In the real world, adverbs are extremely common in spoken speech, but in writing it is considered bad style to use too many of them. When you write, you should try to avoid unnecessary adverbs. But when people talk, they use them constantly!¹  In details, you can use an adverb on its own or together with the word it's modifying.

Even my brother very rarely puts so much sugar in his tea.

In the previous example, "Even" adds emphasis to "my" (a possessive adjective), "rarely" tells how he puts _____ (adverb modifying a verb), "very" modifies "rarely" (adverb modifying adverb: how rarely? very), and "so" gives a sense of scale to the adjective "much".

Adverbs (and adverb phrases) add details to a sentence by providing answers to five possible questions: how, when, where, how much and how often. Adverbs are grouped based on which question they answer.

How? Adverbs of manner

I ate my dinner quickly.

The werewolf silently stalked his victim.

When? Adverbs of time

Carol recently visited Barcelona.

My daughter eventually got up and washed the dishes.

Where? Adverbs of place

Olya ate her lunch outside.

The lizard people are everywhere.

Come here!

How much? To what extent? Adverbs of degree

The lawyers were very unhappy.

The penguins completely ruined my dinner party.

The detectives solved the crime quite quickly.

How often? Adverbs of frequency

Cats sometimes follow me home.

Lisa rarely drinks champagne.

Insects are constantly biting me!

The most basic use of adverbs is to modify verbs, so a good strategy in details when you have an adverb card and a verb card is to try to place them in the sentence together. For example, if I have the sentence

Fat babies like cake.

Fat babies like occasionally eating cake.

Adverbs are regulary used to modify adjectives. very ugly not bad obviously fake stunningly beautiful.

Adverbs less commonly modify other adverbs. almost completely very eagerly quite suddenly surprisingly well.

Some adverbs can perform the job of a conjunction (joining a clause to a sentence). Appropriately enough, these are called "conjunctive adverbs". When used this way, the clause introduced by the adverb still adds a "detail" to some other part of the sentence. Example:

I love you like bears love honey.

The adverb "like" is adding a detail to the base sentence, it tells "how much" I love her (as much as bears love honey).

Conjunctive adverbs also sometimes work in as a pair with a conjunction or another adverb, such as if-then, where-there and as-so.

If you are right then we are doomed.

When using a verb, sometimes we want to use the negative form of it. This usually means just adding the adverb "not".

The dog is not barking.

In order to make it easier for players to use negative verbs, "not" can be added to any verb card, in the same way that articles can be freely added to noun (or adjective, adverb or verb) cards. For example, if we have the sentence

I am!

and we have a verb card and a noun card, we could write not eating and the dog, and details will insert it correctly into the sentence:

I am not eating the dog!