This level finally steps the difficulty up a notch, though it's a small one ultimately. The chief annoyance here is the fact that your portal limit is only four creatures, and you already start with four cranky Warlocks. This means that there is absolutely no use rushing for your portal - not a single creature will ever emerge from it unless you somehow manage to lose all of your minions. With this guide on your side, that would be a mean feat.

The realms of the Deeper Dungeons become progressively more complex, to the point where describing them accurately and concisely in only text becomes almost impossible. Beginning with this level, I am going to provide graphic maps marked with numbers, like the one below. I will then refer to locations on the map by number when describing them. This will make following the guide easier, I hope.

So, you begin this realm in the south without much territory at your disposal. Though there are three enemies in this realm, none except the Blue keeper can pose a serious threat to your territory. Yellow cannot build bridges, and Green gets too confused by the choke point south of him to even try.

This means the first thing to do is to tunnel one block west of your portal and then north between the water and the small cache of heroes in the cave marked 4. Possess one of your speedy Imps and dig straight up through the gold vein, being careful to leave one block of soil along the Blue keeper's pre-existing wall. He will be occupied with digging gold to the north for the time being, so now is a good time to fortify across this narrow gap and seal him within, claiming the four-faced gem block for yourself.

(Note that like in previous realms, doing this will not run the Blue keeper dry even though he has no gems. In the Deeper Dungeons, enemy keepers understand how to sell items from their Workshops to stay in business.)

Now, at point 1 on the west side of the small pond, and point 2 behind the gold to your southwest you can obtain a level 5 Bile Demon and five level 4 Skeletons. Be sure to keep them separated in different lairs, since you need the Bile Demon for your Workshop while the Skeletons train. Ordinarily you would wait until late in the game to retrieve these monsters, but you may as well get them as soon as you have built a lair and hatchery.

In the same cave where you find the skeletons (point 3), you will find an Increase Level special. Save this for later.

While your first set of minions train to around level 6 or 7 and your Warlocks research, tunnel south of the hero keep to the east to points 8 and 9. You will find a second Increase Level special and your one and only level 5 Mistress. Continue to tunnel north and stop short of the second step out from the wall in the solid rock. Tunnel across the gap and fortify here, just in case the Yellow keeper finds a way across the water (I have never seen this happen so far, though).

Finally, to finish your fortifications, tunnel north from your portal and use one-block-at-a-time fortifying trick to seal off the central lake. The heroes within include 2 level 6 Samurai, 3 level 4 Archers, and 4 level 5 Mountain Dwarves, which are bound to be more than you can handle at one time. If you do not seal off the lake, the Green keeper will eventually send some Imps out to dig around. They may release heroes in your area to attack you, and you don't want that. If the Green keeper does break into the lake, the heroes will attack him. Unfortunately, he will always thrash them soundly.

In the middle of the lake at point 5 you will find a Make Safe special. However, it is largely useless in this realm.

Once you have completed training to around level 7, you can break into the eastern hero keep at point 6. Within are several groups of level 4 Archers and Barbarians and a couple of feisty level 7 Giants. Take on one group at a time with your whole army, and then burst into the prisons. You will free 11 Level 3 Skeletons in all to beef up your ranks. Now would probably be a good time to use one or both of your Increase Level Specials.

North of the hero keep at point 7 you will find two high-level Vampires and a valuable Graveyard, but they are extremely well-guarded. In the cave before the Graveyard you will find 5 medium-level Samurai and a level 10 Knight. These guys are bad news. You might think that you could sneak around them and use a shot of your Destroy Walls spell on the Vampires' Graveyard, but this is a no-go. Shortly after you do this, the Samurai will once again come bursting through the unaligned door like maniacs. While it is a sight to see, you better have some Boulder traps waiting for them if you try it.

It might be better to put off getting the Vampires until later, but the choice is yours. If you obtain it before attacking the Blue keeper, you will be able to make Vampires from his creatures. Otherwise, you can try it later with Green or Yellow victims. Also, the Blue keeper possesses a torture room which you could use to convert the heroes in this realm if Skeletons are not doing it for you. If you slaughter the heroes with traps now, you lose any chance of making either allies or Skeletons out of them.

The Blue keeper is the weakest here, and thus he will be our first major target. I suggest placing a line of lava traps across the gap a row or two out from your gems, selling off any bridges you may have across the water, and putting guard posts on any openings you may have made on the southern shore (I had a large treasure room there, myself). Once you have quarantined the area next to your gem tile, have an expendable Imp dig out one tile of your retaining wall and prepare for the worst.

The Blue keeper will come flooding out of this hole in short order with his Imps. I recommend turning on Imprisonment and positioning Mistresses, Skeletons, or Vampires (if you have them already) on the gem-side shore of your line of lava traps as the enemy sets them off. The lightning and drain spells will knock out the enemy's Imps quickly. When they stop coming and their bite-size bodies litter the ground, build a bridge across your lava trap gap and let your Imps haul them to jail. This will allow you to once again claim his dungeon willy-nilly.

(By the way, I recommend that you begin to save frequently, and use multiple save slots as backups. Not only is it easy to mess something up, but this level tends to trigger bugs in the game engine due to having three highly active AIs. This level will frequently crash the game, and you do not want to lose all of your progress.)

The Blue keeper can offer frightful resistance. His monsters are uniformly strong, and the four Level 10 Mistresses he started with are only icing on the cake. Do not at all be surprised if you find that all three of the enemy keepers in this realm have obtained Horned Reapers via sacrifice in the temple, and have managed to train them to high level. It seems they can now do these things with regular success! Fortunately, the Blue keeper has few if any traps, so claiming off his rooms is fairly easy.

Just be careful. If you anger his minions sufficiently, they will begin to tear up the dungeon. Normally this is a great thing, but you really want the Torture Room. If you lose your opportunity to get it here, you will have to wait until attacking the next keeper to get a second chance. Since the Torture Room here is very close to the Lair, it will invariably be one of the first rooms to get ripped up in the event of an Orc revolt.

Once you have him whittled down, take out the dungeon heart (or for fun, claim everything in the dungeon and leave the heart beating to helplessly watch the rest of your campaign). Claim off the dungeon, and within you will most likely find a Resurrect Creature special. If it is not in the Blue keeper's library, then you can find it at point 11. Use it now if you lost any creatures in the melee.

Hopefully you either imprisoned some of his minions, or have managed to drag their corpses to one of your Graveyards. This will give you additional Skeletons or Vampires which you will need for your upcoming conquests. The Green and Yellow keepers are more aggressive than the Blue keeper was, and they have more creatures to boot.

After training any additional monsters you possess is a good time to mop up any remaining heroes on the map. The cave at point 4 contains only a few medium-level idiots. Once you decide to break out into the central lake, the cave at point 10 holds multiple level 6 Samurai, level 5 Barbarians, and a neutral level 10 Imp for you to claim. You may wish to starve the Barbarians, but torturing Samurai would be a good idea in my opinion. If you do, just be sure they do not kill your only Mistress.

I would take out the Green keeper next, and for only one reason. The Green keeper suffers the same stupid AI bug that we saw in the previous level. He is allowed to set traps illegally, with dozens if not hundreds on a single tile and even on room tiles. These traps and the enormous workshops he builds to make them can bog down and even crash the game, so the sooner you kill off the Green keeper, the sooner you can stop worrying about the game crashing so much.

There's really not much for me to say about beating him. Establish a beach head in the cave south of his dungeon. Fill it with Magic Doors and Boulder traps, then cut it off from your Imps temporarily by placing a Guard Post against the lake.

The Green keeper will occasionally agitate and try to attack your beach head. This is good. Every time he knocks down your doors, he will be greeted with rolling death. You can shave down his forces in very little time, as long as you use Cave-In liberally to scare away any Imps, and replace your doors between rounds.

Once you tire of this, run your creatures through his gauntlet of deadly Indy-traps the best you can and get them to his heart room, which is only a short jaunt north. I was able to get all of my creatures to his heart with the loss of only four Skeletons despite about twenty boulders going off.

In this keeper's library you should find yet another Resurrect Creature special (if it's not there, check point 12), which you will definitely need by now, and the all-powerful Lightning spell, which he was kind enough to research for you. Absolutely do NOT let your high-level Imps or your other creatures wander through the ruins of his dungeon! Due to the trap bug in this keeper's AI, his traps do not disappear when you defeat him as they usually would. This means you still have live boulders, lava traps, and poison gas traps (thirty to a single tile) everywhere. If you want to make use of his space, I recommend that you take these out with expendable Imps (spawn two at a time and sacrifice one in the temple each time to run down your costs). Frankly, you do not need to do this unless you are certifiably OCD.

Two down and one to go. You can smell the Yellow keeper's fear from across the realm. You will find him considerably softer than the Green keeper, having no Lightning spell and far fewer traps (most of the ones he has are ones he started the map with, thanks to some clever level design).

To attack Yellow, you have but one option. Break into the small lake to the far east, bridge across, and once again establish a beach head. This time you won't be able to exploit traps, however. I recommend using the concealed-Imp claiming strategy. For some reason, this keeper's Imps will largely ignore you as you claim their dungeon out from under them. If they do not for some reason, you have the Lightning spell to put them back in their place.

Unlike with the Blue keeper, you don't give two cents for what happens to this keeper's rooms, so piss off his creatures and howl at the moon while they destroy their own home. You may find his creatures to be undertrained. If so, strike for his heart as fast as possible and just get it over with already. I was able to take on the majority of his army in all-out war with only five casualties (all Skeletons). Just make judicious use of Heal and Protect by clicking on your creatures' faces in the Battle Information pane when it pops up, and back them up with your lethal Lightning.

You may find an Increase Level special in his library. If not, check point 13 on the map. However, there's very little use for it now. Assuming that you did not leave the other enemies' hearts beating as a gag, you have now conquered this realm and wiped out all resistance. Truly a majestic victory.