Layout of Underground World


There are some key differences in this world.

1) It's not very wide but around twice as deep.
2) Floating Islands hang in the sky and
3) when the Monster Portal opens the bad guys will parachute down from above.

You will probably need to have mastered manual control of your dwarves for careful block placement to navigate around the underground chambers / caverns that are packed full of Goblins and the odd dragon.

4) Every 'cycle' of the portal countdown enables a new character - the Shaman to call up a large monster - Takmak. He won't come after you, but more about him later!

5) New craft items such as guns, new food, Chitin armour and steel walls (no more having to buy them from the shop).

Advantages

This world can be easily mastered, especially at it has the advantage that you can finally put the mine carts to good use - easily spanning the whole world, left to right.

Mix this up with lift shafts every so often, going 3-4 deep and you can access most of the underground without using up mana to portal your dwarves. I've had ten dwarves at a time crammed into my lifts.

Another great resource are the islands - 3-4 floating in the sky. They are often clear of really damaging monsters - so a good place to harvest.

Several huge undergroynd lakes spawn - so plenty of fish and water to be found.

On the down side ...

Caverns filled with life sucking Goblins are a real pain!
Rain does fall - but only on small areas - maybe just a few blocks wide and not often.

S0, you need wood, leather, feathers, eggs, wool and food - where is it?

Supplies

1) Berries come from these.



Tomatoes you will have to buy if you want tomato based foods.

2) Leather comes from these creatures.



3) Wool comes from Caterpillars and
4) Feathers and eggs comes from flying Octopus things!




You can catch these with the usual traps and keep them in farms.

* TIP: Just catch two of each, they breed in farms. Remember, once you have more than two 'birds' kill them to get the feathers. Wool is sheared in thhe usual way with the 'cut' action.

I ran out of creatures to kill - now what?

In this world, you will run out of creatures - however, this is where the Shamen comes into it - see next topic.

5) Wood comes from these:

The first two, I wouldn't bother with - they don't do much damage and are a waste of material:





but this one packs a punch



You will need to mine a new material to make the guns and ammunition.



This is sulphur and you use it to make gunpowder and ammunition. There is tons of it the lower down you mine.







When going for portal pieces, I had the biggest guns for my 'Warriors' and a bag of 60 fireball amunition types.


For the new food - you will harvest these mushrooms.


You can make 4 new mushroom based foods.




Other items include:

1) Chitin armour

This comes after basic leather - you make leather based helmets etc, then craft these into Chitin,

Chitin comes mostly from those worms that sit in the soil and nibble away at the dirt/metal,

It offers some protection when hunting but is no match for any of the bad guys!

2) Steel walls

Eventualy you will be able to craft steel walls - the strongest type previously only available from the shop in other levels.

3) Steel ladders - as above

This is Takmak,

Somewhere near your stockpile at the start of the game will appear two things ... the shop



and the Shaman.

Every 'cycle' of the countdown to the Monster Portal, you will have the chance to place goods from your inventory onto the alter.

Simple click on the item you wish to place and then click on the alter - you can place around 12 things.

The aim is to turn the light (round button in the center of the alter) from orange, to white and then to blue. Once it is blue, you are pretty much safe.

What shall I offer to him?

You can try anything - but he really like needle crystals and other colours and shapes - try some and see!




The pieces above the alter will come together to say time is up - Takmak will rise up and thump the ground. He will look at your offering and decide what to do, before disappearing again.

If he likes your offering (and you turned it Blue), he will rewards you with:

1) Spawn lots of new treess, bushes and animals to hunt - and
2) drop you some metal or other resource.

* He can drop Mithril if really happy so you can build the best armour really early on in the game.

TIP: Send imps to pick them up, as bad guys tend to lurk around this area.

If he hates your offering:

1) He will turn red , thump the ground and turn several soil layers into sand (if he likes it next time, the sand will eventually turn back to soil.

Tips to get you through this level quickly and easily.


Bad guys drop down from above when the Monster Portal opens.

1) Hold them back by building up the ends of islands, like this:



2) Underneath the ends of the island, build an area for a pond as soon as possible.



I have a huge pond next to the side of my underground house (i.e. the walls have water next to them. I built up over the stockpile with dirt and fortified it in places with over head ponds and Steel doors and walls.

Bad guys who do get over your island barriers, will fall into the pond and be stuck until they disappear.

They can't dig through ponds - so use ponds for roofs and at the side of walls, observe where the rain falls for your first pond.

3) Cascade ponds.

If rain only falls 10 blocks to the left, allow that pond to fill and overflow into another, and another ... putting ponds side by side allows them to be filled if it never rains on those blocks. (I have one cascading pond on my roof where it rained lots (above picture).

You will probably never have your shelter attacked other than by Goblins.

Goblin Caverns

Throughout the underground are HUGE caverns filled with goblins and the odd dragon. They are mean and kill you quick with anything less than silver armour.

Just avoid them - dig around and don't bother killing them.

Never let a dragon out - even with full mithril armour they are hard to kill. However, they do have nests near them with lots and lots of coins.


This is a good way to move through a Goblin cavern or block in creatures. Build stone or soil ahead of you, beyond a safe wall (top, bottom and straight ahead). When the barrier is up, mine the block ahead of you, walk into the protected area you created, and repeat. Inch you way in.

Goblins can notice what you are doing sometimes and try to break down your wall - just keep trying to replace it.

1) Scroll Keepers with dragons - control a single dwarf to block the dragon completely away from a Scroll Keeper (or they kill you quickly) before you break into the cavern with them in.

Using islands

Control dwarves to build a link from one island to another - uses less mana.