| abstract
| - An Encounter Zone is a type of Terrain Special that contains some sort of Treasure that a Wizard can acquire. However, more often than not, this treasure is defended by a host of guardians. These need to be defeated before the rewards of the Encounter Zone may be claimed. Occasionally, a site will contain no monsters, in which case its treasure will be awarded to the first wizard who sends a unit to scout the area. Encounter Zones are temporary by definition. When the defenders are cleared, and their hoard looted, the structures normally disappear from the map. The only exceptions are magical Nodes and Towers of Wizardry, as these continue to exist as Terrain Specials even after their guardians have been vanquished. However, they do cease to function as Encounter Zones at that point. A total of 93 Encounter Zones are created at the start of each game. The general composition is the same for every campaign: there are 32 "Weak Lairs", 25 "Normal Lairs", 30 magical Nodes, and 6 Towers of Wizardry. While the "Weak-" and "Normal Lairs" are scattered randomly throughout the Planes, the amount of Nodes on each Plane is fixed: there are always 16 of them on Arcanus, and 14 on Myrror. Towers of Wizardry coexist on both Planes at the same location, and (once the guardians are defeated) provide the primary means of travel from one Plane to the other. They function as the same Encounter Zone regardless of which Plane they are entered from. New Encounter Zones are almost never created during a campaign, which makes this feature a fan favourite for Modding. In the latest official version of the game, the only circumstance capable of creating an Encounter Zone is Rampaging Monsters successfully attacking a Town and subsequently reducing it to Ruins. However, this involves no new generation of Treasure, and defeating this encounter simply rewards the File:Icon Gold.png lost by the original owner of the Town when the monsters took over. The main characteristic of an Encounter Zone is its encounter "budget". This is the base value that is modified for generating the guardians found in it which, in turn, determine the amount of its Treasure. Generally speaking, the stronger the monsters, the more valuable the Treasure they defend. Each Encounter Zone may contain up to 9 individual units of up to two different unit types. These are termed the "primary" and "secondary" defenders, based on the order in which the computer generates them. This plays a role in both scouting these sites and rolling out their Treasure. So long as there are uncleared Encounter Zones on the map that share their landmass with a Town controlled by any Wizard, there is a random chance every turn that Rampaging Monsters will spawn from one of these sites (although Encounter Zones featuring File:Icon Life.png creatures are exempt from this procedure, as are sites that only contain Treasure without guardians). These monsters will then try to wreak havoc on a nearby settlement. This can't happen before turn 50 though, and the actual chance is influenced by the game's Difficulty setting. The overall strength of the generated creature group depends mainly on the amount of turns already played.
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)