Wielder movement points are one of the most precious resources in Songs of Conquest and knowing how to use them as efficiently as possible is crucial to success. Some of the mechanics behind adventure map movement are not obvious at first and being oblivious to them will result in wasting movement points every turn. While some of the optimizations in the following sections may appear small, over the course of a game they add up and can net you extra turns worth of movement points across your wielders.

This guide is primarily about the facts and mechanics of adventure map movement, including a few lesser known tips, and is intended for non-expert players (though there may be a few bits interesting for veterans as well). Advising on what to prioritize spending movement points on is not included as that is far more elaborate and would be more fitting in a separate, less specialized guide.

Each action taken with a wielder comes with a cost to the wielder's available movement points. There are some exceptions when it comes to interacting with map objects, which will be covered in the rules of interaction section. This section is primarily concerning the costs of moving your wielders from A to B.

Regardless of how far a wielder moves at once, be it a single step or an entire turn's worth of movement at a time, the cost is calculated on a tile-by-tile basis, with movement cost modifiers applied for each step.
Diagonal movement costs 40% more points than straight movement. By default (i.e. moving off-road), movement point costs per step are as follows:

• Straight move: 1
  
• Diagonal move: 1.4

With a path selected, each small dot indicates 1 point of movement. While this is not an entirely accurate way of telling exactly how much moving to the selected location will cost — as the dots are drawn in-between walkable map tiles as well —, it allows for a solid estimation.

It may or may not take you a hundred hours in-game to finally understand the purpose of the small dots shown in selected wielder path visualizations.

The exact value of currently available movement points is shown when mousing over the movement icon by a wielder's portrait.

Most wielders start with 12 available movement points, and then there's this rascal with his whopping 14. How he keeps himself balanced atop his feathery steed is a mystery.

Roads and certain terrain types modify movement costs.
Travelling by road comes with the benefit of reduced movement costs, allowing you to move farther with the same amount of movement points.

Compared to moving off-road, dirt roads reduce movement costs by ~28.6% (with some rounding), while cobblestone roads and town square tiles offer an even better 50% reduction. Lava tiles, on the other hand, increase consumed movement points by 25%.

Basically Sweden.

It's important to note that these cost modifiers are applied only when stepping onto the relevant tiles and not when stepping off them. Keep this in mind when deciding how far is still not too far to venture from roads for resources.

Movement point costs per step on modifying terrain:

While you will practically never travel an entire turn's worth of movement on straight roads, looking at the difference between ground covered on road vs. off-road is rather revealing.

The game allows you to take one more action as long as your wielder has 0.5 movement points remaining. This action can be any of the normally available actions — moving, capturing an object, collecting a pickup, etc. — even if the given action would cost more than 0.5 movement points. This means that spending the last bit of movement on an otherwise expensive action nets you free movement points (which you would otherwise have to actually use up from your pool of movement points in your next turn), with a gain of up to 0.9 movement points you otherwise wouldn't have.
Conversely, if you end up with fewer than 0.5 movement points remaining, those points are lost.

Spending 0.5 movement points on an action that normally costs 1.4? A steal so good even Baryans couldn't pass up on it.

When your wielder is just about to run out of movement points, try to ensure that whatever action you take will leave you with at least 0.5 points. For this reason it's often a good idea to collect a resource pile or capture a mine before moving as interacting with objects normally costs 0.5 movement — if done in the reverse order, taking the more costly movement action might leave you without enough movement points to initiate an interaction.


Any remaining value between 1 and 1.4 is usually enough to interact-and-move...


...but not to move-and-interact.

When selecting a path, the game will plan the shortest route from the wielder's position to the selected destination. The game will, however, not take into account where you are planning to move after reaching the selected destination, and it is more efficient to move in a way that will take you closer to the direction you're planning to proceed towards beyond your immediate destination.
See, for example, this comparison between following the game’s suggested paths for collecting resources vs. manually planning your wielder’s paths:

The goal is to pick up the highlighted items in the designated order as efficiently as possible. The piles to collect were chosen for demonstration purposes with no certain build in mind. Notice how manual pathing allows Rasc to move two tiles further compared to the game's pathing.

