Tips, Tricks and Cheats

[icStatic]

I've been playing this game for a while, so to help others get the most from it here are some strategies I've picked up while playing:

• You can sell wood, and it is essentially infinite. Work out how much food you need for the dwarves to survive by planting one plant at a time until your food keeps going up over the course of a minute or two at max speed. Fill the remaining spaces around your fertilisation stone with wood plants. When you upgrade to better plants, swap them for the wood bush (or whatever it is called). Next find a big area and dig it out, and fill it with chests (the ones for 100 wood only are a good bet) - add one every time you max your wood capacity out. If you do this right you can have a constant income of wood which you can then sell and buy resources of your choice for. Be careful though, keep an eye on your food - as you add more dwarves your food needs will go up too.
  
• Some plants in the upper tiers will vanish after they have been picked a certain number of times. The safest, most efficient plant I've found is the Radish. As soon as I unlock it I usually swap existing plants with that.
  
• If your dwarves get unhappy (that bar across the middle between the happy or grumpy dwarf) then they won't train or work as efficiently. This means your dwarves won't use those targets you made for them and won't get stronger. The game works out the happiness from the quality of your explored dungeon, so if you dig lots of space out your happiness will go down. You can boost happiness by placing decorations and ornaments. If you've done the wood trick above, lining your floor and walls with decorations is a really cheap because you'll be earning more wood than you can spend.
  
• Games can take a long time to complete, I usually watch DVDs while playing, each level usually takes me a few hours, which I will do over several evenings. To do this I mute the game and put it in windowed mode.
  
• The first things you should build: A food+wood farm (as above), a research bench (and make sure you have at least one researcher); and lots of target practice dummies.
  
• I like playing the game with 'dark mode' unticked. It makes the game a lot easier to see. It also uses a simpler lighting technique so might improve performance on lower-end PCs.
  
• There are nearly always enemies in the question mark blocks. Always save the game before you explore one, and make sure you've levelled up your military units with target dummies before you explore the first one in a game.
  
• Target dummies don't last long, you'll have to keep replacing them.
  
• Ranged military units have a maximum range and a minimum range. A minimum range means they have to be a certain distance away from the enemy they attack. This can be a problem on small maps and it increases as the unit levels up. In one case I had a base full of military units and they were all ignoring the enemies destroying my base because they couldn't get far enough away and were all stood in the same square at one side of my base. I'd recommend having a good balance of ranged and melee types to make sure this doesn't happen to you. If you can't afford the resources, use the wood trick above.
  
• Ranged military units don't need line of sight to the target - they can shoot through walls.
  
• Your prince can level up on the world screen (one of the icons on that screen flashes as you complete levels). This will let you do things like permanently unlocking research the lower tier of research.
  
• I run the game on the highest speed the majority of the time. I drop it down when I max out a resource, a dwarf is in trouble or I have enemies in my base.
  
• Keep an eye on dwarves when digging downwards, be ready to build ladders so they can get back up. If they get stuck they'll die from hunger.
  
• If a dwarf is about to die, pause the game, use the teleporter and move them to the nearest safe location (preferably near a table and bed).
  
• If there are enemies in your base and you teleport diggers and other non-military dwarves out of the way, they will likely run right back again. Place doors at strategic points and remember to close the doors (and then re-open them) to prevent the threat getting through, and the dwarves running back into danger.
  
• Place an outpost near where you are digging so your military is always on hand to dispatch trouble.

If people like these I may post more!

Anybody got any other tips?

[Marshmallow]

It's not much, but:

Make sure you always have a few dwarflings in case one of your dwarves die

[NightHaunt]

There is 2 layers just below the surface you can set your diggers to mine without having to worry about them for the most part. there is almost never any hidden rooms in this layer. It is also a good spot to build storage and things you don't want in your base.

[Mokka]

I recently got the game and those are some helpful tips.

[Sephiroth]

thanks

[Shadow]

thanks to

[[Asgard] Thor]

Plants will re-use a resource after a certain time, if you don't have that resource then they will disappear. Radish's use wood, so it's no surprise they wouldn't disappear with your wood strategy.

[Ancano]

All very good tips.

[Regicide]

2022, still a nice game and thanks for the tips :)

Last time I played this game I got bored after a while and never finished it. I hope I will this time!