KeeperRL 1.0 Guide

1.0 KeeperRL Guide.

Special thanks to CSeven for reviewing this guide, and providing feedback to improve it.

Introduction

With the advent of 1.0, KeeperRL has finally left alpha. It has undergone many gameplay overhauls since I wrote my last guide. Nevertheless, one thing has remained constant – to win you must conquer all main villains. And then you can retire your dungeon for other players to raid. Note that enemy Keepers won't raid you if you leave them alone (No thievery or murder). But they will get triggered if you build a throne.

Starting a new save

Each Keeper gets their own world to explore. You can add other player’s retired dungeons to raid for glory. They don’t count as main villains and don’t need to be conquered to win. However, they will respond if you steal items on a claimed tile or kill their tribe members.
The difficulty of each world will be dependent on three factors – Keeper type, difficulty scaling, and number of main villains. The greater number of main villains, the higher combat power the later ones will be. This can be challenging if you don’t understand how scaling works in KeeperRL, and you can struggle to beat later stages. Additionally, you only can initially travel to nearby sites. By conquering other tribes, you get access to more of the world.

Combat Power

Attacking is divided into three major stats – Magic Damage , Range Damage, and Physical Damage. There is elemental damage – most common is fire. And some attacks can inflict poison. A creature defense is used to resist all types of attacks and can even resist all damage from an attack if the defense is high enough. Surrounding an enemy unit with weaker units lowers their defense (unless they have a shield), and lets your weaker units dogpile on tough enemies. With your unit at the center of a 3x3 grid – the surrounding 8 tiles can be attacked.


There are few major traits that influence a creature’s final combat stats.

• Species – determines base stat of a unit. Example, harpies have a natural affinity for bows, knights have high base stats than squires.
  
• Training – increases the value of a specific stat. Training Dummies increase attack, libraries increase magic damage, archery increases range damage.
  
• Experience – Increases the value of all trainable stats and base defense. It is acquired through combat, and it is the stat that is scaled to make enemy units tougher. A dragon with more experience will have higher total stats than less experienced dragon. You can see how powerful an enemy is by hovering over it with the mouse – use this before engaging with a peasant with 50 attack and defense.
  
• Equipment – will increase stats. Best way to level up the combat power of your whole army

CSeven's long

notes on combat power , flanking, shields, poison, and bleeding.
More detailed than mine, but it explains the details that even I wasn't aware of.


In 1.0, Defense is trained by the currently-highest-trained attack attribute. For example, a Classic/Evil Wizard who's got access to iron dummies but only wooden shelves will get +7 defense from finishing melee training. Once that wizard gets access to gold bookshelves from Master Sorcery, training to spell_damage levels 8-12 will grant corresponding defense boosts as well.

Flanking happens when the amount of hostile units adjacent to a given unit exceeds the amount of friendly units adjacent by 2 or more. 2 hostiles on 1 (solo) friendly, 3 on 2, and so on. You can tell a unit is currently Flanked by the red marks at its corners. Being Flanked by 1 (the 2 on 1, for example) debuffs the victim's defense by 6%, with the penalty increasing by 6% or so for each additional flanker. (The highest I've personally seen was 28%, for someone surrounded but having an adamantine shield.)

Shields grant the Parry attribute: each level of Parry effectively counters a level of Flanking, so someone with an Iron shield can solo two hostiles without being Flanked. (They may not have the stats to win the fight! but they're not taking the debuff.)

Poison and Bleeding ignore defense, and do 3% or so damage per turn. The main difference is that being Healed to fix HP damage also ends Bleeding, whereas Poison continues until it times out or the victim receives a Cure Poison or Poison Resistance. (Poison Resistance cures poison entirely; several poisoned folks could share one ring to cure the group.)

Luxury

Units that acquire over 5 combat experience will require luxurious rooms to realize all combat experience over 5. Realized combat experience will contribute to the units stats, unrealized combat experience will NOT contribute to a creatures stats. This means that fancy blacksmith you hired will require a nice bedroom before forging higher tier items. The break points are 50 and 80 in the forge stat for adamantine and adoxium/infernite respectively. Prisoners will always realize their combat experience – so enslave that dwarf instead of giving him a nice bedroom.

