RuleSage cited table rulings
← Spirit Island

You asked

On a Choice Event, what happens if the Spirits cannot agree on which option to take, and what does it mean when a Choice Event's cost is 'Aided by' a particular Element?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Spirit Islandbg-162886-en-1e · Spirit Island: Branch & Clawbg-191831-en-1e

If the Spirits cannot agree on which option to take during a Choice Event, the first listed option is the default.[1][2]
When a Choice Event's cost is "Aided by" a particular Element, the Spirits may use that Element to reduce the cost in the following ways:
* Count +4 Energy towards the cost for each Power Card (from hand, play, or discard) with that Element which is Forgotten.[2]
* Count +2 Energy towards the cost for each Power Card (from hand to discard) with that Element which is discarded.[2]
* Count +1 Energy towards the cost for each instance of that Element they have in play from Presence Tracks, Power Cards, or other effects.[2]
Note that a Power Card can only be used for one of these bonuses, and if a Power Card is discarded, it cannot also be Forgotten.[2] Additionally, any Energy gained through "Aided by" is only for the purpose of paying the cost and does not provide real Energy.[2]
[1] RULEBOOK Spirit Island: Branch & Claw — Rulebook · p.22 · GLOSSARY/INDEX
[2] RULEBOOK Spirit Island: Branch & Claw — Rulebook · p.9 · BLIGHTED ISLAND · CHOICE EVENTS

Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings

🔧 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 118 ms · ask 5320 ms · total 5440 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 5440 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 8, "score": 0.032266, "snippet": "For decisions about/within a land: Each Spirit makes choices regarding the lands on their starting board. For other cases: The game owner/organizer makes the call.", "headingPath": "But in the rare event that agreement is not possible:", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.031754, "snippet": "When the game calls for a decision (where Blight cascades to, which Invaders to do Damage to, etc) and it's not specified who makes it, what do you do? If the decision springs from a Power, the Spirit using the Power makes the decision. For other situations, players should try come to a consensus.", "headingPath": "WHO DECIDES?", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.030798, "snippet": "Spirits affect things on the Island by playing Power Cards from their hand. A Spirit can play whichever cards they like each Spirit Phase, limited by two things: They can only play as many cards as they have Card Plays available, which is the highest revealed number on the Card Plays Presence Track.", "headingPath": "ENERGY AND CARD PLAYS", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030331, "snippet": "Some Spirits are inclined to take a long time choosing Power Cards: perhaps several centuries in the case of slow-moving earth Spirits. But the threat of the Invaders forbids the luxury of infinite time. Any player may place a limit on the time available to complete the Spirit Phase. This can be don", "headingPath": "THE URGENCY OF WAR", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.029877, "snippet": "Elemental Thresholds: Optional effects which may only be used if the Spirit has gained certain Elements this turn (see #3 on the previous page). The required Elements are not 'used up'; the threshold is simply a check to see if they are in play. For instance, a Spirit with 2 Water in play could meet", "headingPath": "ANATOMY OF POWERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.029437, "snippet": "Spirits affect the game using Powers, which are either Power Cards or Innate Powers printed on a Spirit Panel. Innate Powers function similarly to Power Cards, except they are automatically available every turn (i.e. do not use Card Plays) and require having certain Elements rather than spending Ene", "headingPath": "POWERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.02901, "snippet": "Spirit Name Art: An image of this Spirit. Backstory: The story and history of the Spirit. Setup: Inital Presence placement and any special instructions. Play Style/Complexity: A brief description of the Spirit's strategy and comparison of its strengths and weaknesses, as well as a summary of Powers.", "headingPath": "ANATOMY OF A SPIRIT PANEL", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.028595, "snippet": "Energy Cost (Power Cards only) Name Elements Gained (Power Cards only): There are eight Elements: Sun, Moon, Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Plant, and Animal. When you play a Power Card, you gain the Elements shown. Some Powers have extra effects if you have gained specific Elements (see #8 on the next pa", "headingPath": "ANATOMY OF POWERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 58}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 22, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GLOSSARY/INDEX", "sharpsignalDocId": 220}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "BLIGHTED ISLAND · CHOICE EVENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 220}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 58 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 58 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 0.92647 of 748 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until
Nov 12, 2026 23:48

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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) But in the rare event that agreement is not possible: p.8 0.032266 (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)) 163
#2 RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) WHO DECIDES? p.8 0.031754 (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)) 298
#3 RULEBOOK Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) ENERGY AND CARD PLAYS p.13 0.030798 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) THE URGENCY OF WAR p.8 0.030331 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) ANATOMY OF POWERS p.17 0.029877 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) POWERS p.16 0.029437 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) ANATOMY OF A SPIRIT PANEL p.14 0.02901 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) ANATOMY OF POWERS p.16 0.028595 (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 80 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 Spirit Island: Branch & Claw — Rulebook (corpus doc 220) GLOSSARY/INDEX p.22 #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 Spirit Island: Branch & Claw — Rulebook (corpus doc 220) MEANINGLESS CHOICES p.9 #11 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 Spirit Island: Branch & Claw — Rulebook (corpus doc 220) 'NORMAL' ACTIONS VS. 'EXTRA' ACTIONS · INVADERS DOING DAMAGE MULTIPLE TIMES IN SAME LAND · 'PICK TWO' GROWTH · GROWTH THAT COSTS ENERGY p.15 #22 0.012195 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) SPIRIT PHASE p.8 #14 0.013514 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) WHO DECIDES? p.8 #2 0.031754 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) ANATOMY OF A SPIRIT PANEL p.14 #7 0.02901 (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 Spirit Island — Rulebook (corpus doc 58) But in the rare event that agreement is not possible: p.8 #1 0.032266 (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 Spirit Island: Branch & Claw — Rulebook (corpus doc 220) BLIGHTED ISLAND · CHOICE EVENTS p.9 #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 Spirit Island: Branch & Claw — Rulebook (corpus doc 220) GLOSSARY/INDEX p.22 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Spirit Island: Branch & Claw — Rulebook (corpus doc 220) BLIGHTED ISLAND · CHOICE EVENTS p.9 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 118 ms · first delta 3967 ms · total 5440 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 118 ms · ask 5320 ms · gateway work 5440 ms · total 5440 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
2649
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
217
tok/sec
150.6 tok/sec — 217 output tokens in 1.441 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 15s 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 7), 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.