The track layout: collect all non-gold resources to the south and then to the east of town, heading further east afterwards.


Rasc the First Rider uses the game's pathing on his lap. Notice how he does not make it past the piles of stone before running out of available movement points.


Rasc the First Driver, on the other hand, knows that hitting the apexes does not require a club, and makes it two steps further.

When planning a route that would take multiple turns to walk, be mindful of where your wielder ends up at the end of this turn’s available moves. The game will often not optimize your last step, making you spend your last action on a straight move, while making a diagonal move at the end is worth more (a diagonal step this turn often means one fewer diagonal step next turn). If a diagonal step takes your wielder closer to their destination either horizontally or vertically, consider spending your last move on it instead of a straight move. This is, of course, highly contextual as it involves accounting for what you choose to pick up and where your wielder is headed beyond that, but there’s a lot to gain here if considered thoughtfully.

For example, when shooting for the selected Celestial Ore pickup, the game suggests taking your last step non-diagonally even though there's clearly a diagonal step to be taken next turn due to the terrain's features.

Diagonal movement, in this case, is inevitable — but it doesn't necessarily have to be expensive.

Generally, only travelling a distance that still leaves one move to be taken allows for manual optimization. In the above case, collecting the gold pickup and then moving diagonally is a much more efficient use of the wielder's movement points.


Instead of simply moving straight, ever think about stopping one step early and maximizing your available movement points.

Wielders standing adjacent to map objects can interact with them at a cost to their available movement points. There are three values these interactions can take: 0, 0.5, or 1.0. There are no modifiers to interaction costs as standing on roads does not alter them and there's no difference between interacting diagonally and non-diagonally.

The vast majority of map interactions cost 0.5 movement points. These include the following:

• Accessing objects that grant resources (e.g. orchards, bogs)
  
• Accessing temporary/permanent buff objects (e.g. milestones, tributes to essence, XP towers)
  
• Capturing resource generators
  
• Capturing towns
  
• Flagging capturable non-mine buildings (e.g. Spires, Watchtowers)
  
• Initiating town sieges
  
• Picking up artifacts
  
• Picking up piles of resources
  
• Pillaging
  
• Teleporting using Portals

Some interactions cost 0 points, and among these some can be initiated whenever your wielder is standing adjacent to the interactable map object, while others also require having at least 0.5 available movement points.

0 cost interactions that can always be done as long as your wielder is adjacent:

• Accessing friendly towns and buildings
  
• Accessing Raider's Markets
  
• Garrisoning Wielders (!)
  
• Initiating battles
  
• Teleporting using owned Beacons of Power (!)
  
• Wielder to wielder trading

Once the wielders are next to each other, trading Rats costs nothing. Except Rats.

0 cost interactions that can only be carried out if your wielder still has at least 0.5 movement points:

• Accessing neutral dwellings of matching faction (i.e. recruiting, not pillaging)

Thankfully, Crypts don't actually need to be entered to summon the Oathbound, but you still need to be able to knock on their door.

Certain pickups and buildings allow you to check their selectable rewards without forcing you to choose one of the offerings (i.e. you can choose to simply close the window).
Interacting with these and then refusing their offer will still deduct 0.5 movement points from your wielder, so consider your choices before initiating an interaction with them because repeated interactions are costly. Selecting one of their options costs the standard 0.5 movement points.

Map objects that abide by the above rules:

• Caged Prisoners
  
• Dead Commander
  
• Faey Offering Tree
  
• Large Camp
  
• Mystic Hermit
  
• Old Camp
  
• Old Urns
  
• Petrified Tree
  
• Secluded Monastery
  
• Sunken Statue
  
• Wooden Idol

Peeking comes at a cost. Consider your options before interacting with objects that include dynamic rewards.

Objects that a wielder has to enter to fight are special and come with their own set of rules. Interacting with these without entering costs 0.5 movement points, while also taking the fight costs an additional 0.5.
Note that if you take the fight with less than 0.5 movement remaining, the loot will not be automatically picked up and will require another interaction.

Like it or not, you will have to pay the full 1.0 movement cost to retrieve the loot inside.

