Ruling — Descent: Legends of the Dark

← Descent: Legends of the Dark

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Descent: Legends of the Darkbg-322708-en-1e

Setup

1. Launch the Descent: Legends of the Dark app and select “New Game”.[1][2]

2. Use the app to create a save slot, select a difficulty setting, and choose starting characters.[1][2]

3. If playing a single-player game, the player chooses and controls two heroes.[1][2]

4. Each player gathers hero components: a reference card, a health dial, the plastic figure and hero card matching their chosen hero, and that hero's two starting weapon cards.[1][2]

5. Players combine starting weapons by placing one on top of the other with the upgrade (<0xEF><0x97><0xA2>) icons facing each other, then insert the pair into a card sleeve to be treated as a single attack card.[1][2]

6. Each player sets up a play area in front of them to place gathered components.[1][2]

7. A hero can begin the game with either side of their hero card and attack card faceup.[1][2]

8. Set health dials to the number matching the maximum health value on the hero card.[3]

9. Create the supply by separating all tokens by type and placing them in piles; place map tiles, terrain, enemy figures, consumable cards, and injury cards in the supply (injury and consumable cards do not need to be shuffled).[3]

10. Create the starting map by following the app's instructions to place map tiles, tokens, terrain, and figures.[3]

Round Structure

Each game round consists of two phases:[4]

1. Hero Phase: Each hero takes a turn performing actions to move, attack enemies, and interact with tokens and terrain.[4]

2. Darkness Phase: Time passes and enemies activate.[4]

Hero Turn

During a turn, a hero may perform one maneuver and two additional actions.[5][4] A hero can perform the same action multiple times, including multiple maneuver actions.[4] Actions include:

* Maneuver: The hero gains movement points equal to their speed.[5][4]

* Fight: The hero attacks an enemy within range.[5][4]

* Explore: The hero interacts with an explore token or piece of 3D terrain.[5][4]

* Ready: The hero flips one of their cards.[5][4]

* Unique: The hero resolves any ability prefaced by the action (<0xEF><0x97><0xA4>) icon.[5][4]

Enemy Activation

An example of enemy activation follows these steps:[6]

1. The enemy activates.[6]

2. The enemy moves based on its speed and range, attempting to reach a target without being impeded.[6]

3. The enemy attacks the target.[6]

4. The target rolls a black die for defense.[6]

5. The target's success or surge results are applied to reduce damage or negate abilities.[6]

6. The enemy's attack deals damage, and the target rotates their health dial to reflect current health.[6]

7. The activation ends, and players select “Done” to proceed to the next enemy's activation.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook · p.6

[2] RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook · p.6 · seTup

[3] RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook · p.7 · seTup

[4] RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook · p.32

[5] RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook · p.3

[6] RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook · p.17

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 90 ms · ask 5983 ms · total 6075 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6075 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 32, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "Learn to Play 32 Quick reFerence rOund sTrucTure Each game round consists of the following two phases: 1. Hero Phase: During this phase, each hero takes a turn performing actions to move, attack enemies, and interact with tokens and terrain. 2. Darkness Phase: During this phase, time passes and enem", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 499}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "Learn to Play 6 seTup To set up a campaign of Descent: Legends of the Dark, follow the steps presented in this section. 1. Launch App: Players launch the Descent: Legends of the Dark app and select “New Game.” The app guides players through a series of screens to create a save slot, select a difficu", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 499}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "To set up a campaign of Descent: Legends of the Dark , follow the steps presented in this section. Launch App: Players launch the Descent: Legends of the Dark app and select 'New Game.' The app guides players through a series of screens to create a save slot, select a difficulty setting, and choose ", "headingPath": "seTup", "sharpsignalDocId": 499}, {"page": 29, "score": 0.04526, "snippet": "Players can save their campaign at any time by selecting 'Save & Quit' from the options menu. If players choose to save their game during a quest, it is important that the heroes record the location of all figures on the map as well as the arrangement of their play areas-this includes the types and ", "headingPath": "sAving A cAmpAign · cOnTinuing A cAmpAign", "sharpsignalDocId": 499}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.045235, "snippet": "The rules presented in this section are not necessary to begin playing the game . When the heroes gain access to the campaign map in the app, they should read the rules presented in this section and continue the campaign. Early in the campaign, the heroes gain access to additional features in the ap", "headingPath": "cAmpAign rules · eQuipmenT", "sharpsignalDocId": 499}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.044468, "snippet": "As heroes progress through the campaign, they automatically unlock skills and gain experience (xp) , both of which are tracked by the app. Skills provide a hero with abilities that are resolved as described on the skill cards. At the start of each quest, heroes choose which skills to equip. The comb", "headingPath": "skills And experience Marshal. Vengeance.", "sharpsignalDocId": 499}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.043596, "snippet": "Set Health Dial: Each player sets their health dial to the number that matches the maximum health value on their hero card. The Elf Huntsman 1 : During your turn, ^«®¥ã ϭ 'My family is gone. Their teachings are not.' Add 1 . Then you may suffer 1 Create Supply: Separate all tokens by type and place ", "headingPath": "seTup", "sharpsignalDocId": 499}, {"page": 30, "score": 0.042745, "snippet": "Each ability describes when it can be used. Most commonly, abilities can be used 'before,' 'after,' or 'during' a specific time or action of the game, as follows: ◊ If the timing of an ability uses the word 'before' or 'after,' the ability's effect can be resolved immediately before or after the des", "headingPath": "Timing · GOLDEN RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 499}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 499}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "seTup", "sharpsignalDocId": 499}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "seTup", "sharpsignalDocId": 499}, {"page": 32, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 499}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 499}, {"page": 17, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 499}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 499 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 499 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 0.87550 of 2249 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 28, 2026 08:15 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 Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)		p.32	0.04866 (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 Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)		p.6	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
#3	RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)	seTup	p.6	0.045928 (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 Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)	sAving A cAmpAign · cOnTinuing A cAmpAign	p.29	0.04526 (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 Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)	cAmpAign rules · eQuipmenT	p.26	0.045235 (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 Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)	skills And experience Marshal. Vengeance.	p.28	0.044468 (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 Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)	seTup	p.7	0.043596 (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 Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)	Timing · GOLDEN RULES	p.30	0.042745 (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 50 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 Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)		p.6	#2	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
#2	RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)	seTup	p.6	#3	0.045928 (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 Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)		p.3	#12	0.027106 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)		p.17	#19	0.024405 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)	cAmpAign rules · eQuipmenT	p.26	#5	0.045235 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)	sAving A cAmpAign · cOnTinuing A cAmpAign	p.29	#4	0.04526 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)	seTup	p.7	#7	0.043596 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)		p.32	#1	0.04866 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)		p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)	seTup	p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)	seTup	p.7	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)		p.32	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Descent: Legends of the Dark — Rulebook (corpus doc 499)		p.17	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 90 ms · first delta 2599 ms · total 6075 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 90 ms · ask 5983 ms · gateway work 6075 ms · total 6075 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4011
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 676
tok/sec: 199.6 tok/sec — 676 output tokens in 3.387 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 30s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 9s 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: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 430), 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.