Ruling — Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto

← Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grottobg-391795-en-1e

To play, follow these steps:

**Setup**

1. Separate the cards into their various types.[1]

2. Shuffle the 3 Master cards, choose 1 at random, and place it facedown in the center of the play area.[1]

3. Place the progress tokens and dice within easy reach of all players.[1]

4. Each player chooses a Seeker and takes that Seeker's character card, their lantern card, and their deck of 18 skill cards.[1]

5. Each player places their Seeker character card faceup in front of them, with their lantern card facedown next to it.[1]

6. Each player shuffles their Seeker's skill deck and draws a hand of cards.[1]

7. Set the 4 gauntlet cards off to one side.[1]

8. Shuffle the deck of 6 Exhausted cards and place it facedown within easy reach of all players.[1]

9. Shuffle the deck of 57 Well cards.[1]

10. Draw the top 4 cards and place them faceup around the Master card.[1]

11. Discard the top 3 cards of the Well deck facedown to form a discard pile.[1]

12. Set the health tracker (10-sided die) to 10 (or 8 for hard mode) and place it near the play area.[1]

13. Choose a player to go first; play continues clockwise.[1]

**On Your Turn**

1. At the start of your turn, you may choose to exhaust yourself to draw a new hand of cards; if your hand is empty, you must do this.[2] To exhaust yourself, discard the remaining cards in your hand, draw the top card of the exhausted deck and put it into play faceup, then draw a new hand of cards.[2]

2. Select one of the 4 Well cards surrounding the Master to interact with.[3][4]

3. If you choose an event card, read the instructions on the card and perform them in order.[3][4]

4. If you choose a challenge card, attempt the challenge by following these steps:

* Play a skill card as an action (if desired).[5][3] You may play one skill card that matches the color of the challenge (white matches all three).[6] If your lantern is charged, you may use it instead of a skill card.[6]

* Boost the action up to 2 times.[7][5][3] Other Seekers may play skill cards as boosts if the boost color matches the challenge color.[7] In a 1-Seeker game, you may boost your own actions.[7]

* Roll all 4 of the dice.[7][8][5][3] For each die result that matches the color of the challenge, add 1 extra progress (white matches all three, black matches none).[7]

* Complete or fail the challenge.[8][5][3] If the total progress (from action, boosts, and dice) is equal to or greater than the difficulty, you complete it and receive the reward.[8] If the progress is less than the difficulty, you fail and suffer the penalty.[8]

5. After completing your action, if there are fewer than 4 Well cards surrounding the Master, draw cards from the top of the Well deck and place them faceup until there are 4 cards again.[4]

6. Discard any skill cards you played this turn (and any boosts played by others) faceup to a discard pile.[2]

7. Your turn ends and play passes to the Seeker to your left.[4][2]

**Ending the Game**

1. Continue play until the Seekers either win or lose the game.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook · p.6 · SETTING UP

[2] RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook · p.16 · END OF YOUR TURN · DRAWING NEW CARDS AND EXHAUSTION · EXHAUSTED CARD EFFECTS · RUNNING OUT OF CARDS IN YOUR DECK

[3] RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook · p.22 · QUICK GUIDE ON YOUR TURN · EVENTS · CHALLENGES

[4] RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook · p.8 · A PLAYER'S TURN · 1. EVENTS · 2. CHALLENGES

[5] RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook · p.10

[6] RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook · p.11 · STEP 1: PLAY A SKILL CARD AS AN ACTION (IF DESIRED) · USING YOUR LANTERN

[7] RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook · p.14 · STEP 2: BOOST THE ACTION UP TO 2 TIMES · STEP 3: ROLL THE DICE

[8] RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook · p.15 · STEP 3: ROLL THE DICE · STEP 4: COMPLETE OR FAIL THE CHALLENGE · COMPLETING A CHALLENGE WHEN NOT ATTEMPTING IT · REWARDS AND PENALTIES

So says the rulebook. So plays the table.

