New Players Guide

= Introduction =

This guide will give you the direction and information you need to advance quickly in Dungeon Overlord. This guide is written for players who want the information they need to gain an edge over the Overlords in their area. Casual players can also glean a lot of information from skimming this guide, but most of this will be written under the assumption that you're reading this because you want to make the right decisions. You start making a lot of critical decisions starting with your 2nd Dungeon, and there is no way to reverse a poor decision once it's made, so our goal is to give you what you need to make the most informed decision you can make.

This is a work in progress. Even when finished, it will undergo (hopefully timely) changes if patches change anything utilized by this guide.

= Important Information For Quick Advancement =

I'm going to throw a bunch of stuff at you that's really important, but you don't need to memorize it. Just keep it in mind. From this point on, a lot of your choices will be guided by short-term goals and a long-term plan. Sometimes the short-term goals will be the same as everyone else's - quest completion. However, you'll be surprised at how often and how long you'll delay those short-term goals in order to gain significant headway on your long-term plan.

Everything about this game is resource-driven. Your collection rate of every resource can be increased by improvements or decisions you make in the game. The funny thing is that the tutorial gives you the impression that the most important resources are your Creatures, and what you can mine in your dungeon. Both of those are totally wrong.

The two most important resources in this game are Experience and Research. Advancement in the game depends almost entirely on those two things, and these two resources are also the hardest to accumulate without planning things out. Early on, the only way you'll get more Experience is if you get more Research, so by increasing one you'll automatically increase the other. But you'll also need an awful lot of resources to get those experience bonuses. If you thought 2400 Iron was bad, your next goal (after the Level 3 Vault and Level 3 Den in your 2nd Dungeon) is a Level 5 Mine. That's 10000 Gold, 6000 Primordial Earth, and 400 Deep Ochre. You probably have no idea what those last two are, but nobody around you will have any idea either. The trick is that you know ahead of time that you will need more Primordial Earth than all the Iron you've spent on upgrades, and so you know exactly what you need to have in your 2nd Dungeon. More on that later.

The Overworld that I'll be forcing you to visit every 8-32 minutes is a single region in a larger continent. There are multiple continents, each of which contain a bunch of regions, and new players populate one region at a time. They're also seeded within that region, in columns going from upper-right to bottom-right, then upper-middle to bottom-middle, and then upper-left to bottom-left. So there may be people in your region who have quite a bit of a head start on you in time, but by the time several days pass you may catch up to or even pass them up if you play your cards right.

= Level 1 to Level 2 =

The following list is under construction still, but it's a step-by-step way to advance to Level 2 with an early Vault 3 as quickly as possible. The Faster Way will blow everything else out of the water but requires that you spend a small amount of money, while The Slower Way will finish roughly the same time as other dedicated players, but will have more Research and will already get an experience advantage from Vault 3.


 * Tag the Goldmine
 * Buy 1000 Station Credits for $10
 * Buy +3 Goblins, +25 Tiles
 * Build the Den, Upgrade the Den
 * Upgrade your Vault to Level 2
 * Continue with the quests until it tells you to craft a Warlock Bed
 * Deactivate the Iron Node (you should have the Crystal and Gold Nodes activated)
 * Craft the Warlock bed
 * Continue with the quests. Place the Warlock bed when it’s completed.
 * You will be short Crystal for upgrading the Library. Go to your Crystal Node and pick up the Crystal stack(s) on the ground. If you collect 30 or more Crystal, upgrade the Library immediately. Jot down the time you start this upgrade. If you’re a little short, continue down the list and collect crystal every couple minutes or so until you can get the upgrade.
 * Collect the gold in your Vault. Don’t obsessively collect, but you need to know your running totals. Click on the “All Quests” tab and stay on that tab.
 * Choose: Faster Way or Slower Way? You have to spend more money with the Faster Way.

