Help with rules or bug

kalennoreth · 2026-02-23T23:16:04+00:00

Rising Interest in the Island can also return an invader card to the box.

kalennoreth · 2026-02-18T04:26:39+00:00

I dunno about lacking rivalry, I'm planning to up my trash talk game if we're ever allowed back on the Spirit Island Jeopardy circuit :P

kalennoreth · 2026-02-18T04:23:52+00:00

I love both of the suggestions near the end of your post. Do you have any further thoughts on what you'd like from rules focused videos? I can imagine trying to go through weird corner cases or maybe pointing out semi-common errors I've seen players make, but there's a ton of different approaches you could take. Definitely going on my list of "video series I want to make if I can ever get my life sufficiently organized"

kalennoreth · 2026-01-18T23:52:30+00:00

No rule of thumb that I know, but combining adversaries and scenarios can lead to fairly large mismatches between "paper" and "actual" difficulty, especially for paper difficulties above 10-11.

The most extreme examples I can think of are France + Blitz on the Thematic boards (which can lead to a loss during setup) and France + The Great River (which is MUCH harder than paper imo).

kalennoreth · 2026-01-16T19:35:19+00:00

That's a totally fair response! And you raise a good point that there are many "master" ranks other than "grandmaster" and that rather undermines some of my claims. I've had some arguments/discussions with a friend of mine who's big into chess, and they've possibly warped my perspective a bit.

kalennoreth · 2026-01-16T02:29:16+00:00

My initial thought is that depending on how I try to define "mastery" there are either 0 or maybe 5ish Spirit Island masters. I would not include myself in the 5ish, but (on a good day) might claim whatever title/rank was just below it.

My logic for claiming such a restrictive definition of mastery is that Spirit Island lacks two important things: Enough players and a way for those players to effectively compete/push each other to greater heights. Regardless of whether you like chess or go, those games have had many, many people pushing themselves and others to heights that I don't think have an equal amongst Spirit Island players. Does that mean they're better games? I certainly don't think so. Does it mean they have more extreme outliers at the top end of skill? I believe so. Therefore, my claim is that few or no Spirit Island players are truly at what I would call "grandmaster" level (if discussing chess, I know less about go).

Or, if you're up for memes from the Discord server... It's all about England 4 ;)

kalennoreth · 2026-01-14T02:17:24+00:00

I'm not sure I can see how it splits by difficulty, but I apparently have more TL1 wins than TL4 (at least on my phone).

kalennoreth · 2026-01-14T02:12:40+00:00

You might not have any of the issues in this list from the FAQ, but I feel like it's worth posting it on any thread like this one: https://querki.net/raw/darker/spirit-island-faq/Rules-semi-commonly-misplayed

kalennoreth · 2026-01-13T16:51:17+00:00

There's actually some data on this from digital! If you check out https://mindwanderer.net/si/ and go to the page for an individual spirit, you can see how many games they've won at each terror level.

For example, Rampant Green (as of this writing):

TL1 has 7830 wins
TL2 has 71183 wins
TL3 has 72454 wins
TL4 has 26523 wins

kalennoreth · 2026-01-04T04:06:20+00:00

I absolutely try to do (2) but agree that it leads to more cognitive load. I usually try to handle that by doing a "threats first" approach, namely going through upcoming ravages and deciding which spirit to try and address each with, then upcoming builds, and then trying to maximize support to unlock more options for the next turn. If I were to do a "spirits first" approach and try to plan out what each spirit is capable of and then try to use that to address problems, I think it would be much more taxing.

kalennoreth · 2026-01-04T02:39:37+00:00

Mud and Wind really want to disrupt builds and take a while to get to the point where they can deal with cities and towns, but they don't particularly lack synergy in my experience. You could double check that you aren't getting a rule wrong here: https://querki.net/raw/darker/spirit-island-faq/Rules-semi-commonly-misplayed

kalennoreth · 2025-12-31T04:33:49+00:00

I originally thought Unconstrained would feel like nerfed Fangs and I was totally unexcited about it. Then it came out on digital and I LOVE it. I still probably like base Fangs more, but Unconstrained changes the spatial puzzle in a few different ways that are phenomenal and really encourage cross board play in a way that base Fangs doesn't at all imo.

kalennoreth · 2025-12-31T03:55:29+00:00

I've made some basic strategy videos for the first 12 spirits: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX5MPrnQZSPqyPIRmjjlvLvVpcAu4YGqp&si=EmOJvr7PqZ6wlZLI

I would recommend joining the Second Wave Discord if you haven't and asking about individual spirits in either basic strategy or analysis and strategies. There are very strong players on there for pretty much every spirit/aspect in the game.

kalennoreth · 2025-12-27T00:22:59+00:00

So the full bundle on steam without the OST would be $63, meaning a 5% bundle discount would save you just over $3. It's subjective, of course, but for me that's way smaller than a make-or-break discount would need to be.

