By Annie S.
Heliana’s Guide to Monster Hunting is a D&D supplement built around the simple but thrilling premise: the adventure is in the hunt.
The book will send your party tracking their quarry across eleven distinct biomes—including frozen tundras, mosquito-thick bayous, and the subterranean strangeness of The Low—each with its own encounters and hazards. And every single one deserves a map that pulls your players straight into the world.
These eleven map picks are matched directly to the encounters in the book, with one per biome. Whether you’re running Heliana’s as written or just need the right wilderness backdrop for your party’s misadventures, there’s something here for every stretch of the journey.
1. Arctic | Unseelie Ritual — Mysterious Druid Grove (Winter)
Arctic regions in Heliana’s are unforgiving but beautiful and mysterious—and nothing captures that better than stumbling into a boreal grove where Winter Court hags are mid-ritual, building a trapped portal to an Unseelie dungeon, while captive musicians sit locked in a cage nearby.
The Winter variant of the Mysterious Druid Grove is tailor-made for this encounter, providing a vivid central focal point, where the party must shut down the ritual before the portal completes or risk being dragged through with the hags.
This map also comes with an animated scene that sets the scene with all the cold, eerie urgency that the encounter deserves.
2. Coast | Witch of Brine — Coral Witch Cottage
The coast biome in Heliana’s Guide is gorgeous, treacherous, and full of otherworldly things that aren’t as they seem—making it perfect for the Witch of Brine encounter, where the party meets a hunched, seaweed-draped figure offering her conjuration services. But she is, of course, a hag.
This vivid Coral Witch Cottage is a wonderfully apt home for this deceptive encounter, pairing the colorful beauty of the reef with the shipwreck sitting ominously out front—a reminder of what a bad deal might cost.
3. Desert | Fool’s Watering Hole — Verdant Oasis
Deserts in Heliana’s Guide are home to scorching elements, dangerous monsters, and very little mercy. The Fool’s Watering Hole encounter leans into all of that with a lush oasis possessed by primal elementals who are content to let travelers visit, and absolutely furious if anyone tries to rest nearby or touch the water—setting off a timer that the party doesn’t even know exists.
This Verdant Oasis map paints the picture of an inviting sight that any parched party crossing the desert wants to see—and the ring of canyon walls around the oasis provides an arena for when the elementals grow tired of these intruders.
4. Forest | Itsy Bitsy Spider — Baba Yaga’s Domain (Spiders)
Forests in Heliana’s Guide hide all manner of surprises—and the Itsy Bitsy Spiders encounter wastes no time on subtlety, dropping the party into a stretch of woodlands claimed by ettercaps and driders. Webs blanket the ground and trees, turning the entire area into difficult terrain.
It would be challenging to find a more suitable map than the Spiders variant of this Baba Yaga’s Domain map, where webbing and egg sacs cover every surface and make it very clear, very quickly, that the party is the prey here.
5. Grasslands | Circle of Life — Goblin Forest Fortress (Natural)
Sprawling grasslands can sometimes feel flat and endless—but this Circle of Life encounter finds something sacred hiding within the ordinary, as a nature deity has chosen the party to witness and protect one of life’s most sacred moments.
The natural variant of this Goblin Forest Fortress map gives this tender moment the stage it deserves, with a wide flat-topped rock rising from an open clearing that looks lifted directly from the encounter description.
This map also comes with an animated scene that gives the players a sun-warmed view of the outcrop.
6. Hills | Death from Above — Precarious Waterfall Crossing
Hills in Heliana’s offer sweeping vistas… and occasionally, something large and dead falling on you from one. The Death from Above encounter hits fast, as flying predators drop prey from the heights above Dead Goat Falls and immediately set their sights on the party below.
This Precarious Waterfall Crossing exactly captures that sense of exposure, with narrow canyon paths that limit movement and a sheer drop into a deep pool, keeping players on their toes throughout the fight.
7. Jungle | The Price of Greed — Jungle Treasure Trove
Jungles are full of ancient ruins, layered canopies, and enough natural hazards to humble even the most confident adventurers. The Price of Greed encounter delivers all of the above with a smile, as the party finds an ancient golden idol on a derelict altar—ending with the whole party either cursed or blessed.
This Jungle Treasure Trove sets up the temptation of treasure just an arm’s reach away, with coins and treasure scattered invitingly around a still pool and one ornate chest practically daring someone to go for it.
This map also comes with an animated scene that makes the treasure look exactly as tempting as it needs to be.
8. Mountain | One With The Peaks — Cave Temple (Summer)
Mountains in Heliana’s pierce the sky and offer tons of opportunities for giant wars, draconic cults, and seriously misguided celestials--but the One With The Peaks encounter finds something quieter between the cliffs, as a monk invites the party to meditate with her in a cave.
The warm summer variant of this Cave Temple map is perfect for this encounter, looking exactly like the sort of place where an ancient entity of great power would consider dropping in to answer a few questions, if asked nicely enough.
9. Swamp | Rotting Gargantuan — Swamp Graveyard
Set in the wet, insect-infested, and treacherous swamps, the Rotting Gargantuan encounter turns the landscape itself into the story, sending the party through the carcass of an impossibly large dead creature with treasure to be found amidst its bones.
This Swamp Graveyard map gives the encounter its full weight, presenting a graveyard so vast and strange that the joy of finding treasure will quickly pale in the face of the creeping question of what could have put this behemoth into the ground.
This map also comes with an animated scene that perfectly depicts the eerie, dappled stillness of this location.
10. The Low | The Spider’s Web — Cavern of the Venom Queen
The Low is Heliana’s subterranean biome—a vast, bioluminescent underworld where danger has had millennia to adapt to the darkness. The Spider’s Web encounter has the party discovering a cavern where deep gnome traders have been cocooned eighty feet above the ground—and the creatures responsible are due back any moment.
The Cavern of the Venom Queen expands the sense of creeping underground dread brilliantly, starting with livable quarters underground that grow increasingly overrun with webs—until the map is nothing but cocoons, egg sacs, and the sickening realization that the party has just walked into the middle of something’s larder.
11. Urban | Corporeal Illusion — Marketplace Festival
The streets of a bustling city can be just as dangerous as the untamed wilds, and the corporeal Illusion encounter makes that point memorably—as a street magician’s illusions turn real mid-performance thanks to a hag’s curse, leaving him bleeding out while constructs tear through a panicking festival crowd.
This Marketplace Festival map is a fantastic stage for this chaotic encounter, with the central performance tent placing the magician right where everyone can see him, and the bustling plaza complicating matters in every direction.
Didn’t Find What You Were Looking For?
Czepeku’s Fantasy Maps library includes over 8,000 hand-drawn battlemaps with variants across biomes, seasons, and events—so whatever corner of Heliana’s world your campaign takes you, there’s a good chance the right map is already waiting.
Browse for the perfect hunting grounds using tags like forest, swamp, jungle, arctic, cavern, and urban to dig into the full collection.
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