Map objects, depending primarily on their size, have different rules for which tiles they can be accessed (i.e. interacted with) from. Some of these are as straightforward as it gets, while others come with various oddities.

Map objects of 1x1 size can be accessed from any adjacent tile. These are quite consistent and all work as one would expect: position Wielder on any adjacent tile, interact, and see results immediately.
The Crumbling Tower allows your wielder to get high from any adjacent tile. Apparently they were built by a progressive society.

However, while most map objects of 2x1 size can be accessed from any direction, there are several which cannot be accessed from certain tiles. In such cases, the objects cannot be interacted with when standing on the tiles positioned to the right side of it, requiring your wielder to take an additional step before being able to do so.
Trying to capture the Small Settlement from these tiles will require additional legwork from your wielder.

List of 2x1 size objects that come with the special access rules laid out above:

• Gold Mine
  
• Bubbling Bog
  
• Old Battlefield
  
• Secluded Monastery
  
• Small Settlement
  
• Stone Circle

2x2 objects are rare and are mostly limited to highest tier creature dwellings. All these dwellings can be interacted with from any adjacent tile.
The only non-dwelling object of this size is the Bandit Hideout, which cannot be accessed from the north.
Access creature dwellings from any adjacent tile. Bandit Hideouts may not be accessed from the northern tiles.

2x2 objects, excluding those which cannot be interacted with (i.e. research buildings):

• Bandit Hideout
  
• Factory
  
• Faey Court
  
• Sacred Grove
  
• Smoldering Cave
  
• Summoning Circle (except when neutral, see below)

Upgrading dwellings does not change their sizes or access tiles.

Neutral Summoning Circles are 2x1 in size as opposed to the 2x2 size of other neutral large dwellings.

Neutral Summoning Circles are shorter than their peers. Loth people are known for their simping prowess, not for their skill in construction.

Towns come in three different sizes for all factions: Small Settlement, Large Settlement, and Fortress/City/Excavation/Camp (Fortress-likes for lack of a better term). There's nothing faction-specific regarding their access tiles.

• Small Settlements can be accessed from three sides, these being north, south, and west. As shown previously, the adjacent eastern tiles cannot be used for access.
  
• Large Settlements can also be accessed from three sides: west, south, and east. Due to their larger size, they are not accessible from the north.
  
• Fortress-like towns can only be interacted with from the south.

Tiles the towns of various sizes may be accessed from. Identical across factions.

Though upgrading towns alters their models, it does not change the access tiles.

By default, wielders cannot interact with objects diagonally when the wielder does not have a free path towards any of the sides of the object in question.
In this case, the axe and the staff cannot be picked up without taking one of the non-diagonally positioned artifacts first.

However, if there is an open path to an object, it can be picked up diagonally too from any adjacent tiles. Unfortunately the game's pathing often does not reflect this and becomes misleading: the selected path tends to follow a requirement of accessing from another side despite it being possible to interact with the object without moving away from the current position at all.


According to the game, Ethylle should not be able to pick up the axe this turn. Ethylle, however, does whatever she wants and picks up the axe anyway.

This is most possibly a bug one way or another and it might be changed in the future, but for the time being, it's an issue to play around.

Teleporters, i.e. Portals and captured Beacons of Power, can also be used to legally cheat movement points in certain scenarios. Their static wielder landing spots and low interaction costs allow wielders to reposition around them in a manner more efficient than simply walking.

The preferred landing spots around Portals and Beacons of Power are identical and work consistently enough to allow for systematic use and abuse.

For example, if your wielder is looking to travel south from north with a Portal in the way, it might be more efficient to initiate two teleportations (0.5 + 0.5 movement points) than to walk around it using diagonal steps (1.4 movement points each by default).


Get yourself accused of cheating today with this simple yet completely legal trick!

Once captured, Beacons of Power are entirely free to interact with. Use this to reposition your wielder around them at no cost, or just channel your inner AI and enjoy an endless cycle of dematerialization and materialization.


Enter and exit stage top, all in one swift turn.

