Treasure hunting in dungeons, ruins, and lairs

by i11u5i0n

This tip applies to players of R14 to R16 who inhabits an area of the savage frontier with the most varied & colorful of wandering monsters found in RSI’s Forgotten Realmstm War of the Avatars scenario. This area too has one of the highest number of Dungeon, Ruins and Lairs (DRLs) and what set them apart is the interesting contents of the DRLs. Actually I prefer R44’s or R33’s location for this strategy.

Here is what you will need for