"You will be transported back to the days when evil flourished. Noble heroes, brave of heart and pure in spirit were ever vigilant to their task. Far greater wisdom & cunning will be required to defeat both the heroes and the ruthless masters of this age. If you conquer these enemies, then you will have truly earned a seat amongst the Great Ancient Keepers".
Ancient Keeper is a complete campaign set for Dungeon Keeper. It is designed to be played sequentially from levels 1-20 as per the original Dungeon Keeper game. New secret levels & a full moon level are included. Deeper Dungeons is not required to run Ancient Keeper.
We have discovered around twenty features of the Dungeon Keeper game, which have been exploited in a constructive manner. Be prepared to find some pretty tough puzzles, which will really test your skills and knowledge about DK. Nearly every level contains some novel twists, which you won't have seen in the Bullfrog maps. This is for serious keepers only. Serious keepers will have a hard time trying to solve the puzzles and complete the levels.
This realm is divided into three main areas: southern (yours), central (pool) and northern (hero castle). You must kill all the heroes (thus conquer the hero castle) to win the game. You'll lose the game if the number of your creatures drops to zero (except for the beginning, when you don't have any creatures yet).
There is a portal between the hero castle and the central pool, but you must first kill lots of archers to be able to claim the portal. South to your dungeon heart there is an unclaimed library with an unallied level 8 warlock. This is the only creature you can have until you claim the portal.
Dig out the gold surrounding your part of the realm except for the three tiles separating you from the central pool and prepare space for rooms (from the room panel you can see what rooms will be available to you). The space you prepare for workshop should be big enough because the workshop will be your main source of income in the future.
Once you have all the space for rooms and gold (except three tiles) dug out and fortified, break down the door to the library and claim it together with the warlock. Hold the warlock in your hand while the imps are fortifying the library walls (else you may lose your imps). Once the library is all fortified, take away the imps and put the warlock in there. Soon he'll research all the available rooms and spells for you.
While the warlock is researching, as soon as he has researched a room, build that room in the space you had prepared for it.
Wait at least until you have guard post, then pick up your imps and drop one of them next to the remaining three gold tiles. Possess the imp, dig out one gold tile, claim the resulting path tile, run away and de-possess the imp. Pick him up and immediately place a guard post on the tile you have just claimed. You must be fast in doing that, so that none of the archers gets into your dungeon (if any of the archers should manage to get in, blow him away with your warlock). The guard post will keep the archers away from your dungeon, because it is too high from the water level to climb onto it.
Wait until all the archers are sufficiently far away from the guard post tile (blow them away if you're impatient) and place two bridge tiles into the pool off the guard post. Immediately sell away the bridge tile (just this one), which is next to the guard post, so that the archers cannot climb onto the guard post.
Now that you have one bridge tile left in the pool, you can continue building bridge into the pool from that tile. Build a bridge towards the portal.
Cast full strength disease spell on any of the archers who climbs onto your bridge. If you wish, you can blow them towards each other so that spreading of the disease is more effective. New archers will keep coming every half of a pay-day period until you claim the portal. So you must claim the portal to stop them from coming. Most of the archers will die because of the disease and the remaining ones will be substantially weakened.
As soon as there are no archers in the vicinity of the portal, dig out one of the three earth tiles separating the pool from the portal and claim the portal. Kill off the remaining archers now. If you haven't already built your torture room, do it now and soon you'll get mistresses.
You don't have enough money to train all the mistresses at the same time so put 6-7 in the workshop and train only 3-4 at a time until they reach level 7. Now put the trained mistresses in the workshop, and take some inexperienced ones from the workshop to the training room.
When they are all at level 7 you shouldn't have any financial problems anymore (as long as you remember to sell magic doors periodically), because they're so fast in the workshop. Now remove one wall tile (or earth if not yet fortified) to the right (or left) of the portal and kill the tentacles. Explore and conquer the castle killing off all the heroes as you encounter them.
Watch for boulders!
In this map, your living space is initially limited to the perimeter of the realm. The central part is occupied by three allied AI keepers and by heroes. There's no portal in the level so you can only gain creatures by finding or capturing and converting them.
In the perimeter, there are three unclaimed rooms to be found and one of them has a couple of unallied vampires in it. However, you must not rush into finding those rooms, because you have no lair or hatchery for the creatures. And you know how angry a vampire can be! The only lairs and hatcheries are in the central fortress. It should be added that you cannot research in this level, but once you have claimed a room, you'll be given full access to that type of room.
The problem is that both heroes and AI keepers have strong armies, while you have only imps. However, fortunately you are the only one who can build bridges. You have to build a long bridge from your dungeon to the hero part of the fortress (the distance is short, but still make your bridge long and winding), and entice the hero knights with an imp to leave their posts and come after you. You may have to walk your imp into the heroes' castle to make sure that they all notice you and leave their castle.
Once they are all on the bridge, sell some bridge tiles connecting it with your dungeon and the fortress, so that the knights have to stay on the bridge in the middle of lava. Now build another bridge to the hero castle and claim all the rooms in there. Unfortunately you cannot stay there, because the AI keepers' imps will soon break down the doors separating them from the heroes' gems and you are too weak to fight them. The best thing you can do is to sell all the rooms that you had claimed (remember you now have full access to those rooms, so you can rebuild them somewhere else in a safe place) and abandon the castle (remember to sell the bridge too). You'll come back later.
Now explore the perimeter of the realm and find three rooms and thevampires. Build lairs and hatcheries and command your imps to dig gems. Remember the heroes you had left on the bridge in the lava? Let them into your dungeon in small groups of 2 or 3, imprison and convert them.
Now you can go after either the north-west (orcs) or south-east (bile demons) AI keeper. The north-east keeper (dark mistresses) is still too strong for you. Try to capture as many creatures as possible.
Your advantage here is that none of the keepers will ever get reinforcements, as there are no portals. When the orc and the bile demon keepers are no more (and you have captured and converted some of their creatures), you can go after the mistresses.
Good luck!
Have you noticed that grenade blast can move some objects,
like gold pots or statues?
When you start the level you only have enough money to buy a single tile of treasure room,
but all the money is on a hero-owned path tile.
You cannot pick up the money from the white tile, but you can move it onto your tiles
using your troll's grenades in possession mode.
You will then be able to pick up the gold pots and place them in your treasure room.
After that, you'll be able to buy your first imp and start your quest.
Near the gem stones, north of your dungeon, you'll find some unclaimed level 4 imps. Then, dig to the east and try to carve as much land for yourself as you can, but be careful not to connect with the yellow keeper's dungeon.
Fortify yourself against the yellow keeper. If possible, try to dig further to the west (fortifying all the time) along the impenetrable rock, and then north until you encounter lava river. Fortify your walls along the lava river in order to prevent confrontation between the yellow and the blue keeper.
Then build your dungeon, research, train and scavenge. When you're ready, destroy the yellow keeper and you'll be given bridge.
In the blue keeper's prison, there are 3 Avatars: 1 yellow and 2 green. If you take over the blue prison, the yellow Avatar will die (because the yellow heart is destroyed), but the two green Avatars will be freed and will start to fight your creatures. You don't have to be afraid of them if you have mistresses, but you may want to kill them with your dragon whilst they are in the prison. Your choice.
But first you must of course destroy the blue keeper, which shouldn't be too difficult. You may also connect the blue dungeon with the green dungeon and wait for the two AI keepers to kill each other's creatures. You will also have to fight some heroes.
There is one steal hero and one resurrect creature bonus in the level.
Good luck!
You start this level in the middle of a fight: your level 9 dark mistress against a white level 10 knight. Don't let the mistress kill the knight until she is at level 10 (possess her if necessary and let the knight heal himself if he is in a bad shape). Conversely, don't let the knight kill the mistress either (this is not very probable, but possible if she gets stuck somewhere and can't retreat). When she is finally at level 10, finish off the knight.
Now how will you get out of the dungeon area?
Have you seen where dark mistresses teleport themselves to, if they have no lairs?
Try it and soon you'll have lair, hatchery and imps. There are many hero giants
just outside your dungeon. There's no other way out, but through the area with these giants.
How do you get rid of the giants without letting them into your dungeon?
Consider the following picture:
+---+---+ ! * ! * ! * : earth (un-mined) +---+---+ ! * ! ! Empty : water or lava +---+---+
If three tiles of a corner are un-mined, earth tiles and the fourth one is water or lava tile, then by digging out the earth tile that is diagonally opposite to the water/lava tile (upper-left in the picture) a gap will be created between the remaining two earth tiles (lower-left and upper-right). Any creature (even a bile demon) can walk through this gap.
+---+---+ ! ! * ! * : earth (un-mined) +--, '--+ ! * ! ! Empty : water or lava +---+---+
When the remaining earth tiles are later reinforced (turned into wall), the gap is closed.
In this way you can open your dungeon for a very short period of time, let out some of your creatures, and close your walls (seal your dungeon) again. If you put your imps to reinforce the gap as soon as it is created, the time during which your walls are open will be so short, that the heroes won't even notice it. This is a quite safe way of leaving your dungeon.
In this case, you'll have to lead one of your imps out of your dungeon, whilst making the other one close the gap. Then, with the outer imp, run to the east across the water and dig to the east until you break into the blue dungeon. Now pick up your imp and put him back into your dungeon.
