By now, fans of Critical Role and Dungeons and Dragons have likely heard of the announcement of the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount. This new campaign setting consists of everything that a Dungeons & Dragons party needs to know to set their next campaign in the world of Exandria on the continent of Wildemount, the setting of the second campaign of Critical Role.
Matthew Mercer has gone in-depth on a variety of different upcoming additions in the book, from new subclasses and styles of magic to the unique set of legendary artifacts known as the Vestiges of Divergence. One of the many features that he’s taken a moment to explain is the monsters and creatures that will be added into Dungeons and Dragons canon with the book.
If you’re a fan of Critical Role, some of the creatures that he explains may sound familiar. Mercer goes into the lore around some of them, namely the setting of the land of Xhorhas and how the savage and cruel landscape has shaped the fauna of the creatures within. As the site of the final battle of the Calamity, many of these creatures are divine or fiendish in nature and have had their essence distilled and corrupted by the centuries that have passed.
One example of these monstrosities is a four-armed gorilla-like creature that roams the wastes in search for prey that has been trained as a beast of burden (to varying degrees of success).
Moving away from the wastes of Xhorhas, Mercer outlines a new underwater basilisk to add to the families of everyone’s favorite petrifying creature. These basilisks lurk underwater and use their oily secretions to petrify and consume their prey.
Mercer even teased a bit of a grim surprise, hinting that one of the many monsters would be leftover science experiments from the fall of the Dragonborne nation of Draconia. These experiments have been living off of their instincts as they go feral, tossed out into the wilds. There’s no limit to what these creatures could contain with such an esoteric background.
There’s still plenty that Mercer isn’t telling us, as one would expect when we still have two months until the release of the Guide on March 17th. While Mercer has laid out plenty of the contents of the books in his interview series with D&D Beyond’s Todd Kenrick, there’s still so much for fans to find in the book. If you’re wanting to add all of the fantastic new additions to your next campaign, make sure you pick up the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount at your local game shop when March comes around!
