Ruling — Lost Ruins of Arnak

← Lost Ruins of Arnak

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Lost Ruins of Arnakbg-312484-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

1. Use the side with the Bird Temple for your first game.[1]

2. For the Island:

* Place the blocking tiles if playing with two or three players:

* In a two-player game, block all 5 spaces so each site has space for only one archaeologist.[1]

* In a three-player game, mix the blocking tiles face down, flip over 3 at random, and use them to block the space at each of those 3 sites, then return the 2 unused tiles to the box.[1]

* In a four-player game, do not use the blocking tiles.[1]

* Mix the Idol Tiles and randomly assign them to sites.[1]

* Each site in a region gets one face-up idol for Level 7 sites.[1]

* Each site in a region gets one face-up idol and one face-down idol for Level 8 sites, as depicted on the board.[1]

3. For the Card Row:

* Separate the cards into two decks: Artifacts and Items.[1]

* Shuffle the artifacts deck face down and place it on the marked space.[1]

* Place the Fear cards face up on the marked space.[1]

* Shuffle the items deck face down and place it on the marked space.[1]

* Place the moon staff in the card row to indicate it is round I.[1]

* Deal 1 artifact to the card row, face up, to the left of the moon staff.[1]

* Deal 5 items to the card row, face up, to the right of the moon staff.[1]

4. For the Supply Board and Research Track:

* Place all resource tokens on the supply board.[2]

* Shuffle the site tiles marked and place them face down on the supply board.[2]

* Shuffle the guardians and place them face down on the supply board.[2]

* Turn all assistants silver side up, shuffle them into 3 random stacks of 4 tiles each, and place them on the supply board.[2]

* For the solo variant:

* Set up the board as you would for a 2-player game.[3]

* Whenever a stack is supposed to have a number of tiles equal to the number of players, give it 2 tiles.[3]

* Make a stack with as many research bonus tiles as there are players and place it face down at the top of the research track.[2]

* Distribute research bonus tiles randomly to the appropriate spaces on the research track, then turn them face up.[2]

5. For Player Setup:

* Each player chooses a color and takes the player board, research tokens, 2 archaeologist figures, and 4 basic cards in that color.[4]

* Each player's deck starts with the 4 basic cards in their color plus 2 Fear cards; shuffle this deck and place it face down on the player board.[4]

* Place research tokens on a starting space below the research track.[4]

* Place the magnifying glass atop the notebook.[4]

* The starting player is the one who most recently traveled to a place they had never visited before; give this player the starting player marker.[4]

6. For the Solo Variant (Rival Setup):

* Choose another player board to represent the rival expedition and use the side with the gray tents.[3]

* Give the rival all 6 archaeologist figures not in your color.[3]

* The rival uses only one research token.[3]

* Place the rival's magnifying glass on a starting space next to your research tokens.[3]

* Build the rival's action stack with 10 action tiles.[3]

* To determine the difficulty level, choose a number of red tiles from 0 to 5, randomly select that many red tiles, and add the appropriate green tiles to complete the set of 5 tiles.[3]

* Shuffle the rival action stack face down.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook · p.4 · Main Board · Setup · Island · Blocking Tiles · Card Row

[2] RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook · p.5 · Research Track · One-Player Game · Supply Board

[3] RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook · p.20 · Solo Variant · Setup · Rival Setup · Rival Action Stack · Gameplay · Rival Actions

[4] RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook · p.6 · Player Setup · Player Board · Your Starting Deck · Play Order · Starting Resources · RECOMMENDED TABLE LAYOUT · …

Rule found, game on.