You now have two options: you can let the heroes be disorganised and go after the blue keeper whenever and however they please. In this way they will most probably be killed without loss of a single blue creature; your task to destroy the blue keeper will thus be much tougher. Or you can lead out your mistress using the same method as used for your imp. As soon as she is outside don't fight the giants, but organise them into a group (i.e. make sure they all follow you simultaneously) and lead them, in one pack, into the blue dungeon. In this way they may even kill some of the blue keeper's creatures (if not all of them). You may even help them in such a way, that as soon as you are close to the blue dungeon heart, you run away from the giants, so that their attention is directed towards the blue keeper's creatures instead of you, and during their fight you attack the heart.
If the blue keeper wins the battle with the giants, you must continue the fight. If only 2 or 3 blue creatures are left, attack them in their lair, so they can't rest. You have to side-step (strafe) in circles, while dodging the wizards' freeze/slow spells, and firing drain/lightning at the same time (a la Doom). If more creatures are left, you'd better strafe around the blue dungeon heart while firing at it all the time.
After the blue heart has been destroyed, you'll be given bridge and thus you can claim all the rooms in the blue dungeon. Put your mistress in the scavenging room and soon you'll have an army of them. Train them and make them produce magic doors. When you have sufficient magic doors (around 20 is enough) create an opening in your southern wall, far away from the workshop.
A batch (around 10) of white level 10 reapers will charge into your dungeon. You should separate them into smaller groups with magic doors, and kill them off with your mistresses.
Then you can walk one of your mistresses through the opening over the lava, to explore the lava lake (during this trip kill the archers on guard posts so that they don't bother your imps). You'll see three hero buildings in the lava: a temple, a torture room and a prison building. In order to conquer them and claim the rooms in them, you must create another opening in your southern wall, now in the workshop.
In the first building, there are several tentacles for you to kill, and a few boulder traps to avoid. In the second building, there are many powerful heroes and a few word of power traps. In the third building, there are several prisons with prisoners. The inmates will attack your imps as soon as they have claimed the prison rooms, so be ready.
Additionally, the prisons (after take over) are unfortified, and their efficiency is low, so your prisoners will start to escape immediately. But you should still try to imprison them. You have about half a second time to pick them up after they are carried by your imps to the prison. After that, they'll start to escape, and you can't pick them up anymore until they're knocked out again. The last of the prisoners is a white Avatar, which you definitely should capture and convert.
After you have claimed all the hero rooms (beware the lightning traps in the prison building) and converted all prisoners, you can now prepare to defeat the yellow keeper. The key to success is to take over his lair, or else his vampires will keep resurrecting themselves for far too long for you.
Good luck.
In this realm, there are four hero castles in the four corners, and an (almost) abandoned dungeon in the middle. You start having no creatures or imps whatsoever.
You must buy some imps and break down either of the two doors leading to your dungeon heart room. In both neighbouring rooms a white level 1 fly will be awaiting you. You will have to defeat either of the flies solely with your imps, but in the possession mode you'll only have to waste 3 or so imps.
Once the fly is dead, you can continue exploring the abandoned dungeon and claim all the rooms that you encounter. You will also find two unallied level 1 dragons and one white level 10 Avatar standing on a one tile island in the middle of a lava room. This is the 'training room' of the previous keeper.
Make your imps dig gems, put one of your dragons in the workshop and drop the other dragon near the entrance to the 'training room'. Possess this second dragon, walk him close to the Avatar, but still standing on lava, and apply flame breath constantly against the Avatar. You will be surprised how fast dragons train: in under a minute he will go up to level 10.
You don't have to be afraid of the Avatar killing the dragon, usually it is enough to cast heal on yourself only when the Avatar freezes you. When the dragon is at level 10, don't de-possess him immediately, but first walk him away from the Avatar. This is to prevent the Dragon from casting word of power on the Avatar, which might accidentally blow the Avatar away from his island into your workshop (you would then have no other choice, but to kill the Avatar and thus lose your 'training room').
After the training, drop your high level dragon into your scavenging room and train the other one in the same way. After the second one is trained too, drop him too in the scavenging room. Soon you'll begin to gain more level 1 dragons (up till 10). Train them all against the Avatar, but watch the Avatar's health: because he is not in prison, he will only heal himself during a fight. If the Avatar's health is low, walk a dragon close to him, but refrain from damaging him until he has healed himself sufficiently. Then continue training your dragons.
When you already have 3 or 4 dragons in the scavenging room, drop the remaining trained ones in the workshop to produce doors for you, and when no more dragons can be scavenged, drop all of them in the workshop. Close the 'training room' with the first door you get, to prevent your creatures from fighting the Avatar unnecessarily.
Now, drop your dragons in the barracks and lead them to the first hero castle (north-east). Kill all resistance in there (remember the archers around the castle too) including the lord of the castle. Once the lord of the first castle is no more, you will be given ability to build one bridge (at least one tile). This is however sufficient to claim the first castle.
Now that you have a temple, you can create more imps, and fortify all the walls if you wish (in the meantime, make the dragons produce doors).
When you are ready, drop your dragons again in the barracks and lead them to the second castle (you can use CTRL NUM+ to speed up the game while walking the slow dragons; CTRL NUM- to slow down again). Kill all resistance in there (if you should lose any of your dragons, you can always get more in the scavenging room up to the maximum of 10; you'll have to train the new dragons however). When you have killed the two lords of the second castle, you'll be allowed to build at least two bridge tiles. This is sufficient to connect to the second castle and claim all the rooms (always remember to make more doors in the meantime).
When you're ready, you can lead your dragons to conquer the third castle. Having killed the three lords of the third castle your limits to building bridges will be removed. You can now freely connect all your castles with your dungeon. If you wish you can now turn imprison on and bridge over to the fourth castle.
The archers of the fourth castle will soon start to move towards your dungeon. Before they reach the third castle sell some tiles of the bridge so they are trapped in the middle of the lava, and then let them into the third castle in small groups, the first group being just one archer. Possess one of the dragons and knock out the archer with the meteor spell (as the flame breath always kills). Make a skeleton of the archer and use the skeleton for knocking out even more archers and make even more skeletons of them.
When there are no more archers and all of them are skeletons, put one bridge tile in your 'training room' (do not connect with the Avatar's island) and drop all your skeletons on that tile. They'll knock out the Avatar with their lightning spells. Now connect to the island and make one of your imps drag the Avatar to the prison. When he's healthy enough, convert him.
You can now go for the fourth castle. Drop your creatures in front of the door to the fourth castle and kill the reaper and fairy in the first room (you may also capture them, your choice, but remember that the living space of your dungeon is very limited). Break down the other door and claim the unallied fairy. If you wish you can put her in the scavenging room to scavenge away the other fairies. Or you can proceed right away to the second room.
In each of the rooms, you will encounter increasing number of reapers and fairies. Kill (or capture) them all, but don't lose your skeletons, as you'll need them to kill the two Avatars in the hero dungeon heart room.
At the start of this level you can hear the sound of rolling boulders. If you look around, you'll also see 3 level 6 white samurai standing in the way of the boulders.
In this level the only way to gain soldiers is to capture and convert heroes or enemy creatures, so you'll have to save the samurai from getting crushed by the boulders. But they are heroes, so you can't just pick them up and it looks like there is no way to stop the boulders either.
How will you solve this puzzle?
Have you ever seen what happens to a boulder when it rolls into an unconscious creature?
It falls apart. Yeah, unconscious creatures are pretty much invulnerable
(for the short time they are unconscious), so you can use them
as shields against boulders.
Knowing this, the solution to our puzzle is rather simple; put imprison mode on and drop your knight next to the samurai that is the first to encounter the boulders. The boulders will fall apart against the unconscious samurai. Fight the samurai in possession mode and after you have knocked out the first one, go immediately for the two others, so that they stay behind the shield (knocked out samurai) and don't rush past him into the approaching boulders.
Make your imps drag the samurai to the prison, feed your prisoners and convert them. Wait until they are all fully healthy and dig out the single tile that is diggable for you. You'll have to confront a level 10 white Avatar.
Drop all four soldiers of yours on the Avatar, the knight first and samurai next. The knight will take the Avatar's hits and the samurai will train whilst fighting him.
If you notice that (after a word of power spell) the Avatar starts to fight a samurai instead of the knight, pick up the samurai and drop them down as soon as the Avatar's attention is on the knight again. Conversely, if you notice that the knight's health is getting too low, pick the knight up and when the Avatar's attention is directed towards any of the samurai, drop the knight down and let him heal for a while (during the fight). When the knight's health is a little better, make him again the Avatar's primary target. Pretty soon during the fight the samurai will acquire freeze and from that time the Avatar is doomed. Capture him and convert him.
The moment the Avatar converts (or gets killed), you will be given another Avatar outside of your dungeon, at the heroes' dungeon heart. You must NOT pick him up (if you do, you won't ever be able to get out of your dungeon area and you'll lose)! Possess this second Avatar and destroy the white dungeon heart.
Ignore the reapers until you have destroyed the white dungeon heart. This is because the time allotted for the destruction of the heroes' heart is limited. Once the white heart is destroyed, fight the reapers inside any of the surrounding rooms (if you knock them out on lava, they'll die; you must take them prisoners). Once all the reapers are knocked out, you can pick up the Avatar (pay him now; he must be quite angry) and dig to the outside of your dungeon.
