Lorcana Hyperia City Rules Changes: What CR 2.3 Changed

Five cards that are already legal in Core Constructed have just been reworded. Cobra Bubbles - Dedicated Official, This Growing Pressure, Ariel - Curious Traveler, Woody - Town Sheriff and Gaston - Frightful Bully each tell an opposing character it can't challenge and must quest. Ravensburger's Hyperia City set release notes, published 8 October 2026, update all five to say it with a keyword instead: Adventurous, which the Comprehensive Rules did not define until this update.

That is one of several parts of the notes that reach into the deck you play today. The notes ship a Comprehensive Rules revision they call version 2.3, and much of it reaches past the new set: keywords gained twice resolve differently, "enters play" effects move into a different rules category, effects where several players act at once now resolve part by part, and an interaction between The Black Cauldron and Belle - Apprentice Inventor that the community had been asking about gets a written answer. The notes also settle the ink drop questions that our ink drops explainer had to leave open on 28 September, before any rule existed.

Sources: the set release notes on disneylorcana.com; the October 2026 Comprehensive Rules document listed on Ravensburger's resources page, with its rule wording quoted here from lorcana.gg's searchable transcription, which labels it version 2.3.0; Comprehensive Rules 2.2.0, effective 9 July 2026, for the old wording; Ravensburger's Ink Drop Deep Dive of 29 September; the 22 September Hyperia City press release for the prerelease date; and Lorcast's card data for card text. Where only the notes say something, the post says so.

The changes at a glance

When the new rules apply

The notes do not print an effective date for version 2.3. lorcana.gg's transcription labels the document as effective 16 October 2026; the previous revision, 2.2.0, carried 9 July as its effective date, the day Attack of the Vine!'s release notes went up. Two things are fixed either way. Hyperia City cards - and so ink drops in real games - are legal in sanctioned Constructed and Limited events from the prerelease, under Tournament Rules 1.6, and Ravensburger's 22 September press release dates the prerelease 16 October. And at any sanctioned event the Lead Lore Guide, Lorcana's head judge, is the final arbiter of rules disputes (Tournament Rules 2.2). If a keyword-stacking or Black Cauldron question comes up at a store event before then, ask which version is in force.

Ink drops: the rule that was missing

When our explainer went up on 28 September, it had to work from card reminder text and a line of the set's press release. The notes and the new counters section replace that with a rule, and they settle where a drop lives: you keep the spare supply nearby, but a drop you get goes into your inkwell, and it is from the inkwell that you remove it to pay.

The notes' own example is the one that shows why this matters: five drops can pay for a 5-cost character on their own, leaving every ink card in your inkwell free for something else that turn.

Four card interactions follow from the new text:

• Cards that count cards in your inkwell. Gramma Tala - Connected to Nature costs 1 less for each card in your inkwell. Under rule 1.13.2 a drop sitting there is not a card. The notes don't name her, so treat that as a reading of the rule rather than a published ruling - and the uninkable cards breakdown covers how her discount works with an ordinary inkwell.
• Baymax - Amped Up's Shift. His Shift cost is "remove 2 ink drops." The notes rule that this is not paying ink: you are only removing counters.
• Madam Mim - Resourceful Trickster. Her Bauble Game draws a card whenever you remove an ink drop, once during your turn - but not for the drops you spend to play her, because those are removed before she is in play.
• Intense Research. Removing a drop to play it lets you look at 5 cards instead of 2, and the rest of the card still happens as written: one to your hand, the rest to the bottom. Per the notes, a replacement effect replaces only the part it can affect.

Which Hyperia City cards make or spend drops is covered in our ink drops explainer, and how many to expect in a six-pack pool is in the Hyperia City prerelease guide.

Adventurous is a keyword, and five Core cards have it

Rule 8.16 defines Adventurous as two static abilities, and it is built as a mirror image of Reckless:

Read the second row twice. Adventurous does not make a character quest the moment it is able to; it stops you passing the turn while that character is ready and could quest. That is the ruling Ravensburger had already given for Woody - Town Sheriff in the Attack of the Vine! notes - the chosen character can still sing songs or pay exert costs, and simply has to quest before its player can end the turn if it is ready and able. The Hyperia City notes say the same thing from the other direction: many of the Reckless interactions carry over, including singing.

The five updated cards are all Amber and all from Core-legal sets: Gaston - Frightful Bully (Whispers in the Well), Cobra Bubbles - Dedicated Official (Winterspell), Ariel - Curious Traveler and This Growing Pressure (Wilds Unknown), and Woody - Town Sheriff (Attack of the Vine!). The ink drops explainer tabulates when each one applies the effect. The notes say the five are being updated "to correctly reflect that they now have this new keyword," but they do not print the new wording, so the card above, with its original text, is still what you will find in your binder.

