Treasure Deck Query

[The Admiral]

I think their intention was that all the negative cards go back into the deck and reshuffled in. Any treasures or potions drawn once are left out. So as the deck runs out the good cards become more and more sparse.

Yep.

[Vorimir]

We ended doing another thing. I burn a card just before the game start and is secretly discarded. We dont shuffle every time so bad cards go down but players will never truly know if there is another potion or not.
We save time and shuffling

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Admiral, it is interesting that you are agreeing with wallydubbs statement (which I also understand as the official instructions and agree with) when your stated rules play out differently.

Take the NA treasure deck for example (this works the same with the EA Treasure deck but the numbers vary)

24 Cards - 14 "Good", 10 "Bad"

Under the official version if at some point during the quest you have drawn 7 "Good" cards (and discarded them) and 5 "Bad" cards and returned them (shuffling after each of course), then the deck would now consist of 7 "Good" cards and 10 "Bad" cards so the proportion of bad to good cards will have doubled, making the deck worse.

Under your version all 12 drawn cards would have been discarded making the remaining deck 7 "Good" and 5 "Bad", exactly the same proportion as we started with?

As most quests comprise of about 10 rooms, even the larger expansion quests tend to be in the 12-15 range, and you like me only allow one treasure search per room, then you would never exhaust the treasure deck and have to recycle it - which I think is deliberate on the part of the original designers, the board only has 22 rooms and the treasure deck has a few more cards depending on your edition to ensure you don't exhaust it (although that mechanism was broken along with the advancement mechanism when the NA designers decided to allow one search per room, per hero)

For me personally I go with

1) Draw a card, if it is a good card "Gold" or "Potion", then the player keeps the card, if it is a bad card, then it is played out and returned to the deck which is shuffled.

2) "Gold" cards stay with the character, unless they are killed, until after the quest when they are totalled and spent on new equipment (and are then returned to the deck for the next quest

3) "Potion" cards stay with the character until they are used, even if that is in a subsequent quest, having been used they are discarded and form part of the deck for the following quest

This mechanism has a number of advantages

a) you get the deck worsening effect that wallydubbs mentioned as the quest goes on
b) you don't have to scribble gold or potions down during the quest
c) you keep the limit of potions down to what is in the deck - there is only ever 1 Potion of Strength/Speed etc so that reduces issues around stacking
d) you don't ever have to be forced to discard potions as per the official EA rules, but neither do you get to hoard them as per the NA rules, so the mechanism is self-balancing, the easier you find the game the less potions you use, the less you get, the harder the game gets (and vice versa)
e) you retain the maximum cap on gold from the deck so you don't break the advancement balance

[The Admiral]

Admiral, it is interesting that you are agreeing with wallydubbs statement (which I also understand as the official instructions and agree with) when your stated rules play out differently.

I was agreeing that that is the way the rules intend. It is not the way I play it.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

In which case that makes perfect sense

[TheLastChaosWarrior]

I think it's meant to be played so good cards stay out of deck, but bad and neutral go back in and get shuffled when put back in.
I limit one search per room, no searches in passages, and have made custom wandering monster cards featuring a Chaos Knight, a Chaos Sorcerer and a Gargoyle!!
Mwah, hah, hahh!!!