Part 6: Behind Enemy Lines
Episode 6: Behind Enemy Lines









The dwarven jail and the first hero fortress are just to the north of our dungeon core. Small problem, though: we have no gateway.

So first things first, we'll want to build a large beast den. Beast dens don't need a gateway to attract beasts, so it's useful in missions like this.

You know what, that's a good idea. There's a new upgrade for the Beast Den, and since I start the level with one Sin, I might as well get it.



Mendechaus might be overselling shadows a little bit, but as long as they're stronger than oculi, I welcome them



Rhaskos, buddy, I appreciate your input, but we already have two narrators.

Now that I have a few beasts, it's time to spring Rhaskos' minions from the dwarven jail. I built this big training barracks

The prison itself was undefended, but soon a small force of dwarves shows up.

After dealing with them, we break into this small treasure chamber. In addition to not having access to a gateway, we also don't have any gold ore, so it's useful to claim these little treasuries on the way to make sure you can pay your monsters.

I notice a large wall of brimstone to the north. It's usually worth cracking open brimstone to see if it's hiding any goodies inside.





Shut up, Rhaskos. This is an incantation shrine, and it's awesome. It reduces spell costs by 40%. A big part of winning fights between your monsters and enemy heroes in enemy territory is spamming heal spells on your monsters whenever your mana recharges. Reducing spell costs by 40% means I can cast ~67% more heal spells before I have to stop and wait for my mana to recharge, which is a pretty big deal.

I go back to check out the prison. After we claimed the prison and defeated the dwarves, our workers picked them up and threw them all behind bars.

Mendechaus has a lot of really good ideas this mission.

I follow his advice and unlock the Blood Money spell. We can use it to turn creatures under our control into gold statues. Our workers can then mine the statues and bring the gold to our dungeon core. We're going to run a for-profit prison!

I turn all the prisoners into gold. This statue contains over 6,000 gold, which is a very large amount when you're strapped for cash! Blood Money is an excellent spell.

Now that the war has become extremely profitable, I immediately attack the dwarves once again. Inside their next base, I discover a new room type.


Hey! Quit bitin' my style!
Looks like those uppity dwarves wanted to get in on the evil game, because they built a large torture chamber for our minions. Is this like, a reverse "are we the baddies?"

Then out of nowhere, a large force of dwarves charges right through my base!

I'm so surprised that I don't even have time to mobilise before they've reached my dungeon core. I drop a bunch of monsters on them and manage to hold them off. Honestly, I don't know what they were expecting, this attack seemed unusually suicidal.

There were so many of them that I couldn't even fit them all in my prison.



Suddenly, some succubi appear! I don't have a gateway, so I actually have no idea where they came from. But succubi are really good. They deal a ton of damage and have some handy combat abilities. Unfortunately, torture chambers are really expensive to build, so unless you have an infinite gold shrine or something, it'll be hard to attract significant numbers of them.
Succubi work in the torture chamber room. If you drop prisoners on the racks, you can try to convert them to join your side. This is very useful, as the heroes tend to have some powerful units, and it's much quicker to convert powerful enemy heroes than to attract and train up your own units.
I could start converting the dwarven prisoners, but I have a better plan.

I found this guy in one of the dwarven prisons. I don't know what he did to end up there, but he's a level 10 bard, which means he's very powerful. We'll try to convert this guy while we assault the final hero stronghold.
But first, an observation from Mendechaus.


I'm surprised that I haven't done that yet, honestly. I should have done that in like, episode 1.

All right, enough messing around. Let's take down this fortress!



We advance on the inner sanctum of the dwarves. Our succubi managed to convert the bard really quickly, shown here rocking out. Clearly, he didn't have much sympathy for his captors.


No, they're revolting. Individual minions will rebel against you if they get very angry for one reason or another. I'm not sure what they're angry about here, but we're so close to the goal that I don't want to call a retreat.

You rock that lute, bard!



