Caverna: The Cave Farmers

Components

Setup

1. 1Choose a color and take a Home board plus 5 Dwarfs and 3 Stables. Place 2 Dwarfs in the pre-printed "Entry-level dwelling" (2 cave spaces, room for up to a pair of animals). The remaining 3 Dwarfs and Stables stay in your personal supply.
2. 2Randomly determine the starting player. The starting player and the player to their left take 1 Food, the third player takes 2, and everyone else takes 3 — later turn order means more starting Food.
3. 3Attach the basic game board (1-3 or 4-7 player side) matching your player count, plus any additional boards needed for 3 or 5-7 players.
4. 4Shuffle the 7 Harvest markers and place them face-down (grey rune side up) on round spaces 6 through 12. In the 2-player game, remove one green-leaf marker and leave round space 9 empty.
5. 5Shuffle the 12 Action space cards. In the 2-player game, remove the "Exploration" card (with the Level 4 expedition) to use only 11. Stack the 3 stage-1 cards on top, followed by stage 2 (including round 4's "Wish for children"), then stage 3, then stage 4.
6. 6Place the Furnishing supply boards near the Forest/Mountain tile stacks, and set out the sorted building materials, animals, gold coins, and Weapon strength markers.

Round structure — 5 phases

Every round follows Add a new Action space → Replenish accumulating spaces → Work phase → Return home → Harvest time (if applicable). The base game runs 12 rounds (11 in the 2-player game).

1. 1① New Action space: flip the top Action space card and place it on the lowest-numbered empty round space. From round 6 onward, also flip that round's Harvest marker face up.
2. 2② Replenish accumulating spaces: refill every arrow-marked accumulating space with its listed goods, adding to whatever remains from the previous round.
3. 3③ Work phase: starting with the first player and going clockwise, each player places 1 Dwarf at a time on an empty Action space and resolves it immediately — unarmed Dwarfs first, then armed ones in ascending Weapon strength.
4. 4④ Return home: once all Dwarfs are placed, return them to their Dwellings. Since you can never have more Dwarfs than available room, there's always a spot.
5. 5⑤ Harvest time (if applicable): resolve the Field phase, then the Feeding phase, then the Breeding phase.

Clearing the forest vs. digging the mountain

Your Home board splits into a Forest on the left and a Mountain on the right. Clearing the Forest yields Meadows and Fields; digging the Mountain yields Tunnels, Caverns, and Mines — developing both sides together is the heart of Caverna.

Furnishing tile structure

The "Furnish a cavern" action places 1 Furnishing tile on an empty cave space, paying its building cost (usually Wood and/or Stone). Each tile has its own unique ability; this guide covers only the structure, not every individual tile's effect.

Mining, Rubies, and raising animals

1. 1Placing an "Ore mine/Deep tunnel" twin tile on 2 adjacent ordinary Tunnels (via "Ore mine construction") immediately grants 3 Ore.
2. 2You may place a Ruby mine on a single empty Tunnel space (via "Ruby mine construction"). If that space happened to be a Deep tunnel, you immediately gain 1 Ruby — an ordinary Tunnel grants none.
3. 3The "Ore mining" and "Ruby mining" Action spaces accumulate goods, and owning mines adds bonus amounts (1 extra Ore per Ore mine; 1 extra Ruby if you have 2+ Ruby mines, capped).
4. 4Rubies are a wildcard resource. Exchange them 1:1 at any time for animals, building materials, Grain, Vegetables, or Gold (Cattle is the exception: 1 Ruby plus 1 Food), and also spend them on single Field/Meadow/Tunnel/Cavern tiles.

Forging Weapons and Expeditions

1. 1On the "Blacksmithing" Action space, spend 1 to 8 Ore with an unarmed Dwarf to forge a Weapon of that same strength.
2. 2An armed Dwarf can undertake an Expedition on an Expedition Action space, immediately or in a later round. Expeditions range from level 1 to 4 — higher levels let you choose more loot items.
3. 3Each loot item on the Overview card lists a minimum Weapon strength; you may only pick items at or below your Dwarf's current Weapon strength.
4. 4After an Expedition, that Dwarf's Weapon strength always increases by 1 (a newly forged Weapon is capped at strength 8, but Expeditions can push it past 8, up to the maximum of 14).

Harvest — Field, then Feeding, then Breeding

1. 1Field phase: take 1 Grain or Vegetable token from each sown Field into your personal supply.
2. 2Feeding phase: pay 2 Food per Dwarf in your cave (newborns from this round need only 1). Convert animals, crops, Rubies, or Gold into Food as needed; take Begging markers for any shortfall.
3. 3Breeding phase: with at least 2 Farm animals of the same type, gain 1 offspring of that type if you can house it. Dogs never breed.
4. 4Rounds 1-4 have only 1 harvest, at the end of round 3; round 4 instead requires paying 1 Food per Dwarf with no harvest. Rounds 5-12 normally end with a harvest, but a revealed question-mark Harvest marker (on rounds 6-12) changes that round instead (see the Harvest events card).

Final scoring

End of the game

The base game ends after round 12 (round 11 in the 2-player game). Once the final round is complete, move straight to final scoring — the player with the most Gold points wins, with ties sharing the win.

Strategy tips

• Rather than committing entirely to clearing or digging, it's safer to cover your minimum food needs on both sides of the board.
• Expeditions are more valuable the fewer players pursue Weapons — going alone for Weapons when everyone else stays peaceful (or vice versa) tends to pay off.
• Since Rubies can be spent any time as a wildcard, save them for urgent resource needs or for reordering your Dwarf placement.
• Most Furnishing tiles beyond ordinary Dwellings are one-of-a-kind, so grab a tile you really need before someone else does.
• Every unused Home board space costs a point, so avoid leaving Forest or Mountain spaces empty for the whole game.

Player-count variants and editions

Caverna supports 1-7 players, with different combinations of basic and additional game boards by player count. The rulebook recommends capping your first game at 5 players to reduce downtime.

• Solo game: cover part of the 2-player board with Overview cards and play alone. You start with 2 Food, every round from round 5 onward ends with a harvest, and there are no Harvest events. The suggested target is a "magical score" of 100 points.
• The 2-player game removes the "Exploration" Action space card (with the level 4 Expedition) to use only 11 cards, and skips round 9 entirely. Ruby mining also only becomes available from round 3.
• The 2018 expansion Caverna: The Forgotten Folk (originally a fan project before becoming an official expansion) is distributed in Korea through Korea Boardgames. This guide covers only the base game, without that expansion.

Frequently confused rules

History and editions

Caverna was designed by Uwe Rosenberg and published by Lookout Games in 2013. Often described as a spiritual successor to Agricola, it's known for feeling like more of a sandbox thanks to its fixed Furnishing tiles replacing a hand of cards.

A simplified 2-player-only spin-off, Caverna: Cave vs Cave, followed in 2017, and the expansion Caverna: The Forgotten Folk — which began as a fan project before becoming an official design by Alex Wilber and Uwe Rosenberg — released in 2018.

Namuwiki's article on Caverna reports that Korea Boardgames published a Korean edition through crowdfunding in early 2015, which sold out before being reprinted in 2021 alongside The Forgotten Folk expansion. A Danawa price-comparison listing separately confirmed a Korea Boardgames "Caverna: The Forgotten Folk" expansion set, though neither source led to an official Korean rulebook PDF.