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 118 ms · ask 11095 ms · total 11218 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 11218 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "Use the side with the Bird Temple for your first game. The Snake Temple side follows special rules which are explained on page 19. 1 3 2 Idol Tiles. Mix these up and randomly assign them to sites. 7 Level sites. Each site in region gets one face-up idol. 8 Level sites. Each site in region gets one f", "headingPath": "Main Board · Setup · Island · Blocking Tiles · Card Row", "sharpsignalDocId": 212}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "10 12 Temple Tiles. Make stacks of temple tiles on the temple. Each stack has as many tiles as there are players. As shown, 11-point tiles have one stack at the top, 6-point tiles have two stacks in the middle, 2-point tiles have three stacks at the bottom. Return unused tiles to the box. 9 Research", "headingPath": "Research Track · One-Player Game · Supply Board", "sharpsignalDocId": 212}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Day 6 - We found a good place to pitch our tents, with fresh water nearby. Our quartermaster has ensured we wi be we supplied. For the fortnight, this sha be our home. Each player should choose a color and take the player board, research tokens, 2 archaeologist figures, and 4 basic cards in that ", "headingPath": "Player Setup · Player Board · Your Starting Deck · Play Order · Starting Resources · RECOMMENDED TABLE LAYOUT · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 212}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Your rival discovers a or site, depending on the round. If there are multiple undiscovered sites: ◊ First narrow the choices down to one row. Among sites, give preference to the bottom row. ◊ Then use the decision arrow to choose left or right. Put a rival archaeologist on the chosen space. Move the", "headingPath": "Discover a New Site · Research · Overcome a Guardian · Buy an Item", "sharpsignalDocId": 212}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "On your turn, you can choose to pass - inform the other players that you will take no more turns this round. Passing counts as your main action for the turn. At this time, you should also use up any free actions you still have available. If you take no other main action, then you must pass. It is no", "headingPath": "We have discovered such wonders today! Who knows what we sha find tomorrow? · Setup for Next Round · All players simultaneously do the following: · The card row should be adjusted as follows: · End of Round V", "sharpsignalDocId": 212}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.030478, "snippet": "We thought we had kept this secret to ourselves. Somehow, others are here ahead of us! This solo variant allows you to enjoy the thrill of discovering the lost ruins even without another player to compete against. Set up the board as you do for a 2-player game. Whenever a stack is supposed to have a", "headingPath": "Solo Variant · Setup · Rival Setup · Rival Action Stack · Gameplay · Rival Actions", "sharpsignalDocId": 212}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Day 10 - Our archaeology team returned with fantastic tales of dweings in the cliffs adorned with lapidary masterpieces sti intact. Yet their joy at their discovery was mingled with dread of the monster that lurked above. At the beginning of the game, only 5 sites are available for digging. But du", "headingPath": "Discover a New Site · To Discover a New Site", "sharpsignalDocId": 212}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The four slots at the top of your board give you access to useful effects. On your turn, you may put an idol in a slot as a free action : Move the idol from your supply crates to the leftmost unoccupied slot on your player board. Choose one effect from the five depicted options. Some boons are trave", "headingPath": "IDOL SLOTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 212}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Main Board · Setup · Island · Blocking Tiles · Card Row", "sharpsignalDocId": 212}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Research Track · One-Player Game · Supply Board", "sharpsignalDocId": 212}, {"page": 20, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Solo Variant · Setup · Rival Setup · Rival Action Stack · Gameplay · Rival Actions", "sharpsignalDocId": 212}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Player Setup · Player Board · Your Starting Deck · Play Order · Starting Resources · RECOMMENDED TABLE LAYOUT · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 212}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 212 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 212 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.90717 of 2693 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 25, 2026 00:52 UTC

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	Main Board · Setup · Island · Blocking Tiles · Card Row	p.4	0.048387 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	Research Track · One-Player Game · Supply Board	p.5	0.046875 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	Player Setup · Player Board · Your Starting Deck · Play Order · Starting Resources · RECOMMENDED TABLE LAYOUT · …	p.6	0.032787 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	Discover a New Site · Research · Overcome a Guardian · Buy an Item	p.21	0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	We have discovered such wonders today! Who knows what we sha find tomorrow? · Setup for Next Round · All players simultaneously do the following: · The card row should be adjusted as follows: · End of Round V	p.17	0.030769 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	Solo Variant · Setup · Rival Setup · Rival Action Stack · Gameplay · Rival Actions	p.20	0.030478 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	Discover a New Site · To Discover a New Site	p.10	0.030303 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	IDOL SLOTS	p.11	0.029851 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 39 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	We have discovered such wonders today! Who knows what we sha find tomorrow? · Setup for Next Round · All players simultaneously do the following: · The card row should be adjusted as follows: · End of Round V	p.17	#5	0.030769 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	Main Board · Setup · Island · Blocking Tiles · Card Row	p.4	#1	0.048387 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	Research Track · One-Player Game · Supply Board	p.5	#2	0.046875 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	ORNATE HAMMER · OBSIDIAN EARRING · PATHFINDER'S SANDALS PATHFINDER'S STAFF	p.22	#27	0.011628 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	KEYWORDS · STARTING RESOURCES	p.24	#10	0.029412 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	Dreadful Tales!	p.19	#35	0.010526 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	Player Setup · Player Board · Your Starting Deck · Play Order · Starting Resources · RECOMMENDED TABLE LAYOUT · …	p.6	#3	0.032787 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	Solo Variant · Setup · Rival Setup · Rival Action Stack · Gameplay · Rival Actions	p.20	#6	0.030478 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	Main Board · Setup · Island · Blocking Tiles · Card Row	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	Research Track · One-Player Game · Supply Board	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	Solo Variant · Setup · Rival Setup · Rival Action Stack · Gameplay · Rival Actions	p.20	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Lost Ruins of Arnak — Rulebook (corpus doc 212)	Player Setup · Player Board · Your Starting Deck · Play Order · Starting Resources · RECOMMENDED TABLE LAYOUT · …	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 118 ms · first delta 3984 ms · total 11218 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 118 ms · ask 11095 ms · gateway work 11218 ms · total 11218 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3630
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 885
tok/sec: 123.8 tok/sec — 885 output tokens in 7.146 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 24s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 2s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched: SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 137), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.