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Training rooms can only get your creatures to level four, but at level four, a lot of your creatures add really useful spells
So, you're tired of being the nice guy. You are sick of killing the evil wizard who kidnapped the lovely princess and is forcing her to marry his homely-as-a- hermaphrodite-troll son. You want a change. You want to be the bad guy doing all the nasty things. Well, you've come to the right place.

Dungeon Keeper 2, like its predecessor, puts you in command of building a dungeon and killing good guys and other bad guys. There is even a great campaign that slowly introduces you to all the rooms, traps, and spells at your disposal. However, the first thing you should do is play the first My Pet Dungeon map. These maps allow you to build dungeons and only deal with heroes when you are completely ready for them. The maps also tell you in great detail exactly what each creature, trap, and room does for you. Finally, it makes it really easy to capture and covert heroes so you can see what their strengths and weaknesses are as well. After you play through that, you should be familiar with what everything does. However, there are a few things you can do to maximize their efficiency and usefulness.

The warlock provides you with your primary spell research. Also, his fireballs make for a nice addition to combat, coming in as, er, "fire support" from behind your front lines
The rooms
The most important rooms in your dungeon are the lair and hatchery. These are must-have rooms since your creatures need a place to rest and they need food. Otherwise, they get mad and leave. Each square of a lair can hold one creature. A portal can summon fifteen creatures. Right away, that means your first lair should be 3x5 to house all those creatures. Hatcheries can be any size at all, but if you build them 3x3, they will get a chicken coop that launches eggs into nearby rooms. Put the 3x3 hatchery in the same room as the 3x5 lair, and your lair will be filled with chickens, making it very easy for your creatures to eat right before heading to bed. It is also a good idea to put small lairs and hatcheries in your other rooms so that the creatures who use those rooms do not have to travel far to get from bed to work.

Putting your enemies in the torture room can lead to map info or, with a bit of chicken and healing, to them joining up with your minions
The library and training room are the next most important rooms. The library allows warlocks to enter your dungeon, gives those warlocks a place to research new spells, and the imps will also drag any special items you find. Once a special is in the library, you can activate it from the spells tab. The training room is a must-have in any dungeon where it is available since it allows your creatures to reach level 4 which is the point where most of them add abilities.

The treasure allows you to store extra gold. However, that is only useful if you are mining gold or gem seams that are not near your dungeon heart. Otherwise, you can simply flood your current gold storage by picking up loose gold (as your imps dig up gold they cannot put anywhere) and manually dropping it into a treasury or your dungeon heart. The gold will not be added to your reserves, but as you spend gold from your normal reserves, the loose gold you moved will automatically be added back in.

The big bad red machine in person. Do not get between him and his next meal unless you want to be that meal
The last two significant rooms that are common in the campaign are the prison and the torture chamber. The prison holds any enemies you defeat until they either die and become skeletons or until you toss them into the torture chamber or combat pit. Although it is rare to capture more than half a dozen heroes, a large prison supports more skeletons, so building unusually large prisons isn't a bad idea if you can afford it. The torture chamber allows prisoners to be interrogated, converted, and—most important of all—it allows the very useful mistress to come to your dungeon. If you want to convert rather than interrogate a prisoner, you either need to heal them or feed them. Healing is much faster.

Finally, although it is only available in the last few of the campaign maps, the temple is a very useful room. First, it allows dark angels to enter your dungeon, the most powerful minions you can get. It also works as a creature converter:

2 salamanders produce 1 mistress
2 vampires produce 1 bile demon
2 black nights produce 1 vampire
2 warlocks produce 1 goblin
2 skeletons produce 1 dark elf
2 trolls produce 1 warlock
2 bile demons produce 1 rogue
2 rogues produce 1 salamander
2 dark elves produce 1 troll
2 mistress gets you in trouble (why would you ever get rid of them anyway?)
The creatures
Imps are the backbone of your dungeon. They do all the real work. They are also a great source of early mana. Simply pick them up and drop them in the dungeon heart. Your first four imps are generated mana-free by the heart, so they will come back automatically and you get to keep the mana generated when they got tossed.

