Frequently Not Asked But Pondered Questions on Dungeon Keeper 1) Can any stupid creature become a Dungeon Keeper? A) No. Contrary to popular belief, a creature needs to have an IQ of 50 and inner source of mana in order to become a Dungeon Keeper. This prevents skeletons and vampires from becoming keepers as they don't possess inner sources of mana. They are magical, but they don't PRODUCE magic like a living creature would. They would likely just absorb the energy from the Dungeon Heart, making using it very very difficult, if at all possible (try running a computer with only 10% of the energy needed). 2) Why 50? A) Because the creature needs to be able to use the Dungeon Heart. The Runes for rooms, spells and such are simply to speed up how quickly the Dungeon Heart can respond and maintain a level of effeciency. The Dungeon gives the keeper a small kick in the butt... er, I mean, some basic instructions on how to use it, but the creature has to be intelligent enough to be able to HOLD that information. If a creature is able to imagine what they want, they can get it, but it will be a lot less efficient. The cost would likely be double or triple normal, meaning just a 3x3 lair could cost upwards of 8100 gold instead of 2700. This is why most keeper have to be able to use the runes. Besides, do you honestly think an artificer of these things is going to just let some rat or chicken wander onto it and claim it? No. 3) Why not? A) Because if you were the artificer of these things and you knew damn well that you weren't going to live forever, would you want your Dungeon Heart to be doomed to destruction because something stupid claimed it? No. 4) So there aren't any non-human Dungeon Keepers? A) I didn't say that. I said that the creature has to be intelligent enough to use it. Why keep a prodigy from claiming your artifact, just because it happens to be rat or a chicken? In truth, I have many non-human keepers. The one Keitaro worked for was actually a firefly. It had fused with the Dungeon Heart. 5) So, if you fuse with the Dungeon Heart, you can live as long as it does? A) No. In time, your body gets... digested by the Dungeon Heart if you stay in it too long. You can live upwards of double your natural lifespan, possibly even more, if your Dungeon Heart never gets severely damaged (which causes it to beat faster, thus damaging your body), but there's also the drawback that the longer you stay in it, the less time you can spend away from it. Stay in too long and you can never leave (which is horrible for a keeper who hasn't had the chance to produce offspring (or Offspring, the band)). Sadly, this is what had happened to the firefly Keeper. 6) Why doesn't anyone need water? Wouldn't everyone get dehydrated in dungeons without water? A) The way I see it, the hatcheries probably magically hydrate the body as you stand in them, which is why creatures like the Troll or the Bile Demon visit them so often (forging is thirsty work!). It's not a perfect solution, but it'll keep the creatures from getting thirsty. Besides, you don't know what's been in that dungeon water. A friend pointed out another possibility. There are types of fungus that can absorb water and grow by living off the impurities. However, if you were to open it up, you'd find fresh drinkable water, sort of like what's found inside a cactus. 7) How do the prisons work? I mean, they can make skeletons in roughly five minutes or so. A) They create sort of an antithesis of the Hatchery's hydration effect, drawing water from the creatures (the rats that surround the prison are protected against this). If the creature catches a disease from one of the prison rats, this triplicates the dehydration effect and causes most unhealed creatures to die instantly. And in actuality, this probably takes about a week to occur. 8) Lord Avaricious couldn't have been the only greedy power- abusing jerk on the heroes' team. Who else did that? A) In canon, no one, though a few are already dead or they're referred to as cowardly or gutless (like Ludwig, who destroys the bridge to his domain and Lord Constantine, who guards his fort with Fear Traps). In my stories, there are a number of Bad Lords or at least Lords who shouldn't have gotten their titles. Lord Darius was a pompous twit who overestimated his popularity (no one in his own fortress liked him, let alone anyone in the nearby towns). In DK Ukyou, I go a bit further with him and make him focused on appearances, so he heavily taxes his people so that he can have even more luxuries to impress his guests with. Lord Constantine was a lush (which was why there weren't many people in his fortress, because he couldn't pay them or remember who they were). Lord Bramble was a penny pincher (his men were weak from hunger because he hated stockpiling anything save cash). Lord Ronin was a self-glorified rapist (he chose to take