Ruling — Dinosaur Island

← Dinosaur Island

You asked

How do I take my turn?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Dinosaur Islandbg-221194-en-1e

Dinosaur Island is played in a series of rounds consisting of five phases that occur in order:[1]

1. Research Phase [1]

2. Market Phase [1]

3. Worker Phase [1]

4. Park Phase [1]

5. Cleanup Phase [1]

Research Phase

* The first player rolls all dice in the DNA dice pool and places them along the top of the research center, with one die per slot.[1][2]

* In turn order, each player assigns one scientist at a time to research DNA, increase cold storage, or procure a dino recipe.[1][2]

* Players continue assigning one scientist at a time until each player has had three turns in this phase.[2]

* Players may pass with as many scientists as they wish during a round; scientists that are passed move to the worker pool for use in the Worker Phase.[3]

* To research DNA, a player assigns a scientist to a slot to claim the corresponding die; they then multiply the number of DNA symbols on that die by the scientist's research level and add that many DNA of that type to their lab, provided it does not exceed current cold storage limits.[2]

Market Phase

* Players take market actions, which can include passing; passing as a first market action still allows for a second market action.[3]

* Players collect $2 when they pass in this phase.[3]

Worker Phase

* Players use workers in this phase.[3]

* When creating a dinosaur, players must adjust their threat level and excitement level.[3]

Park Phase

* Players draw visitors from a bag; for example, a player's current excitement level determines how many visitors they draw.[4]

* Players collect $1 from each patron drawn from the bag, even if they cannot be placed in the park.[3][4]

* Players place visitors at the entrance of their park.[4]

* Each dinosaur in an exhibit can attract only one visitor, and players cannot place more visitors in an exhibit than there are dinosaurs present.[3]

Cleanup Phase

* Preparations are made for the following round by resetting turn order, refreshing the market, revealing new dino recipes, returning workers and scientists, removing visitors, and resolving plot twists.[1][5]

* Turn order is reset based on current scores; the player with the fewest VPs becomes the first player.[5] If scores are tied, the relative positions from the previous round determine the order.[5]

* The market is refreshed by discarding items in the $2 row, sliding remaining items upward, and filling empty slots from stacks.[5]

* New dino recipes are revealed by turning the top tile of each stack face-up.[5][6]

* Workers and scientists are returned to their starting locations (the worker pool and research pool, respectively).[6]

* All visitors (patrons and hooligans) depart the parks and are put back in the cloth bag.[6]

* Plot twists that resolve "at the end of each round" are resolved.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Dinosaur Island — Rulebook · p.6

[2] RULEBOOK Dinosaur Island — Rulebook · p.6

[3] RULEBOOK Dinosaur Island — Rulebook · p.20

[4] RULEBOOK Dinosaur Island — Rulebook · p.13

[5] RULEBOOK Dinosaur Island — Rulebook · p.15

[6] RULEBOOK Dinosaur Island — Rulebook · p.15

Settled. Play 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 164 ms · ask 4746 ms · total 11406 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 6492 ms · generation 4914 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 15, "score": 0.047938, "snippet": "If a given stack is empty, shuffle the corresponding discard pile to form a new stack. (Note: Do not rearrange the attractions in order of cost; that only occurs during initial setup.) Reveal New Dino Recipes Check each stack of dino recipe tiles on the research center board. Turn the top tile of ea", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 391}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "remaining worker on the turn order track. Lastly, put your 3 scientists just above your lab; this is your research pool. 33 Gain Starting DNA Place a limit cube at “4” on each of the basic DNA tracks (i.e., blue, pink, purple) and at “2” on each of the advanced DNA tracks (i.e., green, red, orange) ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 391}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "1 1 1 6 6 4 4 4 9 9 11 11 16 16 14 14 19 19 21 2624 29 31 41 36 46 34 44 39 49 2 2 2 7 7 5 5 10 3 3 3 8 8 12 12 17 17 15 15 20 20 13 13 18 18 22 2725 3023 28 32 42 37 47 35 45 40 50 33 43 38 48 10 Victory Points Excitement Level Turn Order 1 1 1 6 6 4 4 4 9 9 11 11 16 16 14 14 19 19 21 2624 29 31 41", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 391}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "RESEARCH PHASE To begin this phase, the first player rolls all dice in the DNA dice pool and places those rolled dice along the top of the research center, so that there is one die per slot. (It doesn’t matter which die is in which slot.) Then, in turn order, each player assigns one of their scienti", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 391}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "• Instead of the standard objective cards, use the solo objective cards. Shuffle all 16, then draw 10. Of those 10, choose 7 that will be in play this game, and place them face- up. Take the 3 cards that were not chosen and shuffle them together with the 6 that were not drawn, giving you a face-down", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 391}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Shuffle all 11 plot twist cards facedown, then draw 2 at random and place them face-up. The rules on these cards are now in effect for the remainder of the game. (If the second plot twist card would contradict the first, discard the second and redraw.) Return the other plot twist cards to the box. E", "headingPath": "7 Prepare the Plot Twists · Distribute Player Pieces", "sharpsignalDocId": 391}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030159, "snippet": "Gain any 2 basic DNA $2$2 Gain any 2 advanced DNA $5$5 Gain any 1 advanced DNA $4$4 Gain any 3 basic DNA $3$3 Phase 2Phase 2 then discard 1 item from $2 row then discard 1 item from $5 row then discard 1 item from $4 row then discard 1 item from $3 row Phase 5Phase 5 CLEANUP PHASECLEANUP PHASE 99 Ch", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 391}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "In addition, if you were able to avoid discarding any objective cards during the game, score a 10 VP bonus. Hint: To score the 10 VP bonus, you need to score exactly one objective in each round, which is why you might decide not to score multiple completed objectives in the same round. VARIANTSVARIA", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 391}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 391}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 391}, {"page": 20, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 391}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 391}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 391}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 391}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 391 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 391 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 0.91011 of 2314 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 24, 2026 21:02 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 Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)		p.15	0.047938 (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 Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)		p.6	0.046696 (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 Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)		p.15	0.032258 (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 Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)		p.6	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 Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)		p.17	0.03125 (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 Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)	7 Prepare the Plot Twists · Distribute Player Pieces	p.4	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
#7	RULEBOOK Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)		p.5	0.030159 (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 Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)		p.19	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 37 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 Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)		p.6	#2	0.046696 (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 Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)		p.6	#4	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)		p.15	#3	0.032258 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)	7 Prepare the Plot Twists · Distribute Player Pieces	p.4	#6	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
#5	RULEBOOK Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)		p.20	#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 Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)		p.13	#15	0.014493 (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 Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)		p.17	#5	0.03125 (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 Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)		p.15	#1	0.047938 (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	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)	p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)	p.20	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)	p.13	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)	p.15	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Dinosaur Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 391)	p.15	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 164 ms · first delta 1457 ms · total 11406 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 6492 ms · retrieval 164 ms · ask 4746 ms · gateway work 4914 ms · total 11406 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3718
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 674
tok/sec: 199.7 tok/sec — 674 output tokens in 3.375 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 31s ago)
gateway schema (read from the running child): schema head 0042_definer_search_path (live revision not readable by this principal)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 5h, checked 6s 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 320), 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.