By picking up gold in your dungeons and collecting it manually, you can flood your treasuries. This will automatically refill them with the loose gold as your reserves get spent
The goblin and skeletons will likely be the bulk of your army. They are also your best bet for dropping on enemies first since they recover the fastest from being stunned. The warlocks are your prime researchers. They are good as support troops in a fight, although you want to drop them behind other minions since they are easily taken down in direct fighting. At high levels, they will even heal your other troops during the fight, making them great candidates for extended time in the combat pit The troll and bile demon are okay fighters, but their greatest usefulness is in the workshop where they will produce your traps and doors. The salamanders are good multi-purpose fighters since at level four they get a fireball attack to go with their bite. The dark elf is probably the best support fighter with two ranged attacks at level four. The vampire is another very multi-purpose fighter, especially at higher levels since it has a wide array of attack types, including the ability to raise the dead.

Rogues and fireflies are explorers; they can fight a bit, but it is generally not their strong suit. Fireflies can cross any terrain, and they move fast enough to avoid fights. Rogues can cloak, which will keep enemy creatures from attacking them, but it doesn't help with traps until they are disarmed.

The combat pit allows your minions to train further than is possible in the training room. In fact, they can get all the way to level eight here no matter what the manual says
Your best fighters are the black knight, mistress, and dark angel, in that order. The black knights are great for absorbing the brunt of enemy attacks while dealing out some fairly heavy damage. They are also a great choice for possession when you need traps and doors cleared out. The mistress is fairly weak at levels one to three, but at level four, she gains the very useful lighting attack. This attack not only does damage, but it stuns her target, making it very vulnerable to any other attackers. Finally, the dark angels have the best attack and defense of any minion, and at high levels, they even have the ability to create an instant skeleton army to aid them.

The spells and traps
Most of the spells are fairly straightforward. Summon imp, create gold, heal, and chicken do exactly what they say the do. Upgraded, summon imp creates level four imps and create gold produces 2000 instead of 1000 gold. Thunderbolt is your basic direct damage spell. It does a little bit of damage, but its best use is stunning the target while your minions pound them. This is especially useful any time your are trying to slow down a creature. Inferno is the other direct damage spell, but although it looks pretty, it doesn't do enough to justify the mana cost.

Horny likes shiny things... like portal gems
Sight of evil is your scout spell. It reveals areas that are still in the fog of war. It is an incredibly good idea to cast this spell before you dig anywhere. Possession allows you to take direct control over one of your creatures; you can also group other creatures with it (this is usually only necessary when you need to clear out traps and doors in a dungeon). Turncoat is your best defense against invasions: simply cast it on the strongest enemy invader and it will turn and attack its friends. This generally halts the invasion until the traitor is killed or kills all his companions. That usually gives you plenty of time to rally your own defenses.

Call to arms is a great spell when you are ready to wipe out your enemies. Cast it on a room, and your creatures will make a beeline for that room and kill anything bad in it, including lords and dungeon hearts. It is usually not a good idea to use it for other attacks, though, since it causes your minions to forget their normal roles in combat.

The traps available to you serve only to slow your enemies down. Even level one creatures can usually destroy a single trap, and building enough traps to actually kill them is way too much of a mana drain. That being said, sentry traps are a good idea for any place where enemy imps might show up since they will chase such creatures off. Lighting traps are a good choice for stunning their targets while your minions finish the invaders off. However, lighting traps require 25 mana just to sit idle, so it is not a good idea to build a lot of them. Fear traps are useful for keeping low level creatures out of your dungeon, and for giving high level creatures something to beat on for the few moments it takes you to summon your creatures to dispatch them. Freeze is the best choice for halting enemies since it leaves them totally vulnerable for quite a while.

One fun trap combination is alternating wooden doors and boulders traps, making a "hall of doom." The enemy creatures break down the door that sets off a boulder trap that squishes them. If they survive that to knock down the next door, they get re-squished. You can even drop your support troops behind the doors to blast them while the pancakes keep slogging down the hall.

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Page Updated Mon Feb 28, 2000 8:25pm EST