A Town Guide

Dungeon

Overview: The dungeon is like the old warlock castle, and it is still as powerful as it was in the old Heroes games. This town type benefits from two excellent ranged attackers, as well as three flying units. It is also one of the most powerful towns in terms of magic. Its heroes are quite adept at spellcasting and gain the most destructive spells and advance the fastest in spell power. This town's special buildings are very useful, although they are also very expensive. In fact, this is one of the most expensive of all towns, and it relies heavily on precious resources like sulfur and mercury for many later buildings.

Pros: Three flying units, two good ranged attackers (both mid level); powerful seventh-level unit; unit upgrades are significant (especially with levels 3-7 troops); powerful magic; strong in creatures from levels three to seven.
Cons: Weak first and second-level creatures; needs lots of sulfur; buildings are expensive; creatures are expensive.

Creatures
This castle type has several strengths, although it is weak in the early levels, considering its lackluster level one and two troops. The troglodyte is barely stronger than the puny imp or gremlin, losing handily to the centaur, pikeman, or most other first-level creatures. Its upgrade is only slightly stronger, bringing it to the middle of the first-level pack. The harpy can fly, and it has a boomerang attack that forces other troops to run after it, but it is too weak to stand against other town types' level two creatures. The harpy hag, though, isn't a complete waste, since its attack cannot be retaliated against.

Once you go beyond those two troops, the dungeon starts to yield some strong advantages. The next two levels of troops are strong, ranged attackers, and the medusa also gains the ability to petrify opponents. Upgrade the medusa quickly, though, because unupgraded medusas only have four shots! The minotaur is the strongest level five creature, and the upgraded minotaur king is close in power to the weaker level six creatures of the other towns.

The manticore is a surprisingly weak sixth-level creature compared to the other town types, but it serves the dungeon ranks well with its combination of good hit points, flying ability, and cheap cost. With the addition of such creatures as the titan from Heroes II and the new archangel, the red and black dragons aren't nearly the terror they were before, but are still powerful, especially because they are immune to magic.

When you have the chance, upgrade your troops. Obviously they are better, although you need not do so with the urgency of, say, the stronghold or fortress town types. You should upgrade your harpies, medusas and beholders first, for more shots (in the latter cases) and better speed. Minotaurs and manticores should follow next.

Buildings
The buildings for the dungeon aren't cheap. Even the harpy loft building upgrade requires a few crystals and sulfur. The pillar of eyes building and its upgrade requires one of each resource, in addition to gold. You will need to take and hold many mines early on to support this town type. However, the low to mid level buildings can be acquired fairly quickly if you do decide to scramble up the building tree. You need, however, to build the first four dwellings in sequence, at which point the labyrinth (minotaurs) and manticore lair are both available. There are no other building dependencies. Unfortunately, if you want to advance beyond the mid levels, you usually can't upgrade even your lower level creatures until you take more mines. There is only one horde building, and it amplifies troglodyte production.

The special buildings are among the most useful of any town types. The Battle Scholar's academy can be built immediately and gives a +1000 experience bonus, giving your heroes a small boost over other enemy heroes in the early game. The mana vortex is extremely helpful because it temporarily doubles your hero's spell points. The dungeon can also summon an eighth-level monsters via its Portal of Summoning, which allows the dungeon player to recruit a random creature from any external flagged dwelling. The artifacts merchant is another useful building because it allows you to buy artifacts. But again, to take advantage of this benefit, you really need to go out and amass a lot of resources. The resource silo of this town produces sulfur (which you'll need for your dragons), and the blacksmith builds the ballista.

The dungeon grail building is the Guardian of Earth, which gives you an additional 5000 gold per day, boosts weekly creature growth by +50 percent, and increases the spell power of garrison heroes by +12. Combine this power boost with the mana vortex, and the dungeon's magical defenses are by far the most potent of all town types.

Magic
This castle type is strong in magic, gaining many destructive spells at the guild. Its special buildings also boost spell points, and thus spellcasting. The magic hero of this town, the warlock, is one of the two most powerful spellcasters in the game (the other is the wizard), gaining secondary spell skills and power skill points quickly.