Wandering creature
| Text | Range |
|---|---|
| Few | 1–4 |
| Several | 5–9 |
| Pack | 10–19 |
| Lots | 20–49 |
| Horde | 50–99 |
| Throng | 100–249 |
| Swarm | 250–499 |
| Zounds | 500–999 |
| Legion | ≥1000 |
| Relative strength (%) | Stacks |
|---|---|
| < 50 % | 6–7 |
| 50...< 67 % | 5–7 |
| 67...< 100 % | 4–6 |
| 100...< 150 % | 3–5 |
| 150...< 200 % | 2–4 |
| 200 % or more | 1–3 |
Wandering creatures (or sometimes monsters or neutral armies/stacks) is a term for the creatures standing on the Adventure Map. The type of the creatures can be totally random, restricted by creature level or be specifically defined by the map-maker. The creatures are not truly wandering, they always stay at the same place and mostly serve as a guard of a passage or an object. Unlike enemy heroes, your hero initiates a fight whenever they move at the square next to the creature. In case of multiple creatures at the nearby squares, only one combat occurs. The priority is counterclockwise, starting at top left.
Spawning of wandering creatures
The number of creatures in a wandering creature encounter can be set between 1–4000. If an exact number is not defined, the amount is randomly generated between 1–99 (or in other word, between few and horde) depending on the level of the creatures. The number of creatures in wandering creatures grows by 10% on the first day of every week, but cannot exceed the limit of 4000 creatures. The maximum time to reach 4000 creatures will be 87 weeks with 1 starting creature and the minimum time will be 1 week with 3636 starting creatures and up all the way to 4000. To find an exact number of weeks needed to reach 4000 for any number of creatures plug it into the formula log1.1(4000/x), where x is your starting number of creatures.
The wandering creatures are mostly fixed during the map generation. New ones can spawn only during the new month of only specific creatures.
Combat with wandering creatures
The number of creature stacks on the battlefield, is basically dependent on the ratio between the attacking hero's army strength and the strength of the wandering creatures. The rule of thumb is, that the stronger the hero's army is, the less stacks there are on the battlefield. However, every tile on the map influences the number of stacks (towards the higher or lower bound) in a fixed way.
Since they only contain one type of creatures, they always have +1 morale unless they are undead, elementals, or other creatures unaffected by morale.
If the creature is non-upgraded, there can be also upgraded creatures included in the battle, but not the other way round. Such upgrade occurs only after the fight is accepted and therefore has no bearing on the AI value of the stack on the map. Only one stack can be upgraded, therefore using smaller army can be advantageous, as it will cause only less creatures to be upgraded. Similar feature is also present at Creature Banks.
Joining, Negotiating or Fleeing
Depending on several factors, the combat can sometimes be avoided by causing the creatures to join, negotiate or flee.