Expedition

An expedition is a mission that heroes can undertake by visiting one of the various locations near the Hamlet.

Undertaking an expedition
Expeditions always start from the Hamlet, where the heroes rest between missions. An expedition is formed by four heroes recruited through the Stage Coach, with various possible compositions of classes and formations. After choosing the heroes and the location to approach, provisions must be bought from the Caretaker before departing.

Types of expedition
Each of the locations outside the Hamlet will have a number of different types of missions to accomplish, with various dungeon sizes, objectives and difficulty levels. Greater mission length and difficulty make expeditions harder, but also increase the rewards for completion. Each mission's objective, difficulty and size are generated randomly, with size and especially difficulty being weighted depending on the heroes of the current roster.

Expedition length
There are three different possible lengths for any mission:
 * Short: consisting of a handful of rooms, are the least risky, but also the less rewarding at all difficulties. Higher difficulties make for slightly bigger dungeons.
 * Medium: featuring a larger dungeon with different branches, making bigger supplies of food and torches necessary for the survival of heroes. When facing medium sized missions, one unit of Firewood will be provided to allow for one camp during the expedition, giving a chance of respite from combat stress and damage and possibly to better prepare for further encounters with camping skills.
 * Long: especially at higher difficulties, long expeditions will feature much larger dungeons, with extreme branching and a big number of dead ends. Bountiful amounts of food and torches are essential and those, together with the two units of Firewood provided, prevent the party from gathering much loot at the start of the quest. Careful planning for exploration and camping, as well as good stress control are mandatory to make long expeditions successful.

Mission length acts as a sort of multiplier for the difficulty level, making hard expeditions even harder with longer quests.

Difficulty
There are three different levels of difficulty an expedition can have, each corresponding to a certain hero Resolve level. Heroes that are two or more levels above the expedition level will refuse to take part in it. Heroes of any level below the expedition can participate, but low level heroes will suffer severe stress damage from partaking in it and will obviously be at a general disadvantage with the dangers thereof, and will protest to the player to warn them.
 * Apprentice: corresponds to Resolve level 1 and is the least challenging difficulty, with monsters being weaker and dungeons being smaller.
 * Veteran: corresponds to Resolve level 3 and presents a bigger challenge; dungeons get bigger, posing for a larger consumption of supplies, enemies get stronger and a broader variety of monsters is introduced, with some of them possibly being champion monsters, harder to slain and control.
 * Champion: corresponds to Resolve level 5 and is the most challenging difficulty: dungeons can be very long and intricate especially on long expeditions, monsters are of the most dangerous variety and the chances of encountering bigger monsters are a concrete threat. Enemy attacks on this difficulty are more accurate and dangerous overall; additionally, many monster attacks that do not do it at lower difficulties gain the chance to apply status effects.

A higher difficulty grants more challenge, but also more valuable rewards for money, heirlooms and trinkets rewarded, with loot found during the expedition becoming more plentiful and valuable also.

Mission objectives
Every dungeon has various tasks to take care of, each with different objectives in order to consider the expedition successful. It is never necessary to explore a dungeon completely: it can be left as soon as the objective is complete.

Possible missions for each expedition include:
 * Skirmish: requiring the party to win every fight encounter in dungeon rooms. Battles along corridors do not count, and can thus be circumvented if scouted in advance and alternative paths are available. These missions allow the party to hold an empty inventory (except for provisions) and consequently do not constitute a problem for the gather of loot. Despite this, it is probable for the heroes to suffer much damage, hence a good party composition and food supply are recommended.
 * Scout: the requirement of scout missions is to set foot in 90% of the dungeon rooms; this means that regardless of the dungeon size, at least one room can be foregone, with larger dungeons having a proportionally higher amount of rooms that an be avoided in case of dangerous paths. Despite being the least dangerous in theory, scout missions have larger risks if a numerous amount of battles are generated throughout corridors and rooms. Moreover, since most of the dungeon will have to be explored, the party is guaranteed to consume a high number of foodstuff and torches. Despite the risks, it is however possible to abandon dangerous battles, especially when in dead ends and circumventable passages. It is worth noting that leaving a room by abandoning a fight will still count the room as explored.
 * Gather: gather missions will require the party to collect quest items from special curios distributed around the dungeon. The risks of these missions depend on the position of the items, with larger dungeons requiring more items to gather. Especially in smaller dungeons, gather quests can end up being very easy if the quest items are generated closely to each other and the player follows the right route. Due to the items being placed in the inventory, these missions don't allow the party to gather as much loot as others; as such, leaving a gather quest will prove more economically punishing if it cannot be successfully completed.
 * Activate: these missions require the party to activate various special curios along the dungeon, consuming special quest items provided with the rest of the provisions at the start of the expedition. These quests constitute a similar amount of risk as gather missions but, because the quest items are provided at the start, they allow for more plentiful loot toward the end of the quest as the items get consumed, while leaving limited room for additional items at the start.
 * Boss: these special expeditions have only one simple objective: to slay the boss of the dungeon. The dungeons of boss quests are always of medium size and their difficulty is not generated randomly: by defeating all the varieties of all bosses of a dungeon, their next versions of higher difficulty will be unlocked. In order to find and undertake a boss quest it is first necessary to accomplish enough successful expeditions in the same location to clear the path to the boss.