Everything You Need to Know About the Clank! Wandering Monsters Mini-Expansion

September 15, 2026

The Clank — Cube of Holding and The Forgotten Vault Kickstarter is heading towards its third week, and we couldn’t be more grateful for everyone who has pledged their support so far! Previously during the campaign, we’ve unveiled deep dives for the Cube of Holding and the Master Thief Edition line, and now we’re turning our attention to the Wandering Monsters mini-expansion!

Wandering Monsters comes packed into the Master Thief Edition of the Clank! base game, and it’s supported in all of the Master Thief Edition expansions (including The Forgotten Vault). Let’s take a look at how this optional new mini-expansion adds new variety to your dungeon-delving, and gives you all kinds of new baddies to thwack around with your Swords!

Wandering Monsters, Explained

On every map in the Master Thief Edition line, you’ll find new colorful icons for tunnel monsters. These are wandering monsters, which are represented by wandering monster tokens! During the game, there will always be three (out of 40) wandering monster tokens face-up at the side of the board, each with their own color. If you defeat a tunnel monster that matches the color of a face-up wandering monster token, you can claim that token and its reward[s].

Wandering monsters are defeated the same way as any other tunnel monster — travel through the tunnel, spend a Sword, and they go kaput. Similarly, they affect you the same way; if you travel through the tunnel and don’t have a Sword (or choose not to spend one), you will take one damage. And, of course, if you skip the tunnel entirely via a teleport or card effects, no token for you! Slaying the monster is required to gain its bonus.

Elite monsters play by slightly different rules, and require two Swords to vanquish instead of one. That said, if you pass through a tunnel and don’t want to spend two Swords on an elite monster, you can choose not to do so, treating it as a normal tunnel monster icon instead. That means you vanquish it with one Sword as usual, or take one damage passing through. This applies to all wandering monsters, not just the elites — you can always choose to treat a wandering monster icon as a normal tunnel monster and forgo drawing a token, regardless of what’s available in the row.

Delving Differently with Wandering Monsters

While your path through each dungeon is always different based on your card draws and the movement of your opponents, Wandering Monsters adds a new layer of tactics and unpredictability that may change the way you move through the dungeon. Based on which tokens are available, certain tunnel paths may be more enticing than others.

In the example above, a player with two Boots and two Swords normally wouldn’t have a strong incentive to visit the crystal cave below — there’s no Minor Secret, and using a Sword for the tunnel monster would prevent them from being able to slay a Goblin that turn for one Gold. But with two purple Wandering Monster tokens active, the value proposition changes: now, the trade-off is either one Sword for two Gold (plus a Clank!) or two Swords for a Gold and a heal.

Let’s look at another example:

Orcs offer increasingly more victory points for each one you grab. Particularly to a player who already has one or two, it could be worth going out of the way to get another.

Imagine this player has two Boots, and two Swords, and they’re chasing the Artifact that sits below the crystal cave with a Minor Secret. No matter what, they’re ending their turn in that cave. In a normal game, it wouldn’t make sense to go up and around and take a hit from the extra tunnel monster, especially with the Minor Secrets already plundered from the space above three tunnel monsters in the way. But in this game, it may just make sense, because there’s an Orc wandering monster token waiting to be claimed with sweet, sweet victory points.

New Cards in Wandering Monsters

Wandering Monsters tokens add new variability to each game of Clank! by themselves, but things get really fun when you pack its 14 new cards into the Dungeon Deck. These cards — marked by a monster icon in the top left of their text boxes — interact with wandering monsters in unique ways, often giving you even more reason to take paths less-traveled through the dragon’s lair.

Sometimes, the wandering monster tokens in the row aren’t what you’re looking for. In the example above, a player who wants to add another Orc to their collection couldn’t do so unless they’re next to a tunnel with a purple monster icon… that is, unless they have Adept Huntress or Rune of Transfiguration at their disposal! These cards can allow you to be opportunistic about grabbing wandering monster bonuses that you would otherwise be unable to access.

In other cases, your cards might grant additional bonuses for chasing monsters on the turn that they’re played:

Bounty Hunter, Careful Study, and Tenacity are all cut from the same cloth, rewarding you for defeating a monster token. If any of these came out in your hand (or if you’re really lucky, all three at once), it would be prudent to seek out a wandering monster tunnel that turn.

And some cards reward you for your collection of wandering monster tokens:

With either of these cards, a player may decide to forgo the Major Secret in the Crystal Cave and push their luck taking the monster-heavy path below instead.

Monster Hunters and Crowning Achievement both scale in value based on how many wandering monsters you’ve defeated — these kinds of cards make a compelling argument for a Sword-heavy run, and may have you adjusting course to whack as many monsters as possible!

Want to claim a monster token, but you’re not near a wandering monster of any color? Well, with the right card you can do that too:

One of the most exciting Wandering Monsters cards is, in fact, the Wandering Monster, who allows you to defeat a wandering monster token on the spot — useful for situations where there’s a valuable bonus in the row but no corresponding wandering monster nearby. This can be especially fun in examples like the one above, where a player on their way out of the dungeon can leave their opponents with a Ghost cube as a parting gift. Hasta la vista!

Now Available on Kickstarter

The Wandering Monsters mini-expansion is packed in with the Master Thief Edition of Clank! A Deck-Building Adventure (and also available to owners of the original game via the Mastery Pack upgrade kit), which is currently making its way across retail, and it’s also being offered as part of the Clank! — Cube of Holding and The Forgotten Vault Kickstarter. Additionally in the Kickstarter, you’ll find all of Clank!’s expansions in the Master Thief Edition line, as well as the new Forgotten Vault expansion, which all include support for Wandering Monsters on their maps!

Craving the definitive dungeon-delving deck-building experience? Pledge to the campaign before it ends on September 29th, and don’t miss our next preview, where we’ll be doing a deep dive into the new maps in The Forgotten Vault!

**Learn More About the Clank! — Cube of Holding and The Forgotten Vault Kickstarter**

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