Nothing about how those five play is described as changing. What does change is that the effect is now a keyword, so the stacking rule in the next section applies to it. On Lorcast's full Hyperia City list, two cards use it directly: Mickey Mouse - Best in Town has it printed, and Nick Wilde - Inquisitive Harbormaster can give it to a chosen character when he quests. The notes confirm that a character with 0 lore given Adventurous by Nick still has to quest. It just gains nothing for the trip.

Keyword stacking: the longer duration wins

Keywords written with a +N, like Resist or Challenger, still add together. The change is for the ones without a number, and it is a reversal of the old wording:

Under 2.2.0, a character that already had a keyword for "this turn" could not pick up the same keyword "until the start of your next turn" from a second effect, and lost it when the turn ended. Under 2.3 the longer grant is the one that sticks. The notes name two reasons for the rewrite: interactions with Attack of the Vine!'s Duo Shift, and cards like Ancestral Guitar.

The notes' Guitar ruling is the clean worked example. Point From the Heart at a character that already has Singer and the granted Singer does not apply, because, in the notes' words, a card with Singer has that ability in perpetuity - which under the new rule makes the printed one the longer grant. The +2 to sing still applies for the turn. Rule 8.11.3 adds a "+N cost to sing songs" effect to the Singer number - the rulebook's own example has Ursula - Vanessa, a Singer 4 character, counting as cost 6 at Atlantica - Concert Hall - so a Singer 5 character chosen with the Guitar sings as a 7 that turn. The songs breakdown covers why that gap between a character's cost and what it sings as is the number that matters.

Entering play, moving, and acting together

Three changes rewrite parts of the engine rather than any one card.

Entering play. Under 2.2.0, rule 6.7.9 said effects that modify how a card enters play "resolve along with the card being played." The notes say these effects are no longer treated as replacement effects but as static ones, and the new 6.7.9 spells out the timing: they are applied as the card is played but before it is put into play, and when several apply, the entering card's own effects go first and effects from other sources after. Rule 4.3.3, the step where a paid-for card becomes "played," now points to 6.7.9 before the card enters play.

Moving. The old 4.7.1 said a player "can move only their characters" to their own locations. The new one frames the same limits as choices: a player can choose only their characters to move, and only their locations to move them to. The new 4.7.2 adds that if a player chooses to move a character to the location it is already at, the move doesn't happen. Per the notes, the choices are now part of the rule itself - made for every move, whether a turn action or an effect caused it, and made even when the move won't happen - and Ravensburger calls this one a bit more finicky than the others and says it will be watching community feedback.

The notes' movement ruling uses a card already in Core. Russell - Junior Wilderness Explorer, an Attack of the Vine! Common, moves himself and one of your other characters to the same location for free whenever he quests. Send both to Port Authority - Center Hub, a Hyperia City location whose ability fires once during your turn whenever a character moves there, and it triggers twice. The first resolves and each player gets 1 ink drop and 1 lore. The second resolves with no effect, because the once-per-turn condition is already used. That queue is the bag doing what it always does.

Acting at the same time. Rule 6.7.6 has the active player do their part of an "each player" effect first, then everyone else in turn order. The new 6.7.6.1 handles effects with several parts: everyone does the first part in turn order, then the second part in turn order, and so on until every part has resolved. The notes say the change was needed to make one card work as intended.

That card is Thomas O'Malley - Savvy Vagabond. Under 6.7.6.1, when he quests the active player reveals their top card, then each opponent does in turn order; the highest-cost card or cards go to their players' hands; then the active player bottoms anything they still have revealed, and each opponent does the same in turn order. If both players reveal a cost-5 card, both are tied for highest and both go to hand. The notes add that the change affects a few other cards as well, without naming them.

The Black Cauldron and Belle

The Black Cauldron is a Whispers in the Well item that stashes character cards from your discard underneath itself and then, for 1 ink and an exert, lets you play characters from under it that turn. Belle - Apprentice Inventor, from Archazia's Island, can be played for free during your turn by banishing a chosen item of yours. So: Belle is under the Cauldron, you play her from there, and the item you banish to pay for her is the Cauldron itself. What happens?

The notes' answer, now backed by added rules language, is that it works. Banishing the Cauldron sends the entire stack to your discard - Belle included, along with anything else that was under it - and Belle is then played from the discard. It is the stack rule doing its normal job: when the top card of a stack leaves play, every card in it goes to the same zone, which Lorcana Shift explained walks through for shifted characters. A quality-of-life change elsewhere in the notes fits around it: rule 4.3.2.1 now says a card you play is revealed from whatever zone it is in, where 2.2.0 said "from their hand."