Riding

The mount will attack each turn if there is a tile that it can attack. Riders are more likely to take damage before their steeds

Recruiting Powerful Units

Build a prison cell and a torture table. And then torture the prisoner if you have a free population slot. That unit will either join you or die. Hilariously, prisoners will also torture other prisoners to recruit for you. Just remember to have spare bedrooms. You can capture or enslave enemy Keepers.


CSeven:
In 1.0, it's important to know that torture results are determined by the victim's internal creatureId. This is set when the creature is created, so for most creatures (and almost certainly all high-value creatures, like dragons, major villains, etc), the question of whether they'll join you has already been decided.

(It's still useful to save first: if you'd rather have the dragon as a non-combat steed than as a corpse, reloading the save can undo killing it on the table. Just don't bother reloading repeatedly in hopes it'll convert.)

Morale

Units will work slower if morale is low. Killing a hostile, drinking booze, or receiving the attentions of a Copulator will all grant High Morale for 200 turns or so, which improves creature performance across the board.

Range is king

Archers with elf vision will snipe vulnerable units. Consider attacking maps where elven archers spawn at night so they will be in bed while you pillage. Crossbows have a larger range than short bows, but can't fire each turn. Dryads are a tough lesser villain if you are ill equipped.

Fire is an effective ranged weapon

Throw a torch and watch the world burn. Trees, wooden walls, and wooden floors can and will burn. This can also be used defensively with a fire trap and ring of fire immunity/fire resistance. A torch can be paired with a ring of spying to sneak in and burn down an enemy base.


However, fire is not that dangerous to high-end folks: defense 60 or so and you don't take damage from fire. (-CSeven)

Taking items without triggering

You can take items from chests from all allies. They won't appreciate if you pilfer their gold or ores.


When you retire a map, put any items you wish to give away on a tile, and surround it with forbidden tiles to ensure your workers don't put them back into storage. Then unclaim the tile. Because the things you put are now on an unclaimed tile, other players that visit your map will be able to freely take those items without triggering the retired AI.


This is useful


Be sure to grab the goodies I left for you...

Research

You get malevolence level when you conquer other tribes; one research becomes available with each malevolence level. Your starting Keeper will determine what can be researched. Additionally, the bandits/peasants on the starting map will get you your first point of research. Minor and lesser villains will net the next few points. Note that the experience required per level continues to increase until a cap, so pick you’re your first researches carefully. There are more than enough tribes to conquer to unlock all of your Keeper’s research tree.

Best Early Research

• Alchemy

  – you get potions of slowness and speed. KeeperRL is a turn based game. Each unit gets one move each turn at normal speed. Two moves per turn if moving faster. One move every other turn if slowed OR collapsed. One move every 4 turns if BOTH slowed and collapsed. Combining potions of speed and slowness lets your units overwhelm tough units. For example, throwing a potion of slowing at a Dragon will neutralize its spell that grants itself a speed bonus. Potion of slowness only costs 2 gold – it cheap for such a potent combat weapon. This is my personal choice - community consensus has iron working as the best.
  
  
  

• Archery

  – Dragons are vulnerable to range attacks, and an archer behind some meat shields will help keep those units safe. At archery level 7, archers can fire arrows through their allies. Archers can out range bandits, giant spiders, ants. Ranged attacks are effective against most units.
  
  

• Iron working

  Community consensus here is pretty in favor of Iron Working as the first pick, if you don't already have it. Iron dummies attract better troops and let folks train to higher levels, and iron gear is about 50% better than leather/wooden. (Don't even bother making wooden shields. Thanks CSeven for the input )
  
  

• Sorcery

  - also a decent early choice if you don't have it, since access to bookshelves lets you recruit and start training healers. (-CSeven)
  
  

Late game Research

Humanoid mutation and Beast mutation require a succubus to get pregnant to recruit legendary units. Point is these researches are useless without Demonology, and take time to realize to their full potential.

Death

It is Game Over when you lose your Keeper. Dwarves and Gnomes have multiple Keepers that must be killed to get a true game over. Your Keeper is your most important unit, all other units can be lost. The easiest way for your Keeper to die is to be picked off by an archer who can see you through trees (elves or dryads) or to be invaded without guard zones, or to be alone on the frontlines. When raiding with your Keeper, make sure he has plenty of meat shields.

