Difficulty: Harder than it ought to be, mainly due to shortage of gold.
Your Portal max: 25 creatures.
Enemy Portal max: 20 creatures.
Starting forces: 4 Imps (1st level).
Enemy's starting forces: 4 Imps (1st level).
Starting gold: 3000
Enemy's starting gold: 7500
Possible minions:
Attracted through portal: Fly, Spider, Beetle, Demon Spawn, Warlock, Troll, Orc,
Bile Demon, Dark Mistress.
Rooms:
Known at start: Basic Five.
Can be researched: Bridge, Guard Post, Workshop, Prison, Torture Chamber.
Gained later: Barracks.
Spells:
Can research: Sight of Evil, Speed Creature, Call to Arms, Heal, Lightning.
Doors/Traps: Wooden Door, Braced Door, Poison Gas Trap, Lightning Trap.
Enemies: One enemy Keeper with access to more gold than you, plus some heroes headed by a 4th-level Knight who guard a couple of hoards of gold in their fortress...
For the first time, you're faced with two separate enemies:
an enemy Keeper to the left of you (his portal is not visible, unlike the portals in
previous realms: this is because it belongs to him before you enter the realm, and so it
is never "unaligned", and only unaligned portals are automatically made visible to the
player) and some heroes to the right, who have set up a small fortress of their own and
dug out several long corridors from it. Furthermore, the location is not good: while
you're pretty well set up for defence (surrounded by lava and permanent rock), you don't
have a great deal of room to expand, and you have less gold available than is visible in
the enemy's three separate deposits.
On the plus side, you have four clear 5x5 rooms that you
don't have to spend the time digging out. Place the training room, when you have time
and money to build it, in the room to the east, and dig directly eastwards from it to
the lava: this is your first main entrance to your dungeon. Put the Library to the south,
the Hatchery to the north, and a Lair to the west (best arrangement). But first, you're
going to have to dig out another 5x5 room in one of the corners (between the Hatchery and
Training Room for preference, i.e. the northeast corner) and make it into your Treasure
Room, so you can then dig out the gold to buy the other rooms with...
So you'd better get moving if you're to get a faster start
than your enemy. Make sure, as fast as possible, that you have at least one 5x5 room of
each of your basic five rooms, and get your creatures into training as fast as you can.
As soon as you get a few creatures, you'll encounter a stroke
of good luck: an Orc warrior with ambition has decided that, despite your apparently inferior
position in this realm, you are clearly the one to watch - and he will join you and bring with
him some plans for expansion, and details of the Barracks room which you can use to attract
more Orcs: 9 or more tiles will attract more Orcs. And once you've got Orcs for your minions,
you'll wonder how you ever did without them: they are quick and cheap to train, very loyal,
don't have any enemies, don't take much money on pay-days, good at hitting things in combat
(getting even better at this when they can Haste themselves at 5th level) and pretty good in
the Workshop too.
Once you have one or more Orcs, throw back all Flies, Spiders,
Beetles and Trolls: they're too wimpy for you. You will need a sizeable Workshop in this realm,
a Barracks to attract more Orcs, and a Torture Chamber to attract Mistresses. And possibly a
Prison in which you can create Skeletons from dead heroes.
Build up a decent-sized army of Bile Demons, Demonspawns, Orcs,
Warlocks and Mistresses, and train them up a few levels. Build a bridge tile to the east to
let some heroes assault your dungeon, maybe also one to the west - don't bother torturing them
if you capture any: let them starve and become Skeletons, apart from the Lord of the Land if
you capture him. The best place for any Skeletons you create is, in fact, straight back into
the fight to weaken the enemy while your main force trains and/or rests and heals up. Don't let
too many Skeletons try to train, you need to spend the money on your better troops: and once
the Lord of the Land is dead, throw any excess Skeletons back if you have more than 25 minions
(lowest-level ones first, of course.)
Kill or imprison the heroes and take the gold they were carrying.
If your own creatures are badly weakened, or if too many heroes come after you, sell the bridge
connecting you to the east, and the heroes will no longer be able to enter your dungeon, so
your minions can rest and recover. Eventually, you will kill all the remaining heroes, and the
Lord of the Land will turn up. Kill him (or, better still, capture and convert him - what could
be better than having a pet Knight on your side, apart from having *two* pet Knights?) and
you've dealt with one of your enemies in this realm.
There is plenty of gold within the hero fortress (many gold pots,
containing 28,000 pieces in total, in addition to any gold dropped by dead heroes), and two
Specials (an Increase Level and a Resurrect Creature, both of which will be very useful to you)
but there are a couple of lightning traps in one area which are more than likely to take out a
lot of your imp population almost before they know it's there. Be careful near them.
And now it's time to go after the enemy Keeper. Dig westwards
from the northern tip of one of the corridors (use Sight of Evil to find the right area to
dig): you will either break into a corridor that goes right round to the back of his
northwestern gold deposit, or dig a new one in the same direction. Prepare as best you can,
then bridge eastwards straight into the enemy's Heart room (which you will actually see just
over the water from the gold you've just mined out) and drop everything at once. You should
win the fight, and this should give you victory in the realm (if it doesn't, then there's a
hero somewhere down a corridor which you missed: find and kill him.)
(Note: There will be a Transfer Creature special, either behind
his southernmost gold deposit (if he hasn't found it) or in his library (if he has): use this
on your best creature - Mistress, Orc or Warlock. I recommend using it on the highest-level
Mistress, if you have any high-level Mistresses left, or a Warlock otherwise.)
(Also note: Enemy Keepers are not very good at projecting their
power across lava, or even water, in general. This particular one may not have even mined out
his NW gold deposit. If he hasn't, bully for you - you can loot it yourself, and any more gold
that he hasn't done yet.)
(Hint: In realms with a gold shortage, torturing creatures can
be a good idea if done properly: as torturing a creature makes other creatures of the same
type accept less pay. The tortured creature will get angry, though, so only begin torturing
him just before pay-day, and get him out of there after his fellows have taken their pay:
then pay him by hand, to make him happy again, which means dropping a small handful of gold
on him rather than just dropping him in the treasury.)
(Hint: There is one general trick which you can use in future
realms, to defuse Lightning or Gas traps quickly: hold two imps in your hand. Claim up to the
square adjacent to the trap. Drop one nearby, let it set the trap off and die. Then immediately
drop the other imp by the trapped square as soon as the trap has stopped firing. If you're
lucky, it might claim the square (and thus disarm the trap) before the trap resets... It is
possible to disarm the traps for the loss of just one imp each, this way: it depends how
careful you are...)