Lock up your imps and wait for the reapers to wake up and come to your dungeon. The reapers are now very weak; knock them out again in your dungeon and imprison them. Feed them, convert them, and claim all the heroes' rooms. You'll now have some spells including destroy walls.
When you're ready (creatures healthy, paid, fed, etc.), break the wall leading into the blue dungeon and try to explore it. Beware, the blue keeper has boulders, so lead your Avatar (one of your Avatars) on an exploration trip first. This won't be easy even for an Avatar, because the blue keeper has an army of level 10 mistresses. You may, of course, also use imps for triggering the boulders.
When there are no more boulders to threaten your creatures, you can try to attack the blue keeper. You may even try to capture some of his mistresses. You will be outnumbered, so you may have to sneak into the blue keeper's dungeon heart room and destroy the heart while he is fighting your other creatures.
Once the blue keeper is defeated, you can take over his dungeon and get prepared for yet another heavy battle with the green keeper. You should now have plenty of boulder traps to aid you in your next goal, which is destroying the green dungeon.
Good luck!
In this realm, you'll have very little control of what is going on. Instead of leading your own forces, you'll have to use the blue AI keeper to your advantage. At the beginning, you should prevent the blue keeper from fighting the heroes' forces and later, when the correct time arrives, you should do the opposite: lead them to confrontation.
The only resources you have available are your imps, treasure room & gold, as well as the destroy walls spell. There are also 2 level 10 unclaimed vampires in the level, but it is not wise to claim them too early, because you don't have lairs or hatcheries.
There's one more invaluable resource for you to use: a reveal map bonus next to your dungeon heart. Use it at once, and you will know where you have to dig to achieve your goal.
First of all, in the northern part of the realm, you have to dig along the impenetrable rock line in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions, until you reach the unclaimed graveyard from both directions (do not break into the graveyard though!).
Fortify this winding corridor and ensure that the blue keeper cannot break into the water in the south, or into your dungeon.
Do not enclose the blue dungeon completely within this corridor, but leave at least three tiles wide strip of earth connecting the blue dungeon and the graveyard. You will later let the heroes into the blue dungeon through the graveyard and a passage dug out through the middle of this strip of earth.
But now, that you have prevented the blue keeper from encountering the heroes prematurely, and yet left a way for the heroes to enter the blue dungeon without compromising your own security, you can sit back and relax.
Wait until all the blue creatures are at level ten and the blue keeper has developed the lightning spell. When both these conditions are satisfied, cast destroy walls twice on the same tile of the northern wall of the graveyard (make sure the tile is within the strip of earth you left for hero passage) and drop your imp on the resulting unclaimed path. If any of the vampires are still in the graveyard (hasn't yet wandered off onto the water), claim him first, pick him up and hold him in your hand all the time (he'll be angry soon, but you'll make it up to him later).
Next, dig with the imp to the blue dungeon (use destroy walls again if the blue dungeon is reinforced) staying all the time completely within the stripe of earth (i.e. not breaking into your dungeon). Soon the heroes will invade the blue dungeon and most probably will win (if some of the heroes get stuck in their heart chamber, help them out with destroy walls).
You must now quickly take over the blue library and kill off the remaining heroes with the lightning spell.
You have conquered this realm.
At the beginning of this level, high level heroes will invade your dungeon almost immediately.
Since you have no decent army, your only choice is to wall them out. There are at least two ways of doing that: you can wall them in right in their portals, or you can fortify all your dungeon using make safe special.
The first way is very difficult, because you'll have to dig exactly to the right places and fortify the exact four tiles. You must be VERY fast and slap your imps properly and drop them onto the right tiles. It is almost impossible but doable (verified several times).
The second way is somewhat easier, but still you have to be pretty fast. You have to bash down the only door that is leading out of your dungeon, and fight the level 2 samurai with your level 1 orc. You must switch the imprison mode on, because in this realm you can only get creatures by capturing/converting them. You can fight the samurai in two ways: possess the orc and do it personally or wait till the samurai moves away into your dungeon, claim his room, take the heal spell to the library and use the heal on your orc while he is fighting the samurai.
Either way, you must not forget to use the make safe special in time (it's easy to forget it during a fight). After that you have to proceed along the corridor leading south from your dungeon and capture/convert all the creatures encountered as well as collect all the goodies.
When you have claimed the most southern room and converted the knights in there, you can now go after those heroes that you had walled out from your dungeon at the beginning of the level. Convert the knights and make skeletons of the tunnellers. In the meantime, do not forget to make doors too.
You can now dig east from the southern room. You'll break into a new area with action point in it. Claim and fortify that area fast, or else you may end up having four Avatars to deal with at once.
Once you are safe again you can dig north from that newly discovered area. You must not dig east from there as it will let the Avatars in. You will find there is a large lava lake to the north, but now you should have bridge too, so this won't be a problem. Build now a long bridge following the shape of the lava lake: first to the north, then to the east and lastly back to the south.
Pretty soon after you have connected to the land again, a tunneller may teleport into your dungeon and four Avatars will charge after him at enormous speed. You must cut them off from the tunneller by selling a couple of bridge tiles in time.
Knock out the tunneller and make a skeleton of him. Then build and sell bridge tiles in such a way, that you let the Avatars one by one into your dungeon, capture and convert them. Train your low level creatures in fight against (one of) the Avatars by healing them constantly.
You can now attack the hero castle. As soon as you enter the impenetrable rock 'wall' surrounding the castle 24 four level 10 white reapers will be released north to the castle. Lock up all your creatures in your dungeon and use your four Avatars to knock out the reapers. Be fast enough to do it in the castle area (if you knock them out over lava they will die).
As soon as they're all knocked out, take your Avatars back to your dungeon, feed them and pay them (they must be quite angry by now). Now let the reapers wake up and come to your dungeon. Since they're now very weak, you can knock them out very fast and have them carried to your prison. Don't convert them! Reapers are pretty useless against Avatars, and you'll have to fight even more Avatars in this realm. Make skeletons of the reapers.
Then break into the heroes' castle and capture/convert the knight that is in there. Claim the castle (watch for traps!), destroy the white dungeon heart and prepare for a heavy battle at your own dungeon heart!
There's also a locate hidden world bonus in this level.
Try to figure out for yourself how to get to it. If you can't, we'll be
happy to provide you the solution upon your request.
Don't give up: it is possible!
Upon starting this level you'll find out that all your creatures are imprisoned and guarded by a white level 10 reaper. You have to find the prison and free your creatures with your imps. But beware, do not break any other door than that of the prison until your soldiers are free again.
As soon as the reaper notices your imps, pick them up and let the reaper go to attack your dungeon heart. Don't worry your heart should be strong enough to survive this. As soon as the reaper has left the prison hall let your imps continue claiming tiles and free your creatures. Put imprison mode on and knock out the white reaper. Make a skeleton of him. When he is in prison, switch off imprison mode and conquer all the rooms one by one. Try to take over the hatchery first and then the treasure room (to pay your reaper when he gets angry). Then the lairs and lastly all the other rooms. Be careful not to lose any creatures, as you won't get any more of them. At about the time when you have taken over most of the rooms, a white level 10 Avatar should arrive at your dungeon. You must kill him. Put every creature, which doesn't dislike manufacturing, in the workshop to make doors.
At regular intervals groups of while level 10 knights will arrive at your dungeon. This will continue until the white dungeon heart is destroyed. There are also other heroes on islands along the long winding path to the hero dungeon. You have to kill them all as you gradually proceed towards the hero dungeon. You may also try to stop the knight flood pretty early by possessing your reaper and walking him to the hero dungeon, while ignoring all the heroes on the way. But watch for boulders in the hero dungeon. And remember that the reaper may also be needed in your dungeon to defeat those knights that are already approaching. When you have destroyed the white dungeon heart and killed all the heroes, you will have won the game. You may be wondering about the purpose of the two white libraries, which are visible right from the beginning. There's a puzzle connected to the two libraries. If you solve it, you'll find a locate hidden world bonus.
In this level, you'll have to solve several puzzles before you can enter the final hero fortress and deal with the heroes in there.
The first puzzle is very simple. When you start the level you'll notice there's a fight going on. Your level 10 dragon is fighting against a white level 10 knight. You must possess the dragon and lead the white knight onto your lava trap. When the tile under the trap turns into lava, an opening will be created in the earth surrounding your dungeon heart.
Hint: you'd better continue the fight in the possession mode, or else your dragon most probably will be killed by the knight (and you'll lose).
Second puzzle: how to get into the blue dungeon?
In order to solve this puzzle you must know one thing: There's one (unintended?) "feature" of the DK-engine, which under certain circumstances will allow you to blow a creature out of a sealed off area with the wind spell. This can happen when two earth tiles (or rock or fortified wall or any combination of these) have exactly one common corner (but not side) and the other
Two tiles of this very same corner are dug out (claimed or not, doesn't matter):
+---+---+ ! ! * ! * : earth or fortified (un-mined) +---+---+ ! * ! ! empty : floor or claimed ground +---+---+
You can blow a creature from one dug out side through the corner to the other dug out side (in skew direction). Of course for this you need another creature, which has the wind spell.
Now that you know this quirk of the DK-engine, you can use it here to your advantage in the following way: at this moment you probably already have two creatures: a level 10 dragon and a level 7 samurai. You have to make a ghost of one of the creatures (We suggest that you choose the dragon for it because it's much easier to take prisoners with a samurai than with a dragon).
