Dungeon Keeper level 8: Tickle.

Difficulty: Medium.

Your Portal max: 30 creatures.
Enemy Portal max: 27 creatures.

Starting forces: 4 Imps (1st level).
Enemy's starting forces: 4 Imps (1st level).

Starting gold: 9000
Enemy's starting gold: 9000

Possible minions:
Attracted through portal: Fly, Demon Spawn, Warlock, Troll, Orc, Bile Demon, Dark Mistress.
Found elsewhere in level: 2x Hellhound (Level 7), and possibly 1x Barbarian (Level 6).

Rooms:
Known at start: Basic Five.
Can be researched: Bridge, Guard Post, Workshop, Prison, Torture Chamber, Barracks, Temple.

Spells:
Can research: Sight of Evil, Speed Creature, Call to Arms, Conceal Creature, Heal, Lightning.

Doors/Traps: Wooden Door, Braced Door, Iron Door, Poison Gas Trap, Lightning Trap.

Enemies: One enemy Keeper. Also a couple of small bands of heroes.

     Once again, you're faced with an enemy Keeper and no clue as to his location. However, your own location is not great... You're in the southwestern corner of the realm. The disappearance of various gold deposits soon marks out where he is, which is fairly central. There are two small gold deposits near your Heart, which are obviously your first source of income: use these to build your basic dungeon (this should be pretty much second nature by now.) The minions you want are pretty much the usual suspects - Bile Demons, Warlocks, Orcs, Mistresses, Demonspawns. The training room should be in the northwest corner, near the long thin strip of gold. DO NOT attempt to mine this strip yet... there are three Fairies beyond it, of high enough level to be dangerous. (In other words, they can cast Lightning.)

     Don't try to get at the gold deposit that is just south of centre: you can't stop your enemy getting to it as well, and you do not yet want to open hostilities with him. Wall it off instead: dig a corridor in such a place that you can make your imps fortify the northern wall between the two sides of the opening in the permanent rock. Head instead for the H-shaped deposit to the east: beyond it are some trained Demonspawns and two high-level Hellhounds, who will all join you. (You will also find a Transfer Creature special, for use later.) Train all your creatures up. While your creatures are training, let a Hellhound explore (Possess it if necessary.) Try to train a few of your Imps up to 2nd-level but *no higher*.

     At some point you will run short of gold, but you should have at least got a few Orcs and Mistresses to 5th or 6th level respectively before this happens. When this happens - or preferably beforehand, while you still have some gold left - start digging the long thin seam northwest from your realm. The first things you will release are three Fairies, which you should now be able to beat. Follow the gold seam north, then dig further north again to release six enemy 5th-level Barbarians. There may also be a 6th-level barbarian in there, who will join you: or the enemy may have got him first. In any case, beat up the barbarians. Preferably, capture them (and, indeed, preferably capture the Fairies, if you can entice them into your land instead of killing them over lava.) You may convert them, or (better) starve them.

     There are now two possibilities, depending on what the enemy has done:
  1. If he has made inroads into the large northwestern triangular gold seam that is surrounded by permanent rock, then let him have the inside, and bridge around the outside to the outer faces of the gem blocks, and fortify a wall tile to protect the southern entrance to the central triangle so he cannot get out.
  2. If he has not got there yet, then bridge and dig around to get into the eastern end of the triangle, and fortify walls to prevent him getting in at all (if you cannot do this, then abandon this attempt, sell the bridge back, and be content with the outer faces of the gem blocks.) You will now be able to run him out of gold.
     Now, bridge north from the outer face of the northern gem block and dig directly north: you will break into a large open area, which contains an Increase Level (now you know why you wanted a bunch of 2nd-level imps: when their level is increased, they become 3rd-level and can haste themselves, so they can mine the gems faster) and is a useful place to put a treasure room in. If your income is still not fast enough, then find some way of stopping your creatures training - give all the compulsive trainers something else to do (workshop, guard duty, temple duty, or just sitting in the lair) allowing you to train only your imps for a time, until you have enough 3rd-level imps to make money fast enough to let your creatures train again. In any case, you now have access to at least three faces of gem block, and possibly five. Train all your creatures as high as they will go, which means level 10 (Demonspawns will not yet become Dragons in this realm.)

     It is possible to win by any of several means, depending on which tactics you use. But whichever way you choose, you are looking forward to the moment when he no longer has enough creatures left to save his Heart. This should be achievable without too much difficulty (the difficult phase in this realm is trying to get control of the gems, and the money troubles you will face before you have 3rd-level imps mining three gem faces), but do remember to Transfer a creature - of any kind - to the next realm.

     (And don't leave this realm without investigating the northeastern corner completely: there's a small abandoned Hero Fortress in there, with no heroes but several traps including Boulders (be very careful with your creatures, you don't want to lose them), and three magic doors to break down. Two of them have nothing but boulder traps behind them, but the third has a bonus special which will take you to a Hidden World...)

     (There are a lot of strategies that can be used, which begin to come into play on this level. For instance: