Game rules

Lost Ruins of Arnak rules: how to play and how to score

Reviewed on 13 October 2026 against the publisher’s rulebook. How we check

Lost Ruins of Arnak plays 1 to 4 players over 5 rounds: everyone leads an expedition to an uncharted island, between digs, cards and the research track. Here are the essential rules, setup and final scoring, based on the official rulebook.

Players: 1 to 4 (solo against a rival expedition)
Play time: About 2 hours
Winner: Most points; on a tie, the first to reach the Lost Temple

Lost Ruins of Arnak quick rules

The goal: Each player leads an expedition to an uncharted island: send your two archaeologists to dig at sites, buy cards to improve your deck and advance on the research track, toward the Lost Temple. The game lasts 5 rounds, and the most points wins.
A round: Everyone starts the round with 5 cards in hand. Play goes clockwise: on your turn, take one main action (dig, discover, overcome a guardian, buy, play a card, research or pass) plus as many free actions, marked with a lightning bolt, as you like. Once you pass, you’re done for the round.
Cards and travel: A card is used either for its effect or for its travel icon, never both. There are four travel values: boot, car, ship and plane. A car or a ship can replace a boot, a plane replaces anything, and 2 coins always buy a plane. A Fear card has no effect: it only works as a boot.
Digging and discovering: To dig, pay the travel cost of a free space, place an archaeologist there and gain what the site shows. Discovering a new site also costs 3 compasses (level 1) or 6 compasses (level 2): take the idol, flip a site tile and gain its effect, and a guardian appears. With two archaeologists, you get two placements per round.
Guardians and idols: A guardian doesn’t attack, but each archaeologist returning from a guarded site gives you a Fear card at the end of the round. To avoid that, overcome it by paying the cost on its tile: it’s worth 5 points and grants a boon, once. Each idol is worth 3 points; placed in an idol slot, it gives a bonus, but you give up the points printed on the slot.
Buying cards: The moon staff splits the row: artifacts on the left, items on the right. An item costs coins and goes to the bottom of your deck. An artifact costs compasses, and you may resolve its effect right away; played later from your hand, its effect costs a tablet.
Research: To research, pay to move one of your two tokens up one space. The magnifying glass always leads: the notebook never passes it. Each row gives a reward, including assistants for the notebook. At the very top, your magnifying glass reaches the Lost Temple: the earlier, the more points. After that, research buys temple tiles worth 2, 6 or 11 points.
End of the round: Everyone takes back their archaeologists and gains a Fear card for each one returning from a guarded site. Shuffle the cards in your play area and put them on the bottom of your deck. The two cards next to the moon staff are exiled and the staff moves: one more artifact, one fewer item. The starting player marker passes on. After round 5, the game ends.
Final scoring: Add up your two research tokens, your temple tiles, 3 points per idol, your empty idol slots, 5 points per guardian overcome and the points on your items and artifacts. Each Fear card takes away 1 point. On a tie, the first player to reach the Lost Temple wins.
Beginner pitfalls: Neglecting the research track, which often brings a large share of the points; buying items too late (in the last round, they’ll almost never be played); trying to overcome every guardian, when a Fear card sometimes costs less; passing too soon, with no way back into the round.
With Expedition Leaders: Each player becomes a leader, with their own board, starting cards and unique ability: the Captain leads three archaeologists, the Falconer has an eagle, the Baroness takes an item she just bought into her hand, the Professor keeps three artifacts in his archive, the Explorer reuses her single archaeologist, and the Mystic’s exiled Fear cards cost him no points. Final scoring stays the same.
With Twisted Paths: A new main board replaces the base game one. In the Spider Temple, dark tablets invoke altars on the research track; each one costs you points at the end, but the player with the most below an altar scores its points. In the Owl Temple, your magnifying glass can take a secret passage, and a lantern takes over on the track.

How to score Lost Ruins of Arnak

Research: The points of your magnifying glass’s row plus those of your notebook’s row. In the Lost Temple, the magnifying glass scores the space it reached.
Temple tiles: The points printed on your temple tiles.
Idols: 3 points per idol, in a slot or not, plus the points printed on your idol slots that are still empty.
Guardians overcome: 5 points each, whether you used the boon or not.
Items and artifacts: The points in the lower right corner of your item and artifact cards.
Fear cards: −1 point per Fear card in your deck, your hand and your play area.
Fear tiles: Rare: taken when the Fear deck is empty. −2 points each.
Twisted Paths (Spider Temple): The points lost for your dark tablets placed below the altars, and the points of each altar where you have the most dark tablets (if tied, everyone tied scores them).
Magnifying glass in the Lost Temple: Tiebreaker: the points of your magnifying glass’s space in the Lost Temple (the first to arrive has the highest space), then research.

Worked example

Emma scores 18 points of research, 8 from temple tiles (6 + 2), 9 from idols (2 idols at 3, plus 3 points of empty slot), 2 guardians (10), 11 from items and artifacts, and has 3 Fear cards: 18 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 − 3 = 53 points.

