Hi! From time to time, people ask for help getting started in KeeperRL. One question that comes up from time to time is how to get started on your first raid as a Keeper.
For beginners, I’ll assume you’re a Knight or Wizard, and you want to go nail the local bandits, or maybe a low-level dwarf setup. Evil/Fallen Knights are generally easier to play than Less-Evil or Lawful Knights, but for current purposes either will work.
As a starting Keeper, you’re pretty weak and poorly equipped. That said, typical starting keepers (wizard, knights) have a few advantages over other folks: 1) You come with Heal Self from the start. Typical mage-casters need level 4 or so (advanced sorcery/iron bookshelf) to fix themselves. 2) You’ve got a good strength: wizards start with a staff (so their magic stat gets used to attack) and knights have multi-attack, throwing two or three swings where most units only throw one. 3) You can set up a dungeon, recruit troops & staff, and upgrade your & their gear. The opposition cannot.
Starting out and killing the local Bandits
The first thing to do is to get your keeper trained & geared. It’s best not to clearcut the forest; the trees and shrubs can provide good cover should you later need it. You’ll want enough wood for a workshop, a few beds, and 1-2 wooden dummies & bookshelves. There is no point in making clubs: most folks do similar (or better!) damage with their unarmed attacks. Workshops can have as many people working them as are qualified and can fit around them; if possible, leave all 8 tiles adjacent open and easily moved around.
Once you have beds and a workshop, you should be able to recruit an artificer (Evil folks use goblin artificers, but the idea is the same). You generally only need one in the early going, and the population-cap room is best filled with combat-capable folks early on. A full set of leather gear (no need for the wooden shield) will make life much safer against the bandits, and all it costs is the time to make it. Have your artificer make some spares: they’ll be handy to outfit your troops and the artificer themself, and since quality can fluctate by a point or two, you may get better gear. You can see all available gear, and assign/equip gear, for a given “slot” by clicking on the slot in individual creatures’ pages in the creature listing. Once geared up, take your keeper and hunt around the ? marks on the map, if you haven’t already. (Daylight is better here, just keep to the wooded areas. You can see them before they’ll see and track you.) Evil keepers will find the bandits operating out of a cave, while Less-Evil keepers will typically find the bandits having occupied a peasant farm and killed the previous inhabitants. Check mountainsides or open areas accordingly. Once you know where the bandit cave is, leave it alone until dark. Since you don’t have a light source, you won’t be visible at a distance.
The plan is to reveal yourself to one bandit at a time, then get them to follow you outside their cave, ideally past a tree or two (so their friends don’t get involved–being surrounded is a serious concern in KeeperRL) then to kill them off one or two at a time, heal up, and repeat.
I can’t tell you exactly how best to accomplish this on your map, because every map is different. But I can remind you that bandits can’t see through trees either, and they usually don’t mutually-support very far outside their cave. Keep an eye on your health, and don’t be afraid to retreat or wait between baiting out the next bandit for your healing spell to recharge. [Screencaps might help here.]
You’ll notice that one bandit is purple. That’s the leader. Killing him will demoralize, and thus debuff, the rest. It will also prevent that particular bandit cave from repopulating, and it will grant a Bandit Slayer title to whoever lands the killing blow.
Slayer titles add 1 to every stat their holder has, up to the total rank they have. However, only the first of a given type applies to any individual unit: Bandit Slayers should let someone else kill off bandit leaders. If you run out of nighttime or find the bandits paying too much attention, go ahead and retreat. Use the trees to break line-of-sight and fall back to your dungeon; even the goblin artificer can help in a fight if need be. Repeat the process as needed. With a little practice, you should be able to kill off the entire bandit population in a night or two. That should earn you enough malevolence to attain level 2, and thus take a new technology.
Depending on your keeper choice, you may have Sorcery or Iron Working already. If you have one of those, I recommend taking the other; if you have none, Iron Working allows better weapons, armor, and training, whereas Sorcery allows access to spellcasters (including healers!) and basic training for them. I personally go with Iron Working first, but that’s a personal preference.
Congratulations. You’ve slaughtered a gang of miscreants that ultimately would make trouble for your rule, and likely learned in the process. At this point, you’ve been taught the basic combat process, and performed it by butchering the bandits. Teach someone else how to conduct solo raids, and you’ll be fully qualified for Adventurer Mode as well! Check back with me if you’d like more information on raiding.
Raiding outside the Home Map
If you’re just starting out with raiding outside your home map, you should know a little bit about the travel process. 1) Your chosen group leader (I’ll use “you” to refer to this unit, as well as to you the player) and whoever is grouped up with you will all instantly travel to the target site when you give the word. It takes zero game time to travel between map squares. Just take control of your group, click the compass button under the minimap, pick your destination square, and confirm.
2) It also takes zero game time to leave an “away” map square and head home IF nobody hostile is watching you. If you’ve killed or evaded all opposition, just exit control mode and your team will arrive at map’s edge back home. (If you have undead in your team, it may still take them some time to get Inside, depending on where you arrive. So allow time for travel on the home square; usually 300 to 400 turns should work, but take a look around your home square first.)
3) Teams, both yours and enemy, arrive at the map border that’s open and closest to the square they came from. If you leave your base and go to a square that’s south of yours, you will probably arrive somewhere on the northern border of that square. (Exactly where depends on the exact direction and whether there’s mountain or similar blocking the expected arrival area.) Likewise, folks traveling from that square to your home tile will arrive on your southern border. (Point 3 may seem obvious. However, it’s good to remember, and more pointedly, if you take note of where your troops arrive when you come home from some place where hostile troops might follow…those hostiles will generally arrive exactly where you did.)
