Spirits and Innate Powers
Errata / Updates
Nature Incarnate clarifies that when a Spirit does stuff with Presence, it refers to that Spirit’s Presence unless otherwise specified.
This is
sort of a change from the previous default
(the previous default wasn't consistent – e.g., Growth choices never bothered to specify that you were Adding your own Presence), but it only impacts two older items:
Draw Towards a Consuming Void (which gets an updated version in Nature Incarnate) and Finder of Paths Unseen (which can definitely move Presence from any Spirit, but reprinting the Spirit Panel and 4 Uniques in NI would be somewhat prohibitive, so it's getting this erratum).
Tags: Presence, Move, Finder of Paths Unseen, Lay Paths They Cannot Help But Walk (Finder of Paths Unseen), 4 more...
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Fear/Event actions destroy Invaders in The Endless Dark?
Yes. While Event and Fear Card actions generate Fear rather than
removing Invaders, those actions are free to destroy, damage, replace, or otherwise harm the Invaders in any way that doesn't use the keyword "Remove" (other than downgrading Explorers, since that's
defined as removing them).
This isn't necessarily obvious:
To Dream a Thousand Deaths affects the
instructions of Bringer's powers (
see FAQ), and unlike most damage modifiers, Badlands applies when the
results of an action deal Damage (otherwise "Badlands don't apply if Damage is reduced to 0" makes no sense). So on first blush, Badlands shouldn't apply.
- Decreases the Health of that Dahan or Invader so it has now taken lethal Damage (one of many ways Finder's action can destroy the Dahan/Invaders with its own action);
- Directly causes something else to destroy that Dahan or Invader (Finder directly triggering their destruction by moving them).
The first case can happen by causing a Health penalty (e.g., Pushing into a Sacred Site of Rising Heat of Stone and Sand) or removing a Health bonus (e.g., Pushing Dahan out of a land with Infinite Vitality or Gathering a Durable Town into a land with Blight against Habsburg Monarchy Livestock Colony Level 4).
The second case most commonly occurs when teaming up with Ocean's Hungry Grasp to Push Invaders into the Ocean, but can also occur with Powers like Melt Earth Into Quicksand and Call to Guard.
As of 2020, the only published Spirits for whom getting around land-type restrictions is relevant are Ocean's Hungry Grasp
(base game, cannot normally have Presence in inland lands), Lure of the Deep Wilderness
(Jagged Earth, cannot normally have Presence in coastal lands), and Volcano Looming High
(Jagged Earth, can normally only have Presence in Mountains).
(Discussion elsewhere) Tags: Presence, Indomitable Claim, Serpent Slumbering Beneath the Island, Ocean's Hungry Grasp, 2 more...
For example, if Finder of Paths Unseen has uncovered its spaces with:
- Sun
- 1 Energy, Moon
- 2 Energy, Water
- +2 Energy
- +1 Energy, +1 Range
- +1 Card Play/Turn
"Move" is used rather than "Push" because Many Minds' special rule about Pushing Beasts doesn't apply.
E.g., After you move a Town into an Ocean, the Town takes 2 Damage. If that’s enough to Destroy it
(because the Ocean has Blight or the Town was already Damaged), then it Drowns normally. Otherwise, it follows the
usual rules for Invaders/Dahan that fail to drown in the Ocean: you Push it to a non-Ocean land. If the land it goes to has Blight, it will immediately be Destroyed, but Ocean’s Hungry Grasp will not gain Energy.
Most "move some Dahan" powers represent the Spirit asking/working with the Dahan or calling in favors. A few, like this one, are more "the Dahan decide to get the heck out of Dodge". This applies to other kinds of pushes, as well.
In the base game, the edge-case where this can happen is if Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares uses Vengeance of the Dead (with threshold) on the Ocean itself. A Town/City/Dahan is moved to the Ocean, triggering Ocean In Play which Drowns it. Drowning (destroying) it triggers Vengeance of the Dead. If Bringer deals VotD's "damage" in an adjacent land to "destroy" a Town or Explorer and Push it into the Ocean, Ocean In Play can't trigger again, because actions can't trigger themselves, even indirectly. So the Town/Explorer isn't Drowned.
As of the release of Nature Incarnate, this includes:
- The early Stage III card of Kingdom of Brandenburg-Prussia Level 2.
- The early Stage II cards and Coastal card of Kingdom of Scotland Level 2, and the early Stage III card of Scotland Level 4.
- The interleaved Stage III cards of Tsardom of Russia Level 4 (but not the Stage II cards they alternate with).
