In tabletop game industries, designers don’t just design a stand alone game. Sometimes their next game shares the same settings or universe as their previous games.
Like in movie industries, it can be a trilogy or even more. By doing so, the designer can use the same art, artist or art direction for their next game.
This can cut the cost a lot instead of paying the artist for more arts. It can also save their time and focus on making a functional game, probably with a new mechanism instead of creating a new world.
From the perspective of consumers, some may get bored. However, if the previous games were successful and have a lot of fans, it is easier for them to get familiar with the next game.
The Valeria series of what they call the Valeria verse is one of them. Right now, they have released 4 games and planned of a couple more.
This next game, Quest of Valeria is their third game. Previously I have a review for their second game, Villages of Valeria, which I published last year.
So, what is this Quest of Valeria game? How do we play the game? Can it be played solo?
Those are probably just a few questions that came to mind after hearing about the game. Well, in this article, I’m going to share with you my Quest of Valeria card game review, based on my experience on playing the game and what I can find from the internet.
Hope this helps. Is Quest of Valeria going to be one of the best card game out there?
Click or tab on any sections from the table of contents to jump right to that part. Use the red arrow button on the bottom right corner of the screen to head back to the top.
Table of Contents
Overview
Game’s Title: Quests of Valeria
Genre: Card Game, Competitive, Solo Mode, Card Drafting, Hand Management, Contract, Fantasy Theme, Set Collection, Multi Use Card, Multi Purpose Card.
Designer: Isaias Vallejo
Artist: Mihaljo Dimitrievski
Publisher: Daily Magic Games
Number of Player: 1-5
Playtime: 45 minutes
Official Website: Quest of Valeria (dailymagicgames.com)
Release Year: 2017
Initial Price: $25
Contents:
1 First Player Token
2 Action Tokens
1 Rulebook
7 Card Cost Tokens
127 Cards (63 x 88 mm):
Citizen Cards (84)
Quest Cards (32)
Guild Master Cards (6)
Player Reference Cards (5)
Expansions:
Lantz, The Viking Jarl Guild Master Card (2017)
Ash, The Chief Justice Guild Master Card (2017)
Grendyl, The Half-Fae Guild Master Card (2017)
About Quest of Valeria Card Game
Quest of Valeria is the third game in the Valeria game series, after Valeria Card Kingdom and Villages of Valeria. It seems that the publisher hasn’t done with, not only expanding the game individually, but with more sequel with Corsairs of Valeria, Margraves of Valeria and the latest one Shadow Kingdom of Valeria.
Some people say that these games don’t just share the same theme and settings but each sequel continues the story of the previous game. With the same art, iconography, and characters, it is very easy for fans of the previous game to get familiar with the new game.
Each of them also introduce a totally different gameplay mechanism, targeting a gateway level game.
In Quest of Valeria, players are Guild Masters, trying to gather adventurers or citizens at the Gutrot Tavern, in the town of New Shilina. We’ll be competing against other players by trying to send these citizens to complete a series of quests.
Completing the right type of quest will help their Guild gain more popularity. However, from the four types of quests, sometimes, the right ones are not available and yet we can try completing the others.
Each quest will require a set of certain citizens roles. A citizen can have a role of either Worker, Soldier, Shadow or Holy. We can only send citizens with the right roles to compete the quest.
Aside from the role, quest will also require us to have certain resources, a combination of Gold, Strength and Magic. All of these can be fulfilled by hiring the right citizens.
A citizen of the same role can offer different type and amount resources. It is possible that we have to include a citizen with completely unrelated role just because they have the resources in the quest.
It is our job as the Guild Master to manage them so we can complete the quest with the highest prestige. Another challenge from the game related to managing these resources is the limited resources.
The story is that we are working behind the scene in a local tavern. We can only hire up to 8 citizens at a time. Our choices are either replace them, which is very wasteful or try to send them into other quests for lower points.
Hired citizens stay in our tableau and they are gone once we have sent them to the quest. Also, the order of hired citizens can change the game.
One citizen can give a one time benefit just by getting hired that allow us to get more resources or more citizens. While the others can only be useful just to complete the quest.
This is also a hand management game. We can have up to 8 cards in our hand that we can discard as a payment for hiring the citizens.
Some of the Citizens who already stay in the tavern for a long time are willing to join the guild for free while the newly come one will charge higher fee. We can wait for them to have lower self esteem but then our opponent can try to hire them first.
So, not only we will be competing to be the first to complete the quest but also to hire the right citizens that fit with the quest. The end game will be triggered once a guild has managed to complete 5 quests.
However, the winner is the one who gets the most points from those completed quest. Which is why we still need to pay attention to the opponents.
Quest of Valeria also comes with an official solo variant. Basically we will be trying to beat our own score before either one of 2 decks runs our of cards.
The designer also uploaded the PnP file on the BGG page for this game here. For those who are interested with this game can try it first before purchasing the retail copy.
It seems that the designer was inspired by Lords of Waterdeep, a board game. Quest of Valeria was his attempt to turn it into just card game.
The next video is from Rahdo Runs Through Channel displaying how the game works and the experience we can get from playing Quest of Valeria.
Components
Quest of Valeria comes in the same box size as their previous game Villages of Valeria.ย The size is 18 x 12 x 4.3 cm which have enough space for two deck of cards and a space in between for the tokens. At the bottom, there is a paper insert, similar to the previous game.
All of the 127 cards use the same size, which is 63 x 88 mm. The width of the box will have extra space that can help us lift the cards to take them out.
While the box has more than enough rooms for these cards but if we use sleeve, that will be a different story. I use the sleeve from Sleeve Kings with 60 microns thick and the cards almost lift the lid of the box.
That means, if we use a thicker sleeve, we might want to use some elastic band to hold the box. If they release any expansion, we probably need additional box unless we want to keep them without sleeve.
When we open the box for the first time, the two sealed deck of cards will have uneven number of cards. Each type of cards can be in either sealed deck.
All of the tokens are made of cardboards with about 3 mm thickness.
Rulebook
The digital file of the rulebook (English) is available on the official webpage for Quest of Valeria of the publisher’s website. We can also find it on the BGG page for this game hereย under the file section.
The rulebook is the first thing we can find after we open the box. Typical to any tabletop games, the size is almost the same as the box itself, with 16 pages.
Here is the table of contents.
Cover (Page 1). It has the same art as the box.
The Story of Quest of Valeria and Overview (Page 2). This part tells a story and setting that Quest of Valeria card game takes place in 2 or 3 paragraphs. The overview part give a general idea of what we will be doing in the game.
Online Tutorial (Page 2). There is a QR code that will bring us to the official webpage for this game on the publisher’s site. That page will have a tutorial video of how to play the game. Also, we can find an email address for missing components.
Credits (Page 2). Here we can find the designer, artist, publisher, editor, and play tester for the game.
Components (Page 3). This shows all of the components of the game, each with illustrations, including the two different side of each card type.
Setup (Page 3 – 4). This part describes the step by step guide to setup the game in multiplayer mode with illustration for the general area and player’s individual setup. There is a small difference between the number of revealed quest cards for 2 players and more than 2 players that we can find here.
Icons (Page 4 -6). This part explains the meaning of all of the icons that are being used in the game. There are several categories of icons: Citizen Roles, Resources, Actions and Hire Power.
Card Anatomy (Page 6 -8). This part explains all of the information that we can find from the three main type of cards of this game, Citizen, Quest and Guild Master Card. In this part, we can also find about flipping the completed quest card face down.
Game Flow (Page 8 – 10). This explains the 2 phases that a player will do each turn, the action and end phase. We can also find in this part how to use the Action Tokens.
Actions (Page 10 – 12). This part explains in detail about each of 4 possible actions that a player can do every turn. There are some details that we will need to look here that are not available in the reference card or the last page of the rulebook. For example, the Hire Power only happens from Hire Action not as a result from other Hire Power.
Ending the Game (Page 13). This part explains how the end game is triggered and how the scoring works down to the tie breaker.
Solo Play (Page 13 – 15). This explains the solo mode from setup to the scoring. There are certain Citizen Cards that we will be removing from the regular mode and an action that will not be used.
Card Clarification (Page 15). This part explains the complicated Hire Power of 10 Citizen Cards, mostly that involve other player or an arrow sign. We can find whether a card is going to a hand or guild.
Quick Play Reference (Page 16). This last page of the rulebook describes the summary from setup, gameplay to the end game and scoring for multiplayer mode. It’s like the Player Reference card plus the setup. We can also find the hand limit and guild limit there.
I think the rulebook does a good job explaining almost everything. While the book has enough illustrations, there are some pages that look like a block of words.
They could have used more colors, especially for the EXAMPLE part. I know that they use a rather grey color instead of black as the standard color but I almost cannot tell the difference.
As I have mentioned earlier that there are some details of rules that we can only find if we read certain part of the book. It will be hard to figure out where to find them again after we have not played the game for so long.
I do wish the summary page at the back can do this part instead of just replicating the player reference card. Some of them are very easy to overlook even if they are just minor rules.
On the forum, the questions that came the most is related to the “=” sign on some of the Citizen Cards.ย There are several questions related to certain Citizens like Thief and Bishop as the rule doesn’t clearly specify that the active player can choose the opponents.
