Difficulty: Medium but EXTREMELY risky, or punishingly hard but less risky. Your choice, depending on who you transferred from the previous realm.
Your Portal max: 17 creatures.
Enemy Portal max: 17 creatures.
Starting forces: 8 Imps, 1 Warlock, 2 Horned Reapers (all 1st level)
Enemy's starting forces: 7 Imps (1st level), 2 Orcs (8th level), 1 Vampire (2nd level).
Starting gold: 27500
Enemy's starting gold: 33500
Possible minions:
You can attract: Bile Demon (up to 2), Troll (up to 8), Orc, Skeleton, Tentacle.
Enemy can attract: Bile Demon (up to 2), Orc, Dragon, Warlock, Dark Mistress, Hellhound.
Rooms:
Known at start: Basic Five, Bridge, Guard Post.
Can be researched: All others.
Spells:
Start with: Sight of Evil, Must Obey.
Can research: All others - Speed Creature, Call to Arms, Conceal Creature, Hold Audience, Cave-In, Heal, Lightning, Protect Creature, Chicken, Disease, Armageddon, Destroy Walls.
Doors/Traps:
Can be manufactured: Iron, Magic Doors: Alarm, Gas, Word of Power Traps.
You have: Several Alarm, Gas and Word of Power traps already set, which may be replaced, and one Boulder trap which can only be used once as you cannot reset it.
The enemy has: 6 Alarm traps scattered around his Heart.
Enemies: One enemy Keeper, and several powerful heroes but no Lord of the Land.
This realm is possibly the hardest of all of them, in fact.
You really need to be able to keep an eye on the whole realm, and have your minions working
in several different areas at once.
The first steps, before anything else, are to build a Hatchery
in the central one of your three northern rooms, and a Lair in one of the 5x5 ones: this will
give you over 25 squares of Hatchery and Lair each, enough to attract the only two Bile Demons
in this realm before the enemy gets them. Then build a Library in the other 5x5 room, and get
your Warlock (and transferred creature, if you have one and if he can research) researching
immediately. Get both of the 1st-level reapers training - fast. If you transferred a researcher
(Dragon, or a hasted-up Mistress), get your 1st-level Warlock training as well, for use later
when you really need fast research: because slow research is going to be one of your worst
problems.
What you do next depends on who you transferred from the previous
realm...
- If it was a high-level Reaper or Dragon, save the game immediately, possess him and
charge southwards straight for the enemy Heart, beating up his two starting 8th-level
orcs on the way: he may win, or he may lose. If he loses, reload from the save... If
you destroy the enemy Heart early, then you have officially won the level: this means
that there will be no further hero drops, no more heroes will appear on the map except
those who are already present at the start. Get 17 creatures of your choice, train
them up, and use the Transfer Creature you will find in this realm...
- If it was anything else, you're stuck with the hard way...
There are two serious problems with the "hard" way to win:
firstly, that the enemy will eventually beat down your two Magic doors, probably before you've
had the chance to build replacements, and start claiming your corridors - the long east-west
one, and the long north-south one up to the central room between your two Reapers' quarters.
Secondly, that up to three parties of high-level tunnelling heroes will appear in the realm,
all in the same place - a small room to the west. If they break into your dungeon, you can
basically consider yourself dead. The worst problem is that if the enemy claims your corridors,
the walls will turn to earth, providing a place for the heroes to get in...
There are two ways to approach the problem: wall the heroes out,
or wall them in. If you want to wall them out, then you have to dig and fortify as fast as you
can, and force them to go the long way around the north side of your dungeon. Eventually, they
will break into the enemy dungeon. You hope they will destroy him for you, or at least weaken
him so that your meagre forces of 2 reapers, 2 bile demons and however many trolls, skeletons,
tentacles and orcs you've managed to attract can defeat what remains. You can protect the walls
of your long north-south corridor, and possibly the east-west one too, by digging, claiming and
fortifying the walls of corridors and rooms of your own along the outside of the relevant walls
(these outer corridors that you dig must be accessible only from the north of your dungeon by
long tunnels, not from the actual east-west and north-south corridors themselves - as long as
you fortify the outer walls of these to stop the heroes getting in there.)
Alternatively, you can wall the heroes in to their portal,
assuming you know where it is (not for nothing do you start off with Sight of Evil.) In that
case, you're backing yourself to keep the enemy keeper out single-handed. The one and only
boulder trap will kill the first few of the enemy keeper's creatures to invade, and slow him
down a bit - especially if his starting high-level orcs die under that boulder. Again, to
protect your long corridors' fortified walls, dig parallel corridors on the other side of the
walls and place your rooms there. Mine the gold, enough to keep your Reapers training and your
income up: and dig around the western and eastern hero fortresses WITHOUT entering them, to
fortify the walls over to the edges of the dungeon, to stop the enemy getting into them. The
only way into your dungeon is now up the long central north-south corridor with fortified walls
which, crucially, DON'T turn to earth when the enemy claims the tiles next to them.
You now have time and space to build doors and traps to keep the
enemy out, down that corridor - keep your trolls manufacturing while the bile demons, orcs and
reapers train. (You shouldn't have much trouble at least researching up to the Barracks and
Prison.) You will need to do this, as he will make periodic attacks up your corridor, and you'll
need to have something to slow him down while his creatures are more powerful than yours.
Once your reapers are level 4 or 5, they're hard enough to be
worth using in a fight, and they and your now-high-level bile demons (and orcs, which should
now be over level 5) can turn the tide, and you can start beating your enemy's creatures
instead of simply trying to keep them out. Drop a locked door between some of them to separate
them, and try to pick them off one or two at a time - capture, imprison and keep alive, don't
kill them: indeed, Heal them to make sure they live. Capture imps alive, and DON'T convert
them - just keep them away from him.
Meanwhile, enter the hero fortresses one at a time, the western
one first: imprison the defenders, get a large force of Skeletons, train them up, take control
of the gems and the Transfer Creature. There's a Resurrect Creature in the northeastern
fortress, a Multiply Creatures (guarded by a couple of enemy heroes, Samurai and Witch, and
several boulder traps) in the far northwest corner, and a second Portal in the large eastern
fortress, which is well guarded by enemies, which you can capture and either starve or torture.
When you think you're powerful enough, take out the enemy Keeper. Then, for good measure, beat
up the remaining high-level heroes (still walled into their portal) as well, though you don't
need to...
(You'll be able to transfer a creature of your choice. Either
Orc or Horny, or a captured and converted Dragon or Mistress, or even a converted hero Samurai
or Wizard would be nice: ex-hero Wizards are better than Warlocks, they research faster and
don't argue with vampires.)