Resources, mines, dwellings and the town

A Conquest match is a race between your army and Haskett. Everything on this page is how the map turns into army: resources pay for town buildings, buildings and dwellings sell creatures, and chests and lairs give the hero levels. The places are fixed per map (The Causeway Meres · Reedford); the amounts are drawn from the match seed within the ranges below.

Resources and the start purse

There are 4 resources: gold, wood, ore and crystal. Every match starts with 300 gold, 5 wood, 5 ore and no crystal. That is not enough for even the cheapest building (the Muster Yard, 400 gold, 5 wood): the town is paid for out of the map, from piles, chests, lairs and the places.

Piles

A pile is picked up by walking onto it, once. Some piles always hold the same resource (each map has a gold pile and a crystal pile), the rest are drawn. A pile of 800+ gold, 8+ wood, 8+ ore or 4+ crystal is a big one, and the deal always stands a lair beside it (below).

Chests

A chest offers a choice when you open it: gold for the purse or experience for the hero. Each chest is one of these rows, drawn from the seed:

Mines

Walk onto a mine to flag it; from then on it pays every day until the match ends. Every mine on the maps sits behind a lair, so the income costs a fight first. The game knows a mine of each resource, but The Causeway Meres and Reedford hold only wood and ore mines: there gold comes only from piles, chests, lairs and two of the places, and crystal comes only from piles. Broadwater, the Large map (still an experiment, opened from the Conquest panel), holds 12 mines: 2 gold, 3 wood, 4 ore and 3 crystal, so there gold and crystal also come from mines. There, troops hired at a town or dwelling away from the hero can also march to him as a war band.

The one-time places

Each map holds the same six places on the same tiles, one of each kind (The Causeway Meres · Reedford show where). Walking onto one opens a card with its two choices and the exact outcome of each, worked out for your army and purse at that moment; you keep one and the place is spent. A choice you cannot pay for, or whose creatures your army has no room for, is greyed out.

The dice table is a fair-looking bet that leans your way: the even bet returns 125 gold on average for the 100 staked and the long shot about 117, but the die is cast once, so a short purse on day one can still be emptied.

Where things stand: the deal

The Causeway Meres and Reedford are dealt anew each match. The town, Haskett’s lair, the mines, the watchtower, the six places, the wardens, the lairs in front of a mine or his lair, and the chest a warden guards always stand on the same tiles, and the roads and rivers never change. The rest, 4 lairs, 5 piles, 3 chests and 2 dwellings on each map, are put on tiles of a larger pool (28 tiles on The Causeway Meres and 27 tiles on Reedford) by a draw from the match seed: the same seed always deals the same map. What a lair holds, how much a pile holds and what a chest offers are drawn exactly as before; only the tile changes. Each lair is dealt only to tiles for its size, and each dwelling to tiles on its own side of the map.

Three rules hold for every deal: no pile or chest within 2 tiles of the town, counting diagonals; no dwelling as far a walk from the town as Haskett’s lair or farther; and every big pile has a monster lair on a tile beside it that is nearer the road than the pile, so the big piles cost a fight. A dealt lair’s card says what it now stands in front of: the pile or chest beside it, or the road. The Daily is dealt from its day’s seed, the same tiles for every player, from the Daily of 2026-10-23; an earlier Daily and a match saved before the deal came keep every object on its old tile. Each map’s page shows its pool as dashed pins.

Dwellings

A dwelling sells one kind of creature, full on the day the match starts and refilled at the start of every week (every 7 days). Each map has 2, selling the creatures no town building sells.

The town

The town starts empty, and a new Conquest, Large-map match or Daily (from 2026-10-17) gives it 12 buildings to choose from. Build at most one a day. A dwelling, once built, sells its creatures in the town at its weekly stock, full the day it goes up and refilled every week; the price of a creature is its gold cost (every fighter). The other buildings hire nobody. The town screen shows the cards in four rows, Dwellings, Hall, Market & Shrine and Top, and each card says what it needs first.

The number after each creature is how many the building sells a week. Nothing here is free: the cheapest building costs 400 gold, 5 wood, and the dearest, the High Hall, wants 2500 gold, 5 wood, 5 ore, 2 crystal; on The Causeway Meres and Reedford its crystal can only come from piles, while Broadwater also has 3 crystal mines.

