Something different: An annotated game of kingdom management

[The Avatar]

That adds more magic, and they're easy for berserkers, so that's not actually so bad.

[Sidestepper]

Lujo: From an economic standpoint, solo Tikki Tooki is clearly the best choice. You can always ignore him until the popcorn phase of the game, at which point you can convert those monsterlings into gold. There is also something to be said for knowing that you will always have a specific god, even if it comes at the cost of having only one altar.

This was originally what I was going to do, but I relented at the last minute for several reasons. Having a full pantheon is generally more powerful than being stuck with just one god. While this is unimportant when you're just screwing around in the Den of Danger, it does matter when you are making aggressive Purist raids against the Hard dungeons. Related to this is the fact that unlocking gods also removes their "intiation rite" from the pool of subdungeons. This is kind of a big deal, because those dungeons suck hard and they have a VERY high spawn rate (verging on 100% for the "first generation" gods). I just barely finished the last bank quest. If I had to exchange the zombie money dungeon for Mystera's test, I never would have made it. I also can't imagine the pure liquid frustration those dungeons would be when pursuing the very diffcult Complicated Tasks series, which I will be doing sooner rather than later.

A safer strategy would be to unlock TT and then just hang out in the Den of Danger, knocking off the Beginner's Brigade quest line while building up cash and buying upgrades. But that's also kind of boring and I think that a more interesting game arises when you try to make each adventure unlock as much content as possible.

[Lujo]

Yep, unlocking gods it saves TIME

[Sidestepper]

I've given the kingdom Tinker the sacred task of finding all of the remaining lost gods. May he do his work quickly.


I send him to the Western Forest to pick up Tuarog. I find an altar to Glowing Guardian right at the front door, so I decide to actually play this dungeon through properly.


Less than a minute later, I find Tikki Tooki's altar. GG into TT is probably one of the best combinations in the game. I was totally going to do this, but I wanted to see the new Enlightenment in action so I stuck with GG to the end. The Tinker makes for a very good follower of the Guardian. Lots of items to convert, and the two compression seals makes the inventory loss much less painful. I easily stomp Getdanafix and then go to the subdungeon for a Taurog-themed victory lap.


The rumors about Taurog's trial being prelit are true.


But once the test actually starts, everything gets shrouded, so it's okay. Check out my Tinker. He looks like some kind of traveling bead salesman.


Found Tuarog, and got some incidental gold.


I immediately send my Tinker back to the Western Forest to fetch Binlor. Instead, I find Pactmaker. I immediately withdraw after this because Pactmaker's dungeon really screws you over for resources. My next attempt finds Pactmaker AGAIN! I'm actually pleased to have these two landmines cleared pre-emptively.


On my third attempt, I find Binlor himself. Binlor has one of the friendliest tests. I could easily continue the game from here, but I already have the Tinker badge for this dungeon. I quietly withdraw, checking Binlor's name off of the list.


The only thing left is Earthmother. I start sending scouts to the south. I mostly find a bunch of random subdungeons, but I get lucky and run across the goblin on my fourth try. That's a nice little bonus!


Earthmother emerges after my fifth try. Her dungeon really screws you hard, so I'm happy to have it out of the way.

I thought that the deal was that Pactmaker makes his final appearance after getting the other 8 gods. It turns out that I was wrong. Apparently 7 gods is enough, and I have already triggered all of his appearances. It takes me a while to figure this out. Thinking he's still out there, I start sending scouts to the west. I chose the west because that will do double duty with the Transmuter quest (which I'm not all that keen on, but will take if I can find it).


Instead, I find the orcs, which is awesome. I now have all of the races unlocked, if not enabled.


As expected, I stumble across the Transmuter a few runs later.


And then I find the Crusader, which tells me that something is up. He only shows up when all 9 gods are present, so that means that I've had Pactmaker all this time. Oh, well, I guess true happiness is wanting what you already have. I go ahead and recruit him and then pull out.

