Raiding

Raiding Overworld settlements and rival Dungeons can be done to obtain Resources and Gold. Raiding elven Settlements generates Hate.

Starting a Raid
The first step towards initializing a raid is to choose a target; whether it is another Overlord's dungeon or an Elven Settlement. Once a target is selected, the Raiding Screen opens to give the Overlord some basic options before launching a raid:


 * From Dungeon: Select which dungeon to raid from. Selecting different dungeons pulls up a list of available creatures in that dungeon.
 * Raid/Pillage Radio Buttons: This changes the attack type and is only available against other Overlords. Currently the only two choices are Raid and Pillage. These radio buttons are replaced by the Leather Boost button if an Elven Settlement has been selected.
 * Objective: Select which Room to target when attacking another Overlord. This drop-down list is disabled if an Elven Settlement has been selected.
 * Available Creature List: Located directly below the From Dungeon drop-down list, all currently available creatures from the selected dungeon are will be listed here. They can be assigned and unassigned to the current attack using the left and right arrow buttons.
 * Attacking Creatures List: Located directly below the Objective drop-down list, creatures that have been assigned to this attack will be listed here. Creatures can be added or removed from this attack by using the left and right arrows.
 * Stop Watch Button: Adds a 5 round delay to an attack for each click to strategically segment an attack.
 * Number of Times to Raid: Select how many times to attack a target with this attack group. The limit is 3 times.
 * Halt Upon Death: Select whether an attack group should stop or continue subsequent attacks should an attacker perish.

Notice that Time Until Attack changes depending upon which Creatures are assigned to the attack group. This value will always be reflective of the slowest assigned creature's overworld movement speed.

Canceling a Raid
Raids may only be canceled while they are en route to the target. There is a currently undetermined point of no return for when raids may be canceled. Raids may be automatically canceled in the case of Elven Settlement destruction.

Maximum number of Raids
A maximum number of raids per own dungeon has been added. From a dungeon you can initiate only up to 20 raids at a time. It doesn't matter if those raids are against other dungeons, settlements or a mix between both.

Pitiful settlement
"Pitiful", that is to say, the lowest level settlements, appear to have 1-2 defenders of levels 1-2. They provide mostly T1 resources. In order of abundance: leather, food, gold, iron and crystal.

They also provide about equal amounts of the 4 T2 resources, the primal elements. However, the probability of them dropping are somehow tied to one (or more) of several factors:


 * Researched technologies
 * Attacking creature level
 * Dungeon age
 * Amount of raids done

Which it is has yet to be empirically determined. Suffice to say, young players appear to find fewer primals than older overlords.

These settlements provide a maximum of 400 resources. After raiding a pitiful settlement many times in a short period of time, this number may drop to 300. After a period of recovery, it will slowly rise again. If a settlement is raided enough times, it will burn to the ground, but it will respawn within a day or so.

The most effective way to raid pitiful settlements is to send leveled thieves alone. If there are multiple settlements within range, it may be more efficient to send thieves to all of them, instead of only concentrating on the closest one.

Stronger Raiding Party Settlement
“Stronger Raiding Party” Settlements are the second level installments in the NPC Settlements. It is recommended to attack these settlements with a minimum of x6 L26 Orc’s. However, sending Orc’s to attack these locations can take a lot of time, to minimize the time it does take to assault these locations it is best to use Thieves. Thieves are faster and can loot far more than Orc’s can, they can also loot the items you need without risk of losing your Army.

Unlike the “Pitiful” settlements you can gain significant more resources from here, for example; a L40 Thief can steal 1500 leather in a single run! However, enemies here are much stronger and come in greater numbers ranging from 4 enemies as high as 10, ranging from level’s low as 2 to as high as 13.

Raids on these also called T2 settlements can also yield higher tier resources like e.g. Dense Basalt, Ruby or higher equipment e.g. Turbominers.

Current Study:


 * Level 30 Thief – Completed 9 out of 10 raids; was caught by x1Ranger(10), x1Rogue(12), x2Footman(5)
 * Comment: a L30 Thief can raid this settlement but has a chance of getting caught by Rogues and Rangers around L10 and L12. I suggest that you do not take the risk, since leveling a thief from 1-30 is expensive and timely. I suggest that you level your thief up to L40 and raid away.
 * Level 40 Thief – Completed 20/20;
 * Comment: I have completed 20/20 with a L40 Thief, never caught and ranked in 4x the value of my thief in my first day in raiding this settlement. It is safe to send 1xThief(40) to raid but, you will max out their carry limit.

