Secrets (10)

As soon as you start, check your map for the gold at the bottom. You'll see impenetrable rock to the left of the westernmost gold. Use this as your guide to build a long corridor straight up from the bottom of the map to the far north, right against the lava. If you can wall off the entire western side within the first 5 minutes, you'll be pretty safe for a while.

Next, build a treasure room near that gold, excavate it, and then build your basic rooms. Start small with just a Training Chamber since your gold is limited early on. Head over to the Portal and claim it. Your Imps will automatically go to the bridge section, but they'll get wiped out there. To prevent this, use one of the 7 doors you start with to block them. You'll only attract Warlocks for now, but that's fine – just have them all research.

You'll get the first bridge section right away. Sell the tile next to your dungeon and build a Guard Post there. This is super important later. A group of Fairies will pop up in the lava, and later, some hero Horned Reapers will be released. They'll all charge your dungeon if they can find a path! Once you get the 'Invisibility' spell, use it to grab the individual bridge sections until you reach point 's'. Doing this will trigger a message saying you've learned to build bridges yourself. This also stops the constant hero spawns at point '1'!

By now, your Torture Chamber and Barracks should be ready. Kick out some Warlocks and get a few Mistresses or Orcs training. Don't go overboard, though, as you can't afford too many creatures training at once. By the way, you can dig east along that impenetrable rock towards the Bile Demon and its free Workshop. Just be careful to avoid the Monks at point '2'. Use this to your advantage.

Construct a bridge to the far west and remove all the connecting segments. You'll find some heroes over there, along with 3 precariously placed Boulder traps. You can use these traps to take out most of the heroes.