Brandrgarde North and South Guide

Two maps that share a name

Brandrgarde publishes as two separate maps, not as one area with two halves. Brandrgarde South carries 1,555 markers and Brandrgarde North carries 1,786, each on a single surface floor, and their contents differ enough that a squad which learns one has learned roughly half of what it needs. South is the more populated ruin: 636 enemies, 597 treasure, 120 loot, 79 landmarks, 59 objectives, 38 extraction, 13 portals and 13 vendors. North is heavier and thinner at the same time: 880 enemies, 723 treasure, 96 loot, 64 objectives, 22 extraction and one single traversal point, with no landmark or vendor markers published at all.

Read those last two numbers together, because they describe the real difference in pressure. North puts nearly 40 per cent more enemy positions in front of you, gives you one traversal shortcut instead of thirteen, publishes no resurrection points and no merchant, and offers a little over half as many extraction positions. South is where a squad learns the area; north is where it gets tested.

Both maps carry the same hedge that every published map carries. Every marker on either Brandrgarde map is a possible position — unlike Hallowgrove, neither publishes a single fixed extraction point — and the match rules decide which of them exist in your run. Use the interactive map to find where things can be, and expect to confirm on the ground.

The trio gate, and what it locks out

Brandrgarde is trio-gated. A solo player cannot enter it, which also means part of the main quest chain runs through content a solo player cannot reach, and there is no duo queue — the developers have said opening one would split the matchmaking pool and lengthen queues for everyone. This is the loudest structural complaint in the community and it is a real one.

It is also not stated to be permanent. The developers have said they may open Brandrgarde to solo players for a limited time during the season, so treat the gate as the current rule rather than a law of the game. If you are playing alone tonight, Hallowgrove is the map that supports you, and it carries its own onboarding structure that Brandrgarde does not. The practical differences between playing solo, queueing solo and queueing into a trio are set out in solo, duo and trio play.

The map's marker data still distinguishes solo and team variants. On South, 767 markers appear only under the team setting and 382 under both; on North, 999 are team-only. The practical instruction for a squad is simple: set the party filter to team before you plan, or you are reading a version of the map that is missing most of what your run will actually meet.

The safe zone collapses in numbered phases

The mechanic that defines a Brandrgarde run is the collapsing safe zone. Rather than the whole map turning lethal at a single moment, the danger closes in numbered phases, and the white circle on your in-game map marks what is still safe at any point. Watching the phase number is how you know whether the far side of the ruin is still an option or has already become a one-way trip.

Neither the number of phases nor their timing has been published, and player estimates contradict each other badly enough that repeating any of them would be worse than saying nothing. What is reliably true is the shape of the pressure: each phase costs you options, the routes out of a shrinking area concentrate other squads into fewer approaches, and a plan that was sound at phase one can be impossible two phases later. Plan the return leg while the circle is still wide.

The practical squad habit is to name a phase, not a time, as the trigger to turn around. "We leave when the next phase lands" is a decision three people can hold in their heads under pressure; "we leave in a few minutes" is not. Pair that with a fallback exit that does not share an approach with your preferred one, and the collapse becomes a schedule rather than an ambush.

Extraction here does not use a bell

Brandrgarde runs two extraction routes at once and neither works like Hallowgrove's. Soul Trees holding Souls of Return appear at random, and you can summon an extraction directly beside one — but the game's own legend states plainly that a Soul Tree withers after a certain period, after which it can no longer be used to escape. A tree you saw twenty seconds ago is not a tree you can count on.

The second route is the Returner Woodling, which appears in mist-free zones and drops a Soul of Return when you kill it; you consume the Soul to summon an extraction. Both Brandrgarde routes let you leave with everything you are carrying, which is the important difference from a smuggler exit. The Soul Ferry also appears in the game's legend as a way out that asks for Soul Threads taken from other hunters, but exactly what it requires has not been confirmed, so do not build a plan around it.

Because no extraction marker on either map is fixed, the 38 published positions on South and 22 on North should be read as a distribution rather than a route. A squad that knows where extraction can cluster in three different directions is far better placed than one that memorised a single point, particularly once the safe zone has started eating the map.

Names you will meet, and the ones that matter

The enemy layers on both maps are built from the same core — Corroded Soldiers, Sacred Chamber Priests, Corroded Archers and Guards, Foul Hounds, Lizardfolk and their elite versions — with Corroded Soldiers alone accounting for 118 possible positions on South and 132 on North. Penitents and Lamplighters are far more common in the north, at 95 and 32 positions against 33 and 20 in the south, which is a fair share of that map's extra pressure.

The Brandrgarde-specific names are the ones to brief your squad on. Brandrgarde Captains publish six possible positions on South and eight on North, General Harald five and two, and General's Guards ten and five. Flesheaters appear twice on each map, Fungus Matrons three times in the south and five in the north, and Blister Wasps three times in the south against one in the north. Twinblade Warrior Statues appear twice on each. Elite Berserkers, Tyrannical Executioners and the season's Soulgnawer sit in the same low single digits here as they do elsewhere; what they are worth is covered in Mist Lords, bosses and elites.

Treasure follows the same logic. South publishes 597 containers led by 94 Civilian Chests, 51 Equipment Racks, 46 Gift of Fate positions and 41 Iron Chests; north publishes 723 led by 74 of The Exiled, 72 Civilian Chests, 52 Iron Pots and 47 Fungus. The north is also the only published map with Forge Furnaces, Timber Chests and Thermal Vents, and both Brandrgarde maps carry small, medium and large ore piles that Hallowgrove does not have at all. If your squad needs forging materials rather than gear, that difference is the whole reason to pick this area over the other one, and the equipment database will tell you what those materials are eventually for.

Splitting three players usefully

The map rewards role separation more than it rewards three people walking in a line. One player should own the exit: watching the phase, tracking which extraction positions are still behind the circle, and calling the turn. One should own the objective, including any key room — South publishes five possible key rooms, and North publishes none at all in its landmark data — and one should own contact, meaning first to engage and last to disengage.

Loot discipline is the other half. Three players opening the same Civilian Chest is three players standing still, and standing still in a shrinking zone is how squads get third-partied. Splitting a treasure cluster between two people while the third holds the approach is slower to describe than it is to do, and it roughly halves how long the squad is stationary.

Communication should be about positions and phases, not about items. A squad that calls "north side of the cluster, phase two, one archer left" is coordinating; a squad that calls out every chest is filling the channel at the exact moment it needs to be clear. Agree before the run what happens if one player goes down far from the others, because deciding that during the collapse never goes well.

Where to go from here

If your squad is new to the area, run South until the extraction distribution feels familiar, then move north for the density and the ore. Set the party filter to team, note two extraction directions rather than one, and pick the phase you will leave on before you enter. The reasoning behind those choices is worked through in route planning and exit timing.

Before the next run, check what your keys actually open — Brandrgarde accounts for the large majority of the game's named key areas, which is explained in keys, chests and treasure rooms — and confirm the materials you are hauling out are ones you need by checking them against the item database.