"The Players must find and defeat Ungoliant's Spawn to win this game."

What if you have already defeated Ungoliant's Spawn during the game?  Do you have to find it again and defeat it again after this quest is revealed?

I would say no as the whole point of it is to have defeated her at some point during the quest if you were fortunate enough to have had her come up early then you are ahead of the game.

This issue was brought up yesterday, so it seems to be becoming a real sore point very quickly. I think the question is how literally will "finding" Ungolianth's Spawn is to be taken. If it's already in play, is it considered found? What if it is already defeated? Some players actually talked about "shepherding it" with some damage until the quest comes up and then defeating it, which seems somewhat cheap and not in the spirit that it was intended. My own personal take is that it must be found and defeated while that particular quest is active.

It is all one quest, merely a different stage of it. I would say since it is already defeated that part is fulfilled. I will write Nate to find out.

The "must find and defeat" condition begins when the "Don't Leave the Path" card takes effect. If the Spawn is in play at that time, the "find" aspect is immediately satisfied, they simply have to defeat it. A previous defeat, though, will not satisfy the "defeat" aspect of the card.

Nate French

Toqtamish said:

Ouch!

But thanks for getting us a reply!

Thank you! Although, I guess that means that the shepherding strategy is valid.

Toqtamish said:

Thank you for the ruling.  However, I gotta say that is pretty short-sighted one.  You invalidate defeating it earlier, no easy task, at least not with current cards available.  Also, you make the card Forest Snare silly good in this case.  Simply lock down Ungoliant's Spawn and save it for later.  Silly... and rather boring/dumb.

That is just silly and makes no sense whatsoever. (my opinion). I can only think of this as an error in Game Design.

 The card says you can search the discard pile and encounter deck  for a spider to put in stage.  I'm guessing they include the discard pile so you can defeat Ungoliant's Spawn again.  

good point cleat64.

Ah, I overpanicked. Apologies.

It makes sense, then. It's tough but ok to defeat the spawn twice I guess. Also makes sense from a storytelling point of view, since the party is sometimes just unlucky enough to encounter two spawns I guess ;-)

cleat64 said:

I'm quite unhappy about the official answer. Wit the official rule, you might as well stop playing if you draw the Spawn before stage 3 and start over. Not fun.

jhaelen said:

Not true. If you pull Beorn's path at stage 3, you don't ever need to face U-spawn, so if you face it before stage 3 you still have a chance of not having to face it again.

I think the offical ruling is a sound one.