Monster lairs

A lair is a guarded spot on the map: walk into it and you fight its guards on a battlefield of its own, by hand or with Auto-resolve. Before you commit, its card tells you its size and exactly what a win pays. Clearing lairs is how a hero gains levels, gold and free creatures, and every lair cleared takes back some of Haskett’s might.

Sizes and guards

A lair’s size word comes from its strength alone: the gold its guards would cost to hire, creature cost times count. Which units can stand in it depends on the size; the exact mix and counts are drawn from the match seed, so the same map plays differently each time.

Reward XP is 50% of the guards’ strength, on top of the XP every won fight gives, which is the guards’ whole strength: a cleared lair gives the hero 1.5 times its strength in experience. Joiners: the guard stack worth the most gold gives 30% of its creatures, rounded, at least one, free; they join your stack of that unit or a free slot, and an army with 6 other stacks has no room for them (the card says so). A Peatholm hero gets the Peatholm creature of the same role, as a dwelling would hire it.

Worked example

From a sample match on The Causeway Meres:

• A few (column 3, row 7): 8 Shieldmen, strength 224. A win pays 100 gold, 224 + 112 = 336 XP and 2 Shieldmen.
• A pack (column 6, row 10): 37 Spearmen, strength 444. A win pays 200 gold, 444 + 222 = 666 XP and 11 Spearmen.
• A horde (column 5, row 13): 16 Shieldmen and 10 Crossbowmen, strength 898. A win pays 300 gold, 898 + 449 = 1347 XP and 3 Crossbowmen.

A fight the guards survive leaves fewer of them, and the card is worked out again from the survivors: the gold stays the size’s, the XP and joiners shrink. Your own losses carry from fight to fight until you hire more.

Wardens, the gate and the greater horde

• Wardens are Mages and Drakes at strength 860–1060: their card reads “a horde” and a win pays a horde’s reward. They seal the boss’s lair and grow after day 2 (the wardens).
• The gate. On both maps a horde stands in front of Haskett’s lair; its win pays like any horde.
• The greater horde appears only at Warpath 2 and above, where every monster lair is drawn one size larger: 3 stacks from the horde’s units at strength 1100–1800. Its card still reads “a horde” and it pays a horde’s reward.
• The boss’s own lair pays no reward: winning it wins the match.

Lairs on each map

More on Conquest: Haskett · The Causeway Meres · Reedford · Resources and the town · Warpath

Play Clear a lair in a Conquest match.