Different game play strategies

[ceres]

I'm interested in hearing about different ways to play the game, including using the console commands.

an example would be bum rushing the Peacer clan and starting the game with their buildings

trying to get back into it.

[CBase]

Just Kill everyone as soon as you see them.

[euka]

i mostly play carefully.
let a base develope and tech up as much as the level and resources let me.

explore with a smal team the area and clear the quests.

when the ways get too long i dig a new settlement area and start moving the hole to the next locations. With storages it is easy to tage most ressources with me. and everywhere milestones to see ressources and or enemy movements.

[The Dandiest King]

I have found that the optimal strategy is to ignore the colony building aspect of the game and just to rush through it with your original 5 Diggles until right before Fenris. My reasoning is thus:

• Diggles get unhappy (to the point of depression spirals) because of civilization level
  
• Civilization level is dependent on: number of diggles, number of inventions you have, number of buildings you have and number of diggles with maxed out abilities.
  
• You can steal buildings from enemy clans if you alt+click the buildings when you are already hostile (if you do so when neutral, your diggles will simply attack them)
  
• You can kill any number of enemies by placing 3 traps next to each other and distracting the enemies by attacking them and running away. They'll keep chasing your Diggles and die to the traps.
  
• Food is so plentiful in loot in caves, troll fortresses etc. if you have few Diggles you can easily not only get by without ever cooking, but you'll leave some behind.

Therefore the optimal way to play is to skip almost the entire tech tree and steal what little you need from the later clans. More detailedly:

World 1:

Keep your men and women in separate time slots so they don't multiply. Since you'll be keeping civ level to a minimum they only need 3 hours of rest with no conveniences (no tents, no baths, no beer etc.) to start each day with 100% Mood and Attention (assuming they just drop everything where they stand when their night shift starts and why wouldn't you let them?). If you have 3 men and 2 women, you can allow them to have one baby (we want to have 3 women by Lorelei). If you take too long and your Diggles grow too old, just let them ♥♥♥♥ a new generation into existence before they croak.
The bare necessity inventions are:
Log->Carpenter->Riding Hamster, Store, Sawmill->Large Basket; Stonemason->Trap.
You can get more inventions if you want, but try to keep them to a minimum (for instance I invented grilled hamster, wooden door and mushroom farming, but didn't use them at all)
At the very beginning, on the surface, you get 3 mushrooms and you're guaranteed to generate 2 caves nearby with 2-3 mushrooms each, so you'll have 7-9 close by, which is very important since you'll need a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of stems in the very beginning, to make: log (3), carpenter (7), store (8), 5 riding hamsters (5), (in World 2) sawmill (5), hamster wheel (3), 5 large baskets (10) and 15 for the bridge at the end of World 2 (66 total). Tip: For stems you don't need a fully developed mushroom. One step behind fully developed drops one stem and one cap, two steps drops one stem. Both of these are good enough. While your designated carpenter Diggle invents and builds all of this (and stores stone for traps and stems for World 2) you can explore with others. You can find enough maces and axes for everyone. When you get to Voodoo village, if you're fast enough, you can steal 3 baskets from them when they spawn (game has no concept of item ownership so they won't mind. For the same reason they won't mind to come to you to steal your ♥♥♥♥, so watch out). They also have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of mushrooms and will leave stems, so you can take some from them. In the meantime you could also collect 30 stones for traps. You can take a potion of youth or two with you just in case. This shouldn't take more than 5 days.

World 2:

Once you have it all, go to World 2, you'll get 2 irons in the first cave, perfect for a sawmill you'll use to make large baskets for each of your dwarves. You can abandon every building but the Stonemason and Store, you won't need them again until World 4. Go through the Knockers village, you can steal 3 irons in upper right part of their base. Help the dragon, dry the Titanic, have him killed, get the egg. There's enough iron in Titanic's barrels for the bridge and then some. Go to the exit, build the bridge and onwards to World 3.

World 3:

Go to the troll stronghold, dig straight for Snow White portrait, kill any troll in your way, take the 2 Invisibility Potions with you(!), then go to the Diggle Stronghold and solve the puzzle, letting you through. Prepare 3 traps for the Eggheads and get men kidnapped by Lorelei. Go to the Egghead city, through one of the external tunnels, place the traps, attack the crystal door from the outside. Eggheads will swarm right into your traps. Leave none alive. Upgrade time, they'll leave 4 hoverboards behind. Unlike Knockers and Voodoo earlier, they have something worth stealing: Luxury Bath, Living Room, Bedroom, a Bowling alley, a reactor, a second store, a crystal sander and a furnace. You can also steal a couple of farms cause in World 4 you'll build an actual base. For Lorelei you'll need 8 crystals, luckily the Eggheads had left more than enough crystal ore for you to sand. Designate one of your diggles to be an alchemist and have her prepare all the crystals. Pack all the *cough cough* newly acquired buildings to your new, second store, solve the Lorelei puzzle and onto World 4 you go. If your male diggles got too old in the meantime they'll start dying. You'd better have a Potion of Youth from World 1 ready.

World 4:

Prepare 3 traps for the Vampires, ethnically cleanse them and grab their Arsenal. You can skip the fire ring puzzle for now, and seek Fenris's lair. Once you find it you can FINALLY build your first (and last) colony, preferably right over it, unpack all the stolen goods and finally let your Diggles go to town with each other. Only things more you'll need is to invent (and build) are: dojo, turner->hoverboards, laboratory->large health potions, rifles (in the Arsenal). In the meantime get the fire ring, the hammer from the female dragon and forge the Gleipnir. Prepare a lot of large health potions while your diggles multiply and their work AI script slowly breaks. Their main profession should be training Ranged at the Dojo, so that everyone can use rifles for the final boss. Once you think you have enough rifledwarves and health potions, go for the final boss and show them the might of dwarven technology.

[havranbartek]

Currently I'm playing what I called "ultimate challenge" - the plan is to resurect every diggle that I ever had. All of my diggles carry with them full inventories of hats of their dead comrades so they don't disapear lol.

Also I'm playing extremely slowly, inventing everything (already done), and collecting absurd amount of resources, and digging basically entire possible space in each world.

Currently I'm in the lava world with 30 diggles alive and like another 30 waiting to be resurected. Sadly because of glitches I lost some hats during my 7 in game months gameplay.

If anyone is crazy enough to try this I have tip for you I learned the hard way: If your diggle died of old age and you want to resurrect them, you need to have fountain of youth ready REALLY nearby. Resurected diggles have 10hp and they are still dying of old age, so you have like few seconds for them to drink fountain. If you fail you can say goodbye to 4 gold.

Sadly I fear this challenge is impossible. Every diggle that died of old age requires 6 gold ingots (4 for resurection and 2 for fountain of youth). I already dug out most of the lava world and I fear there might not be enough gold to resurect everyone WHILE having old diggles drink fountain of youth. With 50+ diggles it will require about 4 gold ingots daily to just keep them from dying from old age, not even counting resurecting the next ones.

As side quest I'm training some insane assasins with 40+ sword fighting skills. If you didn't know that already, after hitting level 40 of sword fighting diggles unlock special move that deal absurd amount of damage and looks cool af. Basically my single diggle can solo 8 of these red monsters from world 4 (idk what they are called in english, "pomiot" in polish), without potions.