Caverna: The Cave Farmers board game box cover

Caverna Score Calculator & Score Sheet

All 10 rows of the Caverna sheet, for 1–7 players, with every rate printed under its row — and the penalties counted, not forgotten.

Score Calculator

Category
Farm Animals+1 per animal · −2 per animal type you own none of
Grain and Vegetables½ pt per grain · 1 pt per vegetable
Rubies1 pt per ruby — enter how many
Dwarfs1 pt each — enter your family size (2–6)
Unused Spaces−1 per empty space — enter how many
Furnishing TilesPoints printed on your furnishing tiles
Pastures2 pts each — enter the number of pastures
MinesPoints printed on your ore and ruby mines
Gold Coins1 pt per gold coin — enter how many
Begging Markers−3 pts each — enter how many markers
Total00

Most rows take a count — pastures, unused spaces and begging markers included — and the calculator applies the rate for you, penalties and all. Farm animals, grain and vegetables, furnishings and mines take points, and the farm animal row accepts a minus sign.

This calculator totals all 10 rows and forgets when you leave. Saved games, player stats, and win rates live in the free Meeply app →

How Caverna Scoring Works

Caverna scores once, at the end of the game, and its sheet is refreshingly flat: nearly everything pays a fixed rate per unit, so an animal is a point, a ruby is a point, a coin is a point. The complications are the three penalties — missing animal types, unused board spaces, and begging markers — and the tiles whose points depend on what you actually built. Here's every row, with its rate written out.

1Farm Animals

+1 per animal · −2 per animal type you own none of

Every animal alive on your home board at the end is worth 1 point — dogs, sheep, donkeys, wild boar and cattle alike. Then look for the gaps: for each of the four farm animal types you finished with none of at all, take 2 points off. Dogs don't count towards that penalty, so it's sheep, donkeys, wild boar and cattle you need at least one of. Enter the net for this row, because it can genuinely go negative: two sheep and nothing else is +2 for the animals and −6 for the three missing types, which is −4 on the sheet.

2Grain and Vegetables

½ pt per grain · 1 pt per vegetable

Count the grain and vegetables sitting in your fields plus anything loose in your personal supply. Vegetables are worth a full point each; grain is worth half a point each, so two grain make a point and a leftover odd grain rounds up in your favour — five grain is 3 points. Food you baked or ate during the game is long gone and scores nothing, so the farms that lived on bread often arrive at scoring with an empty larder. Enter the finished point total for the row.

3Rubies

1 pt per ruby — enter how many

Each ruby left in your supply at the end is worth 1 point. Rubies are Caverna's wild resource during the game — they buy dwellings, stand in for other goods, and pay for actions — so every one you hold onto is a point you chose not to spend. Plenty of strong games finish with none at all, which is fine; this row simply banks whatever you didn't convert into something better.

4Dwarfs

1 pt each — enter your family size (2–6)

Every dwarf in your family is worth 1 point, and you start the game with two, so this row is never below 2. Growing the family is the engine of the whole game rather than a points play: each new dwarf is another action every round, and another mouth at every harvest. Six is the ceiling, and a six-dwarf family that fed itself all game has usually run away with several of the rows below as well.

5Unused Spaces

−1 per empty space — enter how many

Both halves of your home board count here: the forest on the left and the mountain on the right. Any space you never developed — no meadow, field, pasture or forest tile on one side, nothing excavated on the other — costs you 1 point. Excavated caverns and tunnels count as used even if you never furnished them, so the penalty is about land you never touched rather than rooms you left bare. Enter how many empty spaces are showing and the calculator takes a point off for each.

6Furnishing Tiles

Points printed on your furnishing tiles

Add the points printed on every furnishing tile you built into your caverns — dwellings, parlours, chambers, storages, workshops and the rest. Some show a flat number; others pay out at the end based on what your finished board actually looks like, per animal, per dwarf, per tile or for meeting a condition. Resolve those against the board in front of you before you total the row. This is the most commonly miscounted line in Caverna, because it rewards things you stopped paying attention to eight rounds ago.

7Pastures

2 pts each — enter the number of pastures

A pasture is an area of your forest fully enclosed by fences. Each one is worth 2 points, and it's the number of separate enclosures that counts rather than how big they are — the animals inside score on their own row. That makes several small pastures worth more here than one sprawling field, though a large pasture with a stable in it holds far more livestock. Enter how many fenced pastures you finished with and the calculator doubles it.

8Mines

Points printed on your ore and ruby mines

Ore mines and ruby mines are tiles you excavate into the mountain, and each one shows its own point value. Total what's printed on the mines on your board and enter it here. They pull double duty all game — the ore and rubies they produce are what pay for weapons, expeditions and dwellings — so a mining strategy is usually scoring twice over by the time the game ends.

9Gold Coins

1 pt per gold coin — enter how many

Each gold coin in your supply at the end is worth 1 point. Gold arrives mostly from expeditions and from a handful of furnishings that convert goods into coins, and unlike food it survives the harvests, so it's the safest place to park value late in the game. Count what's actually in front of you at scoring — gold you spent on rubies or buildings has already done its job elsewhere on the sheet.