Where you can actually do this is narrower than the ruling. The Black Cauldron is Core-legal. Belle - Apprentice Inventor is an Archazia's Island card whose only later printing on Lorcast is a Promo Set 3 promo, while Belle - Inventive Engineer is the Belle that was reprinted in Fabled - so on Ravensburger's rotation rule, which carries a pre-Fabled card forward only if it was reprinted in Fabled or later, this is an Infinity Constructed play. The items breakdown covers why nothing can attack a Cauldron in the first place.

The Jukebox errata, and rulings that generalise

Jukebox is the one card the notes label with an errata. Its On Repeat ability is printed as "if it has the same name as a card in your discard"; the corrected text adds one word, "another." Per the notes, that stops a song counting toward itself on the turn you play it. One practical catch: Lorcast's digital image of the card, above, already shows the corrected wording, while its text field still carries the printed one. If two sources disagree about Jukebox, the one with "another" is current.

The rest of the card Q&A answers questions about single cards, but many of the answers are general rules wearing a card's name. These are worth knowing past the cards they mention:

Stone by Day, and the small print

Stone by Day returns. The Gargoyle ability from Whispers in the Well reads "If you have 3 or more cards in your hand, this character can't ready." Hyperia City prints it on four new Gargoyles, all Amethyst: Lexington - Fearless Flier (Common), Brooklyn - Full Throttle (Uncommon), Goliath - Transformed Warrior (Rare) and Demona - Imperious Spellcaster (Super Rare). The notes' tip is about timing: if you have 3 cards in hand and play a card that readies your characters, you have 2 cards by the time the effect resolves, so Stone by Day doesn't stop it. Angela - Night Warrior, a Core-legal Winterspell card, still switches it off entirely for your Gargoyles.

The rest of the 2.3 list, from the notes, with the transcription's new wording where it adds something:

• 6.1.4.2 - an effect with more than one "may" is a separate choice for each, affecting only the part after each "may." The Minnie Mouse ruling above is the example.
• 6.7.7 - now defines a card's characteristics: ink cost, inkwell symbol, move cost, name, version, Strength, Willpower, ink type symbol, classification, rules text and lore value.
• 4.3.2.1 - a played card is revealed from the zone it is in, not necessarily your hand.
• 6.1.14.3 - if an effect reveals cards and then tells you to act, you can act only on the revealed cards.
• 6.4.2.1 and 6.4.2.3 - static abilities can affect game rules and game states, not just cards in play.
• 5.1.1.5 - an incorrect rule-number reference fixed.
• 4.3.2.4, 4.4.3.4 and 4.7.3.4 - the ink drop payment language covered above.
• Glossary - "ink drop" added; the "turn action" entry removed and "action, turn" expanded; "Set step" and "triggered ability" adjusted; and the citation in "passing the bag" corrected. In 2.2.0 that entry pointed to section 6.7, which covers resolving cards. The bag is section 7.7.

One housekeeping note. The Comprehensive Rules link inside the release notes points to a file named for August 2025 (Disney-Lorcana-Comprehensive-Rules-082225-EN.pdf). The October 2026 document is the one listed under Game Rules and Documents on Ravensburger's resources page.

Quick reference

• Ink drops are counters that go in your inkwell, aren't cards, and can be removed to pay any ink cost - card, activated ability or move - on their own or with ink cards, with no limit.
• Adventurous (8.16): the character can't challenge, and you can't end your turn while it is ready and able to quest. It can still exert to sing.
• Five Core cards now grant Adventurous: Gaston - Frightful Bully, Cobra Bubbles - Dedicated Official, Ariel - Curious Traveler, This Growing Pressure and Woody - Town Sheriff.
• A non-+N keyword gained twice keeps the longer duration (8.1.2), where 2.2.0 simply ignored the second grant.
• "Enters" effects are static, applied before the card is put into play, with the card's own effects first (6.7.9).
• Multi-part "each player" effects resolve one part at a time in turn order (6.7.6.1) - the Thomas O'Malley fix.
• Banishing The Black Cauldron to play Belle - Apprentice Inventor sends the stack to the discard, and Belle is played from there.
• Jukebox errata: "another card in your discard."
• Hyperia City cards are legal from the 16 October 2026 prerelease (Tournament Rules 1.6); the notes give no separate effective date for version 2.3.

Rule wording for version 2.3 is quoted from lorcana.gg's transcription of Ravensburger's October 2026 Comprehensive Rules document, and old wording from the official 2.2.0 PDF. Rulings and errata are from Ravensburger's Hyperia City set release notes, and card text and set details from Lorcast's card data.