Hello, Kalypso

I'm a first-time customer, and I recently bought a copy of Dungeons....it intrigued me because I'm a fan of Dungeon Keeper from way back. Dungeons is a great game in terms of visual and audio.

I have to say, though, that the game itself is very frustrating. I understand that one of my primary goals is to harvest Soul Energy from satisfied heroes....but the actual process is highly labor-intensive. I can't rely on my monsters to slay heroes automatically so that my goblins can pick them up and convey them to the prisons....the heroes take the exact path out of the dungeon that they took getting into it. Monsters strong enough or numerous enough to slay heroes along that path will prevent heroes from reaching the resources they need to become satisfied; monsters weaker or less numerous than that will be unable to stop heroes on their exit OUT of the dungeon. It seems like the only way to accomplish the job is to wait for the heroes to steal treasure, books, armor, or whatever else they want, and then to swoop down on them with my Dungeon Lord before they can make good an exit.

That's a problem, because keeping a careful eye on that is hard enough with just one hero-door open. If I open two or three, the influx of heroes into my dungeon becomes so overwhelming that sometimes a satisfied hero slips through the cracks and escapes while I'm managing the others. Much worse, I spend most of the game lurking just around the corner to the treasure room waiting for the heroes to exit with their arms full of gold coins. I can't go too far away from that room, because the heroes could conceivably escape. Since heroes arrive relatively rapidly (especially with more than one gate open), I have little time to consider strategy or to manage the rest of my dungeon, or even to enjoy micromanaging the decorations. Simply put, I spend so much time smiting the heroes personally that I might as well be just another of my minions, rather than the Dungeon Lord.

Am I missing something? Is there some way to get my minions to do some of the work? Or does the game essentially force you to lurk around the heroes at all times, as I've been doing? It's not like Dungeon Keeper, where I could, with clever design and placement, leave certain portions of the dungeon's operations on autopilot. What am I missing?

-A very frustrated customer

You could try to summon a guardian at your dungeon heart and don't let heroes get full satisfaction bar, instead you should try to nearly fill the satisfaction bar and let the path end at your dungeon heart.

Hope that helps.

You do not need to wait for the heroes to fully satisfy their needs before harvesting them. You will find that for most situations, the soul energy yield will be just fine at 50-75% of their capacity.

Other than that, since you didn't mention a specific mission and seem to look for a generic strategy: Did you complete the tutorial/campaign already or are you just playing sandbox games?