Ruling — Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape

← Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Massive Darkness 2: Hellscapebg-315610-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

1. Sort the Mob cards into separate decks according to their card backs and shuffle each deck.[1]

2. Sort the Roaming Monster cards into separate decks according to their card backs and shuffle each deck.[1]

3. Sort the item cards into separate decks according to their card backs and shuffle each deck.[1]

4. Sort the Mob Item cards into separate decks according to their card backs and shuffle each deck.[1]

5. Shuffle the Door cards into a facedown deck.[1]

6. Place all Enemy miniatures to the side of the game area.[1]

7. As a group, players select a Quest to play.[1]

8. Arrange the tiles for the chosen Quest according to the Quest's instructions, forming the Dungeon.[1]

9. Place doors and other tokens as instructed by the chosen Quest.[1]

10. Place Portal tokens as indicated by the Quest according to the number of Heroes, when applicable.[1]

11. Take all Treasure tokens and 5 Treasure tokens, place them inside the Treasure bag, and shuffle them.[1]

12. Draw a card from the Levels 1-2 Mob deck for each shown on the Quest map and place the corresponding Mob miniatures: 1 Leader miniature plus a number of Minions equal to the number of Heroes.[1]

13. Draw a card from the Levels 1-2 Mob Item deck and place it under each Mob card just spawned, so that only the bottom part of the Mob Item is visible.[1]

14. Draw 1 Treasure token from the bag and place it on each revealed Mob card.[1]

15. Each player chooses a Hero and takes the corresponding Hero card and miniature.[2]

16. Each player takes a plastic Hero dashboard and places their Hero card in the Hero card slot (A).[2]

17. Each player takes a plastic base in the color of their choice and attaches it to their Hero miniature (B).[2]

18. Each player takes a Level token and slots it into the Level slot on the dashboard (C).[2]

19. Each player takes the set of pegs in the same color as their plastic base and inserts 2 pegs, one in each '0' slot of the experience track and the last peg in the '1' spot on the level track (D).[2]

20. Each player takes 1 Rare Treasure token and 3 Epic Treasure tokens from the box and places them next to the Level token.[2]

21. Each player takes an Activation token and sets it near their Hero dashboard with the blue side up (E).[2]

22. Each player takes Health and Mana tokens equal to the number shown in each Hero card (F).[2]

23. Each player gathers all other components specific to their Hero's Class.[2]

24. Each player chooses a Level 1 skill card from their Class and places it in the appropriate location according to their Class, then sets aside the other skill cards.[2]

25. Place all starting item cards faceup on the table.[2]

26. Each Hero may choose 1 starting weapon (Rusty Sword, Crude Axe, Short Bow, Wooden Staff, Dagger, Ash Wand, Magical Ocarina) and then take 1 Battered Leather Armor and 1 potion (either Health or Mana).[2]

27. Place the chosen weapon and armor on the appropriate slots of the Hero dashboard and place the chosen potion next to the Hero dashboard.[2]

28. Return any leftover starting item cards to the box.[2]

29. Place a number of Lifebringer tokens blue side up on the table according to the number of Heroes playing: 1 or 2 Heroes: 1 Lifebringer token; 3 or 4 Heroes: 2 Lifebringer tokens; 5 or 6 Heroes: 3 Lifebringer tokens.[2]

30. Return any leftover Lifebringer tokens to the game box.[2]

31. For the Berserker, place the Berserker dashboard next to their Hero dashboard and place the Stance token on the stance in which they wish to start.[3]

32. After choosing their Level 1 skill, place its card below its corresponding stance.[3]

33. For the Wizard, take the Spell Amulet and place it near the Hero dashboard, ensuring the Ready marker is attached and rotated to point at any quadrant of the Wizard's choosing.[4]

34. Choose a Level 1 Wizard's skill card and place it in one of the quadrants of the Spell Amulet (replacing a basic spell).[4]

35. For the Ranger, take the 14 Ranger Arrow

[1] RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook · p.14 · ENEMY CARDS

[2] RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook · p.13 · ENEMY CARDS

[3] RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook · p.32 · Bridges

[4] RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook · p.30 · Bridges

That settles it — whose turn was it?

