Ruling — Dungeon Petz

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You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Dungeon Petzbg-97207-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

1. Place the Central Board in the center of the table so everyone can see and reach it.[1]

2. If playing with 4 players, use the side of the Progress Board with four imps in the corner.[1]

3. If playing with 4 players, use the side of the Central Board without arrows between spaces.[1]

4. Each player chooses a color and takes the 10 imp figures, 2 minion figures, Achievement Tile, and Burrow Board in that color.[1]

5. Each player also takes one Pet Display Board.[1]

6. Put 1 manure token in your initial cage.[2]

7. In a 2- or 3-player game, return the nonplayer boards, minions, Achievement Tiles, and imps to the box, except for the 6 or 3 neutral imps used to block action spaces on the Central Board.[2]

8. For the first round, you should have revealed the exhibition for round 2 and the customer for round 3.[3] (Note: In an advanced variant, you may reveal two exhibition tiles and two customer tiles at the beginning of the game [4]).

9. The player who most recently fed a pet gets the Starting Player Token (though you may also choose the starting player randomly, arbitrarily, or by fiat).[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Dungeon Petz — Rulebook · p.2 · A Few Words from Vlaada · About This Rulebook · Progress Board · Central Board · Player Boards · Starting Player Token

[2] RULEBOOK Dungeon Petz — Rulebook · p.6 · Initial Manure

[3] RULEBOOK Dungeon Petz — Rulebook · p.7 · Getting Income · Revealing New Information

[4] RULEBOOK Dungeon Petz — Rulebook · p.17 · More Foresight · Advanced Meat Stand Rule · Final Round Order

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 172 ms · ask 2634 ms · total 2809 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 2809 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 7, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "Each round consists of 6 phases. These are summarized in the left-hand Quick Reference Table on your Burrow Board. Each phase has multiple steps, each represented by a pictogram. Follow these steps in order, from the top down. Phase 1 - Setup Phase 2 - Shopping Phase 3 - NEED CARDS Phase 4 - Showing", "headingPath": "Initial Manure · THE ROUND · Adding New stuff · New Food · New Artifacts", "sharpsignalDocId": 441}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "The imps in your shop no longer dig gold, but you have relatives who do. Each round, they send you some … just not so much that their dungeon lord would notice. Each round (including the first one), all players get income. The starting player and the player on his or her left get 1 gold. The other t", "headingPath": "Getting Income · Revealing New Information", "sharpsignalDocId": 441}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "2 The game is for 2 to 4 players. In this rulebook, we will describe it as a 4-player game. Rules for a 2- or 3-player game will be written in boxes like this one. If you are playing with four, you can ignore them. Most of this rulebook explains the basic rules - the ones you should use for your fir", "headingPath": "A Few Words from Vlaada · About This Rulebook · Progress Board · Central Board · Player Boards · Starting Player Token", "sharpsignalDocId": 441}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Now it's time to have fun with your pets! This phase has three steps: Arrange cages and pets. Draw Need Cards. Assign Need Cards to pets. These steps are followed in order. Everyone may play simultaneously. As soon as you have arranged your cages and pets, you may draw your Need Cards without waitin", "headingPath": "Phase 3 - NEED CARDS · Arranging Cages and Pets · New Cages and Addons · Pets", "sharpsignalDocId": 441}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Once you are experienced, you can make your game more strategic by revealing two exhibition tiles and two customer tiles at the beginning of the game. (For an extreme variant, you can reveal all information at the start, but it is not always fun to plan so far ahead.) As you know, pets in the upper ", "headingPath": "More Foresight · Advanced Meat Stand Rule · Final Round Order", "sharpsignalDocId": 441}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Put 1 manure token in your initial cage. Yes, the cage is a little dirty, but hey, it's free! You have plots for 4 cages. During the game, you can buy more cages and install them in the empty plots (or even over your initial cage, if you want to get rid of it). Each cage (including the initial cage)", "headingPath": "Initial Manure", "sharpsignalDocId": 441}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Green is selling a pet, too, but she is disappointed by the points she would get. She wants to use the platform bonus on a really good score. She decides to sell the pet without using the bonus and save her platform imp for round 4. The green imp stays on the right side of the platform, where it is ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 441}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029551, "snippet": "There is always at least one size 2 pet left in the lower half of the pet corral, but it would be too harsh to just discard a young pet. All pets in the lower half get bigger. Set their wheels to size 3 (showing 3 bars) and move them into the upper half of the pet corral. You see? The upper half has", "headingPath": "New Pets", "sharpsignalDocId": 441}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "A Few Words from Vlaada · About This Rulebook · Progress Board · Central Board · Player Boards · Starting Player Token", "sharpsignalDocId": 441}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Initial Manure", "sharpsignalDocId": 441}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Getting Income · Revealing New Information", "sharpsignalDocId": 441}, {"page": 17, "quote": null, "headingPath": "More Foresight · Advanced Meat Stand Rule · Final Round Order", "sharpsignalDocId": 441}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 441 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 441 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 0.90096 of 939 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 12, 2026 21:01 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 Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	Initial Manure · THE ROUND · Adding New stuff · New Food · New Artifacts	p.7	0.047619 (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 Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	Getting Income · Revealing New Information	p.7	0.046898 (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 Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	A Few Words from Vlaada · About This Rulebook · Progress Board · Central Board · Player Boards · Starting Player Token	p.2	0.032787 (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 Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	Phase 3 - NEED CARDS · Arranging Cages and Pets · New Cages and Addons · Pets	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
#5	RULEBOOK Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	More Foresight · Advanced Meat Stand Rule · Final Round Order	p.17	0.03125 (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 Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	Initial Manure	p.6	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 Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)		p.10	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 Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	New Pets	p.7	0.029551 (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 56 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 Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	Initial Manure · THE ROUND · Adding New stuff · New Food · New Artifacts	p.7	#1	0.047619 (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 Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	Getting Income · Revealing New Information	p.7	#2	0.046898 (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 Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	New Pets	p.7	#8	0.029551 (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 Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	Inviting New Imps	p.9	#16	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 Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	More Foresight · Advanced Meat Stand Rule · Final Round Order	p.17	#5	0.03125 (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 Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	Biggest Groups Go First	p.8	#20	0.012987 (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 Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	A Few Words from Vlaada · About This Rulebook · Progress Board · Central Board · Player Boards · Starting Player Token	p.2	#3	0.032787 (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 Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	Initial Manure	p.6	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	A Few Words from Vlaada · About This Rulebook · Progress Board · Central Board · Player Boards · Starting Player Token	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	Initial Manure	p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	Getting Income · Revealing New Information	p.7	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Dungeon Petz — Rulebook (corpus doc 441)	More Foresight · Advanced Meat Stand Rule · Final Round Order	p.17	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 172 ms · first delta 1278 ms · total 2809 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 172 ms · ask 2634 ms · gateway work 2809 ms · total 2809 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3264
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 295
tok/sec: 201.2 tok/sec — 295 output tokens in 1.466 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 24s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 2h, 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 372), 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.