Difficulty: Easy to medium. Harder than it ought to be.
Your Portal max: 25 creatures.
Enemy Portal max: 25 creatures.
Starting forces: 4 Imps (1st level).
Enemy's starting forces: 4 Imps (1st level).
Starting gold: 3000
Enemy's starting gold: 3000
Possible minions:
Attracted through portal: Fly, Spider, Beetle, Demon Spawn, Warlock, Troll, Bile Demon.
Found elsewhere in the realm: 1 Bile Demon, 2 Spiders (all 2nd level)
Rooms:
Known at start: Basic Five.
Can be researched: Bridge, Workshop.
Can be found elsewhere in the realm: Prison.
Spells:
Can research: Speed Creature, Sight of Evil, Call to Arms, Heal.
Doors/Traps: Wooden Door, Poison Gas Trap
Enemies: One enemy Keeper.
Oh dear. It looks like this realm is already
secretly controlled by the forces of darkness. There are
two portals in
this realm: and, within moments of your entering it, the northern one is
claimed by enemy imps. You won't be facing noble do-gooders here: instead,
you'll face diabolical plots and schemes, and (worse still)
competition for
the local demonic resources. Worse still, the chances are that your Flies
and Spiders are going to start fighting each other this time around,
becuase Spiders think of Flies as dinner: so you'll have to keep them apart
by making separate lairs for them, and must not let the creatures enter
each other's lairs.
So, you're going to have to outbid your
rival. Build bigger rooms. Unfortunately, it looks like the gold deposits
close to him are larger than the deposits close to you. You're separated by
a lava river, so you may have to consider trying to grab some of the gold
on his side of the river early on, once you have Bridges.
In the middle of the river, there's an island
Prison, containing three creatures. The three creatures will join whoever
sees them first: two Spiders, and a large, fat, ugly, red, flatulent Bile
Demon. He hits very hard in melee, has a ton of hit points, and can work in
a workshop extremely well. Unfortunately, he's so big and fat that he
requires extra elbow room in his Lair - he needs 2 lair tiles to sleep on:
and when he gets hungry, he gets *HUNGRY*. He eats six chickens for one
meal, and you need to have a 25-square Hatchery (or bigger) to attract Bile
Demons through your Portal.
But the Prison is nice, for a reason: You can
now set your creatures to "imprison" rather than "kill" the enemies - when
they are down to their lowest hit points, they will be knocked out, and as
soon as the fighting stops your Imps will drag them to the Prison. If
there's no room in the Prison, the enemy will escape and start fighting you
again: so beware of this. But, when you have a Prison, there are two
benefits to imprisoning enemies rather than killing them. Firstly, that the
creatures in the prison still count against your enemy's portal maximum, so
he's going to be short of creatures when he next fights you, while you will
have your full complement: secondly, because some of them can die and rise
as Skeletons, who will join your side, and Skeletons are *very* cheap and
fast to train, and cost next to nothing on pay-day, and reasonable
fighters.
As for when to fight the enemy: that's your
choice, though it can be best to leave it until your creatures have had the
best chance to get trained up. You might also wish to find the two Specials
in the lava, an Increase Level and a Resurrect Creature, and use them. The
former is best used late, as it costs more money and takes longer to train
creatures from level 5 to 6 than from 1 to 2.
(Note: There is an alternative way to win, if
you've transferred a powerful creature from the previous realm. Possess an
Imp right at the start, dig straight north, run over the lava regardless of
whether it hurts the Imp, dig straight north again - dig around the gold,
not through it, it's faster - heading towards the enemy Portal, and break
into the enemy dungeon. Then, slap your powerful creature to speed it up,
Possess it, and walk it over the lava directly to the enemy Heart. He will
have nothing capable of stopping you when you get there, whatever creature
you have transferred... Who said you had to play fair?)
(Note: Skeletons despise Bile Demons for
being overweight, and Bile Demons despise Skeletons for being anorexic, so
they will fight if they have to share a lair or pass through each other's
lairs, just like Spiders and Flies. Keep them apart - they won't fight in
the Training Room, Workshop, Hatchery or when you drop them into a fight
against the enemy.)
(Also note: Only humanoid creatures turn into
Skeletons when they die. These include all hero-types, plus Trolls, Orcs,
Warlocks, Vampires and Dark Mistresses - and, indeed, Horned Reapers.)
Hint: This level is much easier if you get
the gold on the far side of the lava river *first*. In order to mine it
fast before the enemy gets anywhere, build small treasure rooms near the
treasure, and sell off any empty treasure room that isn't near treasure.
This is better than building a large central treasury, as it cuts down the
imps' running time.
Another hint: Imprisoning your enemies' Imps,
in many realms, is a great idea. It means he can't mine, unless he spends
loads of extra gold on imps - each imp costs more than the last.
But the best thing you can do with your
Prison in *this particular* realm is sell it off for cash. You're unlikely
to be fighting more than one grand battle this realm, so you won't have any
use for the imprison button.