It has been a long time coming at this point: we do finally need to face the thing below the Lantern Hoard. So, without further ado..

We started the Lantern Year by gaining 5 endeavors (2 returning survivors, 1 Tinker, Cooking (I) & 10 population) and drawing our random settlement event!
Hunt Reenactment.
Goldenglow had quickly grown to be my favorite survivor in the settlement after returning from being outcast, so she was an easy pick. And for least favorite, uhm, Chrysanthemum had been a disappointment for the most part, so I nominated her. Of course, we picked the Screaming God to play-fight and I rolled a 6.., which killed Chrysanthemum in a .. “tragic” .. accident.
A Broken Lantern was sadly not the Love Juice I had been hoping for.

After adding 2 more notches to the Death Count (saviors just kinda .. vanish), we pushed in to the develop step. We still had so much hide in storage (at least 12) and couldn’t really do much of anything with it.
But what we actually needed the most at this point by far was population!
Still, before I was ready to start doing augury with our 2+ bonus from the victory against the Black Knight I wanted to check for other things to do.
And we had one final chance at innovating Taxidermy (which won’t actually do that much for us so late), which I was not going to let go to waste!
Partnership, Taxidermy, Records or Heart Flute.
Finally! There it was!
Of course, I picked Taxidermy for our final regular innovation.

If you are able to start working on an impressive Trophy Wall quite early on during a campaign, especially with a Collective Toil settlement, you can gain quite a few nice benefits for your settlement phase, like rerolls to endeavors or retaining basic crafting materials whilst making gear.
I have mentioned this before, but I think it should be noted again that – as of writing this (07/2026) if you do not own the GCE there is only 1 Indomitable Hide available and it’s for the Phoenix (the Fateful Feather from the Indomitable Survivor – Fated Dagger Domino box).
Anyways, I doubt that this particular feature – at least the lingering effects of the Collective Toil bit of the Trophy Wall – will matter much for us in this campaign, but the +1 departing survival as well as the +1 Survival Limit will definitely help.

I then made a Love Juice with Pottery (I) and had Daniel and Hollow immediately drink it.
A 1 and an 8 was good enough for a child with +1STR. I named the girl Hope and moved on to some good ol’ fashioned augury.
Sapphire was the one rolling for a further +1 bonus to the initial roll.
1st roll – a 3 upped to a 6 – 1 survival.
2nd roll – a 6 upped to a 9 – babies! Goldenglow had another child with Frogdos – a 5 and an 8 were rolled on Intimacy, so another baby with +1STR and Club 4 was born – the boy called Oak.
I was briefly considering Sacrifice (I) for the final endeavor, but chose to continue with augury instead. Our population levels did not feel nearly high enough for me to go throwing people off of cliffs just to motivate Goldenglow.
3rd augury roll – a 7 upped to 10 – babies! Copperfish and Purple were nominated this time to be the parents of another child with +1STR. The boy was called Frogfish and was probably cursed with such a name.

As I set up the gear grids for the upcoming fight, I built the third Lucky Charm for our set up after considering a Scrap Lantern for a bit. But it ended up being an either-or type of choice with the resources we had left.

The Chosen Vanquishers:
Frogfish – blue (Piercing Claws, Dragon Armor)
Purple – purple (Black Armor bits, Hyperelastic Sword, Grimacing Guillotine)
Hope – red (Alpha bits, Vandal Broadaxe)
Oak – yellow (Leather Armor, Vandal Sledge)

And its not going to get any better than that. 15 wounds should be doable, especially as we do actually have a 5th gear grid with Frogdog Armor as a back-up should somebody explode suddenly.
The 25TGH should not be that much of an issue at this point, especially with Retinues.
Hope spreading +1MOV to everyone will also help in this showdown with such an open area to move through.

Here we are, once again fighting the Watcher, one of the most iconic monsters of the game.

It has no tokens or stats whatsoever, but Infinite MOV and TGH equal to the current Lantern Year – which, again, will be at 25.
We do not have Records (I), so at least this does not get increased by another 2.

15 Life remaining, with everything on the line the survivors got to go first in this pivotal battle for survival! Both the Vandal Sledge and Vandal Broadaxe had a chance to deal double wounds, making Hope and Oak our most important players by far!
Hope started us off by dashing straight into the monster’s blind spot, which activated deadly 3 on the Vandal Broad Axe and gave her a chance to crit on 6+. Her Frogdoggles revealed a wound reaction that inflicted brain damage and I decided to forgo spawning in a Retinue for now. She hit only once and failed the 50/50 crit, before finding 2 more hits with a surge that dealt 3 damage with 2 critical wounds! Sadly savage was limited to once per attack.

After Hope had risen to the occasion, Purple summoned a Retinue for Oak as back-up whilst she backed off to be the furthest away from the monster so she could tank the upcoming basic attack, before Oak then moved up to the monster. 6MOV was enough to activate the +5STR for the Vandal Sledge. As he also spawned in his own retinue he found himself with 28 starting STR.

But he failed to hit the monster on 3+!
Again, the surge found the hit we needed. As the Void Membrane drained 2 of Oak’s 9 remaining survival, the club came crashing down for 2 wounds anyhow! The Watcher even backed off after such a brutal hit!

Frogfish considered jumping in, but I had him hold off for the moment. Maybe my 2 heavy hitters could do this on their own – had all swings connected, the monster could have been down 10 wounds already after all.

10 Life remaining. Hope suffered bash from the Lantern Vortex trait and then the Watcher moved over to Purple. She would only get hit on 8+ and expertly ducked and weaved to avoid being hit at all.

