It's time to discuss the most common enemies that threaten our settlement in the mountains. While your Dwarves must overcome many challenges - such as floods, lava, and strategic planning - when it comes to natural foes, two types stand out the most. Trolls and goblins. Every dwarf hates those two races with a burning passion.

You have probably already seen the Trolls in our trailer. Let's take a closer look at their characteristics:

• Trolls are strong and resilient, but also slow and thick-skulled. Plan your defense accordingly.
  
• They destroy everything in their sight. Trolls will demolish the buildings within your settlement with ease.
  
• Trolls can deal damage to several units around with one hit.
  
• Trolls attack alone, most of the time. On rare occasions, Trolls can form bigger groups, but it's a rare and deadly occurrence.

Goblins haven't been shown much yet. In a way, those small, annoying creatures are a complete opposite of the trolls. Their distinct traits look like this:

• Goblins are fast and sneaky. They can try running away or chasing your units efficiently.
  
• Luckily, goblins aren't strong and their endurance is low. When in a 1v1 scenario, a dwarven warrior will kill one goblin with ease.
  
• To counter their weakness, goblins prefer attacking in groups or even swarms. They truly believe in strength in numbers.
  
• Goblins can be considered as greedy as Dwarves. While Trolls will happily obliterate everything in their way, goblins can sometimes prepare a sudden attack to steal resources from the player. This also means that they tend to collect their loot and keep it near their camps. If you encounter a group of goblins somewhere in the mountain, the precious gold coins will likely be there too.

What do you think about those enemies? And what other threats would you like your dwarven army to encounter? Let us know in the comments!

Best regards,
King of the Dwarves Team

Making a game is not only programming, making art, sounds and music, it also involves research into various themes.

Dwarves in the popular culture were first popularized by Tolkien and his stories in “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings”. Also, you might know that Tolkien was inspired by Old Norse mythology. As fans of both, Tolkien’s world and Old Norse mythology, we delved into research how we should present dwarves and female dwarves in particular.


First, lets look into what Tolkien had to say about females. In the appendices of “The Return of the King” we can find this:

It was said by Gimli that there are few dwarf-women, probably no more than a third of the whole people. They seldom walk abroad except at great need. They are in voice and appearance, and in garb if they must go on a journey, so like to the dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other peoples cannot tell them apart. This has given rise to the foolish opinion among Men that there are no dwarf-women, and that the Dwarves ‘grow out of stone’.

Also, in “The War of the Jewels” we can find this passage about dwarves in general (“Naugrim” is the Elvish name for the Dwarves):

The Naugrim were ever, as they still remain, short and squat in stature; they were deep-breasted, strong in the arm, and stout in the leg, and their beards were long. Indeed this strangeness they have that no Man nor Elf has ever seen a beardless Dwarf – unless he were shaven in mockery, and would then be more like to die of shame than of many other hurts that to us would seem more deadly. For the Naugrim have beards from the beginning of their lives, male and female alike; nor indeed can their womenkind be discerned by those of other race, be it in feature or in gait or in voice, nor in any wise save this: that they go not to war, and seldom save at direst need issue from their deep bowers and halls. It is said, also, that their womenkind are few, and that save their kings and chieftains few Dwarves ever wed; wherefore their race multiplied slowly, and now is dwindling.

So, to sum up, Tolkien’s dwarves were all bearded and females were not very different from males. But Tolkien was inspired by Old Norse mythology, so let’s look into that as well!

In the image: two dwarfs as depicted in a 19th-century edition of the “Poetic Edda” poem Völuspá (1895) by Lorenz Frølich.


If we look into Old Norse religion and texts, there is much more confusion and less clarity. Regarding dwarves characteristics, they are usually described as being short, misshapen, unattractive, and skilled with their hands. Also according to one researcher “there is, to the best of this author’s knowledge, not a single Old Norse text describing the dwarfs as bearded” (Mikučionis, 2020). But where do dwarves come from? There are two somewhat different myths of Dwarves origins that are preserved in Eddas (Eddas are the books with poems and mythological stories, and they are main sources of Norse mythology).

The first myth tells about dwarves having been produced by other dwarves out of the earth:

Then all the Powers went to the thrones of fate,
the sacrosanct gods, and considered this:
who should create the lord of the dwarfs
out of Brimir’s blood and from Blain’s limbs?
There Motsognir became most famous of
all dwarfs, and Durin next;
Many manlike figures the dwarfs made,
out of the earth, as Durin recounted.

- Seeress’s Prophecy 9–10 in the “Poetic Edda”, written around 1270 AD (trans. Larrington, p. 5)

The other myth talks about the first dwarves having emerged as maggots in Ymir’s flesh and then being “improved” by decision of the gods:

Originally posted by author:

The gods <…> discussed where the dwarfs had been generated from in the soil and in the earth like maggots in flesh. The dwarfs had taken shape first and acquired life in the flesh of Ymir and where then maggots, but by decision of the gods they became conscious with intelligence and had shape of men though they live in the earth and in rocks. Modsognir was a dwarf and the second was Durin. <…>

- Snorri Sturluson “Edda”, written in 1222–23 AD (trans. Faulkes, 1995, p. 16)

Because of these stories, a lot of Old Norse mythology researchers claimed that Dwarves “do not
engage in fruitful sexual encounters” (Motz 1993: 623) and “There are not, in fact, any female dwarves in the whole of Old Norse myth, <...>, with the exception of a very late feminine form dyrgja in Þjalar Jóns saga.” (Clunies Ross 1994:168)

But the newer research reveals different opinion: “we do not have any clear references to female dwarves in skaldic poetry or in the Eddas. At the same time, there are relatively many references to family relations (brother–brother, father–son, father–daughters, ancestor–descendant) in these sources. This indicates that the idea of dwarf families was not an alien concept, but rather an important aspect of the life of dwarfs”.

In the image on the left: title page of a manuscript of the Snorri Sturluson “Edda”, showing Odin, Heimdallr, Sleipnir and other figures from Norse mythology. On the right: photo of “Codex Regius (“King's Book”) an Icelandic codex in which many Old Norse poems from the Poetic Edda are preserved.


So we think it is clear that there should definitely be females among our dwarves but contrary to Tolkiens world, we don’t think they should be bearded. Also, we think not bearded female dwarves look much better :)

P. S. There is also a problem related to female dwarf names, but that is for another day!

P. P. S. Can you spot one bearded dwarf?