Faster Way

 * Place Farm tiles around your Farm until the “tiles left” counter in the upper-right reads “3”. This should give you a total of 100 Farm tiles. Once all the Farm tiles have been built by your goblins, mouse over the food display on the top. It should say you’re producing 1200 food/hour. If it’s a little less, click your farm and click “details,” and see how many tiles it is in the right sidebar, and get it up to 100 tiles. ‘’’Jot down when the goblins have finished creating the last tile as well.’’’
 * Place the 3 remaining tiles around your Tavern, and place Tavern tiles over the 3 nearest Hallway tiles (total of 10 tiles). Upgrade your Tavern to Level 2 once the Library reaches level 2.
 * Collect resources as they come in. When you get a total of 300 crystal (click the wooden box icon in the icon bar on the right to check), craft another Warlock Bed. ‘’’You should reach 300 crystal roughly 45 minutes after the time you jotted down for the Library upgrade’’’.
 * Deactivate the Crystal Node and activate the Iron Node. Place the warlock bed when it’s done.
 * Click on the “Stocking up for the Winter” quest. You’ll have 500 food in the Tavern by now. If you don’t, collect it from the Farm until you have 500 food, complete the quest, then go back to collecting. You’ll gain 200 more food from the quest, but it’ll be wasted if you have no room for it. Don’t worry about food lying on Farm tiles, as 100 farm tiles will hold up to 20,000 food before they stop producing.
 * When the third warlock spawns, place Library tiles over any 4 Hallway tiles. Keep an eye out for when you reach 50 research, and research Creature Affinity when you can.
 * Once Creature Affinity is finished, craft a Coarse Mat. Place a Den tile over the first Hallway tile you can build on outside of your entrance. Get the quest reward for the next 2 quests as we’ve completed those already.
 * Sell 2 Farm tiles that aren’t holding food, and then click those tiles again to reclaim them for re-use.
 * Place Storage Room tiles over the 2 Hallway tiles between your Vault and the Gold Node. Place 2 Storage Room tiles next to those to make a block of 4 tiles. Collect Iron from your mine and upgrade the Storage Room to Level 2.
 * Craft another Warlock Bed. Collect Food from farm tiles until your Tavern is full, and pick up all other uncollected resources.
 * Click on the Shop, scroll down until you see “Transmute Basic Elements.” Select that and click “Buy.”
 * Drag the “Food” slider all the way down to 0. Set your crystal to be 600, and your iron to be 500. The rest will go to gold. Confirm the Transmutation.
 * Collect just 1 stack of food from the Farm to stop the warning messages. Get the completion rewards for “Rock Collection” and “More Work Means More Iron.”
 * Craft 2 more Warlock Beds. Sell the 6 Tavern tiles you placed earlier and replace them with Library tiles. Place 3 Den tiles over the Hallway tiles near the entrance to your dungeon, and place the already-crafted Warlock Bed in one of them. Sell the 5 Mine Tiles leading to the Crystal Node and one of the Mine tiles leading to the Iron Node and replace them with Library tiles. This should be a total of 12 added Library tiles. When they’re all built, click on your library and click “Details.” It should have a Maximum Worker Bonus: 6 Research Workers.
 * Place the other 2 Warlock Beds on the 2 remaining open Den tiles to form a nice 3x3 block of Den tiles. Collect Food until you’ve maxed out your Tavern storage, collect the other resources you’ve mined.
 * Now we need to wait until the Farm gets enough food stocked to do our next Transmute. We need a total of 3520 between Gold, Iron, Crystal, and Food. Remember that time you wrote down when those Farm tiles finished? Write the amount of crystal under that. What you want to do look up how much iron you have in your storage, add that to your gold, and then add the result to the crystal number you’ve written down. Then subtract that total from 3600.
 * If the final number is a little less than 2400 or 2400 exactly, then you’ll have enough in 2 hours from the time you have written down. If it’s lower than that, like around 1800, you’ll have enough an hour and a half from that time (which is probably about now, so check). And 1200 is an hour and you should be set in that case. Write down whatever the time will be, roughly, if you haven’t passed it yet; do NOT screw around and be sure to be in the game when the time comes!
 * So you’re at that time and know now that you’ll have enough. Collect everything off the ground, your tavern should be full in one food collection. There will be empty Farm tiles, so sell 4 of them and replace them with Tavern tiles. Collect food from nearby tiles until your Tavern is full, then sell and replace 4 more Farm tiles. Keep doing this until the stacks you’re picking up contain much less food than when you started.