Then, with the ghost, blow the other creature from the torture chamber, in skew direction to the blue dungeon. Kill the opponent and destroy the blue dungeon heart. After that, the blue walls isolating you from the outer world will disappear.
Third puzzle: how to get through the white wall surrounding your dungeon?
This is quite simple. You must use the white tunneller standing on your tile just outside of your dungeon. Turn imprison mode on, drop your ghost on that tile and quickly possess the ghost. Don't fight the tunneller, but blow him towards the white wall, which is standing in your way. Depossess and pick up the ghost, and put him back in his lair. Now, use your samurai/dragon or ghost to knock out the tunneller as soon as he has broken through the white wall (if you have a dragon, knocking out the tunneller will be much more difficult, but possible). You must capture and keep alive the white tunneller, because you'll need him in the fourth puzzle too.
Fourth puzzle: how to get into the green treasure room?
Next to the green treasure room, there is a level 7 white knight. Blow him into the green treasure room with your ghost. The knight will defeat the green keeper for you. After the green dungeon is destroyed, you will be given ability to build bridges.
Build bridge to the white tile on which the knight used to stand before you. Blew him into the green dungeon, claim the tile and sell the bridge. Drop the tunneller that you hold captured onto that tile and blow him into the green dungeon in similar way as you did with the knight. The tunneller will make an opening in the walls of the treasure room for you. Walk your samurai/dragon over the lava through the opening to the treasure room and knock out both the tunneller and the knight (if you have a samurai, you must fight the knight in the possession mode because samurai prefer to fight melee and they're not tough enough for knights; if you have a dragon, knocking out the knight will be much more difficult, because the knight has rebound). Build bridge to the opening and let your imp drag both heroes to the prison (because your prison is very small, you'll have to pick up the first hero from prison immediately in order to make room for the other one; you can hold a hero for unlimited time in your hand without him dying). Make your imp claim the treasure room as soon as possible, as your creatures are by now probably very angry with you for not being paid. After that your poverty is over. You can now convert the knight and let the tunneller turn into a skeleton.
Fifth puzzle: how to get into the yellow workshop?
This puzzle is simple. You must find and destroy the yellow dungeon heart, and then the yellow walls will vanish. Beware however: do not destroy the first yellow looking dungeon heart, because you might defeat yourself! In the area south to the workshop there are twenty rooms with four similar dungeon hearts. They all look yellow but only one is really yellow and three others are in fact red. Yes this is right: you have four dungeon hearts to defend; and you are not four times stronger but rather four times weaker because destruction of any one of them is enough to defeat you. How will you find the right one then? Simple: do not try to attack the hearts in possession mode. Instead drop your knight in front of a heart and if it is yours, he will turn away, if it is enemy's, he will attack it. The moment you attack the real yellow dungeon heart, the yellow keeper will drop all his creatures on you. You may try to capture some of them instead of killing them all.
Sixth puzzle: how to get into the white library?
This is probably the most difficult puzzle in the level. The difficulty is that the library is completely surrounded by your claimed tiles. Because they are already claimed, you can't claim them any more.
But why should it be important to claim those tiles? The answer is in fact another question: have you seen how a fortified wall turns into unclaimed earth when you claim a tile next to it?
If we only could reclaim any of those already claimed tiles, the wall next to it would disappear and we could break inside (well, this isn't always so, but in this case it is). So now we need a way to turn our claimed tiles into unclaimed path. There is such way: have you ever seen angry creatures vandalizing your dungeon? Have you seen how a destroyed room tile turns into an unclaimed path?
Which creatures start to vandalize when they are angry? At least orcs often do. So this is the solution: put a workshop tile next to the place where you want to have the entrance to the library. Claim the orcs and make one of them really pissed off (e.g. by constantly slapping and healing him). He'll destroy the workshop tile that you had put there next to the library wall. It will now be an unclaimed path tile. You can now claim the path tile and so the wall tile next to it will turn into earth, which you can dig out and claim the library. Your imps will now carry must obey and call to arms to the library. You'll need call to arms to solve the seventh puzzle.
Seventh puzzle: how to get into the white training room?
Dig around the training room and dig out one of its corner tiles too. Cast call to arms on this removed corner tile and drop your orcs on it. Possess your ghost and blow the orcs through the corner into the training room. Now move the call to arms spell inside the training room onto one of the treasure room tiles. After your orcs have destroyed at least one tile next to the room wall, the wall tile next to the destroyed tile will turn into earth as long as the tile on the other side of the wall is claimed by you. You can now cancel the call to arms, take your orcs away and break into the training room. You need to claim the training room to train your creatures before you can proceed to the hero fortress, but upon claiming the training room your ability to build bridges will be temporarily revoked.
Eighth puzzle: how to get into the hero fortress?
The hero fortress is surrounded by water and on the entrance tiles there are guard posts. Since guard posts are high above the water level, you are not able to get there. If you had bridges, it would be simple, but you haven't. You have to trigger a boulder trap, which is inside the fortress. The boulder will roll over the guard posts and will destroy them removing them completely. To trigger the boulder you have to fly your ghost over the guard post and destroy the door to the fortress. You have now solved all the puzzles. Only the heroes stand between you and your victory. Good luck!
In this level you have to learn how to dig without seeing where you are digging into, because the way to the portal that is accessible to you is long and winding, and it leads through areas with high level heroes. You'll also have to be fast enough, because you are competing for creatures with another keeper. You can only get a single dragon through the portal, and there are only 20 dragons in the creature pool, so you'd better hurry.
To dig through invisible areas, you need to know two things: there is a unique safe passage to the portal, and from reinforced walls you can see if there is empty space on the other side of the wall. From this two bits of information you can logically deduce where to dig and will be able to remove 2 - 4 tiles at a time after every reinforcing.
Having dug to the portal, you must quickly pick up your imps (as you won't be able to create more for some time) and wait for the barbarian to start walking away from the portal. Then claim the portal and wait for your dragon to appear.
As soon as you have the dragon, drop it a few tiles away from the barbarian and kill the barbarian in the possession mode. Build a long and winding bridge to the central hero castle and entice the archers on the bridge. When all the archers are on the bridge, sell some tiles from both ends of the bridge, so that they stay trapped in the middle of the lava. If you don't want to be bothered by the AI keeper until you are ready, you can fortify the entire perimeter of the lava lake (unless the AI keeper has already tunneled into it).
Now go to train your dragon up to level 10 against the knights of the castle, but be careful not to kill any of the knights. You'll capture and convert them later. As soon as the dragon is at level 10, put him in the library. In the meantime claim the path leading to the prison south to your dungeon, but do it in the possession mode and only claiming tiles between the candelabras. This is because there are lava traps along the way to the prison. If you trigger such a trap, a level 10 horned reaper will charge into your dungeon before you have prison to capture him.
Dig/claim path to the prison, but refrain from claiming the prison yet. Instead, cast call to arms in the prison, and let your dragon destroy the tile on which the create imp spell book floats (for explanation on this, refer to the walkthrough for the moon level). As soon as the spell book is over an unclaimed path tile, cancel the call to arms and take your dragon away. Now you can claim the prison and the path tile with the spell book, but don't let your imp pick it up (keep the doors to your dungeon locked). This is because the imp could trigger some lava traps while taking the spell book to your library and he could lose it in the lava (and let some hornies in). Instead build a one tile library over the spell book and save your game.
Now immediately sell this new library tile and watch if the spell book has made it to the main library. If you still have create imp available you can continue the game, else reload and repeat until the spell book finally has jumped to the main library. It is also enough to check if the create spell has become researchable, so that you don't have to constantly reload and repeat selling, but you can make your dragon research the spell again.
Now rebuild the prison and fortify it. You are now ready to trigger the first lava trap (the one closest to the prison) and let in the first reaper. Switch on imprison mode and fight the reaper with the dragon in the possession mode. Apply the flame breath on the reaper constantly and heal when necessary, while retreating towards the prison. From time to time de-possess the dragon, check the health of the reaper and quickly possess the dragon again. When the reaper's health is low, switch from flame breath to meteor and knock out the reaper with the meteor. This is because you must take prisoners in order to build up an army. You can either convert the reaper or let him become a skeleton. If you convert him, you'll have to give him money by hand on pay-days, so that he doesn't use up too much of your gold resources (reapers are actually better than skeletons for those types of creatures that the AI keeper has, so you may prefer reapers). Do the same to all the other reapers (seven altogether), releasing always first those reapers which are the closest to the prison.
Having taken care of the reapers, you can now deal with the heroes of the portal area in the north (12 samurai in groups of 2). Capture and convert them. You can now make skeletons from the archers trapped on a bridge in the lava (either enlarge your prison or take them to the prison in small groups) and lastly capture and convert the knights from the central castle. Destroy their dungeon heart and claim their treasure rooms.
You should now have a pretty powerful army (especially if you have managed to maintain the reapers) to deal with the AI keeper. But he is also quite strong, so beware!
