Tickle Pickle

[Rozilla]

I think I am on Tickle, it is the one after the 'Lady Catherine is the keeper'. I have attempted to do this 6 times now and I keep running out of gold and or getting pulverized.

Firstly, theres the faerie creatures who right after you chip through gold attack and kill, they are 4-5 levellers. Then the heroes build up a dungeon quick and dig through to where the gems are located. I cant because I have to wait till I have enough beasties to defeat the faeries before attempting to dig there.

I have tried a few different strategies but have failed repeatedly so I would welcome some ideas.

Thanks,

Rozilla

[Don Yacktman]

The easy way to guarantee a win is to use the "transfer creature" on the
previous level(s) to send in a 10th level knight, dig straight to the purple
guy's dungeon heart, and take him out. If you don't hesitate, there will be
zero resistance and the rest of the level is cake.

Of course, that's a rather boring strategy and sort of cheap. So here's how
I did it the first time I won that level (keep in mind that there are *many*
ways to win this level, of course).

1. Dig up to where the purple/blue keeper likes to break through (sort of in
the middle of all that impenetrable rock. Fortify a wall across that whole
opening so that there's no way in to your dungeon.

2. There's some gold you can get (without running into baddies) on the far
side of your area. Part of it forms a land bridge into an area where you can
find a bunch of allies, including some 7th level hounds. You don't need
them--but you can get past the fairies faster if you use them, so until you
become an "expert", it might help to pick them up.

3. Train up a couple of warlocks to level 4, and then send them to take out
the fairies--or send in the hounds if you picked them up.

4. After the fairies, be forewarned that there are a bunch of barbarians
you'll have to deal with. It is best to dig around them (following the gold)
and by then hopefully you'll have enough well trained warriors to help you
past them.

5. The purple guy probably hasn't broken through the earth that goes into
the gem area. Be sure you don't either. Fortify it instead. You can mine
the gems from the *outside* of the impenetrable rock area instead. Be sure
to put a bridge around to *all* the gem faces--you'll have one more face
available than the purple dude, so eventually you'll get well ahead of him
financially.

6. At this point train up until you're ready to take on the other guy in a
really bloody melee.

If you do it carefully, you can actually imprison the fairies and barbarians
and make them your friends...every pair of hands helps in the battles...

Note that if you plan to convert them, you should get your creatures up to
the portal max *first* and then convert them--you'll have more minions if you
do that. (Portal max on this level is 30.)

Now, you can learn several tricks to "stretch" your money. The first is to
learn how to "divide" treasure so that you pick it up in chunks of 100 or
less gold pieces. (Play with picking stuff up out of the treasure room.)
Once you can do this, use the "?" to inspect the details of your various
creatures and learn how to find out what their salary is. Get a feel for the
numbers.

Now, combine that knowledge to pay, by hand, your most expensive creatures.
Vampires, knights, and dragons can all be very costly minions, for example.
If you drop 100 gold on a creature, it will happily skip the next payday.
So, if you have a dragon that costs 2,000 gold per pay day and instead pay
him by hand after each pay day, you'll take 20 pay days to spend 2,000 gold.
That's a savings of 38,000 gold! Now, if you pay all your creatures by hand
each pay day, well, you can see where some savings can be made.

You can also sell off traps and doors in mass quantities to make money. I've
found that a *big* workshop can keep 30 minions funded indefinitely if you
make them all work there. Boulder traps are very cost effective as far as
gold per required manufacturing points. Magic doors are pretty good, too.

To mine gold *much* faster, one thing you can do is mark off all the gold and
don't build a treasure room. The imps will dig and leave the gold lying
about. When they are done, build your treasure room. While they're digging,
you can pick up all the gold and then drop it all at once to consolidate it
into piles of larger amounts of gold. There's no limit to how much gold can
be in a pile, so you can make it all into one big pile which you then tote
yourself to the treasure room, drop, and BOOM you're rich. Leave the excess
there; the imps will add it to the piles as they disappear. Once you have a
treasure room, you can still pull off this trick simply by putting a door
between the imps and the treasure room and locking it. The imps drop gold on
the floor if there's no reachable treasure room...

(Use that trick to mine *all* the gold on your side of the dungeon before the
first pay day is up...and then leave the imps free to fortify the dungeon, or
whatever...this approach is a lot more efficient if you're in a hurry!)

These tricks are all great for resource limited dungeons like many of those
in the deeper dungeons, but they're quite helpful even on a level like this
one. (You probably don't need any of them to win the level, though; the
first time I won it I didn't know any of this stuff...)

--
Later,

-Don Yacktman
d...@misckit.com
<a href="http://www.yacktman.org/don/index.html">My home page</a>