Common mistakes

Scoring both an idol slot’s points and the bonus it gave: a filled slot no longer scores its printed points.
Forgetting the Fear cards in your hand and play area: they all count, not just those in your deck.
Scoring only the magnifying glass: your notebook also scores its row.
Forgetting a guardian whose boon you already used: it’s still worth 5 points.

How to set up Lost Ruins of Arnak

Setup has quite a few steps. With several players, follow the first four parts; with an expansion, add the fifth; solo, finish with the last one.

The board

Place the main board Bird Temple side up, and the supply board next to it.The Snake Temple, on the other side, follows a few special rules: save it for a later game.
Mix up the idol tiles. Put 1 faceup idol on each level 1 site, then 1 faceup and 1 facedown idol on each level 2 site.The idol spaces are shown on the board.
Solo or with 2 players, use the 5 blocking tiles to block one space at each of the 5 starting sites.Each starting site then holds only one archaeologist.
With 3 players, mix up the blocking tiles facedown and flip 3: block one space at each of the 3 sites shown.Return the other 2 tiles to the box.
Make stacks of temple tiles on the temple, each with as many tiles as there are players.One 11-point stack at the top, two 6-point stacks in the middle, three 2-point stacks at the bottom. Solo, 2 tiles per stack.
Shuffle the research bonus tiles facedown and stack as many as there are players at the top of the research track.Solo, 2 tiles.
Put 1 research bonus tile faceup on each research track space meant for your player count.Spaces marked “3+” get a tile only with 3 or 4 players, spaces marked “4” only with 4 players.

The cards

Shuffle the artifact deck and the item deck separately and place them facedown on their spaces.Both have the same back: tell them apart by the icon in the upper right corner.
Place the Fear cards faceup on their space.
Place the moon staff in the card row, on the mark for round I.
Reveal 1 artifact to the left of the moon staff and 5 items to its right.Each round, the staff will move one space.

The supply

Place all resource tokens on the supply board.Coins, compasses, tablets, arrowheads and jewels.
Shuffle the level 1 site tiles, the level 2 site tiles and the guardian tiles: 3 facedown stacks on the supply board.
Turn the assistants silver side up, shuffle them and make 3 stacks of 4 tiles.Only the top assistant of each stack is visible.

Each player

Each player takes the player board, 2 archaeologists, 2 research tokens and 4 basic cards in their color.2 Funding cards and 2 Exploration cards.
Set your 2 archaeologists on your player board.
Put your research tokens on a starting space below the research track: the magnifying glass atop the notebook.The notebook never moves higher than the magnifying glass.
Add 2 Fear cards to your starting cards, shuffle them all and place this deck facedown on your board.Without an expansion, your deck has 6 cards.
Choose the starting player: whoever most recently traveled somewhere they had never been.Play goes clockwise; the starting player marker passes on each round.
The first player takes 2 coins, the second 1 coin and 1 compass, the third 2 coins and 1 compass, the fourth 1 coin and 2 compasses.Stop at the last player, depending on the player count.
Each player draws 5 cards: the first round begins.

With the expansions

Twisted Paths: use the expansion’s main board, on the side of the temple you chose.Spider Temple: 1 dark tablet per player on each dark tablet space. Owl Temple: each player takes 1 lantern token, and the Owl Temple tiles replace the temple tiles.
Expedition Leaders: shuffle the expansion’s items, artifacts, guardians, idols, assistants and site tiles in with the base game ones.Replace the Stone Key card and the Miner assistant with their new versions. Assistant stacks have 5 tiles. Return the 4 leftover idols, unless you play with the Lizard Temple.
Expedition Leaders: each player chooses a leader and takes that leader’s board and starting cards, instead of the player board and the 4 basic cards.Put your tent tile on the board, then follow your leader’s own setup.

Solo variant

Take another player board, gray tents side up, for the rival expedition, and place the 6 remaining archaeologists on it.The rival has no deck and no resources.
Put the rival’s magnifying glass on a starting space of the research track.The rival uses only one research token.
Build the rival’s action stack with 10 tiles: the 5 archaeologist action tiles, plus 1 tile from each of the 5 pairs, red or green.The number of red tiles sets the difficulty, from 0 to 5. Turn all tiles dark edge down, then shuffle the stack facedown.
The rival always goes first: take 1 coin and 1 compass.

Frequently asked questions

How many rounds are there in Lost Ruins of Arnak?

5 rounds. Each one, you start with 5 cards in hand, and the round ends when everyone has passed.

How much is a Fear card worth in Lost Ruins of Arnak?

−1 point at the end of the game, wherever it is: deck, hand or play area. During the game, it only works as a boot.

How many points is an idol worth in Lost Ruins of Arnak?

3 points, in a slot or not. Placed in an idol slot, it gives a bonus, but you lose the points printed on that slot.

Ludingo’s Lost Ruins of Arnak sheet was last reviewed on 13 October 2026, based on: czechgames.com 1, iello.fr 1, czechgames.com 2, iello.fr 2, iello.fr 3, iello.fr 4, BoardGameGeek.