RuleSage cited table rulings
← Ark Nova

You asked

What happens when I play a Reef Dweller card?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Ark Novabg-342942-en-1e · Ark Nova: Marine Worldsbg-368966-en-1e

Whenever you play a Reef Dweller card, you trigger the Reef Dweller effects of all Reef Dwellers in your zoo, which includes the Reef Dweller you just played.[1] You may choose the order in which you resolve any Reef Dweller effects and additional abilities.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Ark Nova: Marine Worlds — Rulebook · p.4 · SEA ANIMAL ACCOMMODATION · REEF DWELLERS
🔧 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 72 ms · ask 3584 ms · total 3658 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 3658 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 20, "score": 0.032018, "snippet": "If you play Ark Nova on your own, modify the rules as follows: Lay out 3 basic Conservation Project cards and do not place any tokens of a different color on them (i. e. like a 3-player setup). Do not use the Break token. Instead, place 7 player tokens of any unused color on the spaces in the left c", "headingPath": "SOLO GAME · Setup · Turn / Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.031281, "snippet": "Take 1 X-token. If you cannot or do not want to perform any of the 5 actions, you can still use this alternative action and take 1 X-token. You can perform this action using any Action card. It is independent of the value of the card's slot and you cannot use X-tokens to increase the strength of the", "headingPath": "Example: Playing a Sponsor card · Appeal and Conservation Points · · 10 conservation points : · Break", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030366, "snippet": "Your Action cards are located below your zoo map. Each card is always assigned to a card slot at the bottom of the map. The number on the card slot indicates the strength with which you can use the Action card located there. The numbers range from 1 on the far left to 5 on the far right, meaning the", "headingPath": "A Turn / The 5 Action Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029911, "snippet": "You are blue, and you are performing the action with strength 5, which lets you take 4 cards and discard 1. Above all, you would like to have the Lion that is within your reputation range in the display. You take the Lion (1) , draw 2 cards from the deck (2) and then decide to also take the Caracal ", "headingPath": "Example: Taking cards using side II", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029469, "snippet": "Play Animal cards from your hand. Compare the strength of the action with the table on the card. Play up to the indicated number of Animal cards from your hand. Follow the steps below for each animal: Check conditions : Any conditions you must fulfill in order to play the Animal card are indicated o", "headingPath": "ANIMALS", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.02904, "snippet": "Ark Nova does not play in formal rounds; instead, players simply take turns (in clockwise order) taking one turn at a time until the end of the game is triggered. In addition, there are so-called breaks in between, when the game is put on hold for an administration phase. During these breaks you wil", "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.028624, "snippet": "Play exactly 1 Sponsor card OR advance the Break token and take money. This action allows you to play exactly 1 Sponsor card from your hand, provided that the strength of the action is at least equal to the level of the Sponsor card and you meet any conditions on the card (depicted on the left side ", "headingPath": "SPONSORS", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.028219, "snippet": "If you have more cards in your hand than your hand limit allows, discard any surplus cards of your choice from your hand to the discard pile. Normally your hand limit is 3, but a particular university allows you to hold 5 ( If you have Multiplier, Venom, and/or Constriction tokens on your Action car", "headingPath": "1. Hand card limit : · 2. Tokens on Action cards : · 3. Association board : · 5. Take income :", "sharpsignalDocId": 247}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SEA ANIMAL ACCOMMODATION · REEF DWELLERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 867}]
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 0.95413 of 218 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until
Nov 12, 2026 12:15

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247) SOLO GAME · Setup · Turn / Cards p.20 0.032018 (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 Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247) Example: Playing a Sponsor card · Appeal and Conservation Points · · 10 conservation points : · Break p.18 0.031281 (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) A Turn / The 5 Action Cards p.8 0.030366 (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) Example: Taking cards using side II p.9 0.029911 (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) ANIMALS p.11 0.029469 (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) GAMEPLAY p.6 0.02904 (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) SPONSORS p.17 0.028624 (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) 1. Hand card limit : · 2. Tokens on Action cards : · 3. Association board : · 5. Take income : p.18 0.028219 (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 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 57 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 — 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Ark Nova: Marine Worlds — Rulebook (corpus doc 867) Example: Playing an animal in an aquarium · Example: Playing a Reef Dweller · Example: Revealing a Wave Icon p.5 #10 0.016129 (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 re-ranker chose it
#2 RULEBOOK Ark Nova: Marine Worlds — Rulebook (corpus doc 867) WAVE ICON (gg p.4 #12 0.015385 (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
#3 RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247) The Association Board p.15 #20 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
#4 RULEBOOK Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247) ANIMALS p.11 #5 0.029469 (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 Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247) ANIMALS p.11 #16 0.013158 (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) Conservation Projects Layouts · Example: Playing a Conservation Project card p.15 #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 Ark Nova — Rulebook (corpus doc 247) Sponsor cards Layout · Example: Playing a Sponsor card p.17 #27 0.011494 (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
#8 RULEBOOK Ark Nova: Marine Worlds — Rulebook (corpus doc 867) SEA ANIMAL ACCOMMODATION · REEF DWELLERS p.4 #9 0.016393 (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 re-ranker chose it

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Ark Nova: Marine Worlds — Rulebook (corpus doc 867) SEA ANIMAL ACCOMMODATION · REEF DWELLERS p.4 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 72 ms · first delta 3156 ms · total 3658 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 72 ms · ask 3584 ms · gateway work 3658 ms · total 3658 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3541
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
59
tok/sec
136.6 tok/sec — 59 output tokens in 0.432 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 3s 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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
decision
NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

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.