Better Building Through Necessity


A lot of times, you will get complaints in DK and DK2. Why? Because either your creatures are A) occupied with doing something else, B) incapable of reaching what they want within a certain about of time, or C) are so F*CKING _SLOW_ that if everything it wants isn't right next to it, it'll just break down and WHINE.

Bile Demons, Salamanders and Rogues are your chief suspects in whinery, with Wizards, Giants, Fireflies and Fairies coming in at a close second place.

Why?

Bile Demons, Salamanders and Giants are slow. In order to solve this, you should grab them after doing ANYTHING that moves them away from your main dungeon and their lair and toss them into a hatchery.

As for Rogues and Fireflies, their primary complaint is usually food because they tend to wander so far away from your dungeon. When this pops up, grab a few chickens, then them, toss them onto a square of your land and feed them.

Hero creatures will often complain that they're in the company of creatures they hate. This is usually their primary enemies. Look at the Good Guy lists to find out who hates who. Wizards, Fairies and Warlocks can't play nice, so make a separate library for Wizards and Fairies.

If you've just gained an extra portal a fair distance from your normal dungeon, check it every so often. Be sure to grab every creature that enters and drop them in an open lair. This prevents them from going to do something (like train, research or manufacture) only to complain later about not having a lair because they were doing something else. The less often creatures complain, get angry or sad, the less likely you'll have creatures ditching you at inoppurtune moments.

Dig out a 5x5 square. Fill the middle 3x3 with a hatchery, then fill the corners with lairs, making sure NOT to obstruct the entrance(s) to the room. This will make sure that no one will complain about not finding a lair when there's plenty of space. Of course, this reduces the number of available lairs to 12-14. That means you'll likely have to make another room if you have more than one portal or if you want to convert. This will also provide a food source for creatures right as they wake up.
It should look something like so If built as a four-way intersection: ("WALK" represents open areas)

[WALL][WALK][WALL]
[WALL][WALL]
[WALK][WALK][WALK][WALK]
[WALL][WALL]
[WALL][WALK][WALL]

When making a workshop, if there's room, dig out a 4x5 section right NEXT to the workshop, do not make a separate room. Place a 3x5 hatchery directly next to the workshop and a 1x5 section of lairs. Pick up every troll and/or bile demon who enters and place them in those lairs. This will maximize their time in the workshop because they have both food AND their homes nearby.
It should look like so:





Workshops, Libraries, Torture Rooms and Training Rooms gain more areas for creatures to use for every 3 rows of uninterupted (in other words, a straight line like so ---) reinforced walls (or if the walls are solid rock). A 3x3 torture room can have up to 4 work spaces IF the walls are reinforced.
So, a 3x3 torture chamber could be like so and still have maximum efficiency: ("T" stands for Torture Rack [where a torture rack would be in a 3x3 torture chamber], W stands for wall, E stands for entrance.)

W T W
T T T
W E W
This means, up to 4 prisoners could be tortured in a 3x3. A 5x5 would have to look like this for max effeciency:
W T W T W
T T T T T
W T T T W
T T T T T
W T W E W
And it could have a maximum of _16_ creatures being tortured. Had the entrance been in the center of the wall on the bottom, only 15 creatures could've been tortured.



The necessary parts:
All dungeons require lairs and hatcheries. Most require a treasury, but you can get more use from them if you grab the accumulated wealth from the treasuries you already have and place them around the sections in your heart. The amount of cash you have will lower, but your creatures can still get paid and if you use enough to drain the current amount of cash, the cash will seemingly 'restore' itself.

Workshops are needed if you don't want to waste your time with Guard Rooms. Prisons are a requirement for skeletons or if you want to convert creatures. Torture chambers are only needed for attracting Mistresses (and Dark Knights) or for converting heroes, but they can be useful for when your prisons are overfull and you instead want corpses for the graveyard. Of course, on levels without portals, you'd be well advised to convert rather than kill as hero creatures more often have much higher HP than your creatures.

Combat Pits are a requirement if you're playing honest (in a game about evil? HA!) and need higher level minions. Don't place undead into the combat pit unless you're willing to hover over the pit and heal them. And NEVER place a Vampire in with a Monk.

