Exhaustive Expedition
When exploring an unexplored island, a player can choose between directly resolving an Expedition Card, or performing an Exhaustive Expedition. The Exhaustive Expedition is one of the "optional advanced mechanics", described on page 35 in the rulebook.
To perform an Exhaustive Expedition, take the Island Board (which is the flip side of the Enemy Ship Board), place it next to the player's On Deck area (on their Ship Board), and randomly place "Exhaustive Expedition" tokens face down on all the marked spaces on the board. The tokens are round with a pale blue question mark on the back side, and one of five different symbols on the face side.
The player may then freely move as many Crew members as they wish with from the Dinghy and/or Ship's Boat Improvement to the coast spaces on the Island Board; then follow this procedure:
- Reveal, resolve (see below) and then discard any Exhaustive Expedition tokens on spaces where Crew members are present. When a token is revealed, one Crew member in the same space suffers one Strain.
- Move as many Crew members as you like one step inland (away from the coast, left if you have the Island Board oriented the same way as shown on page 35 in the rulebook). If a Crew members lands on an already explored space (token has been removed), it can move again. When you have fininshed moving all Crew members you want to move, go back the above step of revealing and resolving tokens.
Repeat the above procedure until a Crew member has reached the golden space furthest inland; when that happens, draw and resolve an Expedition card. The expedition can also end if the player chooses to end it, if all Crew members on the expedition die, or if a "draw Expedition card" token is resolved. When an Expedition card has been drawn a resolved, the expedition ends.
The Crew movements during the Exhaustive Expedition does not cost any Crew Order tokens, but each time a token is revealed, one Crew member on that space suffers 1 Strain, and then the effect of the token is resolved:
- Clue symbol: gain as many Clues as indicated by the digit on the token.
- Treasure symbol (same as on the back of the Treasure cards): gain one random Treasure.
- Draw card symbol: draw and resolve an Expedition card. This ends the Exhaustive Expedition.
- Enemy symbol: draw and spawn an enemy On Deck of the player's ship.
- Special symbol (see image above): All Crew members on the space recover 2 Strain.
When an Exhaustive Expedition ends, place an Explored token on the island, and return all Crew members still alive to valid places Below Deck. The player chooses which spaces they go to. Crew effect spaces can be triggered this way if the Crew member moving there isn't Fatigued.
Note: the rulebook says you can only move Crew members left (inland), not right (towards the coast), but one of the middle spaces on the Island Board has no route inland, only one leading toward the coast and one leading to a space right below it (neither right nor left). But since a path is drawn there, it has to count as going left (inland), otherwise the space would be a dead end, and if that was the intended case, there wouldn't be any point in drawing an unusable path.