The Watcher then started to Inhale – a mood which would pull survivors closer to the Watcher at the end of each monster turn – which also played another AI: Stupefy.
Unfortunately, these survivors were dumb as bricks and the monster healed 3 wounds as its instinct triggered instead?!

Finally, after the Watcher had returned to the center of the board, all survivors were knocked towards the Watcher and Hope collided with it for a brain damage and 1 damage straight to the blood flow in her head!

Hope started the turn for us by revealing 1 of the 2 trap cards with her Frogdoggles. Before she could actually do anything, Frogfish dashed in to surge with 1 claw, hitting once getting blasted with brain damage by triggering White Out. I realized too late that he had no insanity, but he rolled a 3 for Memory Loss, which was fine with me at this stage. He also suffered the Stolen Dreams status which meant he wouldn’t be getting up without the help of at least 2 other survivors next to him.

Hope then dashed to do a little lap and strike with her axe, 3 hits and not a single one had a critical location! She still managed to deal a wound by rolling a clean Lantern 10, but the monster backed off before she could follow up with anyhing else.
Before she was done, she summoned her Retinue on the other side of the board and behind the monster, ready for Oak to come in swinging. His own Retinue followed him, spending another survival to dash and keep pace, closing the distance as Oak bonked the Watcher real hard! The monster fluttered back to the center of the board after suffering 2 wounds from this exchange.

Oak still had his own dash and as Hope’s retinue followed him, he swung again – getting a Perfect hit! The roll was pitiful but even a meager 2 turned into 46 for 2 more wounds thanks to surpass 5!
As the reflex had the monster collide with him, Oak suffered frenzy – yikes!

Purple spent her turn by moving and dashing to reposition, trying to find the best angle for the monster to attack her with its basic, without it passing through any Retinues on the way.

8 Life remaining – the monster knocked down Hope with the Lantern Vortex trait before it moved over to Purple. This time, she was hit twice on 8+ before she was flung away all the way to the board edge.

Which was a blessing in disguise as the AI card for the turn: Voidwarp took both her and the Watcher right back to the center of the board! Unfortunately, she also suffered a severe leg injury from the attack, which put her to 3MOV as her leg was violently broken. And she also suffered the Stolen Dreams status card of top of that.

Getting sucked into the monster as it Inhaled she also would have had to take a severe head injury, but she spent the Dried Acanthus from her grid to ignore the potential roll for death.
Frogfish also had to roll again for Brain Trauma and he got another 3 – even more memory loss!

As Oak got back up, I let Purple take her turn first, so she could immediately discard Stolen Dreams again, thanks to both a survivor and a Retinue being next to her.
Hope then ran back into the monster’s blind spot to activate deadly 3 and she managed to crit the Void Plexus for 2 wounds! Of course, she surged as well! Amongst the 2 hits she scored this time the Void Nerve Mask had me sweating – thankfully the 50/50 worked out in our favor here and the monster got crit!

With 4 Life remaining (which I believe actually should have been 3 because I missed savage on that last surge), Oak saw a chance to kill the Watcher here!
It took a moment to get the Retinues into position for him. First Hope had her Retinue move around her (preserving the dash for it in case of emergency), and after Oak moved into a spot from where he could border both, he had his own move into position on his other side.
2 hits on 3+ (two 4s), he was starting with 28STR again (9+5 from the club, 2 base, frenzy neutralized the -1STR-token from earlier & +12 from 2 Retinues) – any successful wounds wound would double with surpass 5!
And the frenzied Oak did it with ease!

The Watcher deflated and the horror eased up for but a second.

Having survived the fight with our Core monster, all living survivors were rewarded with a permanent +1STR before all the lanterns of the settlement suddenly went out.

At this point we archived the Lantern Hoard and gained the Exhausted Lantern Hoard in its stead.
Not only were we no longer able to innovate normally from this point onwards and that we could only hunt Lvl3 monsters from now on, but we also had to take a gear with the lantern keyword along if we want to go hunting at all. To that end we gained the Final Lantern as we plucked it from the Watcher’s “corpse” and 3 Survivors’ Lanterns.

Finally our Lantern Research level was set to 1 and the Lantern Year finally ended.

***

As far as Watcher fights go, this one felt a little more like an actual fight compared to what usually happens. It probably could have started killing off my survivors soon-ish as well, especially with how the Retinues were gathering closer and closer around the Watcher. And seeing both traps back to back within the next 4 cards during clean up, it likely would have exploded Hope had we gone 1 turn longer.
But, on the flipside I only drew 1 reaction that would have been dangerous for our Retinues in play, and taking into account that we did not lose a single survivor, I really should just be happy how it went.

Fighting against the Watcher has been a fairly binary experience for me personally, either it eats us quickly, or we beat it senseless. And if a Twilight Sword with 4+ proficiency is in the mix it’s only going to be that much more one-sided.
Today, the Screaming God gear proved to be worthwhile substitutes for the Twilight Sword even at 25TGH and without it’s the full armor set – and we even did a bit of over-time considering the Watcher healed 3 wounds with its first AI draw!

Now.., the next challenge already awaits – one I consider far more dangerous than the thing beneath the Lantern Hoard – the Red Witches are returning to the settlement next Lantern Year, this time led by Seer.
And that fight has me worried.

But that will be all for today. I do have to prep some Call of Cthulhu for the upcoming weekend, but I’ll try my best to get the Red Witches Lvl3 fight up by then as well.

As always, thank you very much for your time, between the Watcher and the Parasite Queen it really makes you wonder what the deal is with all the lanterns.
Amathul