Difficulty: Very easy.
Portal max: 7 creatures.
Starting forces: 3 Imps (1st level).
Starting gold: 2500.
Possible minions: Fly, Beetle.
Rooms: Treasure Room, Lair, Hatchery.
Spells: Create Imp, Possess Creature.
Doors/Traps: None.
Enemies: 1st-level Heroes - 2 Tunnellers, 1 Knight (Lord of the Land.)
What a lousy start. Here you are, intending to take on
the entire world at once. You want to get ready to fight your way right to the top,
and topple the great Avatar himself. So you build a dungeon, and paste up all the
notices with promises of great rewards for all those who will follow you. And what
do you get? A handful of flies and beetles...
Look on the bright side, Keeper. It could still be your day
after all. You'll just have to prove your worth to all those demons, dragons,
vampires and orcs out there who don't want to join you just yet. And that means
starting small, taking out the minor realms of goodness and light first. Eversmile
makes a good starting point: it is a long time since the Earl of this realm has
donned his armour for real battle (a more pitiful apology for a Knight it would be
hard to find) and he has no real standing army at his back either. In fact, all you
have to do is follow the instructions to win here...
The first priority is to actually have the funds to pay the
creatures: they don't work for love, they want shiny things. Preferably yellow shiny
things... So build a Treasure Room in that little 3x3 room to your west, then mine
out the gold to the east of your Heart. (Remember, you have to actually dig through
the wall of your own dungeon to get to the actual gold. D'OH!)
Next, you'll want somewhere for creatures to live. You will
now be able to lay down a Lair in the area where the gold used to be, once you've
claimed the land where it used to be.
At last, you're ready to attract some actual creatures. Dig
over to the Portal (the flashing unclaimed area to the north: the location of all
unclaimed Portals is always known to all Keepers.) If you have no Portal, you cannot
normally gain any creature: you will encounter exceptions to this rule later, but not
in this realm.
Your first minion will be a giant mutant Fly - you haven't
done enough to impress the dragons or demons in this world yet (in fact, none have
come near this realm for a very long time, so they aren't even watching...) so the
Fly will just have to do.
Flies are great explorers, as you will eventually find out.
However, they’re total wimps in combat: besides, exploration isn't a serious problem
in this realm. Right now, you're faced with a more mundane matter: now you have
creatures, and can pay them, but can you feed them? The answer is a Hatchery full of
chickens: dig out another 3x3 area (one to the south of your Heart will do), and
build a Hatchery in that.
You will soon be rewarded by the presence of another type of
minion: a giant Beetle, who also requires little except a single place to sleep, and
some food every so often. Like the Fly, he isn’t worth much against tough opposition,
but in this realm he’s the best fighter you’re going to get. In fact, if you get too
many flies you may want to toss some back into the portal in the hope of getting more
beetles to do your fighting for you.
Set your imps to fortifying walls around your dungeon, by
dropping them next to a piece of earth which walls your dungeon and letting them work
at it for a minute. Any dumb Tunneller Dwarf can dig through earth, but they can't
come through a properly-built wall. You should also by now have learned to create
more imps than the three you started with, by use of a magic spell.
At some point, a couple of mining Tunneller Dwarves will come
visiting, mainly because they’re wondering where the gold seam that used to be here
has gone (although, strangely, Tunnellers cannot actually dig through gold, as you
will later find out.) If they hit your fortified walls and cannot dig through them,
they will tunnel around until they can get in - it is possible to wall them out
completely, but pointless as you will have to eventually let them in anyway.
Tunnellers are wimps: drop your Beetles on them, followed by the Flies, and they will
fall quickly. (Watch the fights very carefully: if one of your Imps comes under
attack, pick him out of the way fast.)
At this point, the Lord of the Land will become somewhat
perturbed at the disappearance of the two Tunnellers. Is evil threatening to spring
up underneath his unguarded realm? Unfortunately he has no other heroes on his side
to investigate, so he must come himself, and alone. (I told you this realm wasn't
well defended.) Drop all your creatures on him at once, Beetles first: they should
kill him fairly easily, giving you your first victory.
(Note: No creature can be attacked in melee by more than 4 creatures: if you drop all
seven of your creatures in this realm on one enemy, the three last to be dropped will
simply mill around aimlessly near the fighting, until they get a chance to join in.)