At the start of this level you'll find out that your level 10 Avatar is being tortured by the heroes. You must now proceed fast and free him or else he'll become a hero and without him your mission will be impossible. Possess your warlock and fire meteor multiple times at the door of the torture room (the torture room and its door will probably be visible to you; if not you must listen to where the screams come from). When you are certain that the door has been broken, cast invisible on yourself and walk over the only guard post that you can reach (this will trigger two boulders and destroy the guard post) into the torture room. In the torture room stand in such a spot that the Avatar is between you and the entrance to the torture chamber and blow the Avatar out of there. Now immediately pick up the warlock (hold him in your hand) and possess the Avatar. The white reapers walking about your dungeon heart will probably have attacked by now. There's so many of them, that some will attack your dungeon heart. Therefore you can't kill them fast enough solely with the Avatar, but must use another pair of boulders to your advantage (but do NOT use up all the boulders, as you'll need some later too). Walk the Avatar onto another guard post, destroy the closer one of the two boulders and step aside out of the way of the other boulder so that it can roll freely back and forth. Lead the reapers onto the route of the rolling boulder and watch them die. If you are lucky all of them might die, but if not, at most four are allowed to stay alive, so that all of them attack you and none your dungeon heart. Kill them all without using up any more boulders. Now give one of your gold pots to the Avatar to cheer him up (he's angry because of the torture). Break down all the other doors: to hatchery, lair and library. Claim the tunneller in the library and build bridge from your dungeon heart to the library. The tunneller will try to claim tiles around the dungeon heart first, but you must not let him step onto the remaining guard posts so that he doesn't trigger the last boulders. He has a tendency to wander off, but if you drop him onto the bridge tile next to the library sufficiently many times (you may have to possess him and walk him onto the tile you want him to claim; you may also need to save and reload the game), he eventually will claim that tile. Make him claim the library next. As soon as you have the library, put your warlock in there to research create imp. Soon you'll have imps and won't need the tunneller anymore. Bridge to the other rooms and claim them. Remember not to let anyone trigger the remaining boulders! Now dig towards the gems and as soon as you encounter dark mistresses, immediately pick up everyone except the Avatar. Do not engage in fight with the mistresses, for they'll kill you if you do. Instead walk the Avatar towards your dungeon heart and wait for the mistresses there. When they arrive to attack your dungeon heart entice them to step on the remaining guard posts and do to them exactly what you did to the reapers earlier. If more than two mistresses survive your boulder trick, you may be in trouble (but you should have two unused pairs of boulders when you start fighting the mistresses). In any case you have to kill the mistresses. You can now build your dungeon. Build a large treasure room around the gems, build also a large workshop and a temple. Fortify, dig gems and make doors. When you have at least one magic door, you can dig a passage to the east near the southern boundary of your dungeon. You'll break into a large lava lake with hero castle in the middle of it. Ignore the hero castle at the moment and break down the magic door leading south from the northern part of the realm. You'll break into a huge scavenging room with four fairies. Kill the fairies with the Avatar and take over the scavenging room. In the middle of the scavenging room there is a steal hero bonus. Save your game now. You can choose from two types of heroes: thief or samurai. If the bonus gives you the wrong type of hero, just reload the game and use the bonus again and repeat this until you are satisfied. If you choose samurai, you can only have 20 of them (against twice as big AI keeper army), but you'll get them pretty fast and don't have to train them. If you choose thief you can train some of them into knights and scavenge more thieves up to the maximum of 20 (so if you choose thief, you can have as many knights as you wish), but it takes a long, long time to have all the thieves trained to level 10 knights. When you have finished scavenging the first wave of heroes (20), walk the Avatar over to the hero castle and kill all the heroes in there except the white Avatar. Now bridge over to the hero castle and let the white Avatar walk onto your bridge. Sell tiles from both ends of the bridge, so that he is trapped on one bridge tile far away from both shores of the lava lake. Now take over the hero dungeon (destroy the heart too). If you have samurai you may kill the white Avatar right away. If you have thieves, you must first train at least three of them to level 10 knights. Then drop the three knights and your Avatar onto the bridge tile on which the white Avatar is trapped. Drop your warlock on a shore tile, so that his ranged spells can reach the hero Avatar. It will take a long time (much longer than with samurai) to kill the white Avatar in this way, but he will be killed eventually (you can now continue scavenging more thieves and training more knights). When you think you're ready, break the doors leading to the AI keeper's dungeon in the south. Let your other army fight the mistresses, while you possess the Avatar, cast invisible on yourself and sneak towards the AI keeper's dungeon heart. Destroy the heart while your other army is keeping the mistresses busy. This is the only way to win the level, because neither samurai nor knights will stand for long against the mistresses.
In this realm, there are no imps. You must get along with lazy tunnellers instead. And you must also be aggressive; if you wait, you'll lose.
First of all, make your tunnellers dig gems and have the orcs make their lairs in the rooms next to the entrance to your dungeon. Possess one orc and lead him out of your dungeon to the hero building in the south-west. Break down the door and enter the hero building. This is to trigger an action point, which will give you bridges. Quickly de-possess the orc and take him back to his lair immediately, and lock the door to your dungeon.
Wait for 12 hero samurai to arrive at your entrance, and only then unlock the door and let your orcs loose (this is to ensure that the samurai don't fire lightning at the orcs from a distance, but fight melee when they are close). The orcs shouldn't have problems killing all the samurai.
Now quickly build a bridge to the hero building in the north-east. As soon as your orcs are healthy again, destroy the doors and drop all your orcs there. They shouldn't have problems killing the 12 hero knights. Take them back to heal, and after they're healthy, put them in the workshop to make doors.
In the meantime, untag the gem stone and make the tunnellers take over a portal, which is in the building to the north-east. Soon a single level 1 Avatar will arrive through the portal. Put him in the workshop for the time being and bridge to the building in the south west. Make the tunnellers take over a training room, which is inside the building.
As soon as the first pay-day arrives, another wave of samurai will appear in the training-room-building. If your tunnellers are still inside the building by then, take them away immediately and drop all your orcs on the samurai. If any orc should become dangerously weak during the fight, pick him up and let him heal. You should be able to kill all the samurai without losing a single orc (you are actually allowed to lose one, because you have many resurrect creature bonuses; you can lose only one, because the AI patched version of the game will only let you resurrect one creature of a kind, even if more have fallen).
As soon as you have killed the second wave of samurai, let your orcs heal, continue claiming the training-room-building and put the Avatar to train. Lock him up in the training room and feed/pay him by hand.
When your orcs are healthy again, attack the third hero building in the north-west (having bridged to it first) and kill the wizards in there using the orcs (don't use the Avatar yet; let him train). It is not necessary to take over the third building, unless you need the resurrect creature bonuses in there. Let the orcs heal/make doors, the tunnellers dig gems and the Avatar train.
At the third pay-day, another wave of knights should arrive. By now, your Avatar should be at level 5 at least, so you can use him to kill the knights. Possess him and fight the knights using protect and heal as necessary. You can only use freeze against a knight, when his rebound spell is not in effect. The Avatar will also train pretty fast while fighting the knights. You should have no problems killing all the knights solely with the Avatar. After the fight, the Avatar should be at level 8 at least and thus you can attack the fourth hero building immediately.
There are 12 level 10 reapers guarding the white dungeon heart, but you shouldn't have any problems killing them with the Avatar, who will very soon be at level 10. If you manage to kill the reapers and destroy the white heart before the sixth pay-day, there will be no more hero drops, and you'll win. Otherwise you'll have to kill another 12 reapers to prevail.
You can only attract a limited number of insects in this level, but this shouldn't be a problem, because you can also find a temple quite in the beginning. You should construct your dungeon (from the room panel you can see what rooms will be available to you) and claim the portal. Fortify and dig gems. As soon as you have creatures make them break down the magic door leading north from your dungeon and claim the temple, which is behind the door. Make one warlock and 5 - 6 mistresses and make them train. Then sacrifice only flies (toss out other insects if your creature limit is full) until you get everything researched. After that toss out all the flies and make more mistresses up to the maximum of 10. Your creature limit is 11 in this level and you should have 1 warlock (because of his wind spell) and 10 mistresses. Make everyone train. When your mistresses are at level 10 make them manufacture doors for you and close all the rooms with doors. Break also the northern door of the temple and replace it with yours. Claim path to the north up to the white wall tile (some of your imps may get killed by white samurais, but anyway continue claiming till the end). When your warlock has acquired the wind spell, blow the samurai towards north-east. Repeat this as many times as necessary so that one of your mistresses can destroy the white dungeon heart safely. Blow all the samurai away towards the guard post in the north east, so that your imps can claim the hero prison safely (Do not blow any samurai onto the AI keeper's ramp, as the vampires will kill them, whilst you need them alive). Then start blowing the samurai in small groups onto your ramps and knock them out. Take them to prison and heal them fully. Try to capture as many of them as possible. When there are no more samurai on the ramps, take over the torture chamber and start converting your prisoners. Build separate lairs and hatcheries for them far away from the mistresses (preferably on the opposite side of the treasure room).
When there are no more samurai to capture and convert and everyone is fully healthy, go to attack the vampires. This may be a hard battle, so try to destroy the AI keeper's dungeon heart or at least his scavenging room first. It may also happen that the vampires attack you first, when you're not yet ready. In such a case you must just do your best to beat them off (you can use imps as decoys and other similar tricks; it's up to you). As for the strength and aggressiveness of the vampires this level is pretty unpredictable, but so far we've always managed to kill the vampires eventually.
Good luck!
