Dungeon Keeper 2 Explained

DK2 is part of the Real-Time Strategy genre, but you don't have tanks and infantry, you have demons and undead. Your enemy is not a bloodthirsty faction or extra-terrestrials, but good-doing knights and fair warriors of justice. Yours is the realm of shadows, of traps and fear and chests of gold and jewels lying to bait the witless adventurers who dare try to take it from you.

Adventure games have had a great time giving the player the taste of victory in uprooting evil in deep dungeons, and they still do (like in Diablo 2). But Dungeon Keeper and DK2 are the only examples I know that do the reverse, and they do it well.

You start the game as a fledgling Keeper, it is up to you to prove your mettle by conquering fair realms and replacing laughter and mirth with howls of dispair and murky water. To do so, you must first protect your dungeon heart, source of your power, and build an army of creatures to do battle against those pesky forces of Good.

Training a demon is no peace of cake, though. It has a mind of its own and prefers doing nothing than working for you. So you must prod your creatures from time to time, to make sure they fear you. A good slap sends them all scurrying to do your bidding. You must, however, provide correctly for their needs. A place to rest (lair), to feed (hatchery), to train and a proper salary are required elements to keep the troops in line. Neglect any of these and your creatures will be unhappy. Leave them unhappy long enough and they'll even go on strike !

Creatures are your attack force, and rooms are your resources. Gold is the basic binding element: you need it for everything. Mana is needed for whatever spell effect you cast and increases with the number of creatures (or creature levels) devoted to you.

You have many types of rooms. The original Dungeon Keeper included the lair, the training room, the library, the treasure room, the hatchery, the prison, the torture chamber, the guard room, the sanctuary (for sacrifices), the cemetary and the workshop. Dungeon Keeper 2 adds the casino (to recover part of the salary you pay), and more.

Each of these rooms have to be carved out of the soft stone of the underworld by your trusty Imps, never-tiring workhorses of your construction whims. The underworld has two types of stone : the soft type you can dig through and the hard type you cannot. To build rooms, you must select a given number of soft-stone squares. Your Imps will then rush to carve it out and "pave" it by praying the evil power you wield. When they have prayed enough, the tile they are on gets paved in a beautiful puff of evil-red smoke.

Building your dungeon - the rooms and creatures

To build the perfect dungeon, you need to start with a lair and a hatchery. Use your hand-shaped pointer to define the location and size of these. Once you have these two, you can claim a portal, magical area from where your demons, wizards and undead will come from the depths to do your bidding. A few lowly creatures will start coming shortly thereafter.

You will need a library as soon as possible. The library attracts Wizards who will toil to make your spells more powerful and increase the number of them. Once you have wizards studying, you need to build a training room, to keep your creatures occupied usefully.

In DK2, creatures cannot train farther than level 4, whereas in DK1 they could go right up to level 10. This change appears good to me, as it keeps Keepers from harbouring their strength until the ultimate one-combat-wins-all. You need to fight to gain level experience and proceed beyond 4th level now. Either that, or find a string of special items that boost the level of your creatures.

Once you have your Wizards studying and the others training, you are ready to build a Workshop. That room will allow Trolls to come in. They love working in the Workshop and will produce many good artefacts for you. The use of this room has improved over DK1 as well. Before DK2, you would have trolls slaving away and building, even if you had no more use for items, until the Workshop was full. Now they will go to work only if you have requested items. That means that if you do not request traps, doors or Sentry Guns, they are either training or getting bored.

The ability to build a Torture Chamber will allow entry to the sexiest demon of the lot: the Mistress. Leather-clad bitch if there ever was, she takes great delight in pain, inflicted by - or dealt to - her. Although she should train as the other creatures, when she gets bored a bit of time on the wheel or strapped to the wall will put her spirits back up nicely. And she loves to help you get information from captured heroes.

The Bile demon will also be attracted to a magnificent Keepers dungeon. Foulest beast of them all, the Bile demon is a formidable opponent on the battlefield, and can help make artefacts as well.

Building a Sanctuary will allow you to tap into the most powerful, and costly, resource of the game: sacrifices. By throwing a creature into the pit, you sacrifice them to you demon god. Following the value of the creature sacrificed, the demon god will reward you or punish you. Sacrifice a goblin and you will not be well viewed. Sacrifice a 5th-level Imp and you might get a boost of money, mana, or an interesting creature. Creature combinations are allowed, and can bring nice surprises.

The Prison allows you to lock up captured Heroes, who, in time, die and rise as Skeletons. The Skeleton is the ultimate warrior. Never tired, always alert and ready for combat, it is a valued addition to the bestiary. Once trained, you can put one in every guard room and, coupled with a Rogue (for missile weapon range) and a Wizard (for the fireballs), you have a good guard complement. The nice thing is that dead enemies strengthen your forces !

Traps and Mana

Traps and Doors are made in the Workshop. As stated earlier, you can set as many traps as you like, but if you do not demand any, none will be made. As you build, you can include open areas to house a few Sentry Guns. Long corridors are typical areas for door/poison trap combinations. Place a poison trap and a door behind it. Enemies will trigger the trap and die while they try to open the door. Repeat at will.

You must, of course, keep a steady income of gold to increase the rooms of your dungeon and pay your creatures. The addition of the Casino is a great idea, allowing you to entertain bored creatures who cannot train anymore and giving you back some of your lovely gold that you had to pay in wages.

When combat rears it blood-covered head, the more Mana you have and the better you will be able to help your creatures and prevent them from dying. The Heal spell is quite useful in this matter. The Lightning bolt is well rendered, but can only be used on land claimed by your Imps.

Another interesting possibility is the power to Possess a creature and create a group of followers. In that manner, you can lead a combat group deep into enemy territory where you do not have the power to drop them.

Conclusion

This is but an insight of the possibilities of the game. Ultimately, this game likens itself to the Settlers and other god-games. The most interesting part of the game is the construction of the dungeon, the careful planning of traps and the joy of watching those foolish knights walk to their doom as they trod your paths of evil.