Wilderness adventure area

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Wilderness Adventure Areas, introduced with Module 4, make the older wilderness areas interesting by having ongoing quests within them, as well as add new wilderness areas. Unlike regular quests, you can leave the wilderness areas and not lose any advancement. In fact, it will be necessary to leave and re-enter these Wilderness Areas to hope for the appearance of the Rare Encounters.

As the name implies, most Wilderness areas are outdoor settings; however, some such as the Waterworks and Subterrane are underground, and the House Cannith Manufactury and its related areas are inside a building complex.

Overview[edit]

Wilderness Adventure Areas typically have one or more of four objectives:

Complete Slayer objectives by killing increasing numbers of enemies anywhere in the zone. Slayer has multiple tiers, each requiring more kills than the last, but each also worth more XP. Each area has a specific number of Slayer levels to attain, and a different target number of kills that need to be made.
- Certain wilderness areas share their slayer objectives - for example, there is a single Slayer objective for the four wilderness areas in The Reaver's Reach, or the two parts of The Subterrane.
Complete Explorer objectives by finding locations of interest scattered throughout the zone. Each location is worth XP the first time it's visited, with a one-time bonus for visiting all of them.
- Sometimes Explorer objectives are replaced by Journal objectives, where players need to seek out written entries (with accompanying voice lines) across a map. These differ from Explorer objectives in a couple of respects - they trigger when a player interacts with the journal entry instead of when a player enters a certain location, there are typically a lot more journal entries to find than there would be Explorer locations, and unlike Explorer locations, journal entries can be randomly located.
Complete Rare Encounter objectives by killing rare named mini-bosses, completing mini quests for non player characters, or interacting with intractables or non player characters . Most rare encounters spawn in one or two fixed locations, but on some maps rare encounters instead spawn randomly in fixed zones - they are not guaranteed to show up (hence the name), but a Wilderness area can be reset by the party leader to allow another try. (Certain rare encounters always spawn, typically if summoning them requires extra work like collecting crests or solving a puzzle.) Bosses are worth XP (and a loot chest) every time one is killed, with a first-time "rare" bonus to XP, and a one-time completion bonus when they've all been killed once. The points listed below are the bonuses for killing those rares the first time.

Note: The point total does NOT include XP you will earn from repeat kills, which are at 1/3 original XP. There is no limit on repeat kills and players who want to get all the rares in an area may easily get quite a few repeats as well.
Most rare encounters can only spawn once per map, but if the "random spawns in zones" mode is in play, it is possible for multiple copies of the same rare encounter to spawn in one instance of a Wilderness area.

Random Encounters are a variant of Rare Encounters found in some wilderness areas - they are especially common in Forgotten Realms content, but also appear in a few Epic versions of originally heroic-only Eberron areas - where small encounters may spawn in designated zones across a large map. When a player comes within a certain range, a coin will appear on the map and the encounter's name and objective will appear on the area's objective list. Random encounters are typically a mix of combat encounters and interaction with NPCs (including collection quests, skill checks and negotiations) and award XP and (usually) chests when successfully completed.
- Random Encounters differ from Rare Encounters in that they are marked on the map once found, it is sometimes possible to fail them, and that they often grant an amount of XP proportional to their difficulty. They always award the same amount of XP on completion regardless of whether they have been completed before, although there is also a one-time bonus for completing all of them.
- It is rare, but not unheard of, for a wilderness to include both Rare and Random Encounters - sometimes including overlap between the two if a Random Encounter can spawn a monster in the Rare Encounter list. However, the idea of Random Encounters seems to have been largely abandoned in recent content, as the last time an area used the system was the epic version of Orchard of the Macabre.

Wilderness area objective quests are granted automatically the first time the area is entered. They do not have a difficulty setting. Their progress is tracked between visits, and they cannot be reset or abandoned except via Reincarnation.

When in a group:

Explorer discoveries are not shared. You must find the explorer locations yourself in order to gain the XP.
Slayer kills (but not XP milestones) are shared. Any monster killed by any member of your group will add to your current slayer count. This can make a divide-and-conquer approach in a large group very effective at reaching high slayer milestones quickly.
Rare encounter XP is shared, regardless of whether you participate in the fight or are anywhere near the rare when it was killed.

Level and Penalties[edit]

Each Wilderness Adventure Area has an intended level rating as well as a range of levels for which characters can earn full Experience. The intended level rating is merely a difficulty guideline and has no effect on XP. Only the range matters. Characters below the range earn no XP or cannot enter the area (see Quest Minimum Level). Characters in the range earn full XP unless one or more team members are above the range, in which case the ones in the range earn no XP and the ones above it earn reduced XP. See Experience points for more details.

As of U14, the maps of wilderness areas will be fully revealed once you have found all of the explorer locations.

Notes:
All wilderness XP values are increased by any and all XP boosts such as: Mantle of the Worldshaper, Voice of the Master, XP Potions, XP Tomes, etc. The numbers below do not take this into consideration!

^R = Raid Zone wilderness - Raids special rules fully apply here

¹ = The Subterrane - Central and East: These areas allow level 14+ to gain experience, however they are challenging raid zone wilderness areas. Level 14+ characters may enter solo, but it's not recommended.

² = House Cannith Manufactury is unique in that it is a raid zone wilderness, but raid zone rules do not fully apply to it: Hirelings may be brought in if your party is not in raid mode, and the area has Dungeon Scaling enabled, and has scaling settings for up to 12 players.