Items and locations

Two of the four card types go down on the table and stay there, and new players leave both out of their decks for far too long. One of them cannot be touched. The other is the only card in the game that can be challenged on any turn, with no waiting.

One is untouchable. The other is always available.

Items and locations both stay in play once you pay for them, so it is easy to file them under the same heading. In a challenge they are opposites.

An item can never be challenged and can never take damage. A location can be challenged whenever your opponent likes, and the damage stays on it. Almost everything below comes out of that one split.

An item is safe, and it works the turn you play it

A challenge can only ever be declared against an opposing character or an opposing location (4.6.1), so an item is not a legal thing to challenge. It goes further than that.

An item enters play with the ready, in play, and faceup states. An item that's in play can't have the damaged, undamaged, under, or facedown states.

Comprehensive Rules 5.1.2.2

In plain terms: an item cannot carry damage at all, not even one counter. The only things that remove an item are a card that says it removes one, or the item banishing itself to pay for its own ability.

The second gift is timing. A character you just played cannot do anything yet, because it is drying. An item never is: its activated ability may be used during the turn it was played (4.4.2), and drying is a state only characters ever have (5.1.1.11).

LanternAmber · 2 ink · Item · uninkable

Lantern above has an ability that costs nothing but exerting it, and it discounts the next character you play this turn. Play it and exert it in the same breath. A fresh item is not a card that does nothing yet.

A location is the exception to the challenge rule

You know the rule that stops beginners cold: you may only challenge an opposing character that is exerted. A location does not play by it.

Locations aren't considered ready or exerted and can be challenged at any time during the Main Phase.

Comprehensive Rules 4.6.8.2

In plain terms: a location is never upright and never sideways, so the condition that normally holds you back cannot apply to it. It is a target on every turn, from the moment it lands.

And it does not hit back.

Locations don't have a [Strength] characteristic and don't deal damage to the challenging character during the Challenge Damage step. Locations have a [Willpower] characteristic and can be dealt damage during the Challenge Damage step.

Comprehensive Rules 4.6.8.3

In plain terms: your character deals its damage and takes none in return. That damage stays for the rest of the game, and when it reaches the location's Willpower the location is banished (5.6.5.3). Everything else about the challenge is normal (4.6.8), so your challenging character still has to be ready and still cannot be drying.

Moving a character to a location

Moving is a turn action in its own right, in the same list as inking, questing and challenging (4.1.3). Choose one of your characters and one of your locations, say so out loud, and exert ready ink cards equal to the location's move cost (4.7.3, 4.7.4). That move cost is printed on the location and is a different number from the ink cost you paid to play it (5.6.5.2).

Three limits, all of which come up in real games:

• You may move only your own characters, and only to your own locations (4.7.1).
• A character cannot leave a location except by moving to another location (4.7.2).
• If the location leaves play, the characters that were there stay in play and are simply no longer at a location (5.6.6).

Here is the part almost nobody expects. Moving does not exert the character, and nothing in the move rules asks it to be ready or dry. Drying stops a character questing, being declared as a challenger, and exerting (5.1.1.11), and moving is none of those three. A character can be played and moved on the same turn, and a character that moved can still quest afterwards.

Lore that arrives without questing

Some locations print a Lore value, and it pays out without any character of yours having to leave your side of the board.

Agrabah - MarketplaceRuby · 3 ink · Location · inkable

The active player gains lore from locations they have in play with a [Lore] characteristic. This isn't a triggered ability and doesn't use the bag.

Comprehensive Rules 3.2.2.2

In plain terms: at the Set step of your turn, before you have done anything, a location with a Lore value hands you that lore. Nothing exerts, and no character walks out into danger for it.

The honest side is that it is not free. It pays nothing on the turn you play it, since your Set step has already gone by. It costs ink a character would have used. And it hands your opponent something they can challenge every turn without waiting for you to commit anything first. A location is a bet that the game runs long enough to pay it back.

Rules quoted from the Disney Lorcana Comprehensive Rules, version 2.2.0, effective 9 July 2026. The published rules print icons where the quotes above read [Strength], [Willpower] and [Lore].

Next: Damage versus damage counters. A location is banished by damage exactly as a character is, and that lesson splits the word damage into the two different things it actually means.