his pleasures on females that he found pleasing, such as Dark Elves or Mistresses). He's probably the only lord who's the most difficult to plan out because I hate his type. It's bad for a character when their own author hates them. Lord Tiberius was a paranoid freak (which is why HE had so few men in his fortress, because he thought that most of them were plotting against him). Lord Kentaro Sakata in DK Love Hina is very much the same as Lord Darius, only Kentaro had... problems implimenting the same in full effect. He was even less popular than Darius, meaning he could only get enough to clean the outside of his keep, but never enough to clean the insides. As a result, his fortress was a dump on the inside and sparkling on the outside. 9) So how does one go about getting a Dungeon Heart? A) It's pretty much as easy as it's made out to be. First, the previous keeper must die. If they haven't fused with their dungeon heart, then all you have to do is kill them while they're away and prevent any imps from hauling his/her/it's body back to the Dungeon Heart (burning it is the quickest path). If they have fused, you have to either speed up their body's digestion or simply wait for the keeper to be digested (though, they can haunt the Dungeon Heart until struck down). Once the former keeper is dead, the dungeon heart needs one full moon cycle to uninitialize from it's former master's power. During this time, if the keeper was killed away from their Dungeon Heart, reviving them or placing him near the Dungeon Heart will restore them to their Keeper status (again, burning them or other fast-body- destroying methods (such as acid, stomach or otherwise) will prevent this). Once the heart had uninitialized, the new keeper must step up onto to the invisible platform above the Dungeon Heart. If they are living and intelligent enough to learn the basics that the Dungeon Heart gives them, then they'll become the new Dungeon Keeper. Being the Dungeon Keeper grants a lot of boons. First off, the Keeper can never catch a non-magical disease of any sort and they are purged of any diseases. Secondly, any biological faults that may cause an early natural death, such as thin veins, weak bones, etc. are cleared up as well. The keeper also cannot break bones or dislocate joints. They can still feel the pain, though. 10) If the Dungeon Keeper can be killed and the Dungeon Heart is destroyed, is the Dungeon Heart gone for good? A) If it's the Primary Dungeon Heart and no Temporaries exist, then yes, sadly. If either the Keeper or the Heart (or any of it's temporaries) survives, then a ressurrection can occur. This is why the Keeper relies on the Dungeon Heart and the Dungeon Heart relies on the Keeper. 11) Why did Nemesis move his Primary to Cherry Blossom? A) Because the land he was hiding in had very little in it. Even if he'd kept his Primary where it was, it would have been simply a matter of time before Ranma came and destroyed that one too. And with nothing to defend it with, save imps, he would've been shit out of luck either way. Besides, with his Primary in a mana-heavy land like Cherry Blossom, he would've been able to bring the full power of his Dungeon Heart to bear, whereas a Temporary would have only allowed up to 200,000 mana. In the end, though, it was his pride as a Keeper. If Ranma had beaten him when he had a strong advantage, there was no way he could ever recover enough face to lead even a band of goblins. Skeletons and vampires might have refused to join him (and most of those are created!). 12) What fights are exactly as the game portrays them? A) Since every game of Dungeon Keeper can be different, depending on what you do and how you do it (I once had a large workshop to entice in a lot of trolls, but I only got 1 troll and 14 goblins), not many could be portrayed in the same manner that they were introduced. However, the starting fights go pretty much one way. There's little in the way of divergence in how you can handle those fights, save for maybe using This Is My Church, Feel The Power, Ha Ha Thisaway Ha Ha Thataway or Show Me the Money cheats. 13) So, what's planned for DK Ukyou? A) DK Ranma got a lot of the face-paced hard-hitting action and "GET HOME NOW!" energy out of the way, so DK Ukyou can take it's sweet time exploring the DK universe. 14) The final battle... what was up with all those weird creatures popping up? A) As a last ditch effort to increase the number of creatures fighting for him, King Reginald turned to a lot of the lost subterrainean creatures, such as the Demon Spawn, Dragon (both descendents of the Salamander), Giant Beetle, Giant Fly (predessor to the Firefly), and Tentacle. These creatures hadn't been seen since Keeper Devan's time (during the DK 1 events). 