It’s not without reason your reputable establishment is called a Dungeon. From time to time you may wish to take prisoners, whether to force them to labor on your behalf or to make them a Join or Die offer. Even the “less evil” Castle Keeper has need of cost-effective mining labor, after all.
But your prison is only so large, and some creatures are better than others, but may or may not make good prisoners vs recruits, or may be more trouble than they’re worth. This Prisoner Guide will help you set up effective prisons and fill them with solid choices to better advance your dungeon.
HOWTO Prison
Prisons are available to Classic, Castle, and Greenskin keepers. Necromancers prefer “animated” workers, and the Gnomes & Dwarves aren’t in the slavery business. Keepers with access to prisons can build them from the start (no technology is required) BUT they require 15 Iron per tile, plus more for the Door and perhaps for any prison bars the Keeper may care to install.
Prisoners require one prison tile per prisoner: this is a hard cap on the amount of prisoners you may hold. In order for Prison tiles to hold prisoners, they must be enclosed by some combination of walls (natural stone is fine), prison bars, or prison doors. The advantage of prison bars is that they permit units to see and make ranged attacks through them; conversely, they cost 5 iron per tile.
Prisoners return to a Prison tile to rest, but otherwise have no Quarters or other such individual requirements. As such, one or two communal cells can serve to hold your prison labor force; some players prefer to construct individual cells, which may increase the time needed to breach any given cell in the event of a prison uprising, but becomes significantly more expensive in terms of iron, dungeon space, and prisoner response time. For comparison, a 3x5 communal cell using stone walls will cost 255 iron, whereas 15 individual cells (also relying on stone walls) would cost 675 iron in total.
Torture tables and beast cages, though appearing in the Prison tab, need not be built on Prison tiles or enclosed by walls/bars/door. Beasts who are not Steeds will use the cages as humanoids use Beds, undead use Coffins, and Steeds use Stables. Torture tables will likewise be used without need to secure them.
Let’s Get Digging
“These peasants mine too slowly. I need better diggers!”-most every Castle Keeper ever
Indeed, humans are Large and more adapted to living on the surface. For subterranean construction, Dwarves are stereotypically the way to go in most fantasy settings, and KeeperRL bears that out. Bearded Dwarves’ digging speed will not disappoint, though in the event they witness friendly casualties they may snap into an Insane fury, attacking others around and possibly causing a casualty spiral in your workforce. Non-bearded Dwarves are better crafters and dig almost as well, so they’re a strong candidate to be taken prisoner for labor purposes.
Giant Ants are also a stong choice for digging. Though they will not craft and might not haul (being Beasts), some Keepers prefer to divide tasks such that diggers focus on digging whilst others (such as Imps, who have unlimited carrying capacity) handle the hauling.
Prison Labor
Since crafting skills scale with distance from the Dungeon, most Keepers first encounter crafters capable of handling Adamantine as enemies. Prisoners can and will employ their crafting skills on your behalf, and when you consider the cost of high-end Quarters for someone with 20+ levels of combat experience, letting the prisoner Dwarves make your gear looks quite reasonable. Fortunately, prisoner crafters do not slow-work, strike, or sabotage your operations (or the output); at worst, since they cannot equip gear you may not issue prisoner crafters fast-crafting jewelry.
Gnomes can also make good crafter prisoners; the Gnome Chief you may encounter in enemy dungeons has a baseline 50 Jeweller skill, which makes him quite quick to stamp out glyphs at the Lava Jeweller. Should you encounter the “wrong” (finding the Human smith as a Classic keeper, for example) Skilled Blacksmith early on, capturing them could speed gear progression as well.
It’s generally best not to take too many crafter prisoners early on, though; a campaign with 12-14 of each type of villain will likely go far enough afield that near the end, difficulty-scaling will also provide Dwarves with 80+ Forge skill. Fine Adoxium or Infernite gear is a lovely thing to be able to make in late-game.
Join Us
One of the quicker methods to decide who might make a good converted-prisoner recruit is simple: who would you rather not be fighting? Chances are your opposition will have a similar outlook. ;-)
However, that isn’t always a viable option. You may not be familiar with everyone, and some creatures have logistical differences that aren’t obvious until they’re in your service. So let’s take a look at some units and see what makes them good, or not so good, candidates for conversion. Bear in mind! whether a creature converts or not is based on their internal creatureId, whicch is generated when the game first created them and is NOT player-visible, nor is it reasonably player-manipulable. As such, if you wish to convert a given type of creature, it’s best to capture many creatures of that same type, as (all else being equal) you can only expect half of them to convert. (Your workers administer torture. If your imps/peasants and prisoners are tasked significantly, it’s possible for a torture session to time out before deciding the victim’s fate. Simply order them tortured again. Similarly, freshly-taken prisoners need to check their gear at the equipment stores, so if someone you just captured and ordered tortured goes to the table and immediately gets back up off the table, they probably still have their Stuff. Let them stash it first and then order them back to the table.)
Good:
Not so good:
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