What it is
A clan tournament built on monster contracts. Every player works their own sheet of ten, every completed contract pays points into one clan total, and the top hundred clans are rewarded. If two clans finish level, the one that got there first takes the higher place.
What it isn't is a boss event. There's no single monster the clan piles onto and no raid to join. The Great Hunt is a hundred small errands that add up. That shapes how a clan should play it, and it's why the bonus below matters more than how hard any one person grinds.
How it scores
A contract pays when you finish it, and not a moment before. You have to wipe the whole squad. Damage you deal on the way earns Valor, experience and whatever else the map is paying that day, but it doesn't move the contract at all. A contract is worth its full figure or nothing.
| Contract | Points | On the sheet |
|---|---|---|
| Easy | 100 | Two (one Hero, one Captain) |
| Medium | 200 | Four (two Hero, two Captain) |
| Hard | 300 | Four (two Hero, two Captain) |
| Expert | 400 | Only by upgrading a hard one |
On top of the points, a contract kill pays extra Valor and experience over the same monster killed off a contract. That personal bonus climbs as you finish more contracts, topping out at 50%. So your tenth contract of a session is worth a good bit more than your first, and giving up on a half-done sheet costs you more than it looks like.
The Valor and experience are yours no matter what the clan does on the scoreboard. Even if you never expect a top-hundred finish, there's still a reason to clear the sheet.
How to play it
- Fight inside the bonus window. This is the big one. The clan bonus doubles contract points and lasts two hours, so ten contracts cleared inside it beat twenty cleared outside it. Line your work up to land in that window.
- Upgrade every contract before you touch it. The green arrow bumps a contract up a step, easy to medium, medium to hard, hard to expert, and the payout goes up with it. It costs a little gold or a few potions, and it's the cheapest points on the sheet.
- Common and rare fight differently. A common squad takes a Captain and has a weakness you can aim a troop type at. A rare needs your Hero and has no weakness, so it's a harder fight for the same points. You'll get both on your sheet and you're clearing all of it, so knock out the cheap commons first, then refresh the whole sheet for a fresh ten rather than grinding whatever's left.
- Read a contract as a shopping list, not an address. It names a kind of squad, not one particular monster, so any squad on the map that fits will complete it. Set the Watchtower to the level it asks for and take the nearest match instead of marching clear across the kingdom to the one it pointed at.
- Difficulty tracks your Hero's level. The bigger your Hero, the tougher the squads your contracts point you at. That's just what to expect walking in, not a reason to hold your Hero back.
- Bring Guardsmen, and bring the right kind. Guardsmen carry the bonus against monsters; Specialists are for fighting other players. Check the squad's blocks before you pick, because you have to clear all of them: two in a common squad, three in a rare one.
Leave the clan before the tournament ends and every point you earned resets to zero. If a clan move is coming, finish the Hunt first or wait until it's over.
Deeper in
The sheet, and the three refreshes
Ten contracts open the tournament, split between your Hero and one Captain. They start as easy, medium and hard; expert is the fourth difficulty, and you only reach it by upgrading a hard one. You can refresh the whole sheet three times. A refresh throws out every contract you haven't done and deals ten new ones, and the points you've already banked stay banked. So a sheet worn down to its awkward leftovers isn't a dead end. Clear what's cheap, refresh, and clear what's cheap again.
What a contract actually names
Three things: a rarity, a family and a level. "A common undead squad of level 17" is the whole ask, and the Atlas's own roster is sorted on exactly the families a contract can name: Barbarian, Cursed, Elven, Inferno and Undead. The two families it'll never name are Fortifications, which are citadels, and Epic and event monsters, which belong to other tournaments.
The rarity is always common or rare. Contracts never point you at a heroic or epic squad, so whatever you draw, one Captain or your Hero can take it alone.
You can't reinforce a clanmate's contract kill, because common and rare squads don't take reinforcements at all. The clan's edge is the bonus window, not each other's marches.
The clan bonus
A clan leader or superior can switch it on once per tournament. It runs for two hours and doubles two things at once: the Valor and experience bonus a contract kill pays, and the tournament points the contract itself is worth. A hard contract jumps from 300 to 600 while it's lit.
Coordinate your calendars and make sure the clan is at its most active during this two-hour window.
Squad cheat sheet
A contract points you at a squad, and a squad is a few separate monsters stacked together, each one its own block. In the Great Hunt the count is fixed by rarity, and so is the shape: every block is a different class.
| The squad | What's in it | Who you send |
|---|---|---|
| Common | Two monsters, two different classes | One Captain |
| Rare | Three monsters, three different classes | Your Hero |
No squad ever doubles up on a class, so you're always facing a spread and no single troop type answers the whole thing. The monsters change every tournament, and from one squad to the next in the same run. The family in the contract name, undead or inferno or barbarian or cursed or elven, is only the flavour. It doesn't tell you which classes you'll get, so read the blocks each time before you send anyone.
Once you've read the blocks, the answer is fixed, because each class has exactly one counter: send archers at melee and flying, riders at ranged, and melee at mounted. Here's every squad you can be handed and what to bring.
| You're facing | Bring |
|---|---|
| Melee + Flying | Archers. They beat both, so that's the whole squad. |
| Melee + Mounted | Archers and melee |
| Melee + Ranged | Archers and riders |
| Ranged + Flying | Riders and archers |
| Ranged + Mounted | Riders and melee |
| Mounted + Flying | Melee and archers |
| You're facing | Bring |
|---|---|
| Melee + Ranged + Flying | Archers and riders (archers cover melee and flying) |
| Melee + Mounted + Flying | Archers and melee (archers cover melee and flying) |
| Melee + Ranged + Mounted | Archers, riders and melee |
| Ranged + Mounted + Flying | Riders, melee and archers |
Archers pull double duty against melee and flying, so a squad with both leaves you needing fewer troop types than it has blocks.
Two rules on top of all of it.
- Guardsmen for monsters, always. Specialists are built for fighting other players and do nothing extra out here.
- Read the card first. A few monsters are made to punish the obvious answer. Cerberus, for one, shreds the archers that handle almost everything else. Every monster's info tab lists what it's strong against before you commit, so trust that over any chart, this one included.
Can't crack an expert contract? Team up
Upgrading a contract to expert puts 400 points on it, the most on the sheet, and sometimes a squad too big to clear on your own. You don't have to walk the upgrade back. Get a stronger clanmate to march on the squad first and grind it down. Whatever they leave standing, you finish, and because the squad stays weakened between the two attacks, your kill completes the contract and pays you the full 400, even though most of the damage was theirs.
The only catch: you have to land the last hit yourself, because the contract is yours and only completes when your march is the one that wipes the squad.