How can you clear a wildland without killing the boss?

You have to kill the boss to clear it? I've had wildlands that I completely empty, and yet they still stay hostile to any form of settlement.

It's been my experience in FE that to clear a wildlands you have to kill the boss, clear all the goodie huts, and kill all of the wandering monster armies from that wildland, even if they have wandered out.  But with LH I was able to clear one of the wildlands by clearing all the goodie huts and beating the boss, even though one of the monster armies was still alive.  So I'm not entirely understanding the rules, but I thought that you at least always had to beat the boss.

Edit: Note that there was also a bug in FE where if you saved the game after you had started the wildlands quest, quit the game, then restarted the game and loaded the save, the wildland could never be cleared.  In other words once you started it you had to clear it without leaving the game.  I don't know if that bug still exists in LH.

Ah, chances are that was what happened.

Yeah, I've ended up fighting wildland monsters (not bosses) in every game I've played. Seemed to be normal behavior as addressed earlier in this thread.

Different wildlands have different rules for clearing.  Some you need to clear all goodie huts.  Some you just need to beat the boss.  Sometimes you need to beat all the monsters, including the boss.  Some I think you have to clear all goodie huts and defeat all monsters, but I'm not totally sure there are any in this category.  And in Imperium, you only have to build a city on the 4/4 tile - although it probably wouldn't last very long without clearing the powerful monsters first.

I think the Hiergamenon should list what requirements there are to clear each wildland.

The wildland I couldn't clear was the poisoned swamp. The quest said to 'heal the diseased land', but I couldn't see any way to do that, and had killed all the monsters and looted all the huts. The spell that I thought might do the trick couldn't be cast in their territory.

So, how are you supposed to claim those wildlands?

It's possible that either there was a hidden goodie hut (unlikely as you've checked) or one (or more) of the wildland monsters wandered quite far away from the wildland but killing them is still required to clear the wildland.

Chances are it was a runaway monster. I spent a lot of time waiting at the swamp edge, chasing off anyone who got too close, while I researched troops strong enough to survive. I had fenced off the south area, but it's possible that someone wandered north and out of reach. What confused me was that the quest text said that I had to heal the land, but I couldn't see any way to do it, and I had killed the main monster. Killing all the little monsters as well doesn't seem to connect.

The wildland bosses and their strong armies should only leave their domain, when you enter the lands or your borders touch theirs.

Goodie huts in wildlands are often without a boss or army, because the monsters walk around everywhere in the world and leave their land without reason. Don´t understand that thing, if it´s not a bug.

I had one of my first FE games post release ended by a stack of wildland trolls which crossed a wildland border and crushed my only city at about turn 15. Not fun!

It would be nice if wildland monsters stayed in that zone of control. That would resolve a lot of these problems. Granted, it certainly makes games more challenging if monsters come out of there, but it also creates a LOT of other issues (ending the game prematurely, strange AI issues, trying to locate each rogue monster to fully defeat the wildland, etc.).

Stardock at least needs to make sure high level mobs (obsidian golems, troll warriors) don't wander. These creatures cause too many problems and I see nothing added to the game by having a pair of obsidian golems wandering at turn 1.

Ive nothing against creatures like shrills, darklings or ice wargs wandering out though, provided they aren't part of the clearing conditions.