🔧 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 350 ms · ask 10774 ms · total 11128 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 11128 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 13, "score": 0.047938, "snippet": "1. Each player chooses a Hero and takes the corresponding Hero card and miniature. They take a plastic Hero dashboard and place their Hero card in the Hero card slot (A). Then, they take the plastic base in the color of their choice and attach it to their Hero miniature (B). Take a Level token and s", "headingPath": "ENEMY CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.045536, "snippet": "Bosses are unique Enemies featured in some Quests (in those, killing them usually is the winning condition). The Quests indicate a Chamber where the Boss is placed during setup, this is the Boss Chamber. Bosses do not move, activate, or have any effects until the Boss Fight begins, which starts when", "headingPath": "DUNGEON LEVEL", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "16. Place all Hero miniatures in the Hero Starting Zone as shown in the Quest. 17. Create a reserve of Health, Mana, Fire, and Frost tokens. Take all the dice and place them within reach of all players. 18. Place the Darkness track next to the Dungeon with the side with 9 spaces facing up and the Da", "headingPath": "ENEMY CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Sort the Mob cards into separate decks according to their card backs and shuffle each deck. Sort the Roaming Monster cards into separate decks according to their card backs and shuffle each deck. Sort the item cards into separate decks according to their card backs and shuffle each deck. Sort the Mo", "headingPath": "ENEMY CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "After the attacking Hero has determined their target is within range and there is Line of Sight, it's time to assemble the dice pool and resolve the attack. After the dice pool has been assembled, the attack is resolved by performing the following steps, in order. All 3 steps must be completed: 1- R", "headingPath": "LINE OF SIGHT · RESOLVING THE ATTACK", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "When a Chamber is revealed, follow these steps in order: Draw and resolve a Door card Spawn Enemies Place Treasures Draw and resolve a Door card: Door cards have an event that must be resolved before Enemies are spawned and Treasure tokens placed. Unless stated otherwise, discard the Door card after", "headingPath": "Revealing a Chamber", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030092, "snippet": ". . . 8 DICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 HERO DASHBOARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 HERO CARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 SKILL CARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 TREASURE BAG . . . ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "After the attacking Hero has determined their target is within range and there is Line of Sight, it’s time to assemble the dice pool and resolve the attack. RESOLVING THE ATTACK After the dice pool has been assembled, the attack is resolved by performing the following steps, in order. All 3 steps mu", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ENEMY CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ENEMY CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 32, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Bridges", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}, {"page": 30, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Bridges", "sharpsignalDocId": 570}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 570 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 570 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 0.90321 of 3275 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 19, 2026 15:18 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 Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	ENEMY CARDS	p.13	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 Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	DUNGEON LEVEL	p.27	0.045536 (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 Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	ENEMY CARDS	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 Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	ENEMY CARDS	p.14	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 Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	LINE OF SIGHT · RESOLVING THE ATTACK	p.20	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 Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	Revealing a Chamber	p.17	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 Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)		p.2	0.030092 (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 Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)		p.20	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 76 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 Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	Bridges	p.32	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	DUNGEON LEVEL	p.27	#2	0.045536 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	SINGLE PLAYER RULES · HELLBREAKER CHALLENGE · BREAKING TIES · Bridges	p.29	#9	0.029643 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)		p.2	#7	0.030092 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	ENEMY CARDS	p.13	#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
#6	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	ENEMY CARDS	p.14	#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 Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	Bridges	p.30	#36	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
#8	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	Bridges	p.35	#16	0.02451 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	ENEMY CARDS	p.14	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	ENEMY CARDS	p.13	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	Bridges	p.32	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Massive Darkness 2: Hellscape — Rulebook (corpus doc 570)	Bridges	p.30	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 350 ms · first delta 5961 ms · total 11128 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 350 ms · ask 10774 ms · gateway work 11128 ms · total 11128 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3633
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 200.5 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 5.107 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 21s 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 60h, checked 9s 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: 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): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 502), 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.