Solo: Melanie

Play the normal five-day game against Melanie, whose action priorities are controlled by Solo cards.

Setup

Use the two-player setup. Give yourself the time-management board; Melanie gets a skill board, but no time board. Shuffle the Solo cards and Merchant cards into separate decks. Keep the Priority card visible. Roll to decide which of the two displayed Apprentices receives one Apprentice marker and which receives two. Both Tea markers start at 0. Take one starting plant for yourself and two for Melanie.

The solo rules use the base game only: leave Personality, Event, Private Goal and Open Goal cards, and both alternative bonus-track sets, out of play. Melanie has four difficulty levels; the rulebook recommends Level 1 for a first solo game.

Melanie’s turn

Plan your own day normally. During each work hour, act in Tea-track order. When Melanie acts, reveal a Solo card and resolve the first available area from top to bottom. Within that area, follow the action priorities below. If none of the listed actions in all three areas is possible, Melanie experiments; this fallback is unlimited and ignores the shared two-experiment limit.

Training only takes one hour for Melanie. If a course grants an extra planning marker, she experiments instead. A Solo-card note for a higher difficulty applies only when the card’s area and action priority match; higher levels include all lower-level notes.

Pharmacy priorities

Produce medicine. If Melanie can complete a recipe, she does. Her patients are not subject to the 24-hour deadline. If both are possible, serve the older one first. For time-based rewards, use the middle time band; for variable rewards, take the highest value she can reach. She produces as many copies as possible, but does not use Quick Recipes directly from the display.

Accept a patient. If she has fewer than two, take the patient requiring the least skill improvement. Break a tie by the greatest number of matching ingredients already in stock. If still tied, you choose. Put the older patient on the left.

Make tea. If she has an available root or herb, make as much tea as available plants and Mortar level allow. Plants already committed to patients are unavailable.

Village and forest priorities

Training. If a course starts this hour, Melanie attends it. She does not spend a second hour to attend the same course again. A marker reward becomes an Experiment.

Merchant. If the merchant is open and Melanie has an uncommitted plant, reveal a Merchant card. Buy up to its limit, following its item order and her available plants. If a blue furnishing would grant a Mortar bonus instead of buying a Mortar, take the furnishing. Reshuffle the deck when empty.

Hire. If Melanie has fewer than two Apprentices, hire a suitable displayed one of a medicine type she does not already have. Prefer the one with one Apprentice marker, unless the two-marker type matches a displayed patient and the one-marker type does not.

Individual training. If she has an available plant, spend one in this order: berries, mushrooms, herbs, roots. Improve a skill needed by her oldest patient first; for a patient with two recipes, consider the one requiring less improvement. Otherwise improve the lowest skill, breaking ties Pressing, Heating, Mixing, then Filtering.

Forest. Take as many plants as the hour allows. First choose plants needed for a patient. Otherwise take the plant least available in the forest; break ties with roots, then herbs. Advance Botany once for each plant, ignoring the Botany track’s printed plant pictures.

Day end and special handling

At day end, reshuffle the Solo cards. Take back the two Apprentice markers and place them on the displayed Apprentices for the next day, except after Friday. Whenever Melanie gains a plant, commit it to the oldest patient that needs it when possible. When she takes a patient, commit matching plants already in stock. In general, she keeps roots and herbs for tea and discards other unneeded plants first. She never uses the normal 2-for-1 plant exchange.

For a patient with two recipes, the upper recipe has priority, but complete the lower one first if it can be made sooner. Use unassigned Journeyman and bonus-track abilities as early as possible. If a solo situation is not covered by the rules, the rulebook’s Golden Rule is to decide for Melanie using common sense and knowledge of the game.