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, on the board: its card offers Fight or Not now. 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. Every ordinary lair of a new match is held by the Wild Beasts, monsters of no people that hunt by the Pack rule: each other living beast stack on their side adds 10% to a stack’s damage. Which beasts 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. A Daily before 2026-10-24 and a match saved under older rules keep the peoples’ guards (a few: Spearman, Dire Wolf, Archer and Shieldman; a pack: Spearman, Dire Wolf, Archer, Shieldman, Crossbowman and Knight; a horde: Shieldman, Crossbowman, Knight, Mage and Drake).

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): 4 Ridge Lynxes, strength 152. A win pays 100 gold, 152 + 76 = 228 XP and 1 Ridge Lynx.
• A pack (column 6, row 10): 8 Ridge Lynxes and 31 Thornback Shrews, strength 614. A win pays 200 gold, 614 + 307 = 921 XP and 9 Thornback Shrews.
• A horde (column 5, row 13): 10 Ridge Lynxes and 15 Gorse Hogs, strength 740. A win pays 300 gold, 740 + 370 = 1110 XP and 3 Ridge Lynxes.

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 (Ridge Lynx, Carrion Kite and Barrow Bear) 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 Wild Beasts · The Causeway Meres · Reedford · Broadwater · Resources and the town · Warpath

Play Clear a lair in a Conquest match.