Security

Unless it is endless mode, enemies will not materialize from the aether to kill you. Hostile maps won’t invade your map unless they are triggered. Triggers include population size, thievery, murder, and aggression. You will be flagged as aggressive if you conquer several lesser/main villains. (Sometimes the trigger is related to how fast you clear two maps in a row, sometimes its the total number of lesser/main conquered.)


Once enemies flag you as aggressive – they will show up at your front door and (sometimes) demand half your gold for not attacking. Design your dungeon so there is a choke with guard zones – enemy units will dig and build bridges if there isn’t a reasonable path to your Dungeon. Their goal is often to kill the Keeper – this is what will be used to guide their initial pathing. Point is don't have your poetry table or Keeper's room where an enemy can easily reach it.


Units that are triggered by gold will try to path to your treasure chests and steal your gold for themselves.

When enemies raid you, they will dig if they believe it is easier to reach you than going through a long maze. Moreover, enemies can't climb or build stairs. They can use your stairs, so use them to guide pathing for choke points.

Keeper Pros and Cons

Keeper	Pro/Neutral	Cons
Dark Wizard (Classic).	+ Dark aligned Starting Research: Sorcery. + Access to traps + Portal/Evil Eye + Dark Immigration + Prison/Slavery +Demonology. + Keeper unit can learn Master Sorcery. + Uses gold/stone statues and throne to increase population	Balanced.
Dark Knight (Classic).	+ Dark Aligned + Starting Research: Iron Working. + Same research tree as Dark Wizard. + Keeper unit has the multi-tool skill, can duel wield two handed weapons and his forge skill grows with experience.	Balanced.
Castle (Light Knight	+ Light Aligned + Starting research: Archery. + Builds angel shrines instead of Demon shrines. + Can build arrow slits, and recruit archers that can shoot through arrow slits. + Prison. + Uses horses (replaced for free if killed) to increase population. + Promotes squires to knights	- Uses peasants over imps – peasants suck at mining, enslave bandits and have them be dedicated miners. - No traps - No humanoid/beast mutation.
Undead (Necromancer)	+ Dark aligned + Keeper has zombie mage skill tree + Necromancy available + Access to zombie king and skeleton king minions + Undead units can be empowered by Balsams – increases their base stats when you craft them + Undead units can’t be repaired or healed – injury is permanent + Phylactery research + Can raise a bone dragon.	- No immigration, must craft undead units by spending corpses. - Zombie workers are slow, but you can craft Zombie workers without the slow debuff - No alchemy research – can’t brew potions. - No humanoid mutation/beast mutation/demonology. - No traps
Colony (Dwarves)	+ Light Aligned. + Starts with Iron working + 12 Units to Start, they can dig well + Units can be promoted while your research grows. + Access to Dwarf magic skill tree. It has the dig skill, summon Earth elementals.	- No immigration, even other Dwarves - No traps - No portals - No Eye installation - Units have a chance to go insane if they see a friendly die.
Gnomes	+ Unique, automation based play-through. You craft automations, and craft better automations that can craft or build a super robot to invade castles. + Advanced Traps + You get 5 gnomes. They are squishy.	- No sorcery research. - No prisons. You get gnomes and robots.
Zombies	+ No research available + Population limit is a 1000 + Zombies will offer to join at night, just auto accept them on the immigration tab. Colony will grow like flies. + All Zombies recruited this way have the swarmer skill. (Necromancer zombies don’t have this skill unless they are crafted with it.) + All Zombies are considered tribe leaders, they must all be conquered.	- No prisons - No iron working - No research - Zombies are slow units, and can spawn collapsed too. - No portals, optimize your dungeon layout for minimal travel time. - All units are undead, injury is permanent.

[General Jah]

As a new player trying to figure out the basics of what is going on I found this really helpful thanks

[Complete Edition Man]

Oh and the hermit/cyclops

[Complete Edition Man]

You need to add Corrupted Church now ;)

[The Romam]

ola voce poderia me ajudar como enfrento outras masmorras de jogadores