Ruling — Ark Nova

← Ark Nova

You asked

How do I set up the zoo at the start?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Ark Novabg-342942-en-1e

To set up the zoo at the start, follow these steps:

**Global Setup**

1. Place the game board in the center of the table.[1]

2. Take the Break token and place it on the start space of the Break track that corresponds to your player count.[1]

3. Shuffle the Zoo cards to create a face-down deck on the game board on the space marked with the icon.[1]

4. Deal 6 face-down cards from the deck to the spaces provided on the game board (this is the display).[1]

5. Shuffle the 9 Bonus tiles and place a random Bonus tile face up on each of the 4 blank yellow Bonus spaces on the board; return the remaining 5 tiles to the box.[1]

6. Place the 2 organizers next to the game board as the general supply.[1]

**Association Board and Project Setup**

7. Place the Association board next to the game board, leaving enough room for one row of cards above and one row of cards below the board.[2]

8. Place 1 partner zoo of each continent and 1 university kind on the spaces provided on the Association board.[2]

9. Shuffle the Base Conservation Project cards and place them face-down as a deck next to the Association board.[2]

10. In a 4-player game, place the 4 topmost cards face up below the board; otherwise, place the 3 topmost.[2]

11. In a 2-player game, take 6 player tokens of any unused color and cover: the left level on the left card, the middle level on the middle card, and the right level on the third card of the face-up Base Conservation Projects, as well as the three spaces in the left column of the donation area on the Association board.[2]

12. Shuffle the Final Scoring cards and place them face down next to the Association board.[2]

**Personal Setup**

13. Randomly determine a start player; turn order is clockwise.[2]

14. Choose a color and take all components of that color.[2]

15. Place the counters for appeal, conservation, and reputation on the first spaces of their tracks on the game board.[2]

16. Place your counters on the Appeal track according to turn order: the start player starts on space 0, the second player on space 1, the third on space 2, and the fourth on space 3.[2]

17. Take 7 of the player tokens in your color and place them on the designated spaces at the left edge of your zoo map; keep any remaining tokens next to your zoo map.[2]

18. Take the 4 association workers and place 1 on the notepad of your zoo map as the active worker, and the remaining 3 lying down on the designated spaces below the notepad.[2]

19. Take 25 money from the supply and put it on the notepad of your zoo map.[2]

20. Draw 2 Final Scoring cards and place them next to your zoo map (keep these hidden from other players).[2]

21. Take a random zoo map and place it with that side up in front of you; return any remaining maps to the box.[3]

* If using advanced maps, take 2 random zoo maps and choose 1 advanced map, or lay out player count +1 advanced maps and choose 1 each in reverse order of play; return unselected maps to the box.[3]

22. At the beginning of the game, place a 3-space enclosure on the indicated spaces on your map, with the side showing the number 3 (the empty side) up.[4]

23. Take one set of Action cards each (Build, Cards, Animals, Association, and Sponsors).[3]

24. Place one card with its corresponding side up under each of the five card slots on your zoo map: place the Animals card under the slot furthest to the left showing the 1, and distribute the remaining 4 cards randomly under the other 4 slots.[3]

25. Draw 8 Zoo cards; choose 4 to keep as hand cards (hidden from others) and discard the remaining 4 to a face-up discard pile on the board.[5][2]

[1] RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook · p.4 · Other · Global Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook · p.5 · Personal Setup

[3] RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook · p.4 · Personal Setup

[4] RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook · p.6 · Your Zoo Map

[5] RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook · p.5 · Personal Setup

🔧 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 104 ms · ask 9912 ms · total 10020 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 10020 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "For your personal setup, each of you takes the following steps: A Take a random Map A zoo map , and place it with that side up in front of you. Return the remaining zoo maps to the box. They are not used in this game. 4 of the 8 zoo maps have Map A on one side. All 4 copies of Map A are identical an", "headingPath": "Personal Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "B 4 1 Place the game board in the center of the table. Take the Break token and place it on the start space of the Break track that corresponds to your player count. If there are three players, place the Break token on the space marked 3 . 2 3 Shuffle the Zoo cards to create a face-down deck on the ", "headingPath": "Other · Global Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Build exactly 1 building of your choice with a maximum size of on your zoo map. Pay 2 money per space. Available: Kiosk, pavilion, standard enclosure, and Petting Zoo. The size of a building is measured by the number of spaces it covers on your zoo map. In this action, you have the kiosk (size 1), p", "headingPath": "BUILD", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Your zoo (1) is established in the large area in the middle of your zoo map. This is where you place buildings such as enclosures (standard or special enclosures), kiosks, pavilions, or unique buildings. An overview of all enclosures shows their sizes and shapes (2) . You are not allowed to build on", "headingPath": "Your Zoo Map", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "3 Setup ................................................ 4 Gameplay ............................................. 6 • Your Zoo Map .................................... 6 • Zoo Cards ........................................ 7 → The Break Track ............................... 7 A Turn / The 5 Action C", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "If there are multiple simultaneous effects, you choose the order of execution (whether these effects are appeal, reputation, conservation points, or gained by the ability of the animal or from other cards). Fill empty enclosure : To play an Animal card and accommodate the animal in your zoo, you nee", "headingPath": "ANIMALS", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The game board has a Break track to count down the time remaining until the next break. At the beginning of the game, and after each break, the Break token goes on the starting space corresponding to your player count (1) . Whenever you advance the Break token, move it the appropriate number of spac", "headingPath": "The Break Track", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029644, "snippet": "F Draw 8 Zoo cards. Choose 4 of them to keep as hand cards and discard the remaining 4 cards to a face-up discard pile on the discard space on the board. Make sure to keep your hand cards hidden from the other players. A face-up discard pile is easier to distinguish from the other card piles. This p", "headingPath": "Personal Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Other · Global Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Personal Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Personal Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Your Zoo Map", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Personal Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 247 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 247 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 0.90655 of 2932 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 12, 2026 12:08

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 Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	Personal Setup	p.4	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	Other · Global Setup	p.4	0.047123 (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 Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	BUILD	p.10	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 Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	Your Zoo Map	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 Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)		p.3	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 Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	ANIMALS	p.11	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
#7	RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	The Break Track	p.7	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
#8	RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	Personal Setup	p.5	0.029644 (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 44 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 Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	Personal Setup	p.4	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	Personal Setup	p.5	#8	0.029644 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	5. Take income : · 6. Break track : · 1. Game end · 2. Score cards · 3. Determine Victory Points · Example: Game end	p.19	#26	0.011905 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	The various tasks are:	p.14	#14	0.014085 (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 Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	The Reputation Track and the Display	p.9	#22	0.0125 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	Your Zoo Map	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
#7	RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	Personal Setup	p.5	#10	0.029211 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	Other · Global Setup	p.4	#2	0.047123 (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 Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	Other · Global Setup	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	Personal Setup	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	Personal Setup	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	Your Zoo Map	p.6	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247)	Personal Setup	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 104 ms · first delta 3354 ms · total 10020 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 104 ms · ask 9912 ms · gateway work 10020 ms · total 10020 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3301
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 921
tok/sec: 139.8 tok/sec — 921 output tokens in 6.590 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 11s 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 173), 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.