on a monster surge... monsters go to the outskirts because the arkham limit is reached. i get that, but when the outskirts limit is reached and then exceeded the timing of events is not explained.

so...

do you draw all of the surging monsters at once and then put them in the outskirts, filling it and then returning them from the outskirts to the cup after the limit is exceeded. (doing this may mean that you empty the cup during a surge and thus awaken the AO)

or ... do you draw and place them one at a time and so the monsters may return to the cup from the full outskirts before all of the syrge monsters are drawn from the cup. (in this version you may draw monsters that have just been returned to the cup, and its not likley that the ancient one will wake during a surge using this method).

consider this example

the monster limit in arkham is full. the outskirts limit is (say) 4 with two monsters already in it, and 6 gates are open. Oops! there is a real nasty monster surge, 6 gates that means 6 monsters are going to surge... what do you do?

In the final example:

Six monsters are appearing. The first two go to the Outskirts, filling it. The third exceeds the limit, raising the terror level by 1 and emptying the outskirts. You still have 3 monsters to place--they all go to the outskirts.

In this way, it is possible that one monster surge raises the terror level by multiple points.

Yep. It took me a long time before I found out about the rule about the extra monster :') I always used to put it into the next wave outskirts.

Tibs said:

yes but, did you draw your monsters one at a time and refilled the cup from the outskirts before you drew your 4th monster, or did you draw all six monsters out of the cup at once and then place them one by one in the outskirts?

in the above example i should have stated that there are only 5 monsters in the cup before the monster surge begins.

The Thing In The Attic said:

Oh, you're asking if the monsters in the outskirts are recycled before you draw more? I don't know, I don't play that they are, just because it makes drawing monsters faster.

Monsters are officially dealt with one at a time. So you would have put the first wave of cleared out outskirt monsters back in the cup before drawing the final monsters. So if you needed to draw 6, and there were only 5 left, the outskirts would have refreshed the cup before you lost the game.