Difficulty: Easy.
Portal max: 12 creatures.
Starting forces: 4 Imps (1st level).
Starting gold: 3000
Possible minions:
Attracted through portal: Fly, Beetle, Demon Spawn, Warlock.
Found elsewhere in the realm: 2 Skeletons (2nd level).
Rooms: Treasure Room, Lair, Hatchery, Training Room, Library.
(Note: From now on, these five rooms will be known as
the "Basic Five", as they are all available in every single one of the 20
standard Dungeon Keeper realms - with one important exception.)
Spells:
Known at start: Create Imp, Possess Creature.
(Note: Possess Creature is always available without
needing to research it, so it is no longer worth remarking on the fact that it
is available. Also, in all of the standard Dungeon Keeper levels, Create Imp is
known right at the start, so once again this is not really worth noting in
future.)
Can research: Speed Creature.
Doors/Traps: None.
Enemies: 1st-level Heroes (Tunnellers, Dwarves, Thieves, Archers, Knight)
Start off in the usual manner, by mining gold,
connecting to a Portal, and building a Lair, Hatchery, Treasure Room and
Training Room. Flies, Beetles and Demon Spawns (the latter being the most
useful) will come visiting. At first, you will only be able to get 8 creatures
from your portal. You'll need more minions for this realm, eventually, and you
know now how to get them: build different types of room to attract different
creatures, as you learned from the Demon Spawn who came to your Training room
when you built it for the first time.
There are two bits of news about this realm. One of them
is bad news: the forces of good are beginning to realise you are a threat, and
they have begun to train up some elven Archers to join the fight against you:
the first time you have faced an enemy with ranged attacks. The other news is
more encouraging: now that your name is beginning to be known, a few of the more
evil-natured citizens are beginning to practice black magic and become Warlocks,
in the hope that you will find a use for their services.
So after having got your dungeon going as mentioned
above, you will want to build a Library to attract Warlocks: once again, it must
be at least 3x3 in size to be of any use. However, in this realm, the practice
of dark sorcery is pretty much in its infancy, and they've only discovered one
spell so far, so you won't need a much bigger one - maybe 4x3 maximum, as it
only needs room for one spellbook. You will also now be attract up to your full
maximum of 12 creatures.
And now you run into the problems of handling creatures
the right way, and giving them the right jobs. Warlocks are your best
researchers: but they're no good at combat. The only way to make them better is
to train them: as they train, they get better and better spells, starting off
with Fireballs at level 2 and Fire Bombs at level 4. Higher-level warlocks are
also faster to research in the library, so it is advisable to train your
warlocks to a high level: however, while they're training, they're not
researching at all, and while they're researching they're not training. The best
compromise in most realms is to have some of the Warlocks researching while
others train, and then swap them over to put the high-level ones to research
while the low-level ones train. In this realm, the problem doesn't arise so
much, because after researching one spell they have nothing else to do but train
anyway... They don't, however, enjoy it enough to do it voluntarily, so you'll
have to put them in the training room manually.
Even high-level Warlocks will still be lousy in melee,
though: because metal armor interferes with the ability to cast spells, so they
are unprotected and easy to hit - and all those hours spent reading books
doesn't do much for the constitution, so it doesn't take many hits to kill them.
So you have to think about which creatures to drop where in a fight, to keep
your Warlocks out of melee range (hint: distracting the enemy first by forcing
him to melee a rather tougher fighter is a good idea...)
(Note: If you stop to look around, you might notice a
couple of unusual rock formations in the permanent rock on the western wall and
in the southwest corner. The southwestern corner is the Hero Fortress, from
which the heroes will come: however, the real interest comes from the western
wall, where a secret passage into the permanent rock leads to a secret Training
Room, inhabited by a couple of people who were so obsessed by their fitness
training that they forgot to eat and starved to death, only to rise again as
Skeleton Warriors who now only exist to train and fight. There need be no better
demonstration of the perils of anorexia and the keep-fit obsession... The
Skeletons are 2nd level when discovered, and will join you immediately, being
useful in melee.)
There is something of a shortage of gold in this realm,
so you would be wise to work reasonably fast in all this. Eventually, the forces
of good will send a couple of parties against you - each one of three heroes,
including a Tunneller: there will also be Archers, Thieves and Dwarves. The
heroes will be carrying gold, which can be spent on further training or on
paying your creatures' wages. Destroy the first wave, and a second wave of two
parties will come against you - again, two parties of three creatures each,
although in this case one of them includes the Lord of the Land, who is stronger
than your previous Knightly victims...
The best strategy is to wait for each party of heroes to
reach your land in turn, before dropping your Demon Spawns (and the two
Skeletons, if you have them) on them to start the fight and occupy their full
attention: then dropping your trained Warlocks a couple of squares away to shoot
fireballs at the enemy, while nobody is left to shoot at
them. For best results,
cast Speed Creature on a couple of your creatures, especially the hand-to-hand
fighters, if you can afford to do this... The fight will be harder than your
previous fights have been, but still not too difficult for you to win.