Ruling — The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era

← The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era

You asked

How do I set up the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Erabg-356080-en-1e

The setup for The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era involves several components:

**General Game Setup**

1. Choose a province.[1] If continuing a campaign, select the province determined by your previous session.[2]

2. Place the province's overland map to one side of the play area.[2]

3. Set aside the province's gazetteer.[2]

4. Set up dice, chips, tokens, and pegs by placing storage trays near the play area and sorting attribute, stat, and overland tokens by type.[2]

5. Place all skill line tokens in the trainer bag.[2]

6. Gather black double-sided enemy chips and separate them into stacks by level; place these stacks into the appropriate enemy bags (Level 1/5 bag and Level 10/20 bag) near the overland map.[2]

7. Set up card decks by placing skill line reference sheets in the card tray, shuffling the Side Quest Deck, preparing the Overland Decks (shuffling 10 general cards of that type and drawing 4, then shuffling them with 8 province-specific cards), preparing the Delve Deck (removing "SP" cards and shuffling remaining province cards with general cards), and shuffling the Item Decks.[2]

8. Set up map tiles by sorting neoprene tiles by shape, setting aside the large clash tile and the 5-hex entrance tile, and shuffling the remaining delve tiles into stacks placed together.[2]

9. Set up the campaign journal and dials; if it is your first session, choose a party leader to record progress.[2]

10. Choose a game difficulty.[3]

11. Set up adventurers by creating them (if it is your first session) or using their status from the end of the previous session (if continuing a campaign).[3]

12. Set up the guild quest by referring to its first quest step in the gazetteer, setting aside described quest unit chips, and placing the party token and overland tokens in their starting locations on the overland map.[3] If it is your first session, shuffle the Guild Deck, draw 3 cards, and choose 1.[3]

**Battle Setup**

All battles follow general steps: placing tiles to create a battle map, placing cache tokens, deploying enemies, and then deploying adventurers.[4]

* **Clash Setup:** Place the clash tile in the play area and connect the entrance tile as shown by the encounter.[4]

* **Delve Setup:** Place the entrance tile in the play and (if using delve tiles) separate them into stacks to build the map.[4][5]

* **Dungeon Setup:** Assemble the dungeon map by placing each tile in the play area as shown in the setup diagram.[4][6]

* **Cache Chips:** In a clash or dungeon, place cache chips in the hexes shown on the setup diagram.[4] (Note: Cache chips are not placed during delve setup).[4]

* **Enemy Deployment:** Deploy objective units specified by encounter text, then deploy enemies to numbered and special hexes as described in the encounter instructions.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook · p.12

[2] RULEBOOK The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook · p.12

[3] RULEBOOK The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook · p.13

[4] RULEBOOK The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook · p.57

[5] RULEBOOK The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook · p.74

[6] RULEBOOK The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook · p.82

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 269 ms · ask 21598 ms · total 231485 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 209604 ms · generation 21881 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 11, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Game Setup Game Setup Game Setup ..................................................................... 12 Setup Procedure............................................................12 Choosing a Starting Quest .....................................13 Diﬃculty Levels...................................", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 318}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.048412, "snippet": "13 13GAme Setup 5. Choose game diﬃculty: Diﬃculty level aﬀects several parts of the game. Select a diﬃculty level from the options on this page. 6. Set up adventurers: Each player takes an adventurer mat and sets up their adventurer as described below. First Session of a Campaign: If this is your /f", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 318}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.046175, "snippet": "If you are continuing a campaign, you must select the province determined by your previous session (see page 49) � Note: If this is your first session of your first campaign, it is strongly recommended that you select Black Marsh as your starting province � Ov erland Map: Place the province’s overla", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 318}, {"page": 57, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "57 57Battle Rules Battle Setup Each battle is set up by placing tiles to create its battle map, placing cache tokens, deploying enemies, and then deploying adventurers � Each mode of battle places tiles differently and deploys enemies in its own way, but all battles follow the general setup steps be", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 318}, {"page": 74, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "/T_hese are deployed as additional tiles are explored (see page 77). /T_hen, follow steps 4–6 as described in Battle Setup (see page 57). Delve Setup Example /T_he players proceed to the Encounter Phase to set up the delve battle (see page 57). 1. /T_he players separate the delve tiles into their st", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 318}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030415, "snippet": "12 The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era12 The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era Game Setup The recommended play area for this game is at least 3’ x 4’ (90cm x 120cm) � Setup Procedure Follow this procedure to set up the game as it appears in the diagram on page 14 � 1 � Choose a pr ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 318}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "19 19Adventurer Rules Adventurer Creation Each player creates a unique adventurer at the outset of the /f_irst session of a campaign. T o create an adventurer, follow the steps below. For an example of this, see Adventurer Creation Examples on page 26–page 27. 1. Select Race: Select a race sheet and", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 318}, {"page": 57, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "3 � D eploy Enemies: In a clash or dungeon, refer to that mode’s steps for calculating an enemy pool and deploying enemies � In a delve, enemies are not deployed at setup� Clash (see page 71) D ungeon (see page 82) 4 � D eploy Adventurers: Deploy each adventurer to the entrance tile � Start by choos", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 318}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 318}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 318}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 318}, {"page": 57, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 318}, {"page": 74, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 318}, {"page": 82, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 318}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 318 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 318 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)
debug row retained until: Nov 6, 2026 14:11

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. How much wider that pool was is set gateway-side and is NOT REPORTED for this ruling, and neither are the answerer's final rows — so rulesage has nothing of its own to show beside these.

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	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook (corpus doc 318)	p.11	0.048652 (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 The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook (corpus doc 318)	p.13	0.048412 (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 The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook (corpus doc 318)	p.12	0.046175 (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 The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook (corpus doc 318)	p.57	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 The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook (corpus doc 318)	p.74	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 The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook (corpus doc 318)	p.12	0.030415 (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 The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook (corpus doc 318)	p.19	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 The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook (corpus doc 318)	p.57	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.

the passages the answerer read: NOT RECORDED for this ruling. Any of three things leaves this empty, and they are all different from the answerer having had nothing to read: this ask may never have reached a gateway at all; a multi-book ask keeps each book's own context on that book's own page rather than here; or the gateway build that answered may simply not report it. What this NEVER means is that the answerer read nothing — an answer was composed from passages either way, and their absence here is a gap in what we were told, not in what it read.

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook (corpus doc 318)	p.12	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook (corpus doc 318)	p.12	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook (corpus doc 318)	p.13	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook (corpus doc 318)	p.57	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook (corpus doc 318)	p.74	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era — Rulebook (corpus doc 318)	p.82	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 269 ms · first delta 16872 ms · total 231485 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 209604 ms · retrieval 269 ms · ask 21598 ms · gateway work 21881 ms · total 231485 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4417
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 668
tok/sec: 134.6 tok/sec — 668 output tokens in 4.962 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 39s ago)
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): set up

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 244), 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.