When you start this level you only have a couple of trolls to get you started. It appears you used to have some imps too, but they were all killed at the beginning. Now you have to go to find some more. First however make your trolls manufacture some doors and sell them, so that the trolls have money on pay-days. Then possess one troll and walk him towards the circle shaped area in the middle of the realm. There's a gap in the perimeter of this central area and if you walk through it, you'll find out there's a lava lake inside. This lava lake is divided into two parts and you can only see half of it. In the centre there is a stripe of path with several white giants walking on it. One tile of the path (in the middle) is claimed by the heroes and there's a lava trap on it. You have to walk your troll over the lava on that white path tile. As soon as you step on the tile, a gap will be created in the earth separating the two parts of the lake. Walk the troll through the gap onto the other side of the land stripe. You can now see also the other half of the lava lake and an unallied level 7 demon spawn walking on it. Claim the demon spawn and take it and the troll to your dungeon. Now possess the demon spawn and walk him back onto the lava lake where the giants were. Kill the giants with screaming missiles while training the demon spawn at the same time. Its experience level should rise by at least one level, but probably by 2 levels. Now take the demon spawn back to eat and rest. After a while walk him towards the hero castle in the south-east. Break down the northern door of the castle, but watch for a boulder trap. Break some more doors and dodge some more boulders, until you break into the hero dungeon heart room. You must now fight a level 10 barbarian. Do it in possession mode by retreating all the time and firing screaming missiles at him. If not earlier, at least after this fight your experience level should be 9. Don't destroy the hero heart yet. Save the game and try to find an unclaimed imp in one of the rooms. Take the imp and the demon spawn back to your dungeon. You can now claim the neutral library in your dungeon and use up two of the increase level bonuses. You should now have a level 5 dragon. Use the resurrect creature bonus to get back a level 10 demon spawn. Now use up the last increase level bonus, and you should have two dragons (level 5 and level 6). Put the dragons in the library and make them research. Remember also to sell some doors to get money. Now dig to the hero castle but do not yet connect to it (i.e. leave one tile un-mined). Drop one of the dragons on your tile close to the hero castle and walk the dragon into the castle. Break down the door to the room with two knights. Constantly apply flame breath on one of the knights, while retreating all the time. If you do this correctly, the knights shouldn't have too many opportunities to hit you, and you'll have plenty of time to heal. Train the dragon up to level 10 and then immediately take him away. Now drop your yet untrained dragon on the knights and train him to level 10 in exactly the same way as you did it for the first dragon. Except that now you don't have to stop fighting, but can continue the fight until both knights are dead (don't kill them though before both dragons are fully experienced). Now go back to the hero castle and kill the samurai, wizards and monks two at a time. Lastly break down the door to the room with the two hornies, and try to entice just one of them out of the room (if you retreat a little further from the entrance to the room, maybe just one of the reapers spots you). Kill the reaper and then kill the other one. If you must fight both of them at once, you'll probably have to take away your dragon after some time to give him a chance to heal, and continue the fight with the other dragon. After the reapers are dead you can destroy the hero heart and claim the castle. You will have won the game by this time, but you may also try to find and access locate hidden world bonus. There are at least two ways to solve this puzzle and one solution should already be known to you from an earlier level.
When you start this level you only have one level 10 imp and nothing else. You don't have any rooms and except for the bridge you cannot even research them. You can research some spells, but don't have any library. In the first stage of the game you'll have to take over several rooms after having killed the room guards. There's an unallied level 7 demon spawn in the eastern most hero room. In order to claim the demon spawn possess the imp and run him across the lava to the southern boundary of the realm and dig out an earth tile there. Then dig along the boundary towards east, until you are close to a portal. Run the imp again across the lava to the portal and from there run him to the entrance to the eastern building. Break the door, but be careful not to be killed by two hero archers. Claim the demon spawn, pick up the imp and drop him on any of the unclaimed path tiles at the southern boundary. Leave the imp there to heal, and possess the demon spawn. Kill all the hero room guards and all the archers in the possession mode. Then make your imp claim all the hero rooms. You may consider not taking over the portal, because around 10 demon spawns will enter, and since they like training, they'll use up your money pretty soon. And you won't have any more money until you have defeated either of the AI keepers. If you do take over the portal, you can put your demon spawns to research. Your high level demon spawn you must train into dragon, but not other demon spawns, because both AI keepers have scavenging rooms, temples and lots of dragons, while you have none. Once you have one level 5 dragon, you must hold him in your hand when not possessing him or else you may lose him to any of the AI keepers. When you have this one dragon, build bridge from your dungeon towards the samurai island, but do not connect to that island. Sell some inner tiles of the bridge, so that you can safely connect the samurai island with both AI keepers' dungeons. Make sure that half of the heroes go to one dungeon and the other half to the other dungeon. The samurai will be killed, but your goal is to make the AI keepers fight each other. Train your dragon up to level 10 against the fighting dragons and then walk him towards one AI keeper's dungeon heart. Try to make the heart very small, but do not destroy it completely. This will be difficult, because the keeper's dragons will keep pushing you away from their heart, but this is what you must do. When the heart is so small, that you can destroy it at any time very quickly, do exactly the same to the other keeper's heart. When both hearts are sufficiently weak check out the combat situation between the two AI keepers and destroy that keeper's heart, which has more land. Now quickly take over the bridge that connects the two dungeons and sell its several tiles so that the remaining keeper cannot take over any rooms in the defeated keeper's dungeon. Take over the defeated keeper's dungeon yourself and immediately put your dragon to scavenge, while taking care not to let him be scavenged away. Fortify the scavenging room and cast speed on the dragon until you have scavenged a few dragons from the other keeper. Put one or two of them in the temple and continue scavenging with the other dragons. In the meantime make your imps dig gems, and demon spawns train. If you have difficulties scavenging the other keeper's dragons, destroy or take over and sell his temple. Do not however destroy him until you have about 40 dragons. Train all your dragons up to level 10 and when you have 40 of them destroy the other keeper and take over his dungeon. Make magic doors and close rooms with them. When you're ready, break the doors leading north to the hero area. Do not enter that area, but wait for about a dozen fairies to come to you. When you have killed them, walk one dragon into the hero domain and break the door to one of the two hero buildings. Do not destroy the hero dungeon heart as it will release all the heroes at once. Take the dragon away and wait for 12 reapers to come to your dungeon. Kill this first group of reapers and then destroy the hero heart. This will release another 12 reapers. When you kill them, the game will be over.
You have to conquer this realm with its numerous heroes using just one single dark mistress. She is however an extraordinary one. Keep her satisfied and she'll serve you well. At the beginning dig towards the centre of the map. You'll soon tunnel into a large lava lake with a hero fortress in the middle. There are many archers wandering on the ramps of the fortress. Walk your mistress over the lava onto that ramp and kill the archers, then enter the fortress and kill all the heroes in there. Upon entering the ring surrounding the hero heart (where several knights await you), be prepared to dodge some boulders. You can take advantage of the boulders to kill the knights. When you enter the heart chamber, four horned reapers will be dropped on you. There are boulders around the heart. Use them to kill the reapers. When you destroy the heart, you'll win. But that's not all: there's a locate hidden world bonus in the level. The bonus is behind a white wall in the north-west. You can find destroy walls in the north-east, but you have no money. In the same room with the destroy walls there's a level 10 white Avatar, who has 11000 gold. If you kill him, you'll be able to get to the bonus. But beware: kill him on land! If you kill him on a bridge over lava, some of his money may drop into the lava, and will be lost forever. Also don't let your mistress take any of the money.
When you start this level, you'll see a white level 1 imp trapped on your tile within a cage of impenetrable rock. It's extremely easy to kill the imp, but doesn't it make you suspicious? Leave him there. He's there for a purpose. You can always kill him later.
For the start you'll have to blow one of your hounds out of your dungeon and then immediately possess the hound. Run fast and kill all the barbarians using flame breath. When the barbarians are dead, dig to the west, along the impenetrable rock to the south of your dungeon. You'll tunnel into a lava lake with several archers. Kill the archers and claim the central guard post.
To the east of the guard post you can see a long narrow corridor within impenetrable rock. Run one of your imps from the guard post across lava towards the corridor and dig into the corridor. Just before the corridor you'll find a small room with gold pots. Dig further to the east, but be prepared to run away from boulders. You'll find a couple of increase level bonuses and at the end of the corridor a magic door.
Walk your warlock to the door and break it with the warlock's meteor spell. You'll free an unclaimed horned reaper. Put the reaper on the guard post. Do not dig south straight from the guard post because it'll let lots of heroes into your dungeon. Instead, walk an imp from the guard post over the lava a couple of tiles away from the guard post and dig south from there.
In this way only flying heroes will be able to get into your dungeon. And soon four fairies will be your guests. Let the reaper kill them, and then possess him and walk him into the hero domain. Kill all the knights and giants wandering outside of the hero castle. Your reaper should be at level 10 after having killed all the knights and giants. Then continue your quest into the hero castle.
Before being able to enter the four towers with archers, you'll have to dodge some boulders. Kill all the archers in all four towers and only then dig south from your central guard post. Let your imps claim all the rooms and corridors, where you already have been. The imps will find four steal hero bonuses. Save the game before using the bonuses. You can have dragons (max. 2), samurai and wizards. We suggest you choose all four samurai (because you'll have to kill an Avatar soon), but it's your choice.