They also don’t specify about the Hire Powers are optional which has led to some questions as well.
Well, they do a great job trying to make language independent game by using just icons but some details need further explanation.
Actually, I kind of wish that they combine the CARD EXPLANATION part with the ICONS part of the rulebook. I get it that they want to give a general idea with the Icons part but in reality, some of the icons or combination of icons only happen on one card or a set of cards of the same copy.
For example, the TAVERN icon is only on SORCERESS card alongside the “|” icon. Instead of explaining the meaning of these icons individually, they could have just explain the entire combination from each card. I guess this is more about the placement though.
2 Action Tokens & 1st Player Token
These are the 2 small tokens with a turquoise color and a Guild icon with a number 1 and 2. They are the ones with vertical orientation, and the size is about 2.85 x 1.9 cm.
In this game, each player can perform 2 actions during their turn.
Everytime we perform an action, we pass one of the tokens to the next player or player to the left. After we have performed the second action and passed the second token we proceed to the end phase of our turn.
The idea behind these tokens is that every turn we can do one of 4 actions, DRAW, HIRE, RESERVE and QUEST. Two of them, HIRE and QUEST allows us to trigger a bonus action that can either one of the four as well.
If we combine that with 2 actions per turn, a player’s turn can be quite complex. It is very easy then to lose track of which actions we are currently on. Is it the first or the second?
Hopefully with these 2 tokens and passing them as we perform the action can solve that issue. However, with the pace of the game, it is also very easy for player to just take action and forgetting to pass the token.
I guess, with multiplayer, the non active one should help keep track of the active player.
1st Player Token
Then, we also get 1st Player Token. I thought we don’t really need this especially since we already have the 2 Action Tokens to remind us. It is not a game with rounds, which the starting player will change between rounds.
In this game, we take turns in the same order until the end game is triggered. But that is not necessarily the end of the game. Players will continue playing the game until all of the players have equal amount of turns.
That is how the 1st Player Token will come. While the 2 Action Tokens keep moving around from player to player, the 1st Player token stays.
So, after the end game is triggered, if the player who has this 1st Player token then gets the 2 Action Tokens, that is the end of the game.
Of course, we can just simply remember who was the first player without using this token. However, I can see that in probably full or 5 players, we can really lose track.
The problem is that this token is then just stay in their spot for the entire game. Player can somehow lose the token while moving their cards from the Guild. They can bump the token and it will become meaningless.
I’m not sure but for this specifically, maybe 1st Player Card will be a better component. If it’s possible I would rather have a better components, probably something big that can improve the table presence. But then, I understand that will increase the cost.
Card Cost Tokens
The game comes with 7 Card Cost tokens. Six of them has the same length as the width of the card, each with a number from 0 to 3.
In this game, there will be a public market or TAVERN LINE for hiring the Citizens that any player can access. Each time, a player can hire up to 6 Citizens from this market. The number of the token indicates the price for hiring that Citizen.
The citizen who came out first will be the cheapest one and we can hire that citizen for free up to a cost of 3. As players take turns, Citizens who haven’t been hired will move to the cheaper spot or the same.
What that means is if we don’t hire a Citizen during our turn, we are giving the next player a chance to hire that Citizen with lower price. It is an open information. As a player, we can make decision whether to hire a Citizen that we need or just to prevent other players to get what they need.
If we choose to hire them early with higher cost, is it worth it? Or we can actually let the Citizen stays there for a while because we know that other player cannot afford to hire them?
This is the first element of the game that introduce player interaction. On the other hand, with the 6 choices, even we only care about ourselves, the choices are not that obvious.
The one that we can hire for free seems more attractive. However,ย the next one with just a cost of 1 can give better bonus action.
Some people say that they prefer these tokens to be a single long board instead of individually. I can understand that considering we are not going to change the order as well, always in ascending order.
However, by separating them, we don’t really need a long table space just for displaying the TAVERN LINE.
Hire from Your Hand Token
This is the 7th token of this part with the same function. Instead of adding the card from the general market or display, it reminds us that we can also do HIRE action from cards in our hand.
For taking that action, the cost is 2 cards to be discarded. That is what the number 2 means on that token.
This token will be placed right next to the other 6. The game suggests between the two face down deck of cards.
As for the component itself, I think I prefer that this token uses the same length as the other Card Cost tokens. The reason is because the two deck of cards can be a massive size.
So, if we follow the suggestion, the chances are, most of the time, we can’t even see that token. If the purpose is to remind us of that HIRE option, it doesn’t do it very well.
For the gameplay, I think the option to Hire from our hand give an additional depth to the game. Unlike the market which any player can see, our opponents do not know exactly the card in our hand. All we can see is just the back of the cards and probably the number of cards.
The cost for that action itself can be considered as very high, where we need to discard 2 cards. That also means we need at least 3 cards in our hand if we are not willing to lose the Citizen in the Guild.
Compared to what is available in the market, there are probably just one card that is more expensive option that this one. Either it is a very good one or the one that lets us get a combo of actions that makes it worth the cost.
The interesting part is, again, the bonus action that we can get from Hire Power. That can still affect the market if the Hire Power is to HIRE or RESERVE or QUEST.
Reserve is probably the least worrying because each player can only have one quest in our reserve. We know what is still available in the Active Quest and we probably have a pretty good idea what other player is going for.
Similar with the QUEST. We can see our opponent’s Guild and how likely are they going to complete any of the Active Quests.
However, there is a possibility that extra Quest action can end the game sooner than we think. Or at least, to get the Quest that we were trying to complete.
Our effort for gathering the right Citizen just for that specific Quest can become meaningless. That is probably one of the mean aspect of the game.
Those considerations are going to happen if we can keep some of good Citizen card in our hand. Chances are, we are not going to keep them for long.
The game pace is so fast that cycling the cards happens very often. It is very rare that this extra option for Hire action can significantly change the course of the game.
Player Aid Cards
There are 5 of these to support up to 5 players. Each of them have contents on both sides. One side is for the summary of the gameplay and end of the game. This is almost the same as the last page of the rulebook except without the setup.
The other side is the summary for all of the icons in the game. There are icons that appear in the rulebook but not in cards and vice versa. Clearly, the purpose of this card is as a reminder after we have read the entire rulebook.
If we cannot understand from the rulebook, reading the icons part of this card is probably not going to help either. At least, that’s me, though.
In general I don’t really think we need multiple copies for specifically about the gameplay side. For me, we can always discuss it with the opponent. The part for icons, however, is probably more important as discussing it can reveal our tactics or strategy to the opponent.
So, for me, I would rather they use 1 card for gameplay, if that is really necessary. I think the last page of the rulebook already do a good job for that. Maybe they can use the card for other purpose like Solo Play or highlighting some specific detail like hand or tableau limit, whether it is a hard limit or not.
By doing so, they can have two sides of this Player Aid cards for explaining the icons. Again, as I said earlier, maybe straight to explaining the Hire Power from each Citizen Cards instead of each icon individually.
Guild Master Cards
As mentioned earlier that in Quest of Valeria game, we play a role of Guild Master, hiring Citizens to join our Guild and send Citizen on Quests. Each Guild has some specialties for the type of quest and completing the right type of quest can give us more victory points.
So, the game comes with 6 different Guild Master Cards. These are the cards with the turquoise background color at the back side and a Guild Icon and says GUILD MASTER.
The front side of the card will have an illustration and name of the Master and the description of end game power at the bottom. Here are the details.
Ho-Hai, the Collector: Gain 1 VP per ADVENTURE & SUBTERFUGE Quest Competed.
Lady Amina, the Brave: Gain 1 VP per BATTLEย & COMMERCE Quest Competed.
Maria, the Fortunate: Gain 1 VP per COMMERCE & SUBTERFUGE Quest Competed.
Ni’kal, the Assassin: Gain 1 VP per BATTLE & SUBTERFUGE Quest Competed.
Rahdo, the Game Master: Gain 1 VP per ADVENTURE & COMMERCE Quest Competed.
Zak’ri, the Protector: Gain 1 VP per ADVENTURE & BATTLE Quest Competed.
As we can see, these 6 Guild Masters don’t have much of variety. They always give 1 VP for the two types of Quest.
That means, for multiplayer mode, we can get up to 5 extra points at the end of the game. Assuming if all 5 quests match the types.
It is a bit different for the Solo play as we can complete as many Quests as we can.
In the multiplayer game, each player will take one of this card randomly and keep it secret from other player. Clearly, the rulebook should say that we are not allowed to check the unused card so we still don’t know the card that the opponents get.
Even though no matter each card we get will not significantly change how we play but it is still set the direction. The card serves as the secret objective for the player and small element of variable player power.
By having these different setup, Guild Master cards definitely add a replay value to the game. Even if we use the same Guild Master for multiple play, our opponent may have a different one, combined that with different player count.
While the art is great but it is a shame that most of the time we will not see the Guild Master face at all. I guess we can put it as part of our hand or we can use some card holder.
Quest Cards
These are the only horizontal cards in Quest of Valeria game. As the name suggests, they are the heart of the game.
At the back side of these cards, it has a map, probably just random map with rather yellow color and a word “Quest”. In the game, these will create a face down deck that we shuffle all of them for each session.
