Creating the Dor-Cúarthol Area

To create the Dor-Cúarthol area, place Amon R–dh (Hidden side faceup) in the staging area. Then, place Gate of Garth immediately to its right. Then, shuffle the remaining locations and place them in a sequence to the right of Gate of Garth. Finally, choose one location to be the active location.

A resource token is placed on a location to indicate that it is the active location. The active location contributes its threat to the staging area. Each location has its own staging area. Only the encounter cards added to a staging area of the active location are considered to be in the staging area. When you are instructed to add a card to the staging area of a location, place an encounter card facedown underneath it.

If a location is the active location when an encounter card is added to its staging area, immediately reveal and resolve that card during staging. During the staging step of the quest phase, any cards revealed are considered to be added to the active location's staging area.

You may place progress on the active location as normal through questing. When a number of progress tokens are placed on the active location equal to its quest points, it is considered to be explored. Place a damage token on it. A location with a damage token can no longer have progress added or removed from it.

During the travel phase, the players may travel to any location, even if the current active location has not been explored. Similarly, you may remain at a location that has already been explored. Player card effects that discard or switch locations cannot be used. When the players travel to a location, first place any cards in the staging are facedown underneath the old active location. Then, immediately reveal and resolve any facedown encounter cards under the new active location.

If a location has a damage token on it, encounter cards cannot be added to its staging area (any encounter cards already in the staging area of a location when it is explored remain in play). Note that this applies to the staging step of questing as well (since treacheries are not added to the staging area, they will still resolve as normal). Since cards cannot be added to such a location's staging area, when adding a card to a random non-unique location, do not add a card to a location with a damage token if it is randomly selected.