Remember garrisoning wielders costing no movement points? Turns out this is one of the most impactful ways of saving on movement in certain situations. While towns can be accessed from several different adjacent tiles, sending a defending wielder out will always land them in the same spot (with the exact the position of the spot depending on town size) at no cost to their movement.
By default, defending wielders will be sent out in the tiles occupied by the wielders here.

This means that when a town is in the way of a wielder's path, they can situationally be travelled through instead of having to be bypassed. Notice the difference between maximum movement distance when bypassing a town vs. using the above described game mechanic:

Small Settlements. Meant to be gone through, not around.


Psst, hey, kid, wanna gain up to 3.55 movement points for just 5 clicks?


Fortress-likes are the least flexible of the bunch, but to someone so helplessly hooked on movement points, 2 freely gained points mean the world.

If the primary landing tile is occupied, the defending wielder will be spawned in a secondary spot, and if that spot is also unavailable, they will land in a tertiary one, and so on. The non-primary spawning spots are selected in a way that fills up the tiles adjacent to the main landing spot.
While this mechanic is very situational, in certain cases it allows you to control where you want your wielders to spawn, which can help save movement points when moving in a certain direction.

This also includes scenarios when enemy wielders are blocking the spots, with the difference that your wielder will always spawn outside of the enemy wielder's zone of influence (i.e. at least 1 tile away).

Spawning spot selection also works the same way when hiring new wielders.


Seeing just exactly how far the wielder centipede can extend is beyond our science.

When you upgrade a town, new building sites become available for use. When a wielder is occupying the tile in which a new building spot would spawn, they get pushed aside at no cost to their movement points.

Wielders always get moved 1 tile to the left, except when the destination tile is occupied, in which case they get pushed vertically in addition to or instead of the horizontal movement.


No obstructions means wielder gets pushed one tile to the left.


With the landing spot blocked, the wielder is pushed an additional one vertical tile.

Having additional wielders blocking the secondary landing spots changes where the displaced wielder moves. As such situations are extremely varied (and rare), covering each of them is beyond this guide.

Enemy wielders can also be repositioned the same way using your own towns. While situations will rarely present themselves where doing so would be useful or possible at all, it could theoretically be used to get an enemy wielder into your wielder's range, or to change the battlefield based on terrain features (battlefields are picked based on the defender's position on the map).

Come o'er here.

A few other general usage examples:


Just about couldn't reach town? There might still be a way.


Headed west? Take an additional leap.


Forgetting about this feature of the game can result in unpleasant surprises.

A somewhat niche mechanic, but keeping it in mind can lead to gaining an advantage, and failing to account for it can lead to a disadvantage by unexpectedly moving your wielders.

If you have multiple wielders travelling in the same direction, a singular artifact can be used to increase the movement points of both wielders by trading. This is actually quite practical and can be utilized fairly often, so it's worth playing around it.
Note that multiple artifacts can be used this way during one turn, but only if they belong to different equipment slots — the additional movement points from two pairs of boots will not add up.

Who cares about hygiene when there are movement points on the line?

If an enemy wielder were to get trapped inside the area contained by newly built walls, the game automatically moves them out to towards the nearest entrance. While this is a very situational mechanic, it can be used to force an opponent into the range of a stronger wielder and to force a smaller battlefield due to the presence of walls.

This might work better than asking your opponent to go away on their own accord.

Wielders can drop artifacts from their inventories at no cost to their movement points which can be used to block tiles.

When dropping artifacts, the available adjacent tiles are filled out in a specific order.
The tiles are prioritized in order from lowest to highest as long as they are available.

Situationally this might be possible to use in tight chokepoints of the map or on roads to cause additional movement penalty for an incoming enemy wielder, but realistically you'd only do this with artifacts as valuable as Knuckledusters, so that's not very useful.

The spicier use-case for artifact dropping is blocking building sites before upgrading towns: dropped artifacts prevent the blocked building spots from appearing until the town is upgraded again without the blocking artifacts in place.

The affected building sites will not appear until a town is upgraded to the next tier. If there are no more town upgrades available, the only way to regain the lost sites is to get the town razed or converted by an opponent.