Each time, the order of the card will be random and different. From 4 to 6 cards at the start and we don’t know what will be the next quest. With that, this add more replay value and different setup that can give different experience.
Sometimes the high value quest may come out early but other times they may come out the last or one after another. This is the reason we should strategically use the RESERVE action.
There are 32 unique Quest Cards in the game. With 4 different types of Quests, each type will have 8 cards. The Quest types are ADVENTURE, BATTLE, COMMERCE and SUBTERFUGE as mentioned previously from the Guild Master.
At the front side of the card, we will see two parts. The left one will have an illustration describing the quest. We can also find the type of quest at the bottom of this left part.
Each type also is represented by their own color, Red (Battle), Yellow (Commerce), Black (Subterfuge) and Blue (Adventure). Thanks to these colors, it is very easy to tell the type from across the table.
The right side of the card has several information. From the top, we can see the title of the Quest.
The next part is the REQUIREMENT to complete the quest. This will tell us the type and amount of Citizen Roles and Resources.
For the Citizen Roles, all Quests will require at least 1 role up to 3 roles. It is possible that a quest may require 3 of the same role.
For the required resources, a quest may require just one type of resources. However, the total number of resources from those 3 possible type of resources is always at least 3.
Based on those requirements, we are basically doing a set collection in this game, a set of roles and resources. These Quest Cards are like CONTRACTS or OBJECTIVES that we need to complete in order to earn victory points.
The next part of the right side of the card display the REWARD. This is what we will immediately get for completing the quest. This part will always have from 2 icons up to 4.
One of the icons is always a Victory Points which always the first icon with the purple color. The next 1 to 3 icons are letters that represent all of the possible actions that we can take in the game, D (Draw), H (Hire), R (Reserve), or Q (Quest).
The bottom most part of the card is for Flavor text. They are not essential for the gameplay but they can help setting the theme.
I guess the font size is kind of too small. It is really difficult for me to read them.
There are definitely some interesting character in this Valeria settings that we can find from these texts. I don’t know if the designer or publisher is using these same characters for other games of the same shared universe as well.
Even the artist, the Mico is in the game as the Monster Slayer. I know that they use the same art for several cards. From their second game, Villages of Valeria, I noticed the same art from 2 Quest Cards make appearances.
In case of using sleeve for Quest cards, we might need them if we mostly play multiplayer, especially with higher player. We will shuffle all 32 cards once as setup but it is possible to shuffle them again. Especially, if a player extensively wipe out the entire Active Quest.
With solo play, we may only shuffle the cards once per game but we will slide them from one end to another each turn. That can definitely ruin the card overtime.
Detail of Quest Cards
Quest Name: Ally with the Wizards of Nae
Type: Adventure
Roles: 1 Holy
Resources: 3 Magic
Victory Points: 1
Bonus Action: HIRE
Flavor Text: They claim to have dominion over all creatures. We could use their aid in the battles to come.
Quest Name: Meet with the Key and Blade Council
Type: Subterfuge
Roles: 1 Shadow
Resources: 1 Gold, 1 Magic, 1 Strength
Victory Points: 1
Bonus Action: RESERVE
Flavor Text: “You’ve been summoned? Well, good luck making it out alove.” Node, Master of Swords.
Quest Name: Push Back the Skeleton Army
Type: Battle
Roles: 1 Soldier
Resources: 3 Strength
Victory Points: 1
Bonus Action: QUEST
Flavor Text: The undead have breached out walls once again! Hold them back while we get the children out.
Quest Name: Repair the Bridges of Pratchett’s Plateau
Type: COMMERCE
Roles: 1 WORKER
Resources: 3 GOLD
Victory Points: 1
Bonus Action: DRAW
Flavor Text: If we fix the bridges today, I’m sure the elders will give us preferential treatment in the future trades.
Quest Name: Be Our Village Champion
Type: BATTLE
Roles: 1 SOLDIER
Resources: 2 Gold, 2 Strength
Victory Points: 2
Bonus Action: DRAW, HIRE
Flavor Text: A fierce young man has challenged our Town Elder to trial by combat! Champion needed!
Quest Name: The Empire needs Potions
Type: COMMERCE
Roles: 1 Worker
Resources: 2 Gold. 2 Magic
Victory Points: 3
Bonus Action: RESERVE
Flavor Text: This woman fights for freedom! To keep on fighting she’ll need YOUR help. Trade potions for war bonds.
Quest Name: Expedition to Withered Peaks
Type: ADVENTURE
Roles: 1 Soldier
Resources: 2 Magic, 2 Strength
Victory Points: 2
Bonus Action: DRAW, HIRE
Flavor Text: Academic Explorers needed to find the lost city of Withered Peaks. Riches and fame await us!
Quest Name: Flush out the Goblin’s Den
Type: Battle
Roles: 2 Soldier
Resources: 3 Strength
Victory Points: 2
Bonus Action: DRAW
Flavor Text: “The cleanest parts of a goblin warren still semell like sour milk and maggot juice.” Simon the Unclean
Quest Name: Take from the Rich. Give to the Poor.
Type: SUBTERFUGE
Roles: 2 SHADOW
Resources: 1 GOLD, 1 MAGIC, 1 STRENGTH
Victory Points: 2
Bonus Action: HIRE
Flavor Text: “Whoever has two robes is to share with those who have none.” El’syn, Saint of Shadows.
Quest Name: Expel the Evil Spirits of Kira’s Cavern
Type: Adventure
Roles: Holy
Resources: 3 Magic, 2 Strength
Victory Points: 3
Bonus Action: DRAW, RESERVE
Flavor Text: “As smoke is driven away, so do the unholy vanish in the presence of the Divine.” 1 Aquilas 2:14.
Quest Name: Impersonate the Governor’s Cleric
Type: SUBTERFUGE
Roles: 1 SHADOW
Resources: 2 GOLD, 2 MAGIC, 1 STRENGTH
Victory Points: 3
Bonus Action: DRAW, HIRE
Flavor Text: Protector Lekzand’r is corrupt! Impersonate his priest and hear his next confession to get some proof!
Quest Name: Please Bless the Town Well
Type: COMMERCE
Roles: Holy
Resources: 3 GOLD, 2 STRENGTH
Victory Points: 3
Bonus Action: DRAW, HIRE
Flavor Text: “Sanctify thine waters that the unholy may not find peace in thy land.” 2 Aquilas 12: 18.
Quest Name: Raise the Dragon Hatchling
Type: Adventure
Roles: 2 HOLY
Resources: 4 Magic
Victory Points: 3
Bonus Action: RESERVE
Flavor Text: Only the best Wizards have any hope of raising a dragon hatchling without being eaten.
Quest Name: Reconstruct the Western Wall
Type: COMMERCE
Roles: 2 WORKER
Resources: 3 GOLD, 1 STRENGTH
Victory Points: 3
Bonus Action: DRAW
Flavor Text: “We will rebuild the wall, but more importantly we will rebuild our community.” Elysium the Allsmith.
Quest Name: Rescue Our Boy from the Goblin King
Type: BATTLE
Roles: SHADOW
Resources: 2 GOLD, 3 STRENGTH
Victory Points: 3
Bonus Action: RESERVE
Flavor Text: The village guards are useless without a seasoned veteran to lead them out of the goblin caves.
Quest Name: Serve the Alchemist Petrus some Justice
Type: SUBTERFUGE
Roles: WORKER
Resources: 2 GOLD, 2 MAGIC, 1 STRENGTH
Victory Points: 3
Bonus Action: DRAW, HIRE
Flavor Text: Petrus has been handing out fake healing potions. Public humiliation is what he deserves.
Quest Name: Deliver Scroll to Eye of Asteraten Library
Type: Adventure
Roles: 1 Holy, 1 Worker
Resources: 2 Gold, 3 Magic
Victory Points: 3
Bonus Action: 2 DRAW
Flavor Text: Entrust the grimoire to no one but the Scholars of the Eye – the Darkworn lurk around every corner.
Quest Name: The Logistics of Warfare
Type: COMMERCE
Roles: 1 Worker, 1 Soldier
Resources: 3 Gold, 2 Strength
Victory Points: 2
Bonus Action: DRAW 2, RESERVE
Flavor Text: “Give our soldiers the best weapons money can buy… within our budget.” Hrothgar the Conqueror.
Quest Name: Steal an Owlbear Egg from Foxgrove Forest
Type: SUBTERFUGE
Roles: WORKER, SHADOW
Resources: 1 GOLD, 2 MAGIC, 2 STRENGTH
Victory Points: 3
Bonus Action: DRAW, RESERVE
Flavor Text: “Well, yes, it’s dangerous. And extremely difficult. No risk, no reward, right?” Waryn, Lord of Rogues.
Quest Name: Assasinate the Double Agent
Type: SUBTERFUGE
Roles: 1 SOLDIER, 1 SHADOW
Resources: 1 GOLD, 2 MAGIC, 3 STRENGTH
Victory Points: 4
Bonus Action: DRAW 2, HIRE
Flavor Text: “Chancellor Felhearst works for Balta. It’s too dangerous to permit him to live.” Reese the Firebrand.
Quest Name: Bribe the Amarynth Nobles
Type: COMMERCE
Roles: WORKER, SHADOW
Resources: 6 GOLD
Victory Points: 3
Bonus Action: DRAW 2, HIRE
Flavor Text: The Amarynths are increasing tariffs. Grease some palms to get my shipment through without paying.
Quest Name: Destroy the Gargan Cultist
Type: BATTLE
Roles: WORKER,HOLY
Resources: 1 GOLD, 2 MAGIC, 3 STRENGTH
Victory Points: 4
Bonus Action: HIRE
Flavor Text: “Gargans worship the old gods of death and chaos. Time they meet ’em, eh?” Mico the Monster Slayer.
Quest Name: Escort Brother Maynard on Pilgrimage
Type: Adventure
Roles: SOLDIER, HOLY
Resources: 1 GOLD, 4 MAGIC, 1 STRENGTH
Victory Points: 4
Bonus Action: DRAW 2
Flavor Text: “No on recalls why it’s named the Shrine of Forgotten Sorrows.” Cornelius the Dreamer.
Quest Name: Investigate a Suspicious Death
Type: Adventure
Roles: SHADOW, HOLY
Resources: 6 Magic
Victory Points: 3
Bonus Action: DRAW 2, HIRE
Flavor Text: The Lady Flora’s death wasn’t an accident like they say. I need you to find out the truth.
Quest Name: No Blood Crows in Our Town
Type: BATTLE
Roles: WORKER, SOLDIER
Resources: 3 GOLD, 3 STRENGTH
Victory Points: 3
Bonus Action: DRAW 2
Flavor Text: The Blood Crow’s protection fee keeps getting larger! Get them to leave me alone, and for good!
Quest Name: Restore the Palace’s Magical Wards
Type: COMMERCE
Roles: WORKER, HOLY
Resources: 3 Gold, 3 Magic
Victory Points: 4
Bonus Action: DRAW 2
Flavor Text: The Palace of the Dawn requires trained wardsmiths to reapply protective blessings to the East Wing.
Quest Name: Stand against the Emerald Corsairs
Type: BATTLE
Roles: Holy, SHADOW
Resources: 6 STRENGTH
Victory Points: 4
Bonus Action: DRAW 2
Flavor Text: The Emerald Corsairs are on their way to our village! Defend the town until Isabella’s forces arrive!
Quest Name: Vandalize the Orb of Urdr
Type: SUBTERFUGE
Roles: SHADOW, HOLY
Resources: 2 GOLD, 2 MAGIC, 2 STRENGTH
Victory Points: 3
Bonus Action: DRAW 2
Flavor Text: The Witch Queens rule the Urdr Wastes. Show them that we don’t bow to dark magic!
Quest Name: Slay the Spider Queen
Type: BATTLE
Roles: 2 SOLDIER, 1 HOLY
Resources: 3 Magic, 4 STRENGTH
Victory Points: 6
Bonus Action: DRAW
Flavor Text: “Go forth, valiant warriors! Breach the darkness and cleave at will” Isabella the Righteous.
Quest Name: Take Over Rogue’s Landing
Type: SUBTERFUGE
Roles: 3 SHADOW
Resources: 4 GOLD, 3 STRENGTH
Victory Points: 6
Bonus Action: HIRE
Flavor Text: The old thieves have sown nothing but weakness. We can do a better job of running things.
Quest Name: Defend the Sacred Grove
Type: Adventure
Roles: 2 HOLY, 1 SOLDIER
Resources: 5 Magic, 3 STRENGTH
Victory Points: 6
Bonus Action: DRAW 2
Flavor Text: Endless rivers of magic ay within the Sacred Grove. We must help the Cenobites defend it at all cost.
Quest Name: Host the Isabella’s Banquet
Type: COMMERCE
Roles: 3 WORKER
Resources: 6 GOLD, 2 MAGIC
Victory Points: 6
Bonus Action: DRAW, HIRE
Flavor Text: We must throw an elegant and exquisite banquet to show our appreciation for her support.
As summary, I think the formula is this.
11 / 10 requirements: 6 points
8 requirements: 4 or 3 points
7 requirements: 3 or 2 points
6 requirements: 3 points
5 requirements: 2 points
4 requirements: 1 point
Requirements means the number of roles and number of resources.
So, based on the number of requirements, the value can vary from 1/4 up to 6/10. I think 1/2 ratio is good enough but we definitely should try to complete any of the 6 point quests.
I thought at first that with the same number of requirements, the quest may offer more bonus actions. It turns out, it doesn’t work that way. The higher value with the same requirement can even have more bonus actions.
Of course, we still need to consider the extra point for matching the quest type with the guild.
For each type of quest, there is only one quest that can give us 6 points and 4 points. Those are probably the first ones we need to RESERVE or complete them right away.
Considering that there are not that many, maybe some players can try to memorize and prepare early. When one of these quests came out, they can immediately complete them.
I guess with 5 players, one my not get a very high score, not that the other four will get one equally. On the other hand, in 2 player mode, maybe we can tell that one player is going to win early when that player manage to take all of the quests with high score.
The total score we can get just from the quest is 100 points. If we are just competing to complete 5 quests and 4 of them have 6 points, the other player may not have a chance.
That means we really need to shuffle the Quest card deck. Or, alternatively we can just remove those quests with high score from the game to make the game more competitive.
Somehow, we can associate the type of quest with the CITIZEN ROLE. There are just a small number of outliers but for each type of quest, we will need a certain role.
COMMERCE will always require WORKER, BATTLE for SOLDIER, ADVENTURE for HOLY and SUBTERFUGE for SHADOW. Only four of the quest cards don’t follow these rules.
Citizen Cards
Citizen cards are the last components in Quest of Valeria game. There are 84 of them but not all of them are unique cards. Some have 2 identical copies and others have 3.
The back of the card has the same art with multiple characters which we don’t know who they are. At the top there is a word “Citizen”.
These cards are also vertical, and with a very different color scheme than Quest Cards. It is very easy to tell the difference.
These Citizens are not exactly a specific characters but more about their class or jobs like Knight or Priest or Peasant. So, at the front of the card, we can find the name of the job or class and an illustration to describe that job.
At the top left corner, we can find which of the Citizen Roles the Citizen belongs to. Each of the Citizen can only have one role, either WORKER (hammer icon), SOLDIER (helmet icon), SHADOW (knife and key) or HOLY (bird icon).
For those who have played their previous game will definitely notice these same icons. Each Citizen Role will have exactly 21 cards.
Then, right below the role, we can find resources icons that the Citizen can generate. There are three types of resources in Quest of Valeria, GOLD (yellow), MAGIC (blue) and STRENGTH (Red).
If I recall correctly the red one didn’t appear in Villages of Valeria while the other two did. Each citizen can offer one type up to all 3 types of resources. The same class or job will offer the same, so, they are identical with no variants.
Inside each resource icon, there will be a number that indicates the amount of resources. The numbers are from 1 up to 3 and there are several cards that have “=” or equal icon.
This equal icon is the most confusing one in the game. What it means is that the Citizen with the equal icon will double the amount of resources by the other Citizen with the same type of resources.
On their own, that Citizen with equal icon will generate no amount of resources at all. Only by sending them on Quest alongside other Citizen, they will double the amount.
NOTE: Discarding two cards of these will not necessarily make the resources quadruple. Each on its own just make them double the amount.
We can also associate the ROLE with specific TYPE OF RESOURCES that the role will more likely to generate. WORKER is for GOLD, HOLY for MAGIC and SOLDIER for STRENGTH.
That leaves SHADOW as more of a wild one that can be associated with any. Only one WORKER can generate MAGIC with the rest only deals with GOLD.
None of the SOLDIER generate GOLD and only one HOLY character that generate GOLD. That one Holy character, SHAMAN,ย is the only one that generate 3 types of resources.
So, these Citizen Cards are how we do the set collection element required by the Quests.
At the bottom of Citizen Cards, below their name, we can find HIRE POWER. What it means is that when we Hire them to join our Guild they will immediately trigger a bonus action.
The HIRE POWER can be one of the 4 basic actions, DRAW, HIRE, RESERVE or QUEST or more.ย Specifically for DRAW, it is possible that a citizen can have 2 DRAW actions as their HIRE POWER.
Some of them allow us to do these basic action but with an extra cost like discarding cards from our hand or Guild. There are also other cards that allows us to manipulate the both Citizen and Quest market.
In multiplayer mode, there are also some cards that allow us to steal cards from the opponents. We will not be using these in the solo play.
While the illustrations are great but some of these jobs or classes is kind of hard to tell which one is which. I mean I can tell the name by looking just the illustrations but it failed to describe like the difference between cleric or sorceress, necromancer or shaman.
The similar goes with between Bogatyr and Warlord. Of course, none of that really matters to the gameplay but I wish we can find out more about these classes.
I think there are about 14 Citizens or so that I’ve seen the same exact art in Villages of Valeria. Also, I’m surprised that none of the characters from the game box art make appearances in the actual game.
For people who prefer to use card sleeve, we might need them for Citizen cards. We will shuffle these cards multiple times during the game.
As Multi-Use Card
In the game, the Citizen card has another use, aside from being in the market or TAVERN that we can then hire to join our guild. These cards will also become cards in our hand.
We can also HIRE the cards in our hand but the other use is to pay the HIRE action. So, the card itself is another resource that we need to manage but at the same time we can use for what the card says.