Build one a day for a 15-day match and there is room for 14 builds, but the purse runs out well before 12, so each day is a choice of what to leave unbuilt. The Council Hall pays 250 gold every day from the day it stands, so built on day 3 it has paid back 1000 of its 1000 gold by day 7, and the High Hall adds 500 on top. The Drill House raises the weekly stock of the two cheapest dwellings by half. The Drake Roost is the top building: the only one in town that hires drakes, and it needs the Council Hall and 3 dwellings first. The Weigh House’s card trades at fixed rates that never move, as often as the purse allows and without using up the day’s build: 5 wood for 1 crystal, 5 ore for 1 crystal, 500 gold for 5 wood and 500 gold for 5 ore. The Oath Stone asks for one pick when it stands, kept for the rest of the match: +1 Command at the start of every battle, or your commander’s first power each battle at half cost.

A Duel, a Daily dated before 2026-10-17, and a match saved before the bigger town came keep the older town of 4 buildings: the Muster Yard (400 gold, 5 wood; Vale Host: Spearmen and Shieldmen), the Archery Butts (600 gold, 3 wood, 3 ore; Vale Host: Archers and Crossbowmen), the Tiltyard (1200 gold, 5 wood, 8 ore; Vale Host: Knights) and the Lantern Spire (1500 gold, 5 ore, 2 crystal; Vale Host: Mages).

Town forks

Town forks is a setting on the Conquest panel (its Town switch), and it is off by default: off, the town is the one above, where in time you may build any of its buildings. Switched on, it applies to every new Conquest match on any map until you switch it back; a match already started keeps the setting it began with, and a Duel never has forks. With forks on, 4 of the dwellings come in 2 pairs, and taking one of a pair locks the other in that town for the rest of the match: pair 1 is the Muster Yard (400 gold, 5 wood; Vale Host: Spearmen and Shieldmen, Peatholm: Peat Cutters and Bulltoads) or the Archery Butts (600 gold, 3 wood, 3 ore; Vale Host: Archers and Crossbowmen, Peatholm: Reed Slingers and Stilt Lancers); pair 2 is the Tiltyard (1200 gold, 5 wood, 8 ore; Vale Host: Knights, Peatholm: Heron Riders) or the Lantern Spire (1500 gold, 5 ore, 2 crystal; Vale Host: Mages, Peatholm: Fen Lamplighters). A building counts as taken the moment it is ordered, not only once it stands, and each locked building names the one that stands in its place. So the town is a choice of army, not a checklist, and which half of a pair is in reach depends on the wood, ore and crystal the map has paid you by then.

With forks on, the Town button also opens your town from anywhere on the map. A building ordered that way is paid at once, under the same one-a-day limit and the same lock, and stands the next morning with its first full week of creatures: order it on day 4 from a far mine and it sells on day 5. Hiring still needs the hero in the town (or, on Broadwater, a war band sent to him).

Watchtowers

A watchtower costs nothing and is spent on nothing: walk onto it once and its beacon is lit, and the fog lifts for good on every tile within 9 of it, so you can see the lairs, mines and piles out there before you march. The Causeway Meres has 1 and Reedford has 1; Broadwater has 4, one in each quarter of the map and none near your town. It shows; it does not give: no gold, no troops, no skill.

Broadwater has a second town besides your own. Who holds it depends on the Rival switch under the map choice in the Conquest panel. With Rival on (the default) it is the home of the computer rival, a second hero who starts there with the same army and purse as you, builds and hires in it, and races you for the mines and Haskett; its gate has no lair. With Rival switched off it is held by nobody when the match starts: a horde lair guards its gate. Beat that lair, walk in and flag the town the way you flag a mine, and from then on you build and hire there too, with the same buildings, costs and one-building-a-day limit as above; until it flies your flag it sells nothing.

Moving and the days

The hero has 12 movement a day: 12 road tiles, 6 grass tiles, 4 forest tiles, 4 hills tiles and 3 swamp tiles. Water, mountain and rock cannot be crossed. The fog lifts within 3 tiles of the hero. Both maps give 15 days.

More on Conquest: Haskett · Lairs · The Wild Beasts · The Causeway Meres · Reedford · Broadwater · Warpath

Play Flag a mine and build the town in a Conquest match.