🔧 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 207 ms · ask 8767 ms · total 8978 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8978 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.047883, "snippet": "Separate the cards into their various types. Shuffle the 3 Master cards, choose 1 at random and place it facedown in the center of the play area without looking at it. Return the other 2 Master cards to the box, also without looking at them. Place the progress tokens and dice within easy reach of al", "headingPath": "SETTING UP", "sharpsignalDocId": 831}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.047712, "snippet": "On your turn, select one of the 4 Well cards surrounding the Master to interact with. There are two types of cards in the Well deck: events and challenges. The actions you take depend on the type of card you choose to interact with. When you choose an event card to interact with, simply read the ins", "headingPath": "A PLAYER'S TURN · 1. EVENTS · 2. CHALLENGES", "sharpsignalDocId": 831}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.046432, "snippet": "If you play a skill card as an action, other Seekers have the option to help out by playing their own skill cards as boosts. Boosts add additional progress to the challenge being attempted. A skill card's boost value and color can be found in the bar along the bottom of the card. In order for a card", "headingPath": "STEP 2: BOOST THE ACTION UP TO 2 TIMES · STEP 3: ROLL THE DICE", "sharpsignalDocId": 831}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.046402, "snippet": "9 STEP 1: PLAY A SKILL CARD AS AN ACTION (IF DESIRED) 01� SKILL NAME 02� VALUE A skill’s value determines how much progress it adds to a challenge. 03� COLOR The skill’s color is shown by the card border as well as the indicator below the difficulty . 04� STORY TEXT Amusing or interesting story text", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 831}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.046244, "snippet": "When attempting a challenge, you may play one skill card that matches the color of the challenge you are attempting. So, if you are attempting a green challenge, you may only play a green or white skill card (since white skills match all three colors). The skill card will add progress to the challen", "headingPath": "STEP 1: PLAY A SKILL CARD AS AN ACTION (IF DESIRED) · USING YOUR LANTERN", "sharpsignalDocId": 831}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.04526, "snippet": "Select one of the 4 Well cards surrounding the Master to interact with. There are two types of cards in the Well deck: events and challenges. The actions you take depend on the type of card you choose to interact with. If you choose an event card to interact with, read the instructions on the event ", "headingPath": "QUICK GUIDE ON YOUR TURN · EVENTS · CHALLENGES", "sharpsignalDocId": 831}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.044658, "snippet": "9 01� SKILL NAME 02� VALUE A skill's value determines how much progress it adds to a challenge. 03� COLOR The skill's color is shown by the card border as well as the indicator below the difficulty. 04� STORY TEXT Amusing or interesting story text that has no effect on gameplay is in italics . 05� C", "headingPath": "ATTEMPTING A CHALLENGE · STEP 1: PLAY A SKILL CARD AS AN ACTION (IF DESIRED)", "sharpsignalDocId": 831}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.044118, "snippet": "You must roll all 4 of the dice each turn unless a card or ability tells you not to roll this turn. If a card or ability grants you the option to re-roll, you must re-roll all 4 dice. Add up the total progress earned this turn from your action, any boosts played, and any additional progress from the", "headingPath": "STEP 3: ROLL THE DICE · STEP 4: COMPLETE OR FAIL THE CHALLENGE · COMPLETING A CHALLENGE WHEN NOT ATTEMPTING IT · REWARDS AND PENALTIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 831}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETTING UP", "sharpsignalDocId": 831}, {"page": 16, "quote": null, "headingPath": "END OF YOUR TURN · DRAWING NEW CARDS AND EXHAUSTION · EXHAUSTED CARD EFFECTS · RUNNING OUT OF CARDS IN YOUR DECK", "sharpsignalDocId": 831}, {"page": 22, "quote": null, "headingPath": "QUICK GUIDE ON YOUR TURN · EVENTS · CHALLENGES", "sharpsignalDocId": 831}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "A PLAYER'S TURN · 1. EVENTS · 2. CHALLENGES", "sharpsignalDocId": 831}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 831}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "STEP 1: PLAY A SKILL CARD AS AN ACTION (IF DESIRED) · USING YOUR LANTERN", "sharpsignalDocId": 831}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "STEP 2: BOOST THE ACTION UP TO 2 TIMES · STEP 3: ROLL THE DICE", "sharpsignalDocId": 831}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "STEP 