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Hey, thanks for writing! I’m happy to answer some of your questions. First: yes, playing solo is very dangerous and 7s and up are considered deadly without the right equipment. The solution in the core game (RAW) is to prioritize carrying a compass, but if it breaks you would be dead. We also have 2 house rule solutions that can work pretty well:

1. Every day spent lost in the hardlands, reduce the difficulty of the hardland by 1. So you will spend at least 2 days in an 8 and 1 day in a 7 lost, but eventually, if you have enough supplies and few enough injuries, you will escape.

2. Easy mode: every day spent in the hard lands add a bonus die. This basically makes it very unlikely to spend more than 1 or 2 days in a hard land and works well if you want to have a game where you are more continuously exploring.

Supplies are used to tend your wounds in that if you are injured, you require additional supplies. You are correct that there are only a few ways to heal injuries, though you have ignored the oracle (Jack of Clubs) who offers healing. Also, the Holy Rod technically allows you to remove an injury from one player, by adding an injury to yourself. So its not really healing in the traditional sense. It is the intention of the design that you do exploration loops, each time you come back to town you get an opportunity to purchase a random magic item, and the need to choose whether you will stock up on supplies or spend your treasure another way is one of the critical strategic anchors in the game.

It’s also worth noting that as you get more powerful and flip more cards you become better able to venture farther. Knowing where beasties and hardlands are so can avoid them, or knowing where goodlands are so you can resupply on the way can be the difference between dying on a run or ridding the realm of the unearthed evil, or even, the end beast! Scouring the land for the weapons of legend and using maps to reveal difficult to reach sections all play into the fun. You should also remember that the beasties and the good lands are always there, so once you are equipped to defeat a beastie, or find a weak one (a 3 of your suit for example) farming it for treasure is a good way to prepare for an deeper expedition into the wilds.

Once you have acquired enough power and magic you will not need to return home as frequently, or at all. But then once you have acquired the last quest, you can not return home without facing the end beast. So you will have to rely on the second town for healing services, and then only if you have defeated the City of Thieves.

As you can tell, I love this game so much. I could talk about it for hours lol. You might be excited to know I just commissioned a bunch of new human-made art to fill a new version of it for a print run and an expanded edition. We will be packing in lots of optional rules, house rules, fun alternate play styles, and all kinds of fun in the upcoming release, so check back. In the mean time we wrote a blog post about doing QuestDiving to add under sea exploration to your QuestCrawl game: https://watcherdm.com/2025/04/08/questcrawl-underwater-rules/