Temples are only a necessity to ease the whinings of some of your creatures later on or if you want two Dark Angels. Unless you've got a LOT of money, don't make more than one 5x5 temple.

Remember that Graveyards are expensive. The typical 3x3 needs 18000 gold to construct. Consider that carefully before opting to make one. Of course, if your imps are taking their sweet time claim a room, you'll need one as it'll be less than likely for them to finish in time to haul the bodies of fallen enemies to your prison.

When deciding to torture creatures, there are three ways to make sure that they survive the process. High level creatures will like only need a single heal spell before being tossed on the rack.

However, weak creatures like the Fairy don't have many Hit Points, so it's possible that they'll die if unattended. And since Fairies have the ever useful lightning bolt spell, it's best if you have them as they add some nice long distance firepower. So, you should always return to the torture chamber and heal up the creatures who's health has fallen to two or three petals, unless you want corpses for the graveyard.

Feeding chickens to creatures on the torture rack will slow their rate of HP loss and with enough, may even begin to restore health. This has the added bonus that they'll seek out a lair first rather than go to eat. Unfortunately, to bring their health up using only chickens will likely drain your supply of chickens drastically. Remember that your minions still need to eat.

To review, the three methods, in case you missed them, are as follows:
1) Give them a single heal spell and hope they live.
2) Give them healing spells when they need it and watch low level and/or characteristically weak creatures carefully to make sure they survive.
3) Give them chickens to keep their health up.



Better Defenses

Planning defenses is a bit tougher than one might think. For example, if you simply slap a sentry cannon out in the middle of nowhere near where heroes are, then come back, chances are 1 in 10 that the trap isn't destroyed. However, if you place thirty sentry cannons around your heart, but you're an excellent keeper and things rarely get anywhere near your heart, then chances are that those cannons will are going to waste.

So, how do you keep your defenses up while keeping them effective?

Doors are almost always a good start. Putting steel or magic doors around your Dungeon Heart. This will always buy you time to defend your heart with lightning bolts as your mana replenishes. Doors are also a good way of telling if that Rogue with your colors is yours or not, as enemy creatures, even when imitating yours, can't walk through your doors when one of your creatures isn't around to 'open' it. So, if one of 'your' rogues is going around attacking closed doors, lightning bolt the %@#$er until he's dead on the ground.

A row of sentry cannons facing an enemy fortress while you build up your army is a good idea, but these leave the sentry cannons themselves undefended if the hero forces decide to charge in and break them. To slow down enemy advance, place barricades in front of the sentry cannons. More often than not, the heroes will be so busy focusing on the sentry cannons that they maybe halfway to defeat before they even begin to attack the barricade.

Fear traps are a great trap to tagteam with sentry cannons. The fear traps will force any non-undead to back off as it flares with it's fear aura, giving the cannons enough time to fire another volley.

Another trap that's good to use together with the sentry cannons is the lightning trap. This weapon will stun all non-possessed creatures as it discharges. With this tagteam and a row of barricades to protect them, you may find yourself having decimated attackers before they can begin invading your dungeon proper.

The gas trap, the freeze trap and the spike trap are other brilliant items. Often, the enemy won't see them until they activate. Tagteaming them with fear traps will slow down the enemy advance through the traps, giving you plenty of time to organize a force to defend your dungeon.

The fire trap is powerful and a great weapon to wear down enemies as it uses an omnidirectional version of Firebomb. But the mana drain is rather high. I'd only recommend this on levels where mana is plentiful.

The boulder trap is a limited weapon, but very useful despite that. You can slap your own boulder traps to mow down anything in the direction. Note, though, that it will always try to move 'upwards', so be sure to angle your screen so that what you want crushed is 'upwards'. Also, be sure to grab all your creatures out of the way, because this is one trap that's unforgiving to all.

While they seem like very useful, the trigger trap and alarm trap are actually the traps you'll wind up using the least. The trigger trap prevents all traps in the area from simply firing at will, and organizes a concentrated effort. However, this is actually only useful if you _plan_ to allow the enemy into your dungeon. The alarm trap draws all creatures within a certain radius to it. This is hardly useful if your creatures are all really far away. Also, it blares even if it's only a lowly imp who happens to be running past it's 'comfort' zone and won't shut off until it's sold or destroyed. Frankly, I find it too damn useless.