Hearthfall guide
Hearthfall Campaign Guide: Break the Seals, Take the Citadel
- You win a Hearthfall campaign by bringing down the foe's Citadel, a 5,000 hp fortress sealed while any of its three lairs stands.
- Every lair you destroy breaks a seal and makes every later night 12% smaller, so strike early.
- Battering Rams hit lairs and the Citadel six times harder than normal; Catapults three times, from range, with splash.
- Knock the Citadel under 60% and its champion comes out. Relics turned into weak points add 25% damage each, up to two.
A Hearthfall campaign ends with your army at the gates of the foe's Citadel, rams thudding and the champion roaring out. This campaign guide shows how to get there: break the three lairs to crack the Citadel's seals, bring rams and catapults, turn relics into weak points, and have the army ready when the champion comes out.
Campaign is Hearthfall's default mode, and the one with a proper ending. If you're brand new, start with the Hearthfall guide and the beginner guide, then come back once you can hold a few nights without panicking. Or don't read anything and play Hearthfall right now. We won't tell.
How is a campaign run laid out?
Your Keep sits on one side of the valley and the foe's Citadel squats on the other. Between them are three lairs, the holes the night's monsters crawl out of. Each lair is one of the Citadel's seals, and while a single seal holds, the Citadel can't be touched.
| Target | How tough | What you get for taking it |
|---|---|---|
| Lair (three per map) | 1,400 hp, a real fight | A broken seal, gold, a relic, the Blight cleaned up nearby, and smaller nights from then on |
| Hold (one per region) | Guarded, but smaller | The region and its bonus for everyone |
| Citadel | 5,000 hp, the big one | The win, once all three seals are broken |
So a campaign is really two adventures: first the lairs, then the siege.
Why should you attack the lairs early?
Because the lairs feed the night. One lair attacks on the first two nights, two on nights 3 to 5, and every lair from night 6. Meanwhile the monsters get a little tougher every single day. Waiting only makes the job bigger.
Smashing a lair pays off straight away: every later night is 12% smaller, and it stacks. After all three, each night is about two thirds the size it would have been. Monsters still come (from rifts at the edge of the map, and sometimes from the Citadel itself), but far fewer of them.
A good rhythm: hold the walls at night, send a strike group out by day. Let the Warden scout first. Once one of your buildings or units gets near a lair, it's scouted, and the whole team also learns which way tonight's attack is coming from.
What does the Blight change?
From day 3 the Blight creeps out from the Citadel, a tile a day, turning the ground dark and dead. It never spreads inside your borders or under your buildings, so your village is safe. What it can reach is the valley's resource sites, and a blighted site stops paying.
Destroying a lair cleans the Blight around it, and pushing your borders out with Outposts keeps it off ground you care about. Think of the Blight as a gentle hand on your back, nudging you towards the Citadel. It's not there to rush you.
Which siege engines should you build?
The Marshal builds the Siege Workshop once the Keep has been upgraded once, and only the Master Mason can do that upgrade, so ask early and ask nicely.
| Engine | Where it comes from | Against lairs and the Citadel | What to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Battering Ram | Siege Workshop | Six times the damage | Walks straight at lairs and the Citadel and ignores everything else |
| Catapult | Upgraded Siege Workshop | Three times the damage | Fires from range, with splash that also hits the defenders |
Rams are the heavy hitters, but they're single-minded and will happily trundle into a crowd, so give them an escort. Footmen throw themselves in front of fragile units and clerics heal from behind. Catapults hang back and lob rocks at everything. Siege engines are hungry too, eating twice what a soldier does, so the Steward needs full granaries before the army marches.
Warden research helps as well: Wildbane, at the top of the Warden's research, makes lairs and bosses take 50% more damage.
How do relics become weak points?
Ancient Ruins wake their guardians when a hero walks in. Beat them and your hero carries a relic home to the Keep. If the hero falls on the way, the relic drops on the spot, and any hero can grab it. Cue a desperate sprint.