--Furanku 18:01, January 27, 2011 (EST)


 * Comment: Because of a recent patch, there is no longer a "totally safe" thief level as all detectors now have at least a 2% chance of detection regardless of level difference. The "safe" thief level is now whatever has the stats to solo the settlement in combat. This is highly inefficient because of the required resources.

--Hellheart 10:35, March 8, 2011


 * Comment: Agreed, I lost a level 47 thief and a level 50 thief on a level 2 settlement, both in less than 3 raids post patch. Very frustrating to lose something with that much time and resources invested in it. This page is very misleading to people post patch.

--Kriss50 10:36, April 24, 2011


 * Comment: I managed to lose a lvl 50 on this type of settlement, however he was close to managing to solo it, the lvl 9 Ranger and one lvl 5 Foot Soldier were left alive while he managed to kill 5 other lvl 5 Foot Soldiers. My recommendation is to send all your thieves that are above lvl 15 on a run to these settlements, so that if they are spotted, your lvl 50 has backup and is less likely to die than the lower levels. Also, before I lost my lvl 50, he looted enough that his loss wasn't catastrophic as He had completed 15 runs without being spotted
 * Stealthed units (Thieves, Ghosts) don't assist each other or join combat on offense unless detected.

Settlement Raid Reports
''Due to length, this section has been condensed. Please visit the Raid Reports page for the raid result data previously located here.''

T1-T3 Raid XML
Village aka T1. Data from SettlementVillage.xml max="5000" raidMax="300" respawnPerHour="250"

Furniture possible: Locked Cellar, Slop Bucket, Keg, Mining Cart, Anvil

SettlementTown.xml aka T2 SettlementCity.xml aka T3

PvP Dungeon Raiding
There are two "classes" of dungeon raids: Inactive Player Raids, and Active Player Raids. Anyone is capable of doing the first, while the second normally requires that you have some advantage over the other player. This advantage can be in troop numbers or levels, in stealth, or in troop makeup. Inactive Player Raids, if chosen carefully, are completely safe. The same cannot be said of Active Player Raids unless you have a crushing power advantage.

Determining Active or Inactive Player Status
Because anyone can join Dungeon Overlord for free, a significant number of players will begin the game and then stop within a day or two. In some cases, players won't even start the game at all. There are several ways to judge the likelihood of whether a player is active or not. Keep in mind that none of these methods are foolproof, for reasons that will be outlined as they are addressed. Therefore - and this will be repeated - never send an expensive army to an unknown dungeon! Initial narrowing-down methods include, but are not limited to:


 * Dungeon Name
 * Existence/Timing of 2nd and/or 3rd Dungeon
 * Nonresponsive to inbox messages

Dungeon Name: The quickest way to potentially identify an inactive player is to see if their dungeon is still named "Dungeon Lair" after 2 days of starting. This is NOT a 100%-reliable method of determining whether a player is active, but it's the fastest reliable way to "guess." Some players don't care about naming their dungeon, while other devious players can build a powerful, fast army and maze their entrance so they can kill and counterattack players who raid their dungeon.

2nd Dungeon: It is fairly easy for a player to take their 2nd dungeon within a day of beginning the game. However, because many players will not devote a large time block to the game initially, it can often take two or more days for an active player to take his 2nd dungeon. Some active players may be confused by the interface and stay on one dungeon for a prolonged length of time, while others will be inactive for days before suddenly coming back and focusing on the game. For all of these reasons, the timing of the 2nd dungeon is unreliable on your first day of play, and slowly becomes a better metric as the days go by. Early on, the Dungeon Name is the most reliable metric, while later on the 2nd Dungeon timing helps to identify players who played for awhile and then stopped.

There is one caveat, and this applies even more to the 3rd Dungeon. While many players will take their 2nd Dungeon inside their starting mountain, some players will look to nearby mountains. Very rarely, a player will significantly delay their 2nd Dungeon in order to find a location that provides all the necessary resources for quick advancement. Be sure to check nearby mountains for the 2nd and range wider than that for the 3rd, and never blindly assume that the player does not have a 2nd/3rd Dungeon just because it isn't nearby.

3rd Dungeon: There's a fair number of players who will lose interest in the game before they take their 3rd. Research slows down significantly between levels 2 and 3, and the game can lose its draw over time. Balance changes can also play a part, as the thief nerf seems to have chased a number of players away. A player may lose his entire army to a poor decision or unlucky series of events, and quit the game in disgust. For these reasons, a player who focuses on Inactive Player Raiding should keep in mind when they were able to take a 3rd Dungeon, and how fast they reached level 3 relative to the fastest possible time (which involves rushing mining techs and taking a 2nd Dungeon that has 2 P. Earth, 2 Deep Ochre, and 1-2 Iron Nodes for 2 quick Level 5 Mines and potentially a fast Level 5 Den). With this information, you should have a rough idea of when players should have taken a 3rd Dungeon, although the potential variance in timing can be a week or more.