10Begging Markers

−3 pts each — enter how many markers

Every time a harvest arrives and you can't feed all your dwarfs, you take a begging marker for each food you're short, and each one is −3 points at the end. There's no way to give them back. Two missed food at a single harvest is −6, which is more than most players score from their rubies and gold put together, so feeding the family is the one thing you never gamble on. Enter how many markers you took, not a negative number — the calculator subtracts 3 for each.

The Penalties Decide Close Games

Caverna is the friendlier cousin of Agricola, and the scoring is where you feel it most: there are no brackets to look up, just flat rates, so a good game adds up quickly and a bad one still adds up. What's left of the old cruelty lives in three rows. Two points come off for each of the four farm animal types you own none of, which means a farm with no donkeys and no boar has quietly given away 4 points that a single trip to the right action space would have saved. One point comes off for every space on your home board you never developed, forest and mountain both. And three points come off for every begging marker, which is the one penalty that compounds — the bigger your family, the harder the harvests hit. Fill the board, keep one of each animal, and feed everyone, and the rest of the sheet takes care of itself.

Looking for a Caverna Score Sheet?

Caverna comes with a scoring summary in the box — this is that summary with the math already done. Every row is here with its rate printed underneath, the pastures doubled and the penalties subtracted for you, so nobody has to work out what six grain and three missing animal types come to at the end of a three-hour game. It forgets everything when you close the tab, though. For a score sheet that remembers — every game, every player, every win — Caverna is one of 300+ games in the free Meeply app.

Expansions and Spin-offs

Forgotten Folk is the expansion for the full game: it hands each player an asymmetric tribe with its own abilities, so the board and the ten rows above stay familiar while the routes to filling them change. Caverna: Cave vs Cave is not an expansion at all but a separate, standalone two-player game with its own board and its own scoring, so don't reach for this sheet when you play it.

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This Page Adds. Meeply Remembers.

A calculator gives you tonight's total and forgets it. Meeply keeps the whole story — every Caverna game, every player's win rate, every "I only lost because of the begging markers" settled with receipts.

Free to try. Caverna is one of 300+ games with rules-aware scoresheets built in.

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Caverna Scoring Questions

How do you score Caverna?
Caverna scores once, at the end of the game, across ten categories. You get 1 point per farm animal, 1 per ruby, 1 per gold coin, 1 per dwarf, 1 per vegetable and half a point per grain, 2 points per fenced pasture, plus the points printed on your furnishing tiles and your ore and ruby mines. Then come the penalties: −2 for each farm animal type you own none of, −1 for every unused space on your home board, and −3 for every begging marker. Highest total wins.
What happens if you are missing a farm animal type in Caverna?
You lose 2 points for each of the four farm animal types — sheep, donkeys, wild boar and cattle — that you finish with none of. Dogs are exempt; they help you herd but they are not part of the penalty. Skip all four and that is −8 before anything else is counted, which is why grabbing a single animal of each kind late in the game is one of the cheapest point swings available. One of everything beats a large herd of one thing.
How do grain and vegetables score in Caverna?
Vegetables are worth 1 point each and grain is worth half a point each, counting both what is still growing in your fields and anything loose in your supply. Two grain make a point, and a leftover odd grain rounds up, so five grain scores 3. Anything you baked into food or ate at a harvest is gone and scores nothing — only what survives to the end of the game counts.
What are begging markers worth in Caverna?
Each begging marker is −3 points. You take one for every food you are short when a harvest arrives, and there is no way to get rid of them afterwards — they sit on your board until scoring. Because each dwarf you add is another mouth to feed, the families that grow fastest are also the ones most likely to end up begging, so plan the food before the growth.
How is Caverna scoring different from Agricola?
Agricola scores seven categories in brackets, where a pile of grain is worth somewhere between −1 and 4 points depending on which band it lands in. Caverna drops the brackets almost entirely and pays flat rates instead: 1 point per animal, per ruby, per coin, per dwarf, per vegetable. That makes Caverna's sheet far easier to add up and far more forgiving — the only real punishments are the −2 per missing animal type, the −1 per unused space, and the −3 per begging marker.
Do dwarfs score points in Caverna?
Yes — each dwarf in your family is worth 1 point at the end. You begin with two and can grow to a maximum of six, so the row runs from 2 to 6. The points are almost beside the point, though: every dwarf is an extra action each round, so a big family is really scoring itself indirectly through everything else it managed to build, mine and fence.
How do furnishing tiles and mines score in Caverna?
Both score whatever is printed on the tile. Furnishing tiles — dwellings, parlours, chambers, storages and the rest — either show a flat point value or describe an end-game condition that pays out based on your finished board, so resolve those one at a time against what you actually built. Ore mines and ruby mines each show their own value too. Add the printed and conditional points together for each row.
Is there a Caverna score sheet I can use online?
This page is one — a free digital Caverna score sheet with all ten rows, the rate printed under each one, and the totals added for you including the penalties. It forgets everything when you close the tab, though. For a score sheet that remembers, Caverna is one of 300+ games with rules-aware scoresheets in the free Meeply app.
Does Meeply support Caverna?
Yes — Caverna: The Cave Farmers is in the Meeply app with a category for each of the ten scoring rows, for 1 to 7 players, plus saved game history, player stats, and win rates. Free to try.