Dungeon Keeping
wouldn't be very rewarding without some Lackeys to push around. Creatures
make up your workforce and army. They are your eyes, ears, and hands. Of
course, before you can use these creatures to best advantage, it helps
to know what your little evil helpers are capable of…
Monster Management
101:
The most important
skill for any Dungeon Keeper is learning how to manage your minions. You
can amass all the gold and spells imaginable, but none of it will do you
any good if your forces are slaughtered due to lack of experience, poor
deployment or--Hell forbid--by ridiculous infighting. The real trick is
to know your monsters' strengths and weaknesses, and to make sure that
you have the right menace for the job.
The biggest
mistake novice Dungeon Keepers make is deploying inexperienced monsters.
Literally, if there is any monster less than third level outside of your
Training rooms, you are either in the last moments of a fight to the death
or you are soon going to be on the losing end of one. No minion, from Imp
to Dragon, is very effective until at least third level, where some special
abilities start to come in. Resist the temptation to throw your troops
into battle en masse; the truth is that even a Horned Reaper dies embarrassingly
quickly when it's only a fledgling first level.
You should
also resist the temptation of prematurely putting monsters to work researching
or building traps. While you want your Libraries and Workshops producing
as soon as possible, higher-level workers not only do their jobs faster
and more efficiently, but they also make much more effective guards for
these important rooms. There is nothing worse than a single fifth-level
Bile Demon wandering in to massacre your geeky spell research staff of
ten first-level Warlocks. And do not forget that a third of your Imps should
be in training at any given moment, until your entire construction staff
is above the third level.
Unless you
are severely strapped for cash or building space, try to build at least
one small set of support rooms (Lairs, Treasuries, Hatcheries, Training
Areas, and so on) so that you have somewhere to separate some of your more
provincial minions who tend to come to work with some awkward prejudices.
This racial strife, while not a huge factor in the long run, can make your
life as Keeper a living nightmare. The following monsters still have some
personal issues to work out--it's best to keep them as separate as possible,
namely by moving them to your backup Lair and making sure the odds are
highly unlikely that they will bump into each other at all
Bile Demons
and Skeletons
Warlocks and
vampires
Flies and
Spiders
Hell Hounds
and Demon Spawns
Creature
Feature:
1-Imp.
2-Fly.
3-Beetle.
4-Spider.
5-Bile
Demon.
6-Demon
Spawn.
7-Dragon.
8-Warlock.
9-Troll.
10-Orc.
11-Tentacle.
12-Skeleton.
13-Ghost.
14-
Dark Mistress.
15-Vampire.
16-Hell
Hound.
17-Horned
Reaper.