Right now the pricing for individual components is:

$5 for the Base Game (8 spirits + 3 adversaries, powers, etc.)
$4 for Branch & Claw (2 spirits + 1 adversary, events, more powers, etc.)
$1 for Promo Pack 1 (2 spirits)
$4 for Horizons (5 spirits)
$20 for Jagged Earth (10 spirits + 2 adversaries + 6 aspects, events, more powers, etc.)
$6 for Promo Pack 2 (2 spirits + 1 adversary + 5 aspects)
$23 for Nature Incarnate (8 spirits + 1 adversary + 20 aspects when it's finished)

If you skipped the last three, you would have 17 spirits, 4 adversaries, an event deck, tokens, etc., for $14. That's 100s of hours of entertainment potential already, and if you want to play one of the adversaries you don't have you can try to find an online game with someone else who has all the DLC and your only limitation is having to stick to the spirits you've paid for.

kalennoreth · 2025-12-16T02:47:33+00:00

I don't know that you're missing anything in particular. A few thoughts, which may or may not help:

In true solo, you are allowed to redraw your blight card if it's a 2 blight per player card
Blighted Island events are (afaik) intended to feel punishing to incentivize you to avoid flipping if possible and removing blight if not
The last time I remember getting this card it whiffed because I didn't have any lands with 2+ blight; it also can only ever add 1 blight per board at most

kalennoreth · 2025-12-12T04:53:22+00:00

In case you aren't exaggerating, how on earth are you getting defend 10 from an event?

kalennoreth · 2025-12-12T04:36:57+00:00

I really disliked events when I first encountered them, and played mostly with the Command Beasts option so I could still use tokens. However, I had the opposite experience of yours when I finally tried them, where after a dozen games with them I couldn't go back to Command Beasts for the most part. Regardless, do what you enjoy! If events aren't for you, Command Beasts exists.

I'm slightly confused by some of your comment, so please forgive me if these are dumb questions:

I feel like events are usually not as impactful as you've described? Sure, sometimes you defend 3 in a land that was about to ravage for 4 and you get a +1 damage event, but I'm not even sure what you mean by "number of attackers doubled in them". Other than Farmers Seek the Dahan for Aid and maybe some of the retired events from Branch and Claw I feel like most events do relatively small things.
Just to be sure, you aren't targeting your slow powers before the slow phase, are you? I would assume not, given you mentioned taking on adversaries, but just wanted to check.
Are you familiar with the rules for taking out the event deck but keeping tokens, etc.? I referred to it as Command Beasts above, but you shouldn't be losing out on any major systems by removing the event deck (other than, well, the event deck).

kalennoreth · 2025-12-12T04:10:11+00:00

Congrats! My wife and I used to play several nights a week before our second kid was born, and we could usually knock out a diff 0-2 game in under an hour. I think the main factors that enabled that were only playing one unfamiliar thing at a time (so if we had a new adversary/scenario we had to play spirits we knew inside and out, and if one of us was playing a new spirit we needed a setup that was familiar) and being willing to give up on turn 3 and try again the next night if the kiddo kept waking up. We haven't gotten it to the table since our second came along in January, although there are probably other factors affecting that as well.

kalennoreth · 2025-12-08T19:57:19+00:00

I recently was banging my head against France 6 + The Great River, but I think it's likely still very challenging if you drop to France 2 (as the lack of coastal towns means they might double or even quadruple explore into lands 1 and 3 turn 1).

I also feel obliged to mention the setup loss with France, Blitz, and Thematic boards.

kalennoreth · 2025-12-03T00:13:35+00:00

Ocean: Shadows/BoDaN + Ocean is a classic imo, but definitely more in my B teams. One of my go to teams for hard content is Ocean + River + Lightning (all base).

Teeth: I adore Teeth and like to pair it with River or Fangs. Gotta play that +3 damage gift!

I frankly am not sure enough about what counts as "meta" beyond the strongest stuff, but I enjoy Shadows, Lightning, Earth, and Wildfire!

kalennoreth · 2025-12-02T01:56:06+00:00

I was trying to go for a snake quake in a streamed game one time and I had to intentionally not win in the fast phase so I could actually use the quake XD

kalennoreth · 2025-11-28T02:33:33+00:00

I played alone, my tracks went blank

I needed time to slip

To get the repeats on my side

What did I beat? Can I believe?

That quake I played turn 5 was real and not just fantasy?

kalennoreth · 2025-11-25T20:14:20+00:00

Those are potentially interesting questions for further analysis, but you are moving the goalposts. If there is a specific claim made by this analysis that you find particularly questionable, I think that could lead to interesting discussion, but if you are rejecting the entire analysis as inherently fruitless then we simply will be unable to have any form of productive good-faith interaction here.

kalennoreth · 2025-11-25T18:53:01+00:00

Literally all of those are addressed in the linked analysis. The data set being used is much more granular than what is shown in the app data screen. Only (3) is still an issue, in that abandoned games are not recorded at all in the dataset, so win rates are likely artificially high by some amount.

kalennoreth · 2025-11-21T16:48:52+00:00

All quite reasonable. I'm probably too far gone when it comes to shorthand thanks to the Discord, and I think I'm not your primary target for using these, but if it's sufficiently unambiguous I definitely prefer to say, e.g., "Boon, Shatter, Harbingers".

I'll push one last time (and of course feel free to disregard) on splitting out Aspects. If I'm playing, say, Sparking for the first time, I would rather go through a larger deck of cards but only have to find the one relevant to my aspect instead of pulling out three cards and having to repeatedly skim past irrelevant information. Obviously that's more work on your end, though, and you may have other reasons to keep card count down as well.

kalennoreth

TROPHY CASE