15) Wait, the Demon Spawn and Dragon are DESCENDENTS of the Salamander? A) Yes. The Salamander lived much closer to lava and are prehistoric. When Demon Spawn and Dragons became harder and harder to attract, keepers found that the Salamander, a race that had revived itself from the brink of extinction, could be a very suitable replacement. 16) So, what happened to Ghosts and stuff? A) The way I see it, the Ghosts didn't actually stop existing, they just preferred to leave for the afterworld. Besides, they were limited in their usefulness anyway. A lot of creatures that vanished from the standard list of Keeper creatures were due to their limited usefulness or chronically low HP. As for the hero creatures, they mostly fused. Samurais joined the ranks of Knights, Barbarians and giants became indistinguishable, witches and wizards were classified together, and the guard became useful with their long distance lance attacks. 17) Why did you make the Royal Guard into Dragoons? A) First, the Dragoons of FF series are notorious for using lances. Second, the Jump ability of the Royal Guard, while powerful, isn't useful unless above ground or in a large cavern, which is how I can explain why it was a surprise to various creatures. After all, do YOU frequently expect a man in heavy iron armor to leap up into the air, ricochet of a stalagtite and stab you with a lance? Third, it distinguished them more from normal guards and explain their higher attack ratings. 18) Okay, but why did you make the Elite Royal Guard into a different KIND of Dragoon? And wasn't Kongol supposed to be in there? A) I needed to distinguish the Elite Royal Guard further from even the Royal Guard. If they had to be have Dragon Souls, that would certainly distinguish them, wouldn't it? As for Kongol, he hadn't been designated as Gold Dragoon yet because the giants who were going to decide were in Snapdragon (Lord Sigmund's realm) when it was conquered. Since they had the Gold Dragoon soul hidden in a location known only to them (similiar to the location as the Portal Gem in Butterscotch, but even better hidden than the Portal Gem, which says something of it's importance to the giants), no one else was going to have it until the campaign was over. (for those wondering who Kongol is, just think of a giant with a mohawk who joins the Legend of Dragoon player's side or just look at a picture of a Barbarian from DK 1 and you get the idea) 19) Dragon Souls? What's up with that? How can you GET a Soul? A) In truth, I think of the Dragon Soul as a piece of a Dragon Heart that can be forged into an amulet. For story purposes, they're more like powerful talismans that are granted by dragons to those who do not slay creatures for glory. Others were created by Dragons as a means of amplifying their own power from their fallen enemies, but when they were slain, the slayer found the amulet's mysterious powers. 20) Okay, so who designates who gets which? A) The King appoints Purple Dragoon. Purple Dragoon appoints Red Dragoon. The Monks of St. Cuthbert appoint White Dragoon. Black Dragoon is new, but will likely have a self-appointed heir. Blue Dragoon is appointed by the Dwarves. Green Dragoon is appointed by the Elves. Gold Dragoon is appointed by the Giants. 21) So, once you're appointed, that's it? What if you're evil? A) The appointment isn't simply a "Hmm, you look good. You're it" sort of thing. After all, the Giants didn't choose anyone to inherit the Gold Dragoon, even though the council that decided was converted to Ranma's side. The person has to go through a lot of trials in order to be chosen, trials that show whether or not the person is good enough. Each group has different requirements to be met, but no one truly evil has ever gotten the Dragon Souls, even though the people often chosen are humans or elves. After all, Meru had to impress the dwarves, Albert the elves, Shana the monks of St. Cuthbert, etc. 22) So, why didn't you ressurrect the DK 1 creatures until the final battle? A) I felt it would chaotic enough without adding the unusual creatures of DK 1. Once the conflict was over, however, all of the once-thought-extinct creatures are free to roam the realm and eat freely from Ranma's hatcheries, so long as they don't attack any civilians. Besides, I'd have to explan what Demon Spawn are and how they can become dragons. 23) So the dragons that those amulets are made from... A) Pure-bred dragons. They aren't Demon Spawn who evolved into Dragons. 