At the Keep you choose what the relic becomes: a boon for the realm, a pile of gold, or, in the campaign, a weak point in the Citadel. Each weak point makes the Citadel take 25% more damage, up to two. Two weak points and a pair of rams turn a long, grinding siege into a short and very satisfying one. Finding ruins is Warden work, so the Warden's wandering feeds the siege directly.
How do you beat the champion?
When the Citadel drops under 60% health, its champion storms out to defend it. Who you face depends on the foe you drew:
- The Lich Sovereign of the Hollow Legion, the undead: attacks from range and raises skeletons around itself.
- Warlord Gorefang of the Gorefang Horde, the greenskins: the toughest of the three, with goblins summoned to his side.
- The Ashen Wyrm of the Thornwild Brood, the beasts: flies, attacks from range and splashes whole groups.
Champions get tougher with every player in the room (with four of you, about 2.4 times as tough as for one), and with the day and the difficulty. So gather the whole army before the Citadel crosses 60%, not after. When the champion appears, that's the moment for the Knight-Captain's War Cry (allies nearby deal 50% more damage for a few seconds) and the Master Mason's Raise Ballista, which drops a turret for half a minute. Bring footmen and spearmen in the escort too: the skeletons and goblins the champions call up will swarm your rams otherwise.
How should each duty help the siege?
The campaign needs all four duties pulling the same way. Here's the short version (the Hearthfall duties guide has the long one):
- Warden: scouts the lairs, finds ruins for relics, and claims regions with Outposts so the army can grow.
- Master Mason: upgrades the Keep so the Siege Workshop and the top research open up, and keeps the walls standing while the army is out.
- Steward: stockpiles food for the hungry siege engines and gold for training. Royal Mint is a great pick for a big army.
- Marshal: builds the Workshop, trains the rams and catapults, picks the escort and calls the champion fight.
Campaign or Endless?
Endless takes away the Citadel and the win. Every fifth night the champion arrives with every lair attacking, the nights keep growing at full speed (campaign nights ease off after the first week or so), and the run ends only when the Keep falls. Pick Endless when your group wants to see how far it can go. Pick the campaign when you want a run that ends in a cheer, with the day you won announced.
For a friendly first campaign, choose Pilgrim (weaker monsters, more to start with) and a Small map, which is quick to cross and has fewer regions to claim. Normal is the roomy default, and Large is for long evenings.
If holding the line against a siege is your favourite part, our picks of games like They Are Billions with co-op cover others in that vein. For a crystal to defend instead of a Keep, try Pixaplay's Rogue Defenders.
The valley is waiting. Play Hearthfall.
Questions people ask
How do you win the Hearthfall campaign?
Bring down the foe's Citadel. It's sealed while any of its three lairs stands, so first destroy all three, breaking a seal each time. Then march on the Citadel, beat the champion who storms out when it drops under 60%, and finish the job. The game tells you which day you freed the valley, which makes for good bragging.
What is the Blight in Hearthfall?
A creeping rot that spreads out from the Citadel in the campaign, a little further every day from day 3. It never gets inside your borders or under your buildings, so it can't eat the village, but a resource site it reaches stops paying. Destroying a lair cleans up the Blight around it.
Do I need siege engines to beat the Citadel?
Not strictly, but they make it so much quicker. Battering Rams hit lairs and the Citadel six times harder and ignore everything else, and Catapults hit three times harder from range with splash. Both come from the Marshal's Siege Workshop, which needs the Keep upgraded once; Catapults need the Workshop upgraded too.
Is Endless harder than the campaign?
It's longer rather than harder at first. Endless has no Citadel and no win: you play until the Keep falls. Every fifth night the champion arrives with every lair attacking, and the nights keep growing at full speed, while campaign nights ease off after the first week or so. It's the mode for seeing just how long your walls can hold.