Locations and Points of Interest (POI's)

Locations are the key building blocks of the world map. They are located on a hex-grid, but that hex-grid usually doesn't matter (except for certain AOE effects like Ophanim's Smite or the geomancy spell Volcanic Devastation).

Each location is connected to 1 or more other locations, and those connections are represented to the player as white lines. Any unit (hero, agent, or army) can travel along one of these connections with one turn's move action, regardless of how long the white line appears.

A location can be one of several types. If it's just a wilds location (e.g. "\_ Hill", "\_ Plain", "\_ Coast", "\_ Bay", "\_ Wastes", "\_ Lagoon", "\_ Hills", "\_ Plains", "\_ Cliffs", "\_ Valley") or ocean location (e.g. "\_ Expanse", "\_ Reef", "\_ Depths", "\_ Deeps", "\_ Rocks") location, it'll have 0 POI's. . Also, if the location is the ruins of a human location and it doesn't have an Ancient Ruins POI, it'll have 0 POI's. Otherwise, it will have at least 1 POI (Point of Interest).

## Human Cities/Towns

Most of the challenges available at these locations are described on this page: Challenges#Available Challenges

Cities are human locations with 3 POI's. Towns are human locations with 2 POI's.

Cities/towns have a base security of 5.

Current behavior if a human urban location has an Ancient Ruins POI: it can only have 2 human/urban POI's (a city palace and one of the 4 normal urban POI's), but it'll still be called "City of \_". The Ancient Ruins POI can't be infiltrated, so it doesn't affect the infiltration percentage stat for the location.

Each city or town will have a City Palace POI which can only be infiltrated after all of the other human POI's in the location have been infiltrated.

It will also have 1-2 urban POI's out of the following 4 options: Docks, Market, Library, or Vast Sewers. Those can be infiltrated immediately, and a POI of one of those types unlocks 1 or more special challenges when it's infiltrated.

#### Docks

A market POI passively increases the prosperity of its location (+25 in version 0.8, +20 in 0.9).

Once a docks POI is infiltrated, the 'Malign Catch' challenge becomes available. The resulting Malign Catch modifier is very powerful because dealing with its effects (by driving back shadow or treating madness) takes up a bunch of hero effort and they can't deal with the root cause (the Malign Catch modifier itself). It can also be turned into a Deep One Cult by an enshadowed/recruited hero

"Alters the aquatic life in this area, mutating them into darker forms. These will constantly slowly increase madness and shadow over time. Heroes can hold these effects at bay, but will need to constantly work to hold back this umbral tide. Can be used to start a Deep One Cult here."

#### Market

A market POI passively increases the prosperity of its location (+25 in version 0.8, +20 in 0.9).

A market will always have 3 items for sale, available through 3 one-turn challenges which each cost 35 gold. The available items will almost always be in the common tier at lower prosperity levels, but at prosperity levels above 100 some of the available items will be in the rare tier somewhat often.

If none of the available items at an infiltrated market are appealing, a challenge will reset the market so it draws a new random selection of 3 items for sale. This can be spammed in order to find particular rare items if prosperity is relatively high.

#### Library

A library can be used to obtain Arcane Secrets without committing atrocities (and their associated menace gain). It is also the only way source of arcane secrets for heroes.

A location with a library will start with an Arcane Secret modifier. If that Arcane Secret modifier is consumed by a hero quest or agent challenge (to grant 1 level of Arcane Knowledge to the hero/agent), the library POI will eventually generate a new Arcane Secret.

An agent can only consume the arcane secret generated by a library POI if that library POI is infiltrated.

Also, if a location with a library POI is 100% infiltrated, an agent can perform a challenge to get a level of arcane knowledge through a great expenditure of gold. This can be useful as a gold sink, and it's potentially valuable because it doesn't cause any menace gain.

#### Vast Sewers

Infiltrated sewers provide 2 special challenges:

Details about plague will be covered in the Disease page.

## Human Minor Settlements

Minor Settlements have a base security of 1.

#### Fortress

No special challenges, but base defense will always be really high (>200).

#### Holy Site

The shadow level in holy sites is especially important. Heroes have a special quest Consecrate which can reduce a holy site's shadow all the way to 0 as long as its shadow had been below 75%. Many heroes will be highly motivated to pursue this.

There are 2 ways the player can approach this:

1. place a shadow source or two near a holy site and cackle about the heroes spending an inordinate amount of time consecrating it over and over and over
2. really focus efforts on getting the holy site very enshadowed and then desecrating it.

Option 2 requires more concentrated investment and is somewhat more chancy, but it has really significant payoffs. If you manage to desecrate the holy site, it can never be consecrated again and will passively gain/spread shadow (like an enshadowed witch's coven). In addition, an agent can perform Blasphemous Rituals at a desecrated holy site to rapidly gain more power for the god's abilities.

If a desecrated holy site gets menacing enough, people may decide that it really needs to be destroyed. This is accomplished through a national action which is chosen by the sovereign of the nation which contains the desecrated holy site. Once that national action completes, one of that nation's armies will be sent to clean house (i.e. raze the menacing desecrated holy site). If the sovereign of that nation is very unlikely to deal with the menacing POI (because of enshadowment, or perhaps because they've been driven insane and are too obsessed with other priorities), the desecrated holy site might be able to host many Blasphemous Rituals and get to a very high menace before it is destroyed.

In version 0.9, though, even a desecrated holy site which's protected by its sovereign's corruption will eventually be destroyed. This is because other nations' rulers will become very alarmed by the continuing existence of the very-menacing desecrated holy site, and that will make them more likely to declare a raiding war (national action named "War: Raid Threat \_") on the nation which contains the highly-menacing desecrated holy site. Once that war has started, their armies will seek out the menacing location and raze it before attacking other targets.

#### Village

No special challenges, but base food production will always be way higher than the village's population needs. This is supposed to support nearby cities/towns. These are usually the best places to perform the Raid the Periphery challenge

## Human Capitals

Human capital locations have 3 more base security than would be expected from their location type.

It seems that a nation's capital will always be a city/town unless the nation doesn't contain any cities/towns.

## Misc Locations

#### Witch's Coven

**Infiltrate Coven of Witches**- Exactly the same as infiltrating a human settlement (see Challenges), but the security is always 0

**Lay Low**- See Challenges#Lay Low

### Wilderness

Few or no challenges are available in wilderness tiles.

Certain mobile modifiers like Wandering Ogre or Wandering Manticore cause a challenge to exist in their current location.

A Blood mage could potentially cast Magic#Wasting Soul from a sufficiently enshadowed wilderness location.

An agent carrying gold and/or items can "Drop Cache" anywhere.

An agent with 1+ minions can perform "Dismiss Minions" anywhere

If a Cache modifier exists in the location, there will be an "Access Cache" challenge.

If a hero and an agent are in the same wilderness location, the agent will have the option to attack the hero and might also have the option to rob the hero.

## Special POI's

### Ancient Ruins

Can be part of most other land locations- wilderness or any human settlement/town/city. I don't know if you can have Ancient Ruins in a Witch's Coven or an Orc location.

TODO (low priority because Bobby says a major rework of ruins is planned. Also, imo the rewards for ruin diving are currently too weak to justify the opportunity cost plus the risk)

## Special locations with a single POI

A given game will usually (always?) have either the Brother of Sleep special location/POI or the Primal Font special location/POI, but it doesn't seem possible for both to spawn in the same game.

### Primal Font

Special land location/POI. The POI itself displays a "Control" attribute between 0% and 100%. If the Control attribute is below 50%, only heroes can "Drink Primal Waters". If the Control attribute is exactly 50%, both heroes and agents can "Drink Primal Waters". If the Control attribute is above 50%, only agents can "Drink Primal Waters".

The menace of the quest "Wrestle For Control of Primal Font" (from a hero's perspective) is equal to the Control attribute of the POI, so heroes are more motivated to try to take it from you if you've denied them access to it.

The corresponding hero's quest behaves exactly the same way but doesn't increase profile or menace.

An agent and a hero can both be performing this at the same time, but 2 agents can't both perform the challenge at once.

Applies a trait 'Primal Waters (N)' which increases all 4 main stats by 2.
'N' starts at 39 and goes down by 1 each turn. When it reaches 0, the trait disappears. An agent can refresh the trait (set N to 39) by drinking again before or after the trait expires.

### Brother of Sleep

Special ocean location/POI. Might or might not spawn during map generation.

Has the following 2 special challenges:

* A Gift of Silence: 1 complexity, sacrifices the agent performing the challenge to interrupt all heroes for N turns, where N is the sacrificed agent's level
* A Gift to Others: 1 complexity, sacrifices the agent performing the challenge to distribute that agent's accumulated XP amongst all other agents