23) How do the portals work? A) They work on five possible principles. A1) The Dungeon Keeper creates a room, thus signaling the magic- sensitive creatures of the realm that there is someone hiring. A2) The creatures who desire to be employed concentrate hard on that desire. If there's a keeper in the area whose portals have not been over-exerted, the creature are drawn in through the portal. A3) Any neutral creatures who are above ground and seeking exployment are automatically summoned based on what rooms are bigger and more recently made. A4) A Keeper puts out a flyer with a proposed pay scale, announcing hirings in various locations, then attunes his portal to pulling in more creatures. The number of creatures pulled in depend on whether or not the keeper has the realm's portal gem or not and if the keeper has a living rival keeper. A5) Magic pixies flash their panties at the creatures, distracting them long enough for the Ewoks to tie their shoelaces together and push them into a pit. Wait, sorry, wrong series. Pixies don't exist in DK 2 ^_^ 24) Then, how do Mercenary Portals differ? A) Mercenary portal differ by summoning specifically humanoid creatures, as opposed to the normal portal, which is more broadly based. 25) In DK Love Hina (Anime Dungeon Keeper for those who've visited my Fanfiction.net account), why in the nine hells did you make Brittany a Fairy and Shinobu an Elite Dark Knight? A) For fun, of course. It'd be boring if I just wrote them into roles that further subjugated them to a specific role. Besides, you have to admit, a werecheetah with lightning powers and a homemaker with a blood-caked sword makes for some wacky comedy. 26) So, are there ANY creatures who'll be normal (such as trolls and bile demons) in DK Love Hina (Anime DK)? A) Yes, but they'll mostly be cannon fodder to die. After all, Anime Dungeon Keeper or DK Love Hina was made for the sole purpose of fitting anime-based characters into the DK series while keeping it mostly about the actual story. 27) What's the proper way to become a knight? A) Many people don't seem to realize this, but you don't start out a squire and advance to knighthood. You instead start out as a page, (usually around the age of 8) and you are given various chores and such meant to tire out a youth's pep and vigor. Once you've completed four years of being a page, you advance to squire. Squirehood involves more intimately the aspects of being a knight. You are taught how to wield a sword, wear armor and so on. Squirehood lasts until your teacher, the knight, deems you ready to become a knight (and ready to go through whatever special trial is necessary to prove that to whomever can bestow knighthood (note: this is always hazy. Some knights can knight their own squires, while others must be knight by royalty. It depends on the code/order/chapter of the knight who is doing the training.)) or decides that you are simply not knight material. Some squires spend between two to eight years becoming a knight, depending on how quickly they grasp and prepare and how confident their guiding knight is about them becoming knights. A bad knight might have failed squires constantly because he/she isn't training them properly. So, yes, most of those movies about someone going into the past and instantly becoming a squire are Bull Shit. 28) What's the proper way to become a dark/black knight? A) It is very similar to method of becoming an actual knight. However, with Dark Knights, squirehood is usually a lot more brutal as the squire must be ready for heavy combat. Also, depending on the guiding knight and whatever order/chapter they follow. Elites are much more cautious with their squires, as they must guide their squires onto a much stronger path than those of the common dark knights. There will always be trials with Dark Knights, though the price of failure can cost the squire their lives. The Elite Dark Knights of my DK worlds are capable of standing against even the Royal Guard. The best among them can even stand against the Elite Royal Guard. In DK Ranma, there aren't any 'best' elite dark knights. In DK Ukyou and Anime DK, there are. 29) Order? Chapter? A) Fancy ways of saying guilds or clubs. A chapter is a smaller group of an order. 30) If there _were_ still creature types from DK 1 in the time of DK 2 for your stories, why did only King Reginald have them? A) Most of the creatures who vanished had actually grown dangerously close to extinction as time went by. They'd retreated deep within the mountain upon which King Reginald's castle stood. King Reginald and his men came upon them on occassion when patrolling the inner sanctum and instead of slaughtering them, King Reginald saw that their numbers were dangerously low and they had no strength to fight. So, in compassion, he set about converting them and raising them in secret. In truth, King Reginald had no intention of sending them out to face the enemy armies. The creatures had been well treated in King Reginald's care and had flourished in secret. They sought to repay him for not killing them off by fighting his foes. This was the reason they appeared so suddenly after all of the King's men had been deployed or defeated. 