The game does offer me a chance to avoid this, and I take it. Normally, this level is a slow crawl through a hero fortress with groups of high level heroes to deal with. During the fight, however, Ironhelm rushes into the middle of my forces and dies much faster than usual. My wooden bridge fails to build twice, costing me a couple seconds on my way to Ironhelm.

I attack Lord Ironhelm immediately, before he can retreat back into his keep. I believe that the developers made a bit of a mistake on this level. Lord Constantine does a good job at separating himself from his group, so I concentrate on using my dark elf for additional damage during the fight. This is the first level I get to use possession on, and I use it to kill the dwarf and wizard with a dark elf. I make sure to sell the bridge at 1:22 and 1:35 to avoid a wizard spawn that would occur. I use a bridge at 1:20 because going over water is faster than claiming land. I focus on digging south first to get to the prison as quickly as possible. Just like in the third level, Constantine can be lured into attacking my dungeon, and thus can be lured into a bunch of sentry traps. This level requires a skeleton to get past some fear traps and engage Lord Constantine. When Lord Ludwig comes, I use lightning to stun lock him and my minions do the rest. At 4:13 I make sure to dig around the cannon so I can put my creatures closer to Ludwig without having to destroy the cannon. The same gold trick I used previously is used in this level to get through the large gold seam at 3:10. My forces are augmented by the increase level specials found at 2:49 and 5:23. Only a small lair and hatchery are built to get a small number of creatures to kill Ludwig with. I choose the left side because the timing works out to where Ludwig is patrolling on that side of his keep when I reach him. There are two side entrances to Ludwig's keep that make possession unnecessary. While you're supposed to use possession to kill Ludwig, that requires getting a warlock and waiting for it to research. This level makes you dig all the way to the way to the north to find Lord Ludwig, so that becomes my primary task. When Lord Avaricious attacks, its simply a matter of separating him from his fellow heroes. This allows me to deal with the two dwarfs that come from mining the middle gold seam. I mine the bottom seam of gold first to buy time for my trolls to get out a sentry trap. When I reach the limit, it forces the imps to dig through gold normally because they can't store it. There's a slight mistake here in that I should've hit the 16000 mark without having to pick up an imp at 1:23. When I get a workshop running, I build eight sentry traps and then sell off my treasury so that I'm close to the 16000 gold limit. Mining all of Lord Avaricious's gold will cause him to rush straight into these traps. Raising an army in this level to defeat of Lord Avaricious would take way to long, so I rely on the traps that the game introduces to kill him. Overall, though, the battle with the Darius goes smoothly and a dwarf manages to go the wrong way, saving the trouble of killing him. At 4:07 I do lose a goblin because I was expecting my warlock to heal, so there is a small loss of time here. It also ensures the Lord Darius appears quicker as the death of all of the dwarves in the first group triggers his appearance. Goblins are more damaging and are thus preferred.ДЄt 2:18 it becomes necessary to separate the two dwarf groups in the second wave to avoid being overrun. The single tile of library ensures that I only get one warlock for his heal spell. The dwarf waves are allowed to come to my dungeon heart to make my imps to join in the fight and to prevent morale issues that my creatures would otherwise have. Due to the distance the dwarves have to travel, I dig to them with two minions and get a third by the time they get to my dungeon heart. I start to engage them with the minimum force possible, which seems to be three minions. When the rocks become digable, I simply put my goblins in position and engage them and Lord Antonius.ДЇor this level, there are three waves of dwarves that have to be dealt with. I'm required to build a 3x5 lair and 3x3 hatchery and am stuck waiting until the 2 minute mark to engage the dwarves. I take the portal as quickly as possible to start recruiting goblins. This is due to stability issues and graphic issues that occur on other versions.

Dungeon keeper 2 mistress