Prisoners and Where to Put Them
Raiding enemy sites, such as dwarf holes, will ideally result in your taking enemies alive to labor at your base. In order to hold prisoners, you’ll need to set up a Prison. Each prison tile allows you to hold one prisoner, and all prison tiles must be enclosed by some combination of:
Prison tiles that aren’t enclosed will highlight Red. This part will cost a significant amount of Iron; 10-15 tiles and one door will generally suffice for now, best placed near the entrance to your mines so prisoners can quickly get in and out.
Raid Team Composition
You should generally lead with a strong frontline combat unit. Your Keeper should qualify.
It might seem Risky to lead with the Keeper, and yes, if you die when controlling the Keeper that’s it for your game, BUT you should be investing in the best available gear & training for the Keeper in case they get into trouble anyway. And folks who are armed and armored for Trouble are probably the best suited to go start some. Your Keeper is also almost certainly better-trained in their field than your troops; knight keepers in particular exist to smash the enemy front line and look good doing it. Besides, if you’re anything like me, you respect leaders who lead from the front, so best to merit your electronic troops’ respect. It’s a good idea to bring a backup healer or two. In particular, they can keep track of other folks’ health and patch them up; poison in particular is lethal if not treated. In the early going (before you have Advanced Sorcery) you probably don’t need more than one support wizard, and even that bears thinking about–in a confined space like a dwarf base, standard magic missile might hurt friendlies more than the dwarves. If you’re Lawful and have trained Archers with the bypass-allies ability, by all means bring them along. Goblin warriors or human knights are a good backup in the early going. You don’t need many; they’re around to help flank, block for healers & if need be the Keeper, etc.
So, let’s group up a healer with the Keeper for the initial recon. (Once you have some experience, the healer really isn’t necessary. But for now, we’re playing it safe.) Look at your campaign map and select a target tile. Even allied (green brackets) tiles probably have some minor hostile tribes present, so they’re not a bad choice. Otherwise, something like the Ants or Cyclops would work best. (You’re not aiming to fight the main villain there just yet. Just looking around.)
Look around the map as you did earlier, checking in the direction of ? marks on the minimap, and looking for cave entrances. (Be careful if you’re on an Ant or Cyclops tile: they do live in caves too. Dwarf caves usually have a long straight tunnel going into them, but that’s not always a guarantee. Cyclops caves have a solid mushroom stockpile, usually visible from outside. Ant caves typically start branching out very quickly.) Once you find the dwarves, back off and head home. Time to assemble a strike team.
Attacking the dwarves merits a goblin warrior or two, along with at least one healer and the Keeper leading the attack. Everyone needs to be fully trained and equipped. (Folks who go into combat without proper preparation or equipment deserve whatever they get, as does their leader. That would be you.)
Going In to Play
Unlike the bandits, you’re going to take your team into the dwarf base and root them out. Chances are, you’ll need to do some hiking to reach the dwarf base; for basic point-to-point movement, simply walk there with your leader and your troops will follow. (You may wish to order “Don’t Chase” to prevent your troops from pursuing wildlife or other targets-of-opportunity they spot.) Your primary goal is to eliminate all their fighters (red/purple outline). Ideally, you’ll take their civilians captive, as they dig faster than imps do. (It’s safest to right-click on capture targets and select “capture” or similar. Left-clicking works if they’re not in melee range; if they are, it’ll attack them instead, possibly injuring or killing them.) If you attack at night, there’s a good chance you can catch at least some of the dwarves sleeping. Sleeping creatures have lower defense and won’t attack, so take advantage. However, launching an attack generally wakes up everyone around. Thus, this is a good time to take Full Control of your team and maneuvering so your whole team is in position and ready to attack before actually swinging or shooting weapons or spells. Eventually, you’ll probably have to contend with dwarves in a bottleneck or similar tight space, where fighting is one-on-one. This is a good time to recall that you can heal yourself, as well as get healing from your healers and trade places with your fighters to let them give and take some damage. The important issue is to never let the dwarves group up against you. In particular, make them come down the hallway to you, rather than trying to push into their rooms through a line of two or three dwarves. (Whoever is trying to push will almost certainly take a flanking penalty, and thus take more damage from the dwarves.)
You might consider taking full control of the team and individually moving each unit. It’s always a good option to have, and manually giving orders can allow you to misdirect the opposition, block for folks who can’t take punishment but still let them get the kill or even Slayer blow, and generally make battles go much more safely. At this point, though, those things are a more advanced lesson. Assuming you’ve killed the combat dwarves, you can leave (civilians don’t stop retreats; only combat units do), but it’s best to take the civilians captive. (Or, if you don’t have a prison, to kill them.) Once they’re all tagged for capture and capture-HP drained, exit control mode.
Cleaning Up The Mess
At this point, your troops should be on the home tile, headed for your dungeon and its facilities. You should see the prisoner dwarves in the immigration list as prisoners: click to formally take them into custody. (Letting the prisoner timer time out or canceling their immigration kills them, as though whoever downed them aimed to kill instead.) They’ll arrive similarly to your troops and assist with hauling & mining.
You probably saw the “pillage” option when dealing with the bandits, but you’ll definitely get it now. Pillaging instantly (zero game-time) transfers your clicked resources/gear from the enemy base you conquered to your relevant storage piles/constructions. (If you have no place to put things, you can’t pillage them; in particular, without a Grave, you can’t pillage corpses.)
That’s the basic raid process. Look around to know where you’re sending the raid, pay attention to your troops, make sure you’re doing better than theirs (and correct the situation if you are not!), watch out for bottlenecks and other tactical problems, and bring everyone and everything back home. Go forth and rock big stone bells.
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