This feature might not be the easiest to make use of, but the economical and psychological damage one can theoretically inflict with it is significant.

Note that for this to work for medium and large size building spots, the left-bottom tile of the plot has to be blocked; on any other tiles the artifacts simply remain floating there, becoming unrecoverable until the town is razed.

Discard your valuables in style to make your opponents question their reality. Bonus points for dressing up your Nobles like the Queens they are meant to be.

It's very much recommended to turn on the movement range indicator in settings to get a better idea for how much ground your wielder can cover in a turn, though be aware that sometimes you can travel one step further than the indicator shows due to how the last step mechanic works. It's also quite useful to be able to quickly tell whether there's a last-step optimization to be made.
If having the movement range visible at all times bothers you, keep it turned off and use the info mode instead as the same information is available when pressing Alt.

In rare cases, despite the math working out, your wielder might not get a last move at precisely 0.5 movement points left, presumably because of a rounding error. In my experience, this doesn't happen often, but it can still lead to questioning your reality if you're unaware of it, so just keep it in mind.

Feedback is appreciated, including constructive criticism; feel free to let me know in the comments if I got something wrong or if you think there's something else that should be added.

Happy welding!

April 2023 — Game version at time of guide update: 0.83.6

• Removed exception regarding Watchtower/Farseer’s Vessel:
  ➡ These now act the same as other capturable objects.
  
• Updated rules regarding selectable rewards objects:
  ➡ These now cost movement points to simply check.
  
• Updated rules regarding Bandit Hideout and Graveyard interactions:
  ➡ These now cost movement points to check, as well as costing additional movement when taking the fight with or without automatic loot pickup.
  
• Updated section about defending/newly hired wielder spawning spots:
  ➡ They now spawn adjacent to blocking friendly wielder instead of 1 tile away.
  
• Updated section regarding pushing wielders using building spots:
  ➡ This now displaces wielders a smaller distance than before.
  
• Added clarifications and additional psychological damage to building spot blocking using artifacts.

November 2023 — Game version at time of guide update: 0.89.7

• Added Portals as 0.5 movement cost interactions.
  
• Added Beacons of Power as 0 movement cost interactions.
  
• Added Raider’s Markets as 0 movement cost interactions.
  
• Added Initiating town sieges to 0.5 cost interactions.
  
• Added Mystic Hermit to list of refusable reward objects.
  
• Added town square and lava tiles to types of movement modifying terrain:
  ➡ These are relatively new additions and might not be all that used for the time being.
  
• Removed Bandit Hideout and Graveyard access quirks:
  ➡ These have been fixed and now behave more consistently.
  
• Updated paragraph regarding neutral Summoning Circles:
  ➡ These can now be accessed as standard 2x1 buildings with no additional quirks. Their size remains an oddity when compared to other neutral large dwellings.
  
• Added Overthinking with portals paragraph in Other movement-related tricks (part 1) section:
  ➡ As with towns, it's sometimes better to travel through them instead of travelling around.
  
• Added Repositioning enemy wielders by building walls paragraph in Other movement-related tricks (part 2) section:
  ➡ This is a recently added mechanic that might be possible to use in certain scenarios.
  
• Added Sharing movement-granting artifacts between wielders paragraph in Other movement-related tricks (part 2) section:
  ➡ A fairly practical mechanic that can be utilized to great effect when you have multiple wielders travelling in the same direction in close proximity.

June 2024 — Game version at time of guide update: 1.1.2

• Updated dirt road values:
  ➡ Movement cost reduction has been buffed from 25% to ~28.6%.
  
• Added Sacred Grove object:
  ➡ This behaves pretty much the same as Graveyards and Hideouts.
  
• Updated The rules of accessing map objects section:
  ➡ Several 2x1 object access rules have been fixed. Most mines, Orchards, and Water Mills can now be accessed from any adjacent tile.
  
• Updated Other movement-related tricks (part 1) section:
  ➡ Portal and Beacon teleportation landing spots have been adjusted and are now identical.
  
• Added Secluded Monastery to list of objects that consume movement points conditionally.
  
• Adjusted phrasing in various paragraphs.