Quest or Challenge: The Big Decision in Disney Lorcana

Every Lorcana turn comes down to one decision, made once for each of your dry characters. Send it on a quest, send it into a challenge, or leave it standing. New players usually quest with everything. Strong players decide character by character, and the difference shows up on the lore tracker.

Three jobs

Quest. Exert the character and gain lore equal to its lore value. This is how you win. The cost: the character is exerted until your next turn, so it can be challenged.

Challenge. Exert the character to fight one of your opponent’s exerted characters. Each deals damage equal to its Strength to the other, at the same time. Challenging gains you no lore directly. What it does is take lore away from your opponent’s future turns, because a banished quester never quests again.

Stay ready. Do nothing with the character. A ready character cannot be challenged, and on your next turn it can still quest or challenge. Staying ready is the right choice more often than it feels.

Question one: what can hit back?

Before you quest with a character, look at your opponent’s side and ask: on their turn, what can challenge this character and banish it?

Check their characters that will be dry next turn. Compare each one’s Strength with your character’s Willpower minus any damage it already has. If they can banish it, the quest costs you a character. Sometimes that is still worth it. Often it is not.

Remember the limits. Evasive characters can only be challenged by characters with Evasive or Alert, so an Evasive quester is much safer. And your opponent may have cards in hand, such as a character with Rush or an action that deals damage. You cannot see those, but you can expect them.

Question two: what is worth removing?

If one of your characters can challenge, look for the target that matters most. In rough order:

1. A character that will win the game for them. If they are close to 20, their best quester is the target.
2. A character with a strong ongoing ability, the kind that helps them every turn.
3. The highest lore value among their exerted characters.
4. A character you can banish without losing yours. A clean trade, where your character survives, is the best kind.

Damage stays from turn to turn, so a character already damaged may be easier to finish than it looks.

Question three: who is ahead?

The lore race decides which job matters most.

• You are ahead or even, and your board is safe: quest. Make your opponent react to you.
• You are behind and they are close to 20: challenge their questers. Every quester you remove slows the clock.
• Your characters would be banished if they quested: stay ready, or challenge first to clear the threat, then quest with what is safe.

Count turns, not just points. If you need two more turns to win and they need three, keep racing. If they need one, stop them.

Order matters

Do your challenges before your quests when you can. If a challenge goes well, you may find that a quester is now safe. If it goes badly, you still have the choice not to quest with the character it was protecting.

A worked example

You have 12 lore. Your opponent has 15. You have two dry characters: one with 2 lore, 2 Strength and 3 Willpower, and one with 3 Strength and 1 lore. Your opponent has an exerted character with 2 lore and 3 Willpower, and a ready one with 3 Strength.

If you quest with both, you reach 15, and their ready character can banish your 3-Willpower quester next turn. If instead your 3-Strength character challenges their exerted 2-lore quester, it banishes it. Their quester deals its Strength back to yours. Then you quest with the other for 2. You reach 14, and they lose a quester before it can bring them closer to 20. Their ready character can still challenge one of your exerted characters next turn, so you may lose a character either way. The difference is that they lose one too.

The numbers here are invented, but the shape is common: a challenge that removes lore from their future is often worth more than one quest.

The habit

Sort your characters before you act: questers, challengers, guards. Then play your challenges, then your quests. It takes ten seconds, and it is the single biggest step from beginner to solid player.