3: ROLL THE DICE · STEP 4: COMPLETE OR FAIL THE CHALLENGE · COMPLETING A CHALLENGE WHEN NOT ATTEMPTING IT · REWARDS AND PENALTIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 831}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 831 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 831 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 0.88240 of 2466 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 23, 2026 07:41 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 Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	SETTING UP	p.6	0.047883 (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 Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	A PLAYER'S TURN · 1. EVENTS · 2. CHALLENGES	p.8	0.047712 (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 Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	STEP 2: BOOST THE ACTION UP TO 2 TIMES · STEP 3: ROLL THE DICE	p.14	0.046432 (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 Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)		p.10	0.046402 (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 Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	STEP 1: PLAY A SKILL CARD AS AN ACTION (IF DESIRED) · USING YOUR LANTERN	p.11	0.046244 (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 Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	QUICK GUIDE ON YOUR TURN · EVENTS · CHALLENGES	p.22	0.04526 (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 Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	ATTEMPTING A CHALLENGE · STEP 1: PLAY A SKILL CARD AS AN ACTION (IF DESIRED)	p.10	0.044658 (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 Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	STEP 3: ROLL THE DICE · STEP 4: COMPLETE OR FAIL THE CHALLENGE · COMPLETING A CHALLENGE WHEN NOT ATTEMPTING IT · REWARDS AND PENALTIES	p.15	0.044118 (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 26 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 Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	STEP 1: PLAY A SKILL CARD AS AN ACTION (IF DESIRED) · USING YOUR LANTERN	p.11	#5	0.046244 (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
#2	RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	STEP 2: BOOST THE ACTION UP TO 2 TIMES · STEP 3: ROLL THE DICE	p.14	#3	0.046432 (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 Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	STEP 3: ROLL THE DICE · STEP 4: COMPLETE OR FAIL THE CHALLENGE · COMPLETING A CHALLENGE WHEN NOT ATTEMPTING IT · REWARDS AND PENALTIES	p.15	#8	0.044118 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)		p.10	#4	0.046402 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	QUICK GUIDE ON YOUR TURN · EVENTS · CHALLENGES	p.22	#6	0.04526 (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 Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	SETTING UP	p.6	#1	0.047883 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	A PLAYER'S TURN · 1. EVENTS · 2. CHALLENGES	p.8	#2	0.047712 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	END OF YOUR TURN · DRAWING NEW CARDS AND EXHAUSTION · EXHAUSTED CARD EFFECTS · RUNNING OUT OF CARDS IN YOUR DECK	p.16	#9	0.030159 (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 Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	SETTING UP	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	END OF YOUR TURN · DRAWING NEW CARDS AND EXHAUSTION · EXHAUSTED CARD EFFECTS · RUNNING OUT OF CARDS IN YOUR DECK	p.16	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	QUICK GUIDE ON YOUR TURN · EVENTS · CHALLENGES	p.22	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	A PLAYER'S TURN · 1. EVENTS · 2. CHALLENGES	p.8	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)		p.10	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	STEP 1: PLAY A SKILL CARD AS AN ACTION (IF DESIRED) · USING YOUR LANTERN	p.11	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	STEP 2: BOOST THE ACTION UP TO 2 TIMES · STEP 3: ROLL THE DICE	p.14	no quote on the wire
[8]	RULEBOOK Kinfire Delve: Vainglory's Grotto — Rulebook (corpus doc 831)	STEP 3: ROLL THE DICE · STEP 4: COMPLETE OR FAIL THE CHALLENGE · COMPLETING A CHALLENGE WHEN NOT ATTEMPTING IT · REWARDS AND PENALTIES	p.15	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 207 ms · first delta 2721 ms · total 8978 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 207 ms · ask 8767 ms · gateway work 8978 ms · total 8978 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3037
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 827
tok/sec: 133.9 tok/sec — 827 output tokens in 6.176 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 22s 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 10s 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: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 766), 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.