31) Just how DID Ranma get home only two weeks after he left? A) What no one realizes is that the crossing of dimensions allows for time travel. So long as you don't exist in that other dimension at the time you jump in, it's all right. A full year DID go by in the DK universe, but when he jumped back, he could have chosen any time after he'd left. Ranma should feel lucky. Happousai's banishment spell could have hurled him into the past of the DK universe instead, where he would have lived a much more violent life and would not have had the portal gems to use to go home. Hell, he might not have been able to use a Dungeon Heart. This form of time travel is how I believe the Sailor Moon universe's time travel really works. After all, you can't go back into a past you exist in, nor can you paradoxially go into a future that is yet to be for you, because you would cause a time rift/paradox. The universe doesn't like paradoxes, so it solves them by altering what happens, which is that an inperceivable nudge on the dimensional line shoves you into a different dimension's past/future that is very close to yours. It's usually imperceiveably different if you're lucky/accurate. This means that learning things about that future/past is of no use because it's different. This is why Sailor Pluto and other time travelers don't like to mess with 'history', because telling someone that they're going to defeat a monster, create a rift, etc. might cause that universe to go to a different track, which would render any possible counter-planning useless. After all, there's a saying: "It takes but one pebble to begin to change the course of a river." Also, there's another saying: "He who gets swelled head have really shitty balance when unexpected wind come." Okay, you caught me. I made the first one up. 32) Back to the Dungeon Heart thing: If the Dungeon Hearts tell the Keepers everything they need to know, what's Lundar for? A) Mentors have two purposes. The first is to teach the Dungeon Keeper more about how to best devise a dungeon, strategies on how to build up troops, etc. The second is to act as a watch for times when the Keeper is asleep. They're sort of like Trusted Lieutenants, but not COMPLETELY Trusted Lieutenants. (nod to Peter's Evil Overlord List) In exchange for this, they are granted a form of immortality. They live as long as the Dungeon Keeper wills them to. Without a Keeper, their infinite lifespan slowly becomes more and more limited and they actually begin to age again. It would take an average teenager-turned-Mentor roughly a thousand years to die when the Heart goes into 'standby', provided that the Dungeon Heart isn't reactivated again. 33) How can there be so many Dungeon Hearts? I mean, it's not like someone went around making a billion of the damn things, but it seems like there are a lot of twits getting their hands on them. A) Just like there's a way to create a temporary Dungeon Heart, there's a way of taking that Dungeon Heart. Most times, it usually occurs with a temporary Dungeon Heart. Common: If a temporary Dungeon Heart is left alone for twelve cycles of the moon (a year), it will become inactive, like the primary Dungeon Hearts. This most often occurs when a Keeper is either A) Thinking years in advance, B) Creating a Temporary Dungeon Heart as a beginning of a campaign but they get distracted and forget about it, or C) The Keeper creates a number of temporary Dungeon Hearts before he/she dies/is killed. Uncommon: The Keeper creates a Temporary Dungeon Heart and allows someone else to to take control of it. This allows the primary keeper to have a slight leg up when it comes to utilizing energy as they can still tap the new Keeper's Dungeon Heart and prevents the other keeper from betraying them until the original keeper is dead and their Dungeon Heart becomes inactive. 34) What about the portals? A) What about the portals? 35) If you capture more than one, what good does it do? A) In the original DK game? Nothing. In the DK 2 game, it gives you extra five active creatures per portal after your first. Note that if you lose a portal, then gain it back, it does not add another five creatures. It instead raises the maximum number of creatures you can have, should the ones you're currently commanding die. Example: You can have 15 creatures come through one portal, which a maximum amount of 25. You capture another portal. You can now have 20 creatures in your dungeon with a maximum of 35. You then lose that portal and six creatures. You will only get 1 to replace those casaulties until you regrab that portal. Meanwhile, your opponent gets an additional five creatures via that portal (unless your recapture is swift enough to prevent that). Example 2: Nakago captures six portals to begin with, meaning his active maximum is 40. His reserve is 75, meaning that for each creatures his opponent kills, he'll get another one until they've killed more than 35 creatures. His portals, then exhuasted, will not allow him to gain any more creatures. He must capture more portals before he can resupply to his maximum.