Board Game Arena

Game replay: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=296418349

During the game I wanted to explore Tier 1 site, where there was an idol with assistant recovery. I didn't want to recover my assisant, as it was ready. However, I was not able to play this move, the game was forcing me to pick an assistant for recovery.

I think it is against the rules. Please clarify.

If I'm understanding right, you wanted to take a Tier 1 site with no exhausted assistants, but the game wouldn't let you skip that action until you chose an assistant? So you had to undo the move?

That would be a bug. The icon description in the rules says "you may refresh an assistant." This implies you don't have to do it. Which makes sense: what if you don't even have an assistant, you can't discover a site whose idol has that icon?

If I interpreted this right, then this should be made a bug report.

EDIT: there's an active bug for this issue already.