Morkardar. The first of the Deeper Dungeons realms to become acquainted with your wrath. You will quickly be introduced to the significantly more harsh difficulty, as this realm presents you many opportunities to die by being either too aggressive, or not aggressive enough.

Starting out, you will want to tunnel immediately to the northeast toward the large central gold vein with gems in the middle of it. You will break out into a lake when you get there, and on the way you should stumble upon a handily placed treasure room and torture room currently under hero ownership. Claim the treasure room and enlarge it for your own use, but do not break into the torture room quite yet; it contains an unaligned level 8 Horned Reaper, and you have nothing to do with him at this point. Do NOT dig to your northwest, as you will run into trouble fast.

Tunneling out into a lake this early in the conquest is usually a bad idea, but this is what I meant about needing to exercise the proper level of aggression. The lake itself is unoccupied; you will find no trouble here lest you go looking for it. Plus, if you do not claim this island and mine the gold on it as early as possible, your enemy to the north will soon lay his filthy paws upon it, cutting off your finances. In addition, the gold you see to the far east is well defended. You want to save it for later.

You should build your Basic Five as your imps are mining gold (they will be slowed down considerably by the water), and begin attracting an army. Train Bile Demons at least until you have the workshop, and I recommend ditching your Warlocks entirely after you are done researching. You'll find that your enemy not only started out with a number of high-level Warlocks, but he also has the Scavenger Room, and this is going to cause you nightmares throughout your visit to this realm as your creatures begin to desert despite your best efforts to please and protect them. You will notice that you can attract Vampires from your portal, but so can the enemy. It is likely that any vampires you create here will just be scavenged away, so I suggest imprisoning and converting heroes to flesh out your ranks instead.

I recommend retrieving the Horny from his Torture Room as soon as you can, even before hitting your portal max, because claiming the Torture Room here will give you knowledge of the room without requiring you to research it. If you wait until it is researched, you will discover that your enemy, who starts with the room, has drained almost all of the Dark Mistresses from the portal pool. If you need something to do with a Horny before you have the Temple, I have found that both research and guard post duty are things that they will grudgingly accept as temporary jobs. So, get him as soon as you have the Library or the Guard Post.

Also, as soon as you have the Guard Post, you should line the entire outer edge of your gem island with them in order to guard against invasions by wandering heroes and the enemy keeper. You'll want to keep some high-level Mistresses guarding the island to protect your own imps, since if they get into a fight with the enemy, he may raise a Call to Arms. Beware if this happens late into the level, since his own level 10 Mistresses may immediately appear and try to kill your imps in retaliation. Imprison all enemy imps that you see, and you may succeed in running your enemy out of cash if he cannot replace them.

Once you have a number of level 5 creatures, you can take on any of the heroes scattered around your part of the realm. In a cave to the northwest, which you should avoid early on, you'll find 6 Samurai at levels 3 and 5. If you wait too long to dig into this cave, or at least fortify around it, not only will the enemy keeper arrive and unleash the heroes, who will come after you at their own leisure, but he will also have scavenged away the two unaligned level 7 Warlocks within the inner cave here. If you could get these guys, train them up, get a couple of Vampires, and build a respectable Scavenger room in time, you could try to out-scavenge your enemy. This is entirely up to you; I find that converting heroes is sufficient to make up for your scavenging losses here, however, and it is much more reliable, since the enemy cannot scavenge for heroes. It is also a lot cheaper, since Scavenger Rooms and Vampires are grotesquely expensive.

Through a door from your portal is the eastern gold I earlier warned about. Within it are several level 2 and 3 Archers and Thieves, and a Workshop you can claim. Torture the Thieves so that you can train them into Knights, but let the Archers die and become Skeletons. Mine the gold to keep your finances up as you train, since your imps are horribly slow at the gems.

To the east in the center you'll find a door leading to an unaligned prison that contains a troll, a fairy, a wizard, a skeleton, and two high-level imps. You want all of these guys, but to get them you need to defeat a party of level 5 Mountain Dwarves who drop in as you approach. If you get into this area by mining the gold below it, it may be possible to miss the dwarf drop altogether.

To the west, exactly opposite, is another watery hero cave which is quite a bit more dangerous. In the first room, where you will find an important Resurrect Creature special, there are two level 4 Wizards and five level 5 Barbarians. Your enemy is very likely to release these heroes, but because he seems to be too stupid to build bridges, he will leave the contents unclaimed. Spoils for the taking. Defeat the heroes one way or another and convert them, but beware of going further north from here. The narrow waterway through the rock is filled with level 5 Fairies, illegally placed lightning traps which will survive the building and selling of bridges on top of them, Boulders, and Word of Power traps. All of this defends a Reveal Map special which is well worth getting before taking on the enemy keeper. To make it less of a chore, note that you can build your bridge as far as one of your creatures has seen and continue dropping them at that point, allowing you to skip most of the lightning traps on the way. Note that if you get the Wizard and Fairy from the prison to the east first, you can scavenge away the heroes in this cavern without fighting them! This works particularly well on the Fairies, who make good expendable long-range fighters.

Your enemy is to the north, and between he and you is a small hero fortress. It is unlikely that you can get to this before he does, as he is expansionist and will tunnel as far as he can during the early campaign, even to his own detriment. Within are many mid-level Priestesses and Monks. Beware, because any of these that the enemy fails to finish off will come after you immediately. Convert the Monks and starve the Priestesses when this happens. If you should be fast enough (or crazy enough?) to get here first, you can claim the Temple within. Holding on to it will be another story entirely, of course.

To the north of the hero fortress in a large empty unclaimed room are some dangerous Level 7 Wizards, four insideous Lightning Traps, and the ONLY copy of the Lightning spell in this realm. The enemy keeper for some reason usually fails to get this spell book, so check for it after using your Reveal Map special. If it is still there, you should make an effort to retrieve it yourself, because it will give you an enormous advantage in battle. If a bunch of the enemy's imps have trapped themselves on the other side of the lava by skipping across the corner, have a Mistress zap them all and imprison them if possible. I see this happen almost every time, so exploit it if and when it does.

Once all your minions are trained and your ranks have swelled to outnumber your enemy, I recommend taking the fight to him directly. You won't get far by claiming his territory because this keeper will place traps on almost every square of his dungeon. Claim as far as you can bear, killing and imprisoning his imps as much as possible, and then drop your whole army in a safe, de-trapped location. March them to the heart and use your spells to turn the tide in battle. Overall, it will be much easier than it should have been; a relatively mild start to what is going to be a very difficult campaign.