Even the one that we already hired in the Guild can be discarded to pay the HIRE of another Citizen. The difference is that our opponents can see the characters in our Guild or tableau while they can only see the number of cards in our hand.
This mechanism gives another depth for the game. Are we going to discard the card that can be useful later to HIRE a Citizen that can be useful right now?
If they are already in the Guild, it is a viable tactic to just discard them in order to pay the new one. Maybe they don’t generate enough resources but that same character is perfect to trigger some actions using their HIRE POWER.
It is not that we cannot have multiple cards of the same Citizen in our guild but both of our Guild and Hand of cards have a limit of 8. We have to discard the excess cards at the end of our turn.
So, there are some cards that we might want to keep them in our Guild to complete the Quest and there are others that we are more likely to discard them as payment.
All of these consideration for taking actions is even deeper if we combine them with the idea of taking 2 actions every turn. Remember that each action has at least 4 possible actions.
Most of the time we will be planning how to make the most of these 2 actions. Which action we should take first so the Hire Power allows us to perform the second action?
That is like the basic idea. For higher level combo, we can try HIRE BOGATYR, that allows us to complete a QUEST and the QUEST will trigger a bonus action.
This will definitely require a lot of resources upfront. If that is just for the first action, we can trigger a lot in the second.
If the first quest that we completed has a bonus action of another Q or QUEST, we can definitely complete multiple quests with just 1 action. Sadly, there is only one Quest card that allows us to do this. I guess that is another way of using the RESERVE action.
While the idea sounds great, as a downside, it can lead to a situation of analysis paralysis for some players. They will always try to calculate all of the possibilities to get the best result which can lead to some downtime.
Detail of Citizen Cards
WORKER ROLE
Name: BAKER
Number of Cards: 2
Resources: 2 GOLD
Hire Power: HIRE
Name: BARD
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 2 GOLD
Hire Power: Discard a Citizen Card from your hand or Guild to gain 2 Draw actions.
Name: BARON
Number of Cards: 2
Resources: 3 GOLD
Hire Power: Discard a Citizen card from your hand or Guild to gain a HIRE action.
Name: BLACKSMITH
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 2 GOLD
Hire Power: DRAW
Name: BUTCHER
Number of Cards: 2
Resources: 3 GOLD
Hire Power: NONE
Name: MERCHANT
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 1 GOLD, 1 MAGIC
Hire Power: HIRE
Name: MINER
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: “=” GOLD
Hire Power: DRAW
Name: PEASANT
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 1 GOLD
Hire Power: DRAW 2
SOLDIER ROLE
Name: ARCHER
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 2 STRENGTH
Hire Power: DRAW
Name: BOGATYR
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 1 MAGIC, 1 STRENGTH
Hire Power: QUEST
Name: CAPTAIN
Number of Cards: 2
Resources: 2 STRENGTH
Hire Power: Discard your RESERVED QUEST to gain a DRAW or HIRE. This does not work if we don’t have any quest in our Reserve.
Name: CHAMPION
Number of Cards: 2
Resources: 3 STRENGTH
Hire Power: NONE
Name: KNIGHT
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 1 STRENGTH
Hire Power: DRAW, RESERVE
Name: SQUIRE
Number of Cards: 2
Resources: 1 STRENGTH
Hire Power: DRAW 2
Name: WARLORD
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: “=” STRENGTH
Hire Power: HIRE
Name: WIZARD
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 1 MAGIC, 1 STRENGTH
Hire Power: DRAW
SHADOW ROLE
Name: ALCHEMIST
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 1 GOLD, 2 MAGIC
Hire Power: NONE
Name: ASSASSIN
Number of Cards: 2
Resources: 1 STRENGTH
Hire Power: Discard a Citizen Card of your choice from another player’s Guild.
Name: MERCENARY
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 1 GOLD, 2 STRENGTH
Hire Power: DRAW
Name: NECROMANCER
Number of Cards: 2
Resources: 2 MAGIC
Hire Power: Discard a Citizen Card from your hand or Guild to gain DRAW and HIRE action.
Name: ROGUE
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 2 GOLD, 1 STRENGTH
Hire Power: NONE
Name: SAPPER
Number of Cards: 2
Resources: 2 STRENGTH
Hire Power: Discard a random Citizen Card from another player’s hand.
Name: SORCERESS
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: “=” MAGIC
Hire Power: Discard a Citizen Card from the TAVERN LINE or Discard a Quest Card from the Active Quest.
Name: THIEF
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 1 GOLD
Hire Power: Take a random card from another player’s hand of your choice. The card you take is taken into your hand.
HOLY ROLE
Name: BISHOP
Number of Cards: 2
Resources: 1 MAGIC
Hire Power: Take a Citizen card of your choice from another player’s guild and place it in your Guild. This will not activate the Hire Power of the taken Citizen.
Name: CLERIC
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 2 MAGIC
Hire Power: DRAW
Name: MAGE
Number of Cards: 2
Resources: 3 MAGIC
Hire Power: NONE
Name: MONK
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 1 MAGIC
Hire Power: DRAW 2
Name: PALADIN
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 2 MAGIC, 1 STRENGTH
Hire Power: NONE
Name: PRIESTESS
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 1 MAGIC, 2 STRENGTH
Hire Power: NONE
Name: SHAMAN
Number of Cards: 2
Resources: 1 GOLD, 1 MAGIC, 1 STRENGTH
Hire Power: NONE
Name: SUMMONER
Number of Cards: 3
Resources: 1 MAGIC
Hire Power: DRAW, HIRE
In general, each Citizen will give us a total of 3 from the number of resources and Hire powers combined. So, if a card already generate 3 resources, usually they will not have any Hire Power.
Similar thing also apply for a card that requires us to discard our card either from hand or guild to gain extra Hire Power. The total is mostly still three.
These cards are CAPTAIN, BARON, BARD and NECROMANCER. I guess that is the first thing we need to pay attention when deciding which one we should Hire and which to discard as payment.
We definitely want to keep Citizen with more resources in our Guild. Somehow it sounds like a bad message like we prefer wealth than just one time skill. Not that it is the intention.
Another thing we need to consider is the potential of combo not just between 2 actions each turn but how we can keep triggering HIRE POWER.ย The thing is HIRE POWER can only be activated by HIRE ACTION.
So, if we HIRE a Citizen because of a HIRE POWER, we will not trigger that Citizen’s HIRE POWER. What it means is, the last one we should hire from this chain of combo is the one without HIRE POWER like CHAMPION, BUTCHER, SHAMAN and MAGE.
CAPTAIN is probably the most difficult to take advantage from. In order to trigger the Hire Power, we need to spend one action just to RESERVE which will be discarded later. We probably need the hire power from KNIGHT.
Most of the exceptions are cards that involve some player interactions, like stealing or discarding their card. These cards include BISHOP, SAPPER, ASSASSIN and THIEF.
Also these 9 cards cannot be used in solo play. There were some complaints because the rule didn’t include THIEF.
Cards with equal icon can also be considered as exception. But then, if we can generate at least a total of 3 resources, they are more powerful than other cards.
SORCERESS is the only Citizen that allows us to manipulate the market both the TAVERN LINE or ACTIVE QUEST. This hire power can be really mean toward the opponent if we know what they are after and we deny them using this power.
I also don’t know why the rule remove BARON, CHAMPION, BUTCHER, MAGE AND SQUIRE in the Solo play. Somehow, it’s like they are saying that having more resources in Guild is a better strategy than having more Hire Power. Even though, that argument doesn’t really work with the SQUIRE.
Those are all of the components to play Quest of Valeria. We can then learn how to play. More about this next.
How to Play
Quest of Valeria can be played with up to 5 players, competitively. The solo mode is a bit different than the multiplayer variant, which will be discussed later.
This next video is the official tutorial from Daily Magic Games, the publisher, to play Quest of Valeria.
Setup
First, we shuffle the GUILD MASTER CARDS and give 1 face-down to each player. This is the secret role for the player in the game.
We can look at the card but keep it secret from the other players until the end of the game. The unused cards should be returned to the game box without checking them.
Second, we give each player the PLAYER AID CARD. Of course, we can always discuss the gameplay with the other player.
Each player can then place it on the table in front of them. We also need to have a table space for 9 cards at least for each player as room for our GUILD.
Third, we place the CARD COST TOKENS in the center of the play area, in ascending order from the left to right. The HIRE FROM HAND token should be placed in the right most next to the other token.
We also need to make sure to spare some space below and above these tokens as we’ll be placing cards there.
Fourth, we shuffle all of the CITIZEN CARDS and deal 3 to each player. This will become the STARTING HAND.
The rest will form a CITIZEN CARD DECK. We place it face down on the table in the area below the HIRE FROM HAND token.
At the right side of the deck, we should leave some room for discard pile for the Citizen cards.
Fifth, from the CITIZEN CARD DECK, we deal 6 cards face up below the CARD COST TOKENS to create a TAVERN LINE. These are the starting Citizens that can be hired from the tavern.
Sixth, we shuffle all of the QUESTS CARDS and create a QUEST DECK. We then place the deck face down on the table above the HIRE FROM HAND token.
At the right side of the deck, we should leave some room for discard pile for the Quest cards.