To the west of the central guard post, there's a large treasure room with entrance from the hero area. You'll have to break two magic doors and dodge one boulder, which is between the two doors. Unless you have stolen them, there will also be two dragons in the treasure room. When you take over the treasure room, your financial worries will be over for sufficiently long time.
You can now continue conquering the hero fortress. Enter the two rooms with remaining samurai and kill them all. Continue proceeding towards the centre of the fortress. Next to the entrances to the central area there are doors to small rooms with four wizards in each room. Kill all the 16 wizards in groups of 4 and break one door to the central area.
You'll enter a corridor surrounding the heart chamber. Beware there are four boulders in this corridor. Lastly, break the door to the dungeon heart room and kill the guard, which is level 10 Avatar. Destroy the heart. You have almost won.
Remember the poor white imp from the beginning of the game? If you kill him now, the game will be over, but you won't be able to get to locate hidden world bonus, which is in the north-west. Dig to the west from the northern end of your central (first) guard post, and you'll soon find a workshop and an unallied troll. The troll knows how to construct boulders (unless you've killed the white imp already) and boulders are the key to accessing the locate hidden world bonus. When you are sure that you can construct boulders, you can kill the white imp in order to win the game.
There are two very powerful AI keepers and almost as powerful heroes in this realm. A perfect match for your single level 1 dragon and 0 gold. Additionally you cannot research rooms, only some spells. Fortunately the heroes do have rooms and you can steal rooms from them. But the rooms are not accessible as long as the white dungeon heart beats. This is because there are lava traps on the way to each room, and if you trigger such a trap, the room will be inaccessible to you forever.
In order to win the level, you must assembly a decent army from the heroes. You will also find some unallied creatures, but they won't be enough to deal with the AI keepers, so you must also capture and convert some heroes. First of all, train your dragon up to level 10 against the knights wandering about the hero dungeon heart. You may have to kill some archers and samurai before they let you train undisturbed against the knights. Do not, under any circumstances, kill more than half of the samurai, and more than a quarter of the archers. Do not kill any knight either.
Since you have won all the Ancient Keeper levels up till now, we are confident that you can train your dragon without killing too many heroes. When your dragon is at level 10, use his word of power to move all the heroes onto the small, one tile islands in the lava (including the knights and the samurai, of course), then move them away from traffic routes (from islands close to traffic routes onto ones which are further away from the routes). This is to let your imps claim areas in the centre without being disturbed by archers and samurai.
When the hero heart area is clear from heroes, walk to the magic door in the most southern part of the realm and break it. You'll find another magic door, which you also must break. You'll find a large treasure room with gems in the middle and a level 10 white Avatar guarding the room. You must move the Avatar onto one of those same islands, where the other heroes await. Be careful, do not move any hero onto the AI keepers' ramps. If you accidentally do, blow him back onto an island immediately. Otherwise he'll let AI keeper's creatures into the centre and you'll lose. Once all the heroes including the Avatar are on islands in the lava away from the imp traffic, prepare spaces for rooms in your part of the realm (4-5 lairs, hatchery, workshop, library, treasure, temple), and destroy the white dungeon heart. The timing is important here: destroy the heart just after a pay-day. Having destroyed the white heart, pick up your dragon immediately, so that none of the unallied creatures spots you (the more path you have claimed when they spot you, the better), and let your imps claim. Make them claim hatchery, lair and temple first, and immediately build corresponding rooms in your dungeon. Keep the door to your dungeon locked all the time and immediately drop all freshly claimed creatures into your dungeon, so that they don't start to fight with the heroes. Remember to put the horny in the temple. Claim all the other rooms in the central area and immediately sell them. Rebuild similar rooms in safer place in your dungeon (you'll have to abandon the central area anyway pretty soon). Make your imps dig gems and move sufficient amount of the money from the southern treasure room to the northern one, which is in your dungeon. This is to ensure that your creatures don't walk across the entire realm on pay-days. When you have enough money fortify everything you can, including the southern prison and torture room, which you also must claim. Build also a library (make your warlock research) and a large workshop. Manufacture lots of doors and close everything you can with the doors. Keep your imps in the southern treasure room and start to blow heroes in small groups back onto your ramps. Imprison them, make skeletons of the archers and convert every other type of hero. When all the former heroes are yours (you should have around 30 creatures now; you can make another reaper if you don't want any skeleton vs. bile demon or samurai vs. dark mistress fights), lock up your dungeon and the southern treasure room. Sell all your doors separating the two AI keepers from each other and put some of your creatures destroy doors to both AI keeper's dungeons. Make sure the doors are destroyed simultaneously. Don't let any of your creatures fight, but take them back immediately to your dungeon. The two AI keepers will soon start killing each other. Relax and watch the show. But not for long: when the weaker of the keepers is down to 6-7 creatures, immediately attack the stronger one with your entire forces. Cast full strength call to arms in his heart (or if you can't see it yet, then somewhere on the way to his heart, but eventually move it to the heart) and let your creatures finish him off. During the fight remember to heal your creatures as necessary. When the keeper is no more, go for the other AI keeper. As he doesn't have too many creatures, he should be a piece of cake. You have conquered this realm!
Do not use destroy walls to get out of the dungeon heart area! This will let the knights in and will make your life very difficult to say the least! Instead, possess one of the ghosts and try to chase the other ghost. Have your wind spell ready. As soon as the other ghost is near any corner, blow it out of the dungeon heart area (you may need to practice this a little).
Depossess the first ghost and quickly possess the other one, which is now outside the dungeon heart area, probably somewhere over the lava. Be fast, so that the outer ghost doesn't start to fight the knights. Fly around the heart area just to find out what is where. You'll see that the lava area resembles a double arrow.
Fly your ghost as far away from the knights as possible and de-possess it. Now very quickly use the destroy walls spell on the earth in one of the tips of the double arrow (or both if you want; you have more than enough money) and go back to possess your ghost before it starts fighting the knights again.
Now fly your ghost into the new area(s) and claim the samurai and imp(s). Then de-possess the ghost and put it back into the heart area. Don't pick up the samurai! (if you accidentally do, then you'll have to blow him out again).
Possess the samurai and fight the knights with his lightning spell. You are in an area not connected to the one with the knights, so they cannot hurt you, but you can hurt them. It may take a while, but eventually you'll take out all the four knights and your samurai will be at level 10 by then.
Now connect all the dug out areas and claim all the tiles including the prison. Next to the dungeon heart there are two pots of gold. Give them to the samurai whenever he's angry. You must now proceed fast because his hunger will make him very angry real soon (and samurais are almost as bad as reapers when pissed off).
Switch on the imprison mode. Dig out one tile to the south of your dungeon and let your imps claim the newly discovered area with several rooms. As soon as your imps encounter a horned reaper, pick up all the imps and ghosts and hold them in your hand all the time when the samurai is fighting with the horny. Don't let your samurai fight melee. Whenever he is too close to the reaper, pick him up and immediately drop down again further from the reaper. In the meantime the reaper may hit your heart several times, but don't worry: your heart should be strong enough to survive this pick & drop fight (unless you're not good enough at this). Eventually the horny will be knocked out, at which time you can release all your creatures from your hand and let the imps drag the reaper to the prison. Also claim all the rooms and quickly fortify all the outer walls of your new dungeon (pretty soon after the reaper dies, heroes will be released just outside of your dungeon).
As soon as all your creatures are at full health and are happy (pay them if they are not), put them in the workshop to make doors.
After the reaper has turned into skeleton, clone your samurai using the resurrect creature bonus. (If you don't know how to do it, here you go: put your samurai in the prison with imprison mode on. Feed him and pay him. Drop your skeleton next to the prison and possess him. Knock out the samurai with the skeleton: you have to stand on a tile adjacent to the prison tile and swing your sword over the prison tile several times. While swinging the sword you should align yourself with any of the main directions (skew direction is not as good). With a level 10 skeleton it should be fairly easy, about 15-20 hits on the samurai (you'll notice when you've hit him). (Depossess the skeleton and put him back to work.) Pick up some chicken and try to drop them on the unconscious samurai. If he won't eat them, wait till he's conscious again and immediately feed him the chicken. This is because sometimes he may die of hunger while on the way to the hatchery. Now the game engine thinks that your samurai has died and so you are able to resurrect a samurai. In this way you can reproduce a creature without losing the original one, hence the term cloning.)
Now you should have two ghosts, two samurais and one skeleton. Put everyone to work. If you wish, you can turn on must obey, so that they work faster (but remember to turn it off if you want your creatures to heal in their lairs; for some reason they won't rest if must obey is on). Close all your rooms with doors and make about 10 spare doors (Remember: you can use CTRL NUM+ to speed up the game and CTRL NUM- to slow it back down).
Now break out of your dungeon. Two tunnellers will teleport to your dungeon (so hold your high level imps in your hand). Immediately seal the dragons off your dungeon with multiple magic doors and in the meantime knock out the tunnellers. Make one imp drag one tunneller to the prison, and then pick him up from the prison and hold him in your hand. Make an imp drag the other tunneller to your prison and then turn imprison mode off. Now let the dragons into your dungeon one by one and kill them. After the dragons have been killed, turn imprison back on.
Wait for the first tunneller to turn into skeleton and then drop the other one (which you are holding in your hand) into the prison. Soon you'll have three skeletons. Put everyone to work and claim all the unclaimed tiles.
