Encounters

In short: when you step onto a wild tile, something may happen: a pouch of gold, a trap, or a scene where you choose what to do. Choosing is free. Encounters can hurt you but never kill you, and a good outcome sometimes leads to a second, riskier step.

How it works

When they happen

Each step onto a wild tile has a 50% chance of an encounter (0.5× that on Quiet Roads, see Omens). Towns, sites and boss lairs are quiet: nothing happens there, so they are safe places to stop. Stepping onto your rumoured treasure cache pays out the cache instead (see Sites and rumours), and reaching a stop on your quest is its own event (see Quests).

Encounters exist to make walking worth a turn. Every step is a small gamble instead of dead time between fights.

There are two kinds:

• Immediate events simply happen: you find a pouch of gold, spring a trap, rest at a roadside shrine or are ambushed. Nothing to choose.
• Choice encounters (70% of them) stop you until you decide. You cannot walk on, hunt or use a site until you choose, but you can still drink potions.

Choosing

Most choice encounters are a scene on the road: a place, something strange, a creature nearby and a person walking towards you. You get four options: talk to the person, fight the creature, carry on, or one odd action (search the area, hide, throw a rock, pray to the old gods, and so on). Now and then you meet one of a few hand-written scenes instead, such as a cloaked stranger selling a vial or a sleeping goblin with a full purse.

Under each option a short hint gives its usual stakes, such as "Safe: a little experience" or "Even odds: loot, or a trap". The hint is the same every time that option appears: it tells you the odds, never what was rolled this time.

Some things to know:

• Choosing costs no turn, even when you have none left.
• Encounters never kill. However bad the result, you are left with at least 1 HP. Death only comes from real fights (see Combat).
• You never pay more gold than you carry. A thief cannot push you into debt.
• Rewards grow with you. Wounds scale with your maximum health; gold and experience scale with what a monster in that area would carry, so deep in the wilds an encounter is worth more.
• Experience counts fully, including your season's catch-up bonus, and can level you up (which heals you completely).
• The result of each option is settled when the encounter appears, so leaving and coming back does not change it.

Carrying on is always safe and gives a sliver of experience. Talking and fighting are the richer, riskier choices; the odd action is a coin toss.

Follow-ups

A good result sometimes opens a second step (20% of the time). The follow-up appears straight away as a new encounter, and you can always decline it for nothing.

Follow-ups are there so that a lucky moment can become a small story, and so you have a real decision about how much to push your luck.

Other heroes

Rarely (4% of steps onto wild ground, when a hero of your level qualifies), the figure on the road is another player's hero: a crossing. You can challenge them to a duel, trade stories or walk on; nobody dies in a duel, and they read about it in their journal. It takes the place of that step's encounter. Whatever you choose, the result offers to ignore them, so you never meet again. See Crossings and cairns.

On a tile where a nemesis prowls (a monster that killed a hero there on a hunt), it takes the place of the step's encounter, and of any crossing: see Nemesis.

Tips

• If you are low on health, "continue your journey" is always safe; so is any option whose hint starts with "Safe".
• Encounters cannot kill you, but they can leave you on 1 HP. Heal before your next hunt.
• A follow-up's risk is only health, never gold. If you have potions to spare, the den is the richest gamble.
• Far from Oakhaven, encounters pay more and gear found in them rolls a tier higher (see Levels and gear).