At this point, I think I have all of the random assets. The whole operation only took a few minutes, thanks to the Tinker. My next major goal is to finish the Hex Ruins and trigger the last Bezar quest, but I want to do one last bit of preparation. I go ahead and open up the Halfling Puzzle Pack so that I can add the Venom Ward to my shop pool. That should help when exploring Hexx.

The last puzzle is harder than I remember it being. I don't remember there being zombies there last time. The puzzle can be solved, but you have to do some funky conversion antics at the end or you'll end up with no resources and a boss that you brought down to exactly 1 hit point.

In the end, I get the Venom Ward. I'd put it in my locker, but I don't have a locker yet! Purist4Evar!

Well, maybe not forever. Nandrew wants us to check out the new Slayer Wand, and it occurs to me that it might interact very favorably with Sstheno's curse. It turns out that the wand only costs 5 gold to prep, which is awesome. I send a scout to Hexx armed with the wand to do some field testing. He pops the first monster he can find. Just as I had hoped, the monster is completely disintegrated, and Sstheno's magic is unable to create a revenant out of it. This will be very nice when I do the run for real, and I will definitely try it out next time.

[Fran]

You have a nice way of writing this, and I guess it is awesome help for someone new at the game

[Silent teammate]

Though i played a bit of alpha, before purchasing game, i found this information very usefull. I wish i would stumble onto this, a bit earlier. For sake of newcomers i recomend to put reference to this material somewhere where it will be seen more, somewhere on http://www.desktopdungeons.net/ maybe?

[The Avatar]

Hey devs, can you sticky this and the newbie-friendly annotated walkthrough thread?

[Sidestepper]

I send a Priest to the Hexx Ruins, armed with the experimental Slayer Wand.


A Priest with a GETINDARE rune can almost ignore the effects of Sethno's magic. The Revenants aren't so bad when you can one-shot most of them. The Slayer Wand let me pick off a Goo Blob-9 that would have been too expensive to kill otherwise, plus it prevents a Revenant-9 from spawning. I like this prep, but think it only has a use on Hard dungeons, and maybe Vicious. On normal dungeons, you can reliably cat-fight the monster-9s for bonus xp, and on Vicious runs the badge of courage might be a better long term investment.

The unexpected appearance of Bleaty at the last minute almost wrecked my run. Since Bleaty can one-shot you, he basically negates all of my class and racial powers. I may as well be using the Guard from the tutorial. I make an emergency conversion to Mystera, who grants me 100 piety for my history of magic use. I take Refreshment and Flames and just accept that I am a 100% spell caster now.

Immediately after clearing Hexx Ruins, Bezar starts grumbling about another buy out. I send a Tinker, who easily finishes the quest and then returns home, leaving the monsters untouched. Just like that, I have a maxed out Bazaar. Eight shops per map!

I decide to follow the Witch strand for a while. The first task is to do a Hoarder run against the Eastern Tundra. Priest is the most obvious choice.


A bit of frustration here. I didn't find any good combat glyphs until the map was fully explored. Notice that I still don't have fireball. It's hiding in the one remaining dark square between the Meatman and the Warlock. I still pull it off, but that really limited my cat-fighting options. The Slayer Wand works out well here. Using it doesn't violate the Hoarder condition, and there was no way I could afford to fight that Meatman-9 with all of my regen resources already tapped.




The next Witch quest is to get the Warmonger badge in the Western Forest. Now, the Warmonger is the hardest badge to get on average, but for Berserkers, it's relatively easy. Conveniently, there is a separate quest to clear the Western Forest with a Berserker. Time to take them both out in one stack.

I didn't take any victory pictures, but it wasn't hard to do at all.

The next Witch quest is basically a freebie: Get the Cheeky badge in the Northern Desert. I send a Wizard, because he automatically starts with a Fireball glyph, making Cheeky a sure thing.


Not sure why I didn't get Purist on this run. I must have accidentally prepped something without noticing. Doesn't matter, because I got that badge the first time I came through here.