- The Salt Deposits card of Habsburg Mining Expedition Level 4.
Gaze can't destroy Presence that's not on the island, including:
This applies even if the power has some other spirit doing something (eg, Blazing Renewal). If Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares played the power, it cannot do real damage.
What's the timing on using new Growth options?
Growth choices are made one at a time, so if you unlock a new Growth option by placing Presence, you can choose it immediately if you still have choices left. If you return Presence to a Growth row for some reason, you can’t use that Growth option until the row is unlocked again, and your selection of which Growth to cover remains. (You don’t get to revisit that decision.)
Tags: Growth, Starlight Seeks Its Form
This won't let you get around any conditional requirements in the Power's
effects though. For example, if
Sear Anger Into the Wild Lands destroys the last Invader in a land, a
Relentless Punishment Repeat of the Power can no longer meet the "if Wilds and Invaders are present" condition in the Power's effect to add more Fear.
Tags: Repeat, Targeting, Shadows of the Burning Forest, Lure of the Unknown, 8 more...
"Move X Together" means "X must be together for the entire movement," not "X must move in a way that they are all together at the end of the movement."
Tags: Move, Growth, Relentless Gaze of the Sun
Whether a land is Coastal is defined by whether the land is adjacent to the Ocean. Open the Ways can create an adjacency between two of Finder's lands, allowing it to make lands (temporarily) Coastal.
Those are both Builds, so A Spread of Rampant Green's special ability Choke the Land with Green can prevent them.
It is possible to get all the way to the end of your Presence track without ever using Absorb Essence, if you never have more than 5 Presence on the board. Thematically, this is the Serpent being stung towards greater wakefulness.
(Discussion elsewhere) Tags: Serpent Slumbering Beneath the Island
It works because The Trees and Stones Speak of War only adds Defend to a single land. (The threshold effect may then move some of that Defend around.)
If the Invaders are in a Coastal land, with Sweep into the Sea you can choose to either push them into the nearest Ocean (which is right there) or destroy them; with Ocean's Hungry Grasp in play, it will usually be better to push and Drown them.
(Discussion elsewhere) Tags: Ocean's Hungry Grasp, Sweep into the Sea
Thematically, Gaze should have to restore as many Destroyed Presence as possible (max. 3), but enforcing this in the few cases it matters (e.g., preventing
Blazing Renewal combos) wasn’t worth the trouble of players thinking that they could only take that Growth Action if they could return
exactly 3 Destroyed Presence, or in extreme cases, that they couldn’t choose that Growth Option — and its critical Reclaim All Power Cards Growth Action — unless they had at least 3 Destroyed Presence.
Tags: Growth, Relentless Gaze of the Sun
When Ocean's Hungry Grasp is in play, can Blight, other Spirit Presence, Beasts, or other tokens end up in the Ocean?
Yes, the Ocean is a Coastal Wetland for many purposes, and Blight and any of the tokens from Branch & Claw can end up there. Spirit Presence from other spirits cannot be placed there during the Growth phase, but can end up there as a result of cards like Indomitable Claim or Flow Like Water, Reach Like Air. So long as Ocean has Presence on the board, non-human pieces in the Ocean continue to behave normally and are considered "in play" - so a Disease would count for an Event which checks if the board has Disease, for instance, even though that's an Event Action.
Invaders will never take actions there, so many of the tokens will have no effect.
When does Observe the Ever-Changing World expire?
It expires when Time Passes like other effects do. The Element Markers stacked up in in the target land are a
reminder of how many more times it can trigger this turn, not an actual change to the board state that persists into future turns.
The Special Rule says, "When your Presence is destroyed...", which means the damage is done as part of whatever action destroyed your Presence.
When Ocean's Hungry Grasp is in play against Brandenburg-Prussia, can the extra Towns from the Stage II Escalation be placed in the Ocean (and drowned immediately)?
No. The Ocean is only a land for the purpose of Powers and Blight, and not, for instance, for Events, Fear cards, or Stage II escalation effects.
(Discussion elsewhere) Tags: Fear, Events, Ocean's Hungry Grasp, Kingdom of Brandenburg-Prussia, 0 more...
The same applies to Presence placement during Growth or Growth options allowing movement.
Sweden's rule that the second Blight cannot destroy Presence or cascade is just a reminder of the general rule that Presence destruction and cascades happen
if Blight is added, not on a per-Blight basis - it's not a special ability granted to Sweden's second Blight to make it uniquely less harmful. (In the base game, Sweden 1 was the only was the only way 2 blight could be added simultaneously, so the rule was printed on the Adversary.)