Seventh, from the Quest Deck, we deal 6 Quest cards face up above the CARD COST TOKENS to form the ACTIVE QUESTS. We only deal 4 in 2 player mode.
Eighth, we randomly determine the first player and give that player the FIRST PLAYER TOKEN and 2 ACTION TOKENS. We will be taking turns starting from that First Player.
That is it with the setup.
Gameplay
The game will be played with players keep taking turns until the end game is triggered. Each turn, players will have an ACTION PHASE and END PHASE.
In the Action Phase, players will do 2 of the 4 possible actions consecutively. Each of 2 actions can lead to a bonus actions, usually from HIRE and QUEST action. More about this later.
We should pass one of the ACTION TOKENS to the next player everytime we are done performing the action and the bonus action. After we have passed both ACTION TOKENS we can proceed to the END PHASE.
Here are all of the possible actions that a player can take during their turn.
DRAW (D) ACTION
With DRAW ACTION, we draw 1 card from the CITIZEN DECK. This card will go straight into our hand.
There is a HAND LIMIT of 8 cards. We can still have more than 8 during our turn but we need to discard down to the limit at the end of turn, not the end of our first action.
That means, if we already have 8, and we use our two actions to DRAW, we can have 10. Only at the end of our turn, we need to discard down to 8.
If the Citizen deck is empty, we can shuffle the discard pile of Citizen cards to form a new deck.
HIRE (H) ACTION
Hire action means we take one card from the TAVERN LINE, pay the cost, and put that card into our tableau as part of our GUILD.
The cost is indicated by the CARD COST TOKEN above that Citizen card that we are hiring. The numbers on the token indicates the number of cards we need to pay.
PAYING THE COST means we discard Citizen Cards to the discard pile. We can pay using cards from OUR HAND or from our GUILD.
When a Citizen is hired into our Guild through HIRE ACTION or QUEST ACTION, we trigger the HIRE POWER immediately. Hire power cannot be triggered as a result of another HIRE POWER.
There is a GUILD LIMIT of 8 Citizens. Like the hand limit, we can keep hiring over the limit during our turn. But, at the end of our turn, we need to discard the excess card of our choice down to eight.
HIRE POWERS are mostly just 4 possible actions (D, H, R, Q) that any player can do during their turn. For HIRE and QUEST as a HIRE POWER, we still need to discard the required cards to activate that HIRE POWER.
Aside from those 4 actions, there are several more Hire Power depending on the Citizens that will be a bit different. Some allows us to take or discard cards from opponent’s hand like SAPPER or THIEF. Similar actions can happen to opponent’s GUILD using ASSASSIN or BISHOP.
NOTE: Hire Powers are optional.
RESERVE (R) ACTION
Reserve action allows us to reserve a quest from the ACTIVE QUESTS so it will only be available to us but not for the opponents to complete. When we do Reserve action, we have 2 options.
ONE, we can take 1 of the ACTIVE QUESTS and place it in our GUILD as RESERVED QUEST.
TWO, we can discard all of the ACTIVE QUEST from the TAVERN and immediately fill in the Tavern with new quest from the QUEST DECK. Then, we take 1 from the new Active Quests and place it face up in our Guild as RESERVED QUEST.
There is a limit of only 1 RESERVED QUEST at any time. We can still reserve a new one but we have to discard the existing reserved quest.
We may complete a RESERVED QUEST in a future turn or action. Other players may not complete the quest in our Guild.
An uncompleted Reserved Quest will not generate Victory points at the end of the game or count towards bonus points from the Guild Master.
QUEST (Q) ACTION
Quest action allows us to complete a quest in order to gain Victory points, either from our Reserved Quest or from the Active Quest. There are two parts of this action.
One is completing the quest. Two is triggering the BONUS ACTION.
To complete a quest, we need to discard Citizens ONLY FROM GUILD to meet the requirements listed on the quest.ย We are not allowed to discard cards from our hand to meet the requirements. Also, we cannot complete a quest partially.
After we put all of the required Citizen cards in the discard pile, we take the QUEST card from the tavern and place it face up in our guild. If it is a reserved quest, the card is already in our guild.
Then, we proceed to the second part of this action, ACTIVATING THE BONUS ACTION. This should be done immediately after completing the quest.
Each quest may have one or more bonus actions that we can activate in any order we want. The bonus actions are activating one of the 4 possible actions again (D, H, R, Q). Yes, including a Quest again if listed on the card.
NOTE: Quest’s Rewards are optional, except for the Victory Points.
After we are done completing all of the bonus actions from the quest, we turn the card face down.
End Phase
As mentioned before, an active player will proceed to the END PHASE of their action after they are done taking 2 actions. They also need to have passed the 2 Action tokens to the next player.
During the End Phase, the active player should refill the empty spot for both Active Quests and Tavern Line. So, the next player will have another 6 Quest cards available (or 4 in 2 player mode).
For refilling the TAVERN LINE, we first slide the remaining available Citizens to the left. That way, the existing Citizens will have lower cost to the next player.
We, then draw a new Citizen card from the Citizen deck to fill the right most spot until all 6 spots have been refilled. If either deck is ever empty, we shuffle the discard pile of each to form a new deck.
So, even if the active player has 2 actions, we do not refill these cards during our turn. That means, the active player may not have the card they need in the TAVERN LINE or THE ACTIVE QUESTS.
We do not pass the FIRST PLAYER TOKEN. This token will stay with the same player in the game.
Ending the Game and Scoring
The game end is triggered when a player completes their 5th quest. Players continue to take turns until the turn order reaches the player with the FIRST PLAYER TOKEN. In this way, all players take an equal number of turns.
Then, we proceed with scoring phase.
We simply count the victory points from the completed quests. Then, we reveal our Guild Master and add any bonus victory points if the quest type match as indicated by the Guild master card.
The player with the most points wins the game.
In case of a tie, the tied player with the most Citizens in their Guild wins. If there is still a tie, the tiled player with the most card in hand wins. Otherwise, all tied players win.
That is it with how to play Quest of Valeria game in multiplayer mode.
My Experience & Thoughts
I have only played this with 2 players. The number of Active Quests might be different but we will be using the same amount of cards compared to higher player counts.
With just 2 players, I think the market or TAVERN LINE become more static. Players tend to just go for the cheapest while it is not impossible to pay the 2 or even 3 cards.
The problem is that in this game, the resources are really tight. Paying too much is not really going to help in the long run.
So, I kind of wish that the game use round system for 2 players. At the end of the round, we will be removing one card from the TAVERN LINE to emulate the third player taking one card. Or, just something similar to discard all of the available cards in TAVERN LINE and replenish them right after like for the Quest cards.
So, I haven’t tried it but maybe with higher player count, based on this issue, Quest of Valeria can be more interesting. Not necessarily make it a better game though.
It is still possible to run out of cards from the Citizen deck with just 2 players. But most of the time, we will only see the same card once. How random the order of the card might be the next issue here.
Another thing that I notice is that I think 5 quests to trigger the end game for 2 players is not an ideal number. To solve this, other games can increase it so that 5 is for 5 players, maybe 10 for 2 players or so.
I don’t think 5 is a problem in general but with 2 players, those aggressive cards become more appealing. Every single thing that can slow down the opponent’s progress can really help win the game.
Compared to different player counts, 5 quests for 2 makes it really a race game. It is possible that one player can just complete 5 quests right away ignoring the quest type or even points because the other player stuck with bad cards.
I’m not saying it is a bad design, but it’s makes it different with more players. Maybe for 2 players, instead of the number of quests, they can use the minimum total number of points a player need to achieve in order to trigger the end game.
Somehow, I feel like playing Quest of Valeria has similar experience with playing a deck building game. I mean standard deck building game like Hero Realms but without a deck.
In the sense that the resources is very tight. We will deplete the cards from both our hands and tableau right away mostly because we have to discard to acquire more cards.
Just like in deck building, we will always try to make combos of action, an action that can trigger another action. We have to decide which card or action to take first in the hopes that we can do more.
Sometimes we start our turn with 5 cards that don’t work well. That is similar in this game, where we don’t have the cards with the right set of resources.
The difference is that in Quest of Valeria, we still need to figure out how to get more cards after we no longer have any while in deck building we can just wait. It is not that hard to get a free card next turn with a chance to let us draw more.
So, in some way, I think Quest of Valeria is a more interesting game than standard deck building, specifically regarding the hand management. However, deck building like Hero Realms has more feature for building and deconstructing the deck.
As from the strategy or tactics, maybe this is more of a tactical game. Considering that we cannot really keep cards because how tight the resources are.
I thought that reserving Quest or holding some Citizens can be a good strategy. It is not necessarily a bad strategy but it is really hard to execute.
The problem is that this is not a game where we collect a single resource but the card has a set of resources. With 8 cards, we might get the right resources, but then we don’t have the right roles. This happens a lot.
The resources are tight even though there are a lot of potential for combos. Holding some cards will only limiting the space and the possible actions.
Also, I guess with too many cards, especially in hand, this will either turn into analysis paralysis or just aimlessly hoarding. It feels really bad that a card that can be useful in Guild for Quest came into our hand from the DRAW action. Mostly because they become very expensive to hire.