I then pick up the 3rd quest, which involves hitting level 10 in the Rock Gardens. This is a very easy quest to pull off, since the maze generates extra monsters as the game goes on. Plenty of raw xp to be had. I decide to send a Rogue, and also decide to snag the Hoarder badge while I'm at it. I make the Rogue an elf because you don't see that very often and race doesn't matter if you don't convert anything. I found Dracul, who gave me the long term staying power to hit level 10. I realized at the last minute that I still don't have the Rock trophy, so I sacrificed some resources and killed Aequitas before knocking off the last brother. The way the map was laid out, it would have been smoother to do it the other way around, but Dracul made up for the lost resources.

At this point, I decide to open up the map some more. I send a Monk the Eastern Tundra. I was nervous about fighting Blah Blah with a Monk, so I prepped the Slayer Wand for an easy level up and the Smuggler's Den for extra exploration.


I got lucky and found a bonus subdungeon as well. You can't really fight Blah Blah if oyu still have black tiles on the map, but subdungeons can be left safely unexplored. I now have THREE submaps worth of tiles to regen fight with, plus level up AND a Chaos Avatar just waiting to happen. I end up kicking Blah Blah's ass so hard that I don't even have to use the subdungeons at all.

Clearing this quest opens up the Witchlight Ruins, which I summarily dispatch with a Rogue:


The east is now as opened up as it can get without purchasing the Paladin upgrade. I decide to open up the western frontier a bit more. A send a Sorcerer to cross Havendale Bridge.


I got kind of screwed here. I didn't find Fireball until the very end. That is bad for Sorcerers, and double bad for Elf Sorcerers. It's triply bad in this case, because no Fireball meant that I basically couldn't fight the Tokoloshe, adn hte fight with Zin Kibaru is balanced around the assumption that you have been harvesting their resistance amulets along the way. Also, I run into Bleaty AGAIN >:(

I used my gold to buy the Elven Boots, which give me 15% magic resistance and +3 mana. The first power is good against Zin Kibaru, while the second power is good against Bleaty. I ask Dracul for Blood Shield, punch Zin Kibaru as many times as I can, and then Fireball Bleaty, and then use the channeled healing to punch Zin some more. Then I level up, take Blood Tithe to gain more piety and increase my Fireball efficiency, and do it again. Bleaty eventually gets burned down to the ground, and I have enough blood pools to Sanguine my health back up for the long, protracted melee battle with Zin. The pools start to run dry, but they gave my so much piety that I can Bloodswell my way to victory.




I'm starting to get warnings about the impending market crash. Things aren't bad now, but they will get worse with each new trophy I find. It's in my best interest to stop getting new trophies for a while and build up enough cash to finish my kingdom. When I think I'm ready, I'll try to snatch up the remaining trophies in one quick series and try to settle things with Horatio as quickly as possible.

[Darvin]

Be sure to unlock the Paladin ASAP. There is NO DUNGEON that reliably spawns a dragon scale, and Firstborn doesn't spawn in randomly until you've unlocked the Paladin. The Paladin is the only tier 3 class that you must unlock to get access to Gaan-Telet, since every other trophy can be acquired from dungeons with preset bosses.

Bandit Scalp should be a piece of cake with a run in the Berserker Camp
Nose Ring should be straightforward if you prep Binlor to demolish the minotaur's labyrinth
Don't know how you've managed to avoid Goo Blob yet, but just pay attention to Northern Desert till he cycles in as the boss.
The Deanimated Helm could be a bit of a trouble since that level has two bosses and lots of fat. Another good location for the slayer wand, since level 9 AA's and Illusions are untouchable.
Naga Tail is gunna be the tricky trophy here. Bring a fortitude potion.

[Sidestepper]

Thanks for the kind words, everyone, although I don't think that this really merits a sticky. What we need is some sort of index that links to useful resources. Maintaining this would be a pain for just one person, which means that it should probably be on the wiki. What we could use is a permanent link to the wiki from the forums.

Darvin, you have a good point about the Dragon unlock. I'll make the Church-3 my next purchase. Maybe I'll find the dragon boss while churning out the Den of Danger quests.