 * Now go to the Shop and purchase Transmute Basic Resources again. Drag food to 0, type “800” in crystal, and type “2450” in iron. Once again, you’ll get the rest in gold, which is great. Confirm the Transmute, and immediately upgrade your Vault to Level 3. Be sure to write this time down so you know when to check the game again. Collect one stack of food so the game stops warning you.
 * Research Mechanical Essentials, you should have enough research by now. Remember the Tavern tiles you placed? Sell them and replace them with Farm tiles until you’re getting 1200 food/hour again. You can go do something else until 2 hours after the time you just wrote down.
 * Back? Awesome, now collect all the gold and iron that’s been mined. Sell a 2x2 block (4 tiles) of Farm tiles that don’t contain food; if you can’t find a clear 2x2, find one where you just need to collect a stack or two of food. Place Workshop tiles there, and upgrade the Workshop to Level 2. Wait for this to finish.
 * Collect all the gold and iron again. We should have enough for our next transmute, but to be sure, add your gold, crystal, and iron totals together. If that number’s greater than 1100, we definitely have enough. If you aren’t there yet, wait 15 minutes, then go to the next step.
 * Do the same Tavern/Farm tile juggling you did last time. Then Transmute again. Set your Food to 0 as always, set Iron to 2700, and set Crystal to 300. Confirm the Transmute, collect a stack of food, and sell and reclaim 5 Tavern tiles. Place 4 Storage Room tiles in a 2x2 block next to your Vault, where you’ll have space for more tiles. When your goblins have finished constructing those tiles, go to your other 4 tavern tiles and find the upgrade furniture. Click the tile that contains the furniture, click “move furniture,” bring it over to your new 2x2 block of Storage Room tiles, and place it there. Sell and reclaim the original 4 tiles, then place 5 Storage Room tiles next to your new ones to make a 3x3 block. Upgrade your Storage Room to Level 3.
 * We now have a choice. You can either switch back to Farm tiles for a massive transmute after you take your second dungeon, or you can switch to Mine tiles instead and not have to do all that juggling. Before you make your choice, I have to point out that it’s highly beneficial for you to do one last Transmute; after this last Transmute, you will no longer benefit from using this method and should switch to Mine tiles until you build other rooms in your Main. If you choose not to do the Transmute, sell and reclaim all but around 6 of your Farm tiles and the original 4 Tavern tiles, and rebuild them as Mine tiles around the Iron and Crystal Nodes, and activate all 3 Nodes. Then scroll all the way down past “The Long Way” until you reach the “Combine” section.
 * If you choose to stick with Transmuting, convert Tavern tiles to Farm tiles until you only have your original 2x2 block of Tavern tiles. Place any remaining tiles you have in stock as Farm tiles. You don’t need your Goblins until you take your second dungeon now, which will end up being a huge advantage. Go to the Overworld map by clicking on the downwards arrow to the right of your dungeon name, opening a dropbox, and selecting “Overworld.” Click the arrow next to the dropbox to go there.
 * Welcome to the Overworld! You’ll be spending a decent amount of time here, especially early on because we’ll be surveying a lot of dungeons to see where your second dungeon should be. You will have the pick of the litter using this method, because even though you built Vault 3 early, you’ll still be ahead of everyone else by several hours. We need to take advantage of this.
 * Your mountain should be in view. It’s the red mountain with lava pouring out. Click on that, and click the magnifying glass near the bottom of your screen. It’ll take you inside the mountain. You will see 4 red/orange skulls near the bottom and one grayish skull. That’s you and the 4 Overlords that share your mountain. All of the tower-like spaces above that are empty dungeons, and we need to see what’s in them. Click on one of these towers, and there should be an odd triangle in the upper-left corner with an eye. Click that, then select “dungeon heart” in the dialog box that opens, and send off a goblin to survey. Do that for your remaining 6 goblins. Go back to the dropbox and choose “Dungeon Heart,” then arrow back to your dungeon.
 * You’ll notice in the lower-left corner, where your upgrade timings appear, there’s a bunch of those triangles with green arrows. That means that your goblins are on their way to survey. When they reach the dungeon, the arrows will change to yellow. This means that they’re returning to your dungeon. It’s 4 minutes one-way because these dungeons are in your mountain, so 8 minutes round trip. Make sure to be in the game when they return, because you’re going to do the same thing right away until you’ve surveyed your mountain. What they find is not important right now, as we would survey a lot of dungeons anyway to keep your goblins doing something useful.

(to be continued)