Inbox Messages: This works best if you've had prior communication with a player, but also can work in a general sense. Even something simple as "hello" will often get some sort of response; another common message involves a very trivial question about the game. If a player sends no response after a day or two, he may be inactive.

This is extremely effective for determining whether an active player is unable to play for a period of time, such as holidays and popular vacation times. Players will almost always set their creatures to hide in this case because multiple reprisals in a short period of time can easily wipe out a dungeon. An even more time-intensive variation of this is to simply pay attention to when a player will respond to your messages, and try to determine when that player is sleeping or working. Not only does this give you a potential time window for raiding, but it also lets you know when they will have the biggest stockpile of resources, allowing you to get the maxiumum payoff for the time you invest. The mindset, strategy, and risks for this sort of raiding fall into the Active Player Raiding category, but the various collection rooms (mine, farm, vault) are more likely to be totally full in this case.

Inactive Player Raid Execution
Once you have determined that a player is most likely inactive, you should first raid their Vault with a Thief (this will be called a "Poke"). The level of the Thief should scale to how far along you think that player had advanced before they stopped playing. If you have a Level 1 Thief for whatever reason, err on the side of minimal resource loss and send him out to any starter still named Dungeon Lair and the starters of most or all of the players who haven't expanded in a reasonable amount of time. The only thing you can lose is the 1:30 it takes for the Thief to respawn, and the Thief will safely return from all low-tech dungeons, low-tech dungeons that got their Thief but either the thief wasn't present or he failed his detection check, and sometimes from all sorts of dungeons with no stealth detection and only a single Spike Trap. A Level 10 Thief will return from all dungeons that do not have leveled Dark Elves or Thieves and also do not have multiple traps to increase potential failure and reveal rate. If a Level 40 Thief doesn't return, there's a pretty high chance that you just found a Raiding Dungeon, populated by either multiple high-level Dark Elves and/or a large number of fire traps.

Assuming your "poke" succeeds, you will be able to see their dungeon layout, whether their creatures are hiding (and if not, the creature levels), what traps they have set, and the types of rooms they have. It's important to raid the Vault, because there are some odd players who will only play long enough to activate their Gold Mine. Considering that this is the single fastest source of risk-free gold in the early stages of play, this is pretty much the best possible result since they are guaranteed to accumulate gold at a fair rate (3 goblins mining no matter what). If your Thief raided nothing, and the dungeon layout shows the basic rooms at least but nothing that poses a threat to your Thief, send your Thief to raid the Farm. If he returns with far less food than he should have, that player is most likely Active. Apologize through an inbox message to be sure, and if there is no response whatsoever you should periodically raid the player. It is possible that your poke was poorly timed, and some other player had recently raided that player's dungeon. There is no need to lay off the raiding if you get no sign that the player you're raiding is active.

If the player is either inactive or incompetent, your continued goal is to raid their collection rooms in a timely manner. As long as these rooms aren't full, those inactive players will continue to generate free resources over time. Therefore, whenever you sign on to collect the resources in your dungeons, you should also send out raids to inactive dungeons to collect theirs as well. Initially, of course, you will also be raiding their storage, but once you empty those rooms there will be no way for them to refill because the resources must first be collected. Thus, the order goes: every collection room once, everything not in safe storage, everything currently in the collection rooms. Remember which resources are being actively collected so you don't waste raiding time later!

Often the dungeon will give you a good idea of the danger level of the player if he in fact is active, what rooms would be best to raid, and what sort of loot you should expect to gain. A player with hiding creatures and no traps to speak of, and with no signs of recent activity, can be a target for raids by your raiding party as well as their Thieves. This will allow you to quickly take everything he has in storage, increasing your raiding income and reducing the amount of time you have to spend actively guiding your Thieves. Do not get too cocky with those raids, however, because the player may come back and have his creatures defend and it really, really sucks to lose your entire raiding force because you got lazy. After you remove everything from storage, limit your raids to the occasional Farm/Mine/Vault depopulation raids with thieves until you're certain that the player is indeed inactive. Any player who does not have a Forge after a week into the game is almost certainly inactive (remember that he could have his forge in his 2nd dungeon, though!). A player who does not have an Elements Confine by that point is probably inactive, and is either certainly inactive or a total idiot after 2 weeks or more because it's impossible to upgrade a number of rooms without the Confine to increase resource storage capacity.