You'll notice that, along the new path, everywhere there is white wall except for one tile. Dig out that tile, but do not let your imps claim the guard posts that are on the other side.
There are eight samurais on guard posts in the lava. Blow them from their posts to the lava one by one. They'll get out of the lava and attack your dungeon. Capture them and make more skeletons. After you've got all of them, let your fastest imp claim the guard posts. Now eight samurais will be released at once. If you wish to weaken them before they get to your dungeon, you can blow them into the lava with a ghost. Separate them using magic doors and capture them one by one picking them up from the prison (as soon as they're dragged there) and holding them in your hand (except for the last one, which you can leave in the prison).
Continue claiming, and soon you'll have more prisons, to speed up the process of making skeletons. You'll also find two resurrect creature bonuses. Reinforce everything and put doors everywhere and wait for skeletons.
After you have no more prisoners (you should have 19 skeletons by now) break out of the southern-eastern room at the gold arrow and put a door in there. Put imprison to off. Lock the door and let a level 1 imp claim path. As soon as the imp has claimed certain tiles, level 10 knights will be released. Pick up the imp and put some doors to slow down the knights.
After the knights have moved a bit towards your dungeon, continue claiming. You'll release a level 1 tunneller and open up a path for a boulder trap. Pick up and drop your imp in front of the boulder. The boulder should take care of the heroes. Do the same for the next four parties.
The last but one party has eight knights, so one boulder won't be enough; but if you continue claiming path, you'll find more boulders to continue the destruction. Claim the unclaimed path up to (but excluding) the room with WIND written in gold. Keep away from that room for the time-being. Put first as many doors as possible in the impenetrable rock labyrinth leading to that room.
As soon as you enter the WIND-room you'll trigger an action point. After a short delay, twelve reapers will be released. Eight right in the WIND-room and four in the previous (second prison) room. The delay is however enough to claim an Avatar, which is in the middle of the WIND-room. Surrounded by impenetrable rock, sounds impossible, eh? Possess an imp and walk him over the little central lava pool to dig out the earth tiles around the middle tile where the Avatar is hidden. Then possess a ghost and blow the Avatar out of there in a skew direction (e.g. from lower-left to upper-right, etc.).
After you've got the Avatar, the reapers will be released immediately. Pick him up and drop him at those four reapers, which are closer to your dungeon, i.e. in the room with the second prison. The other eight reapers will be busy getting through the labyrinth full of magic doors, which you had put there.
The Avatar can usually take care of the four reapers just by himself, but you can use also other creatures if you want to speed up the fight. Make skeletons of the four reapers and then drop the Avatar on the other eight hornies (the labyrinth is so long, that they won't get through if it's full of magic doors). After the fight, you should have about 31 skeletons.
Walk the Avatar (or fly a ghost) in the lava around the WIND-room, so that you know which tile to dig out on the northern wall of the room. Claim the path to the hero stronghold. You will not be able to claim anything in there until the white dungeon heart is destroyed. You'll have to fight your way through in the possession mode. And it will be tough even for an Avatar.
In this level four keepers and heroes fight each other in several rounds. Your orc must be the only survivor of each round. Creatures or heroes of each round will be more and more powerful, the last ones being horned reapers. You may be tempted to destroy the other keepers' hearts, while they're fighting each other, but keep in mind, that this will disturb the balance of the fight. Of course if you destroy exactly two keepers, the balance will be restored, but for some time there will be three keepers fighting, and so you may need to fight an almost healthy creature, which is more powerful than your orc. If you destroy an AI keeper's heart, there will be no further creature drops for that keeper, but the same is not true for the heroes, so beware! If you manage to win the level, you'll be given an imp. This will enable you to claim and use the transfer creature bonus located in the middle of the level, so that you can take the orc with you to the next realm.
This realm will teach you how to use the wind spell to your advantage. When you start the level you only have a single ghost and your imps are imprisoned in the hero castle. The shape of the path leading to your dungeon heart is a spiral separated by lava and surrounded by ramps not connected to the spiral. You'll have to blow several heroes onto those ramps and let them stay there before you kill them. First go out of your dungeon and destroy the door to the hero castle. Let the giants come after you through your doors (open the doors for them so that they don't destroy your doors; you may need them later). When the giants enter the spiral blow them onto the outer ramp. Now continue exploring the castle. You'll find more rooms with more giants. Treat them in exactly the same way as the first wave of giants. In the fourth room you'll find the white dungeon heart guarded by a level 10 Avatar. Also the Avatar you must let into your dungeon and blow him onto the ramp with giants. Now save your game and destroy the white dungeon heart. Cast invisibility on yourself and continue to the centre of the castle. You'll probably encounter a horned reaper, but since you're invisible, he won't bother you. Let the reaper go away towards your dungeon, and blow your imps out of the prison (try not to blow them into the lava). Pick them up and dig to an unallied dragon trapped in a small room next to your dungeon heart (it previously had reinforced hero walls, which have turned to earth since the destruction of the white heart). Possess the dragon and kill the reaper, the giants and the Avatar with the dragon. The Avatar will be the hardest to kill, but if you stay on lava while fighting him you should have no problems. In the meantime you may let your imps claim the hero castle, so that you can use the transfer creature bonus, which is in the prison. You'll have won the game as soon as the heroes are dead.
This level will test your ability to run fast and claim fast long winding paths, whilst being attacked all the time from distance by high level hero shooters. You don't have to be worried about losing your imp, as you'll always get a new one for free. When you have claimed the path all the way to the prison located next to your dungeon heart, you can free your level 2 dragon, and kill most of the shooters with the dragon. But leave one hero alive if you want to be able to transfer a creature into your next quest. There's a hero Avatar in the level and if you kill him before killing the last other hero, a level 10 knight of yours will be teleported straight to the hero dungeon heart. You can then destroy the heart and its transfer creature bonus will be available to you.
Apart from you there are three other keepers in this realm. Each of them has different creatures and different strategy is required for each of them. Immediately at the beginning you must kill with your knight the blue and the green keeper's imps. They won't have more of them. Then you can go and kill the yellow keeper's skeletons (probably in two trips or more). Do not destroy any keeper's heart if you wish to be able to take your knight with you to the next realm. The orcs and the mistresses you cannot kill. You must just wait (you may however make a short trip to their lairs if you want to see what they're doing, but don't fight them). The mistresses will soon be so angry for not being paid, that they'll kill each other. Usually one survives however, so you should attack her as soon as she has killed the last but one mistress. If you let her heal, it will be considerably more difficult. To the orcs you don't have to do anything, as they'll soon destroy their hatchery and will die of hunger. When there are no more enemy creatures, you will have won. If you wish to access the transfer creature bonus you must do the following:
Now the former lair tile that you had sold has turned into unclaimed path, which you can claim, because there is your lair tile next to it. When you have claimed it, the wall next to it will turn into earth so that you can dig it out and so on. Now we guess you understand why you were not allowed to destroy enemy dungeon hearts
In this level you must defeat lots of heroes with a single horned reaper. You have no money and nothing to do for your reaper, so he will get mad sooner or later. When later in the game you find some imps, you must hold them in your hand, so that the reaper doesn't kill them. It is possible to climb on the heroes' guard posts, but it's probably the best to go through all the lava corridors and intermediate rooms (killing the knights in the dungeon heart room and the wizards in the temple; don't destroy the heart!) to the treasure room, claim the imps (and hold them all the time) and only then kill the samurai on the inner side of their lava corridor. Subsequently proceed to the inner side of the monk-corridor (watch for boulders) and kill all the monks in there. Next comes the inner side of the archer-corridor (before that boulders!) and taking care of the archers there. Then proceed to the corridor surrounding your dungeon area (and again dodge boulders). The corridor is divided into 3 parts and there are 4 high level fairies in each of them. The easiest way to kill the fairies is to charge forward through them and releasing the boulder hidden behind the door to the next part. But make sure that the fairies have already used their freeze spell before releasing the boulder. Do the same to the next two groups of fairies and proceed to the outer archer-corridor. Kill all the archers and enter corridor surrounding the white heart. There are two groups of dragons in there and you can also use boulders to kill them quickly. Then you kill the remaining monks, two last groups of dragons and then the last samurai. Now you can destroy the hero heart and lock your reaper up in his lair and hatchery. Now you can dig through walls of your dungeon heart room and claim all the corridors. The temple you cannot claim, but since your reaper is mad already you don't need it anyway. When you claim the outer corridor up to its end you'll find yet another door. There's a boulder behind the door so be careful. Behind the boulder there's a transfer creature bonus, so you can take the reaper with you to the next realm (don't worry he won't be mad at the beginning of the next realm).
This level takes advantage of a game bug. You need to be aware of the bug in order to solve the level. The bug is as follows: when your imps take over a room with objects, all the objects in the room will automatically belong to you.
Normally this is a desired effect. Unfortunately this works exactly the same way even if an object is in a wrong type of room, e.g. spell book in a lair: if you take over the lair, the spell book will also belong to you.
Why is this a bug?
Because your imps will NOT carry objects, which already belong to you.
So in this case you're stuck with a useless spell book.
How to solve the puzzle?
You have to destroy those lair tiles on which the spell books are PRIOR to
taking over the lair. In such a way the spell books will be on unclaimed path,
and your imp will carry them to the library.
Of course you, Mighty Keeper, know how to destroy an enemy room tile?