels my Reinforce, can I Reinforce again elsewhere, and do after-Reinforce effects trigger?
- How does the Spymaster's Fortunate virtue work with Reinforce?
- How does Reinforcing interact with Siege Trees?
- If a Reinforce gives me a virtue with an after-Reinforce effect, does it trigger that turn?
- Does the treasure market refill right away after I buy a treasure?
Corruptions
- When do I gain a corruption?
- Do I gain only one corruption per battle card, and does the battle continue after I take it?
- Can I take a corruption instead of resolving a battle card's effect?
- Do I gain a corruption for every building destroyed in my home kingdom, whatever destroyed it?
- Do I take a corruption if a card puts skulls on or next to a foe but there is no building there?
- What if a battle card needs more skulls than the buildings can take, or than the supply holds?
- If several wolves or foes in one event hit me, is it one corruption or one per foe?
- How do I remove a corruption?
- If a corruption ends my turn after Reinforce but I remove it with that Reinforce, does my turn end?
- What happens to extra treasures when a corruption limits how many I can hold?
- Does a corruption limiting Advantage use apply right away in a battle?
- Does an adversary card that says 'gain 2 corruption' respect the one-corruption-per-card limit?
Heroes, Items and Companions
- Can I use a potion or other item on another hero's turn or during event resolution?
- Can I use an item, virtue or companion effect right after I gain it?
- Does a treasure work if I never spend it?
- Can I spend an item for Zaida's wild Advantages and also trigger its own spend effect?
- Can I voluntarily discard a treasure or item to avoid a loss?
- Does receiving an item in a trade count as gaining it?
- How many treasures, potions, gear and quest items can I hold?
- Is there a discard pile for potions and treasures, and where do lost corruptions go?
- What counts as an item when an effect says to lose or spend an item?
- Can I use a virtue more than once per turn?
- Do virtues that say "you" apply only to my hero, and when can I use Bounteous?
- What does it mean to lose a virtue, and can the printed virtues be lost?
- Does the Callous virtue look at warriors lost in total or at the net change?
- Does Crafty let the Potion of Purifying Breath remove skulls from several buildings?
- What counts as a skull emerging from the Tower for Skullweaver?
- Why does the Spymaster have a base move of 4, and how does Swift work for him?
- How does the Relentless Warden's quarry token work?
- Must the Amulet of the Marid move end on the opposite side of the river?
- What is the Black Mark and how is it passed?
- Can a hero have several companions, and can companions be traded?
- Do I gain Grigor, Yana or Hakan as a companion when I finish their main quest?
- Which side of a companion card is active, and what do its texts mean?
- What does Yana's companion ability do?
- What is the difference between gray and black Advantage backgrounds?
- Does the Bezoar's warrior-loss limit apply to battle cards?
- How do Isa's bargain events work when I lack the companion or the cost?
The World: Buildings, Skulls, Glyphs and Foes
- What happens to the skulls when a fourth skull destroys a building?
- Who gains the corruption when skulls must be placed in a kingdom that has no buildings left?
- Does anyone gain a corruption when a building in a dormant kingdom is destroyed?
- Can effects target a destroyed building, and what happens if one is named?
- Does a glyph need to be lit to apply to me?
- How does a glyph work: is it an action, how often do I pay, and does it depend on where my hero stands?
- How do I know which seal the app wants me to remove?
- Can skulls get stuck in the Tower, and how do they come out?
- Is the adversary a foe for potions and treasures that move or remove foes?
- What do foe level and status do, and do foes get worse over time?
- What if a foe level-up event comes up with no such foe on the board, or the app asks for a foe I do not have?
- Who chooses where foes move and which path they take?
- How does the Lemure strike work?
- How do Dragon Strike, Shadow Wolves and Orek events count targets and corruptions?
End of Turn: Skulls and Events
- When can I drop my skull, and whose turn do end-of-turn events belong to?
- In an event, who does 'you' mean, and who takes the corruption if the event can't be paid?
- How does the Tower detect my skull drop, and is the order skulls come out random?
- If an event places several skulls and they can't all fit, how many corruptions do I get?
- Who decides where a skull from the Tower lands, and does the exit spot matter?
Winning and Losing
Competitive Game
Tokens
Return to Dark Tower: AlliancesExpansion
- How do the Archwright's Battlement tokens work?
- How do I raise a guild's rank, and can the Haggle die interfere?
- Do the rank 3 and rank 4 guild effects stack, and can any hero upgrade any guild?
- How do specific guild effects such as the Thieves Guild or Arcane Scouts work?
- How do power skulls work in Alliances?
- Does Greedy make me lose spirit when Ema treats a building as a Bazaar?
- Is a failed guild quest at the end of a month an event for the one-corruption limit?
- What is the fourth virtue slot on a hero board?
- How much does Haunted Recluse prevent per battle card?
- Can I combine Alliances with Covenant?
Return to Dark Tower: CovenantExpansion
- How do monuments and foundations work: are they random, and do they count as buildings?
- Does a completed monument moved into a kingdom with an uncompleted monument satisfy the Arkwright Sledge?
- Can wasteland tokens be removed, and do siege trees cure them?
- Do Wand of Celerity, Azkol's Vambraces or caravans bypass wastelands and rivers of fire?
- Can doom skulls be cleansed, moved or removed, and what if the doom supply is empty?
- Do Blessings last past the end of my turn, and how many does Orphaned Scion's Charm give?
- How does the Cenotaph work, and can I use a virtue from a hero who isn't in the game?
- How do monument offerings work with spent treasures, moved foes and quests from afar?
- How do the Devious Swindler's virtues work?
- Are the Infused virtue and Spymaster's Haggle banner action optional, and can the Undaunted Aegis peek at a corruption?
- What does 'that kingdom' mean in Sanctify the Land, and what does 'upgrade' mean on the Brutal Warlord's Bell?
- Can I use Covenant heroes, treasures or corruptions in a base-game session?