Tags: Blight, Kingdom of Sweden, Bestow the Endurance of Bedrock (Stone's Unyielding Defiance)
Thematically, the Dahan are actually doing a raid in the real world, it is not just a nightmare caused by Bringer. It also doesn't matter if it's a choice Event you pay Energy for: the damage is still real.
This isn't formally specified on Ocean's panel because it's virtually never relevant with just the core game, and spelling it out would both take up a lot of space and needlessly increase complexity / confusion-potential for players who only have the base game. However, it becomes very relevant when playing vs. The Habsburg Monarchy Lvl 4+ (Jagged Earth), which blunts "Destroy Town" effects; see
this FAQ if you need details.
The fact that the Push is part of the triggered action means that it can trigger further actions – e.g., Melt Earth Into Quicksand or Call to Guard in the land Pushed to – which cleaning up illegally placed pieces does not do.
Ember-Eyed Behemoth's highest-numbered Wetlands adjacent to a Jungle could be adjacent to a Jungle on another board (e.g., Wetlands F7 adjacent to Jungle D6 in the standard three-board layout).
Tags: Spirit setup, Ember-Eyed Behemoth
- Anything that interacts with adjacent lands, including Push and Gather (since there are no adjacent lands);
- Invader Actions;
- Anything conditional on having a particular terrain or being Coastal;
- Anything that references the board that target land is on.
Effects that do resolve, but generally not in a useful way:
- Defend and other Damage penalties to Invaders;
- Isolate;
- Skipping Invader Actions.
All other standard effects (Fear, Damage, Destroy, Remove, Replace, Add, Upgrade, Downgrade) work as they normally would, albeit with the exception that adding Blight doesn't destroy Presence or cascade, since the Endless Dark isn't a land. (Thematically, there isn't a real ecosystem to damage.)
This is usually irrelevant, but can occasionally be important (for, e.g., Scream Disease Into the Wind, or other "after using a power on a land..." effects.)
It does not need to
actually do something, as long as it has an instruction that could in theory modify the game state. Setting up a triggered action for the current Power only (eg: Lure's first innate) doesn't count, either; it's effectively an internal modifier as well, despite using a trigger for timing.
Tags: Targeting, Resolving Powers, Range Boosts, Range, 4 more...
- The original use of the Power;
- Any time Relentless Punishment repeated that Power;
- Any time that Power repeated itself (e.g., Winds of Rust and Atrophy repeating itself with its threshold); and
- Any time something else repeated that Power (e.g., Powerstorm)
When placing Wildfire's Presence, Finder's action itself did not cause any destruction. It "directly triggers" the destruction
(via Wildfire's special rule), but it did so by adding Presence, not by moving Dahan or Invaders.
(Earlier printings of Wildfire incorrectly said "when" instead of "after" for the Special Rule; see the errata / clarifications on triggered actions.)
Element Markers don't inherently
do anything; they're just used to track effects that are associated with Elements in some way. While Starlight Seeks its Form uses them to track permanent Elements, that's only because its
Slowly Coalescing Nature special rule explicitly grants that effect. And while Shifting Memory of Ages can spend its prepared Element Markers for various effects, that's only because
Insights into the World's Nature,
Elemental Teachings, and its Presence Tracks grant those benefits.
Tags: Prepare, Element markers, Elements, Claim, 4 more...
Can Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares combine Damage-dealing Powers usefully with Damage from other Spirits?
It depends on ordering. Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares can take advantage of partially Damaged Invaders: e.g.: if another Spirit does 2 Damage to a City, then Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares could afterwards use a 1-Damage Power to earn 5 Fear
(because 1 Damage would have destroyed the City). It could even use several Damaging Powers in a row to earn 5 Fear for each! But if Bringer uses a 1-Damage Power on an unhurt City, it will do nothing, and have no lingering effects that would interact with anything done later.
When does Ocean's Hungry Grasp get to Drown invaders?
Apart from specific power cards, Invaders are Drowned after they are moved into the ocean on a board where Ocean's Hungry Grasp has any Presence. They do not get drowned when moved in to any other land, and Ocean's Hungry Grasp does not need to have Presence that is actually
in the ocean, just on the same board.
If OHG loses all Presence from the board, the joined land remains in play (and retains the printed Ocean area as part of its topology, so makes adjacent lands Coastal), but Ocean In Play no longer applies to it, so Invaders/Dahan aren't Drowned after moving there and it's no longer a Wetland for purposes of Powers/Blight (unless it's a Wetland for other reasons).
If not using the Violence Aspect, you could choose to use To Dream a Thousand Deaths if for some reason you didn't want the Fear.
If an effect changes the Health of all pieces that meet a particular condition, does that affect pieces in The Endless Dark?
Yes, so long as it checks the traits of the piece itself (e.g., what type it is, how much Strife it has) rather than the traits of the
land it’s in (e.g., if Blight is present, if at least 3+ Invaders are present).
Tags: Health, Breath of Darkness Down Your Spine, The Endless Dark (Breath of Darkness Down Your Spine), Kingdom of England, 9 more...
It would be better phrased as, "For each of your Presence in a land, up to 2 Explorer do not participate in Ravage."
To expand on the situation, in a land,
Rising Heat of Stone and Sand has one Presence, another Spirit has one Presence, and there is a Town with 1 Damage.
Entwined Power is used between the two Spirits, and then
Rising Heat uses a Power that requires a Sacred Site there for targeting. Even though targeting the Power is legal by
Entwined Power, the land only counts as a Sacred Site for Targeting, not for the Special Rule
Blistering Heat.
Tags: Counts As, Rising Heat of Stone and Sand, Blistering Heat (Rising Heat of Stone and Sand), Entwined Power, 0 more...
Both Serene Waters and Roiling Waters can only be claimed as a first Healing Card, and both Waters Renew and Waters Taste of Ruin can only be claimed as a final Healing Card.
Doing it this way, you are not penalized if you need to move Presence with this Growth Option before you add Presence off the top Presence track with the first Growth Option.
Tags: Growth, Relentless Gaze of the Sun
How does Reach from the Infinite Darkness work with Presence from Spirits with restrictions on where they can move Presence?
Since
Reach from the Infinite Darkness ignores these restrictions, Presence from those Spirits can be abducted without any issue. However, that Presence can only escape to lands that it could normally be moved to, whether Coastal lands (Ocean’s Hungry Grasp), Inland lands (Lure of the Deep Wilderness), or Mountains (Volcano Looming High). If Breath of Darkness Down Your Spine doesn’t have Presence or its Incarna in any legal lands, you must choose to let a different piece escape or lose the game.
The special rule says "whenever a Dahan moves ... you may move 1 Presence ...". Had you been limited to a single Presence, the rule would have been phrased, "whenever 1 or more Dahan move ... you may move 1 Presence ...".
(Discussion elsewhere) Tags: Move, Dahan, Gather, Push, 1 more...
How exactly does Pour Time Sideways work?
It affects each individual Invader Action – so if they’re Ravaging in Sands, on the board you move Presence to, each Sands with Invaders will Ravage twice. (Then similarly for both Build and Explore.) On the board you moved Presence from, each Sands with Invaders will Ravage zero times. It’s phrased as “one more time” and “one fewer time” instead of “twice” and “zero times” so it works properly if the Power is Repeated.
If you use a Power like Infestation of Venomous Spiders that lets you skip a number of Invader Actions in a land where they would Ravage twice, it has to skip each of the two individually.
Similarly, when an Incarna counts as a Sacred Site, it's still just counts as one Presence.
While a strict reading of the text of Insights Into the World's Nature would have the other Spirit store its prepared markers on Shifting Memory's panel, don't do that. It just wasn't worth convoluting the wording of that paragraph to cover the extreme edge-case. As of the release of Nature Incarnate, "Prepare" is a general game keyword, so the exact text of the first paragraph of Insights Into the World's Nature is just a reminder of how things normally work for Shifting Memory of Ages.
If an Aspect replaces
Insights Into the World's Nature, the function of Element markers also changes for other Spirits. For example, if Shifting Memory is using the Intensify Aspect, Element markers can be spent by other Spirits to increase the effects of one of their Spirit Actions, but can't be spent to gain Elements for a single action.
(Discussion elsewhere) Tags: Elements, Transferring Power Cards, Element markers, Prepare, 5 more...
- Have no targeting restrictions;
- Only target Inland lands (e.g., Here There Be Monsters);
- Can't target specific terrains (e.g., Dry Wood Explodes in Smoldering Splinters);
- Check for pieces that are currently in The Endless Dark (e.g., Territorial Strife targeting The Endless Dark if a City is present there); or
- Specifically target The Endless Dark (e.g., Lost in the Endless Dark).
("Each player may Push a Beasts" would not be sufficient - cases like that don't represent Spirits doing things, the game just needs a player to make a decision for a Fear or Event card. It would have to use the word "Spirit".)