If you feel that your Thief got lucky and may be detected if he raids again, determine whether you can wipe out this player's forces with your army. Even if you take a loss or two, the potential reward is often worth it, as the dungeon will repopulate with Level 1 creatures. You are then able to freely loot the dungeon with higher-level Thieves and any raiding party capable of wiping out all the Level 1 creatures. If the player's creatures combined with the traps in his dungeon will be too much for you to take, just ignore that dungeon. There are plenty of easier dungeons to raid, and by the time you could deal with that force you probably won't need the resources anyway.

It should only take you a day or so to know who around you is most likely inactive after you begin poking. If you do accidentally raid an active player, be sure to apologize, and make sure that you give him no reward if he chooses to counter-raid your dungeons. Between crafting, shipping, and outright destruction (ie, sell mine tiles with resources on them if you either can't collect them or collecting them will put you over safe storage with no way to fix that), you should be able to ensure that initial raids prove fruitless.

Active Player Raid Execution
Raiding a player you know to be active is clearly within the rules of the game. However, raiding a known active player without provocation is a form of griefing, so this sort of activity will get a wide range of responses. Even if you have a clear power advantage over the target player, it's possible that he may know other people in the region who are as powerful or more powerful than you are. You may end up biting off far more than you can chew, especially if those people have creatures with high Pillage values. Even if this is not the case, you are intentially making the game less fun for other players without any reason. While this may give you more inactive players to raid, it may also result in a player intentially deactivating all nodes, selling his farms, and sending everything he has to a random active player in order to prevent you from gaining anything.

Thus the following assumes one of two cases: you are targeting a specific dungeon in order to obtain a known resource, or you are retaliating against a player who provoked you in some way. These two goals have very different methods of assault and danger thresholds.

If you're looking to get a certain resource, your goal is one poke followed by a pair of quick raids. The raids are launched simultaneously, and then the poke launched later such that it'll arrive shortly before the raids do. The result of the poke gives you a chance to cancel the raids, either because the poke unexpectedly dies, or because it scouts creatures that are far more powerful than you expected. One raid will be aimed at the resource storage room, while the other will be aimed at the Mine. The timing for this is the most important thing, because your raid will fail if your target sees it coming. Your method of determining when that player is not going to be playing is up to you, but there is no easy way to do this because frequent communication may make that player suspicious. A lot of work and finesse goes into choosing targets and planning these raids, especially if the target resource is of very high value and is stored in very small amounts. The storage room raid in particular will almost always fail unless preparations are made to ensure that the resource does not fall within the safe storage limits.

If your goal is retaliation instead, your first goal is to find that player's other dungeons. A player's expansion dungeons are almost never as well-defended as his main dungeon; you also can't pillage his main dungeon, so you can do more damage to his expansion dungeons. You should poke those expansions with a high-level Thief unless you're confident you can destroy whatever traps and creatures he may have defending the dungeon. Once you know what's in the dungeon, your goals (in both order of execution and order of difficulty) are: raiding everything not in safe storage, killing every leveled creature in the dungeon, pillaging his library to reduce his research, pillaging his storage in the hope of taking out Safe Storage furniture followed by raids to get the freed resources, and pillaging the rest of his dungeon starting with whatever contains the most expensive furniture. Only the first goal can be accomplished by Thieves, while the rest require a position of greater strength. It may be possible to eliminate the creatures in his dungeon even if they are in hiding by pillaging the Den. If you are able to eliminate all of the beds, it could be virtually impossible for the player to craft and place the beds for more than maybe 2 creatures before the rest end up leaving. This not only leaves him with level 1 creatures, it also leaves him with virtually no creatures at all, making subsequent raids and pillages a cakewalk unless/until he drops a bunch of firetraps in that dungeon.

If you have a Raiding Dungeon with powerful defenses, you may be able to bait him into attacking that dungeon if your intended target is too powerful for you to take. If you manage to kill a large raiding party from your target, you may have weakened his defense enough to crack it with a counterattack. Remember that traps are your worst enemy, although theoretically you may be able to have your entire army follow a number of very high-level thieves and end up having to deal with no traps at all.

The extent and duration of your retaliation is up to you, but keep in mind that excessive retaliation can be seen as griefing, especially if done to a player who is far less powerful than you are and who gained nothing when he provoked you. There is nothing wrong with raiding everything a weak player has outside of safe storage if he foolishly sends an attack at you, but multiple future raids and/or pillage attempts can cross the line between acceptable retaliation and griefing. If the target continues to provoke you, then by all means raid him into oblivion, but all players make mistakes and most people deserve a second chance, particularly in a game like this where a reset is not possible after your 2nd Dungeon unless you create a new account.