That RESERVE action that discard all of the Active Quest can be a mean attack to the opponent if we know what they are after. However, at the same time, it can be a bit of push your luck element because we really don’t know what will come. We could be leaving a better quest for the opponents.
Maybe we should do it as our first action. If we can combine that with SORCERESS’Sย hire power, that will be great.
It can also be the last resort when the end game has been triggered. If we get some extra turns, maybe we can have a chance to complete extra quest rather than not at all.
I guess another tactical tips is to complete a quest as the first action. Especially if the reward is allowing us to HIRE. By doing it in first turn, we can HIRE the free Citizen of the TAVERN LINE.
Any card with D and H either from Hire Power or Bonus reward can be a good combo by itself. We can draw then use that card to pay the HIRE.
I think we need to understand the association between Quest Type, Citizen Role and Resources in order to play this game well enough. Somehow I have an impression where MAGIC and STRENGTH is better than GOLD so I tend to discard Citizen with Gold first.
What I keep forgetting is that these GOLD generator are WORKER roles which is necessary for COMMERCE type of quest. That is how I get stuck with cards that do not match the set of collection required by the quest.
Removing one card is not just removing a resource but a set of resources. It is possible that we end up failing to complete the quest that we have been trying to collect for the past several actions.
There are enough interesting decisions and considerations we need to make each turn in Quest of Valeria.
Solo Play
Quest of Valeria game can also be played with just a single player. We just use the component that come with the box with no extra module.
The story setting is that the King of Valeria is looking for court officer for Minister of Quests and we as the players are considered as the strong candidates. The King is then sending a royal auditor that will evaluate our performance as Guild Master.
Depending on the Victory Points at the end of the solo mode, this royal auditor is going give us our rank.
The next video is playthrough by Mike DiLisio from SoloMode Games YouTube channel for the solo mode of Quest of Valeria.
Setup
The setup of the solo mode uses almost the same as the multiplayer rule but just for one player and a couple of differences.
First, we take one GUILD MASTER CARD. We return the rest to the game box.
Second, we will be removing some of the CITIZEN CARDS from the game. The rule includes ASSASSIN, SAPPER, MAGE, BISHOP, BUTCHER, BARON, CHAMPION and SQUIRE cards. I think we also need to remove THIEF as that one involves player interaction as well.
Then we shuffle the rest of the cards to create a CITIZEN DECK as per the rule for the regular mode.
Third, we also setup the market or TAVERN LINE using the CARD COST TOKENS like in the regular rule. From left to right in ascending order and the right most where the face down deck, we place the HIRE FROM HAND TOKEN.
For the solo mode, we might want to add more space between these tokens. The reason is because these CARD COST TOKENS will also mark the spot for ACTIVE QUEST CARDS.
So, preferably, each token will take the space the same as the length of the card.
Fourth, we shuffle all of the QUEST CARDS to form a QUEST DECK and put it face down like in regular mode. We also reveal 4 cards like in 2 player mode but this time, we need to place each card above the 3, 2, 2 and 1 Card Cost Tokens.
We can say that the revealed Quest cards will occupy the right most spots at the start.
Fifth, we spare some room at the left side of ACTIVE QUEST and TAVERN LINE for the discard pile of both decks. Once the cards on either decks run out, we don’t shuffle the discard pile to create a new one.
Sixth, we draw 3 CITIZEN CARDS as the starting hand and take the 2 ACTION TOKENS. We can also take the PLAYER AID CARD if we want and we will not be using FIRST PLAYER TOKEN.
That is it with the setup for the Solo play. We now ready to play the solo mode of Quest of Valeria.
Gameplay
The gameplay works almost the same as the regular mode. Each turn, we take 2 actions and proceed to the END PHASE.
However, during the end phase, any cards above and below the 0 CARD COST TOKEN are discarded. So, if there is a Citizen Card below and QUEST card above this token, they will be removed.
Then, we proceed with sliding the existing card to fill all of the 6 spots for both type of cards. With the setting described above, at the end of first turn, the Quest card only move 1 spot, instead of moving immediately to the left most spot.
In all subsequent turns, the Quest cards move just like the Citizen Cards.
Another change to the regular mode is that RESERVE action only have the first option. We just take one card and put it in our Guild and not wipe out the entire Active Quests and draw 6 new one.
The game will continue like this until either one of the 2 lines, Quest or Citizen, is completely empty on the TAVERN. That will be the end of the game and we do not shuffle the discard pile. So, these TAVERN LINE is like the timer.
After that, we can proceed with Scoring.
We count all the Victory Points from the completed Quests and the extra point from the Guild Masters to determine the score. Here are the ranks or opinions by the royal auditor.
40+ Points: MINISTER OF QUEST
35 – 39 Points: ASSOCIATE MINISTER OF QUESTS
24 – 34 Points: LEADER OF QUESTS
13 – 23 Points: LAYMAN OF QUESTS
12 or less Points: MINISTER OF JESTS
That is it with how to play the solo mode of Quest of Valeria.
Comment and Suggestion
Clearly, the solo mode loses some elements from the regular mode, related to player interaction. Instead of trying to replicate other player, the game just remove any cards with that ability.
On the other hand, the game changes the overall experience. We no longer have to race against other player just to be the first to get 5 completed quest.
Instead, we have to deal with the timer of the game. The nice thing about the timer of this game is that we still have a lot of control over it.
We can prolong the game and make the game ends even faster. So, the solo mode is more like a puzzle of how to make the most not just our hand of cards, guilds but also the Tavern.
We can actually prolong the game by taking one card at a time, whether it is the Quest or Citizen. The cards will only be removed if there is one above or below the zero Card Cost token.
So, if we take the free ones, it’s like we don’t take anything at all. It is not recommended to take more than one, especially not the left most cards.
In other game, the rule can be like always removing the left most existing cards, whether it is at the cheapest spot or not. That is not the case here.
But that is assuming all of the cards are a good one. Sometimes, we stuck with cards that we don’t need at the moment.
We can always cycle through the Citizen cards easily but not the Quest cards. I guess that is the reason we will run out of the Citizen cards before the Quest cards.
Actually, we can just using RESERVE action to take one Quest to slow down the timer without trying to complete them at all.
Compared to the regular mode, we don’t have to focus on the quest type that match the Guild Master card. However, like the regular mode, we are still tight in resources. Not playing efficiently is probably not a good idea.
Using Sorceress’ hire power is probably the only way to remove quest card faster.
Trying to do combo is still the biggest part of the solo mode or even more, I’d say. It’s just that we have more freedom.
We don’t have to worry about other player taking a specific Quest or even Citizen. In fact, we probably want to let some less valuable cards to be discarded.
Also, we don’t need to worry other player triggering the end of the game. We can also complete as many quests as we can. Not that it will be a good idea to just complete any quest.
There will be a time towards the end of the game where, the Citizen deck is empty but the TAVERN LINE is still available. We cannot DRAW but we still can continue even if we don’t have any card in hand.
I assume that we are not allowed to DRAW from the back of the TAVERN LINE.
Just HIRE, probably with the lowest cost and eventually just complete one last QUEST. Remember that we can still pay using Citizen in Guild.
Somehow that will change the game. We don’t want a combo just to DRAW,ย but how we can trigger HIRE, RESERVE or even QUEST just from HIRE POWER.
Personally, I don’t really care too much about the rank from scoring. It really depends on how random the order of the cards, especially the QUEST CARDS.
If all of the Quests that are worth 4 or 6 points comes early in the game, we probably will score very low. They may not come early but just one after the other can also makes us score very low. We might want to construct the Quest deck so that those high score quest can come within certain interval.
I guess similar things also applies with the Citizen Deck. Considering that we can easily associate the type of quest with the required role and resources, how random the order of Citizen cards can determine how good we play the game.
At least, in this solo mode, we can take time curating our limited Guild and hand. We can just let the QUEST cards get discarded, especially the lower value ones and only complete them after we have reached the maximum amount of cards.
I guess that in solo mode, since we will not use a new deck, so we will not see the cards again. Focus on keeping certain Citizen Role or their Resources can be a good idea.
The Guild Master can really define our strategy to win the solo mode. But then, any Guild Master that prefers any quest related to SUBTERFUGE or SHADOW ROLE is going to make the game easier? Considering that Shadow role has better access to different type of resources unlike WORKER, SOLDIER, and HOLY.
Somehow the solo mode can still take 45 minutes. While we have more control but we also have more options, which is probably bad for players with AP problem.
Overall, the solo mode of Quest of Valeria is about goods conversion and management. I think the randomness from the order of cards is enough to be a replay value. However, we probably just want to play it once every session.
Maybe sometimes we can comeback again. I do wish there will be some expansions that introduce different gameplay, especially for solo mode instead just more Citizen or Quest cards.
Expansion
Since the launch of the base game, up to this point in 2021, there were no official expansion for Quest of Valeria, other than promo cards. These 3 promo cards were offered in convention and later become part of the Kickstarter reward for backing Tantrum House season 5.
The cards are all Guild Master Cards. Here are the details.
Lantz, the Viking Jarl: Gain 1 VP every 2 Citizen in our Guild.
Ash, the Chief Justice: Gain 4 VP if we have 1 of each quest type completed.
Grendyl, the Half-Fae: Gain 1 VP for every quest we complete that worth 2 VP or fewer.
These are just simple cards that we can probably print it ourselves if getting them is difficult. While these Guild Masters don’t change how we play the game but I think it may change the strategy a bit.
I kind of wish instead of just playing one Guild Master, we can combine any of these with the one from the core box. Their power is definitely more interesting for that and of course for 5 players, they need more Master like this.
There was a discussion about the designer’s attempt to create an expansion in this page. It seems, they have not figured it out yet.
Idea for Expansion
This is just me exercising my brain to figure out ideas that can be implemented to Quest of Valeria. Of course, this is just an idea where turning an idea into an actual game requires more effort which I cannot afford.
In my opinion, we can take the idea from The Big Book of Madness. Both games have a set collection and objective element. In The Big Book of Madness, instead of collecting set of resources to complete a quest, we collect a set of magic to defeat a curse.
The interesting idea that I thought could be implemented to Quest of Valeria is adding more resources as the requirements. In The Big Book of Madness, we add a token on the objective card to indicate that the requirements to complete the objective have been increased.
Maybe, in Quest of Valeria, we can add EVENT CARDS which is part of the QUEST DECK. Like in Pandemic game, when we reveal an event card, the event might add these extra tokens to the other Active Quests.
Players can then try to defeat the EVENT and remove the tokens. Or they can just let the Event go away and we have to deal with more difficult quests.
The extra tokens can be either of the Resources or Citizen Roles. This can break the association between the quest type, citizen role and resources and probably make the game more interesting or difficult. Again, this is just an idea.
Maybe we can also apply the same concept to the Citizen from the Guild. We can add Event cards to the Citizen deck which will add token to the Citizen in the Guild. These tokens can either add more resources or reduce it.
I don’t know if we can also apply the idea of CURSE and CURE to the Citizen. Any cursed Citizen cannot be discarded or send on a quest. The simple version can also use the idea of Curse Card.
This card will take a space from either the Guild or our hand limit. Unless we can cure this card, we will have less number of resources.
Other than that, I do wish for more cards whether the Citizen, Quest or even Guild Masters. As mentioned above, a single Guild Master cards may not alter the game very much but if each player can have a set of Masters, maybe it will.
That way, we can also have more combinations of variable player powers. This will open to an issue of being unbalanced.
Those are just ideas from the game that I have played previously. Maybe there are other games that can have interesting mechanism that can be applied to Quest of Valeria.
Again, this is just me having an exercise for brainstorming an idea. I don’t know if this is going to help the designer or not. Clearly coming up with an idea can be easy but turning them into a functional game is another thing.
I’m not even sure if they will read this article at all. Hopefully they can come with a better one than mine.
Session Reports and Pictures
Usually, I share a session report of playing a game on BGG. Here are the links of each session for this game.
I also put turn-by-turn pictures of a session and unboxing pictures for every game on my collection that anybody can find on my Instagram. For this game, search for #QuestsOfValeriaAtHomeOfMark on IG for all of the sessions.
Also, check out my blog on BGG. I occasionally write a detailed session report / written playthrough for a game that I’ve played. In each, I will explain the decision process during the game every turn.
October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo play using Lady Amina, the Brave. Scored about 53. I realized something that if you trigger the Quest action as bonus, I probably should not get bonus from the quest itself. Like when hiring Bogatyr.
June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or even more on TikTok. Scored 48 using Rahdo as the Guild Master.
February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This report had more stories. Scored 48 from 13 quests.
July 2023 session and more pictures on IG.
November 2022 session and more pictures of that session on IG.
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Summary
Quest of Valeria is the third game from the Valeria series of tabletop games. It’s a competitive card game where we will be trying to hire CITIZENS and send them on quests to gain Victory Points.
A quest may require a certain number and type of Citizen roles and probably several amounts of up to three different type of resources. All of these can be provided by Citizens.
A single citizen have a single role and may provide more than one resource. So, the Citizen alone is a set of multiple resources. Most of the time a single citizen is not going to be enough to meet the requirements for a single quest.
We might want to play efficiently but sometimes we have no other choice but to deploy one Citizen just to meet one of the requirement. The challenge is that we can only have up to 8 Citizens in our Guild at a time.
It is possible to experience where we have more than enough strong cards with a lot of resources. But we are missing just one role so we cannot complete a quest.
Removing and replace a card may not necessarily fix the problem. Losing a citizen means losing a set of resources. So, we need to find another set.
We can just play slowly but this is a race game. Once a player has completed the fifth quest, that will trigger the end of the game.
The main mechanism is the hand management. We start with 3 Citizen cards in our hand that can go up to 8.
The hand of cards itself is another resources that we need to manage because discarding the cards is a way to pay the Hiring cost. Other than the Citizens in a communal market or referred as Tavern Line, we can also hire citizen from our hand of cards.
It is not cheap though. By having that multiple uses, players then have more options and the game has more uncertainty element.
Aside from the resources that a Citizen can generate to complete a quest, they also have a one time ability called Hire Power. This allows us to do more of 4 possible actions in the game that creates opportunity of action combos.
Combined that with player doing 2 actions consecutively makes this simple game to have more depth in strategy. What we will be trying to figure out how the end of the first action can generate enough resources to trigger the action of the second.
I do feel the similar experience of hand management from a standard deck building game.ย I think it is more interesting because we don’t have our own deck.
We need to make sure that our last action can generate more cards or resources. Moreover, with the hand and Guild limit, the resources are really tight.
Trying to hold or reserve cards may not be an ideal strategy. We will cycle the cards constantly from both the hand and Guild. It is very tactical.
I feel like the game might be best with higher player count. With 2 players the game works fine but players will become more aggressive towards each other. Mostly because we don’t see a lot of change in the market since we still use the same amount of cards regardless of the number of players.
There is a solo variant which is basically just trying to beat our own score. In this mode, we will see through all of the cards from a deck because the deck becomes the timer.
It is like a puzzle. We are trying to make the most of our cards.
I do think we need more variety of cards, whether the Citizen, Quest or even the Guild Master cards. But as a whole game itself, with the randomness of how the cards will come out from two decks, it is still enough to offer different experience from each session. Even for the solo play.
Quest of Valeria is not a game we will want to do multiple plays in a row but we probably want to seek out again.
More Games
If we are looking for more games like Quest of Valeria, there are still a lot of these great tabletop games whether card games or board games. We can find more alternatives from the forum like Board Game Geek or other websites about tabletop games.
Here are some that I think are similar to Quest of Valeria that I have played so far. Check the links to my review to find out more.
First, we can always go with games that shares the same universe like Valeria Card Kingdom, or Margraves, Corsairs or the Shadow Kingdom of Valeria. So far, I have only player Villages of Valeria which offers a different main mechanism.
This one is more of a tableau building / city building game but still with resource management. There is also the element of HIRING characters so, we might find familiar faces there.
Next, we can try games with similar theme, which is adventure fantasy theme. I mentioned earlier that playing Quest of Valeria feels like playing a deck building game, in which we’ll be trying to make combos of actions by playing cards in the right order.
For that, maybe Hero Realms can be the alternative. This is also a competitive game but instead of racing to collect points, we will be trying to eliminate the other players to win the game.
For the cooperative game with deck building mechanism and fantasy theme, maybe The Big Book of Madness can offer something similar. This is a bigger game with probably longer playtime and with set number of rounds per session.
For games with similar hand management mechanism where we can discard the card to pay, Adventure of D and Goblin vs Zombies have that mechanism. Both games can be played solo or multiplayers competitively or cooperatively.
Fleet also has this mechanism which also another tableau building game. However, the theme is nautical / fishing.
One Deck Dungeon is another game that I have played with fantasy theme. But this uses dice as the main mechanism but still with mostly just cards in a small box. This is a dungeon crawl game where we will be playing a heroine, increase their level while exploring a dungeon to defeat a boss.
Quest of Valeria has a strong element of set collection and contract or objective. For games with a totally different theme, maybe we can try The Castles of Burgundy: Card Game, Walking in Burano, Tybor the Builder, Oh My Goods! or Circle the Wagons.
All of them are also tableau building games. Mandala is another one for different kind of set collection but just for 2 players.
For games with more intensive in resource management and conversion element, we can try Imperial Settlers, Seastead, Cafรฉ or Peloponnes Card game. The first one is bigger and heavier while the second is more of a board game rather than card game.
This last one is a bit too far, I guess. But for solo games that feels like a puzzle with a timer, I have only played Finished! card game.
I will keep updating my website with more games. Find out the latest update from this Complete List.
Final Words
That is all I can share with you about Quest of Valeria card game. I wish I can play the other games of the Valeria series.
I probably have missed something. Please don’t hesitate to point that out and share what you know related to this game and I will update this article.
I keep saying that these tabletop games can be a good way to spend some time without looking at the screen of our gadget.ย If we do have someone close, that we can play with, there are other games where we can play cooperatively or competitively but with more player interaction.
The game can be very fast or like a filler type or it can take hours to play.
So, what is your experience on playing this game? If you know other games similar or even better than this, please do share via the comment section below. I would love to learn and play that game, assuming I can get a copy.
This article is just my notes about what I can find from the internet. Hopefully this can help anybody who reads it.
Thanks for reading.
Mark M.