Hi,
I'm a bit confused about the situation in which you don't 'succeed' and acquire your goal in a dream, but end it through other means (Secret passage, finding another early way out, dying, ... ). It always says you keep any earned items after leaving the dream. Does that also imply that we keep the note cards we earned there (specifically those on which we can read that they 'are only active' in that specific dream?). For example {minor spoilers ahead}: during one of the first dreams with the cockroaches in your house, I acquired a mask and other note cards that let you gain some rules, only in that dream. Do I keep them and make them active again after returning to the dream, essentially skipping to the part where I left? Or are they 'lost' and do I need to play the dream all over again to gain them? I've noticed that if I keep them and resume where I left, there are sometimes problems with laying out the map tiles when restarting the dream. Do I also lay out the Dreamscape map tiles I've discovered earlier when returning to the dream? It seems a bit odd to go through the whole discovery process again when you know what is coming. It wwouldould feel like a burden. Thanks in advance for your answers!
When you retry the dream you start from scratch. But obviously you will know some stuff. Previous knowledge will help you bypass the nasty parts. And of course you don’t regain items and cards that you already have in your decks, only the dream specific ones that they will go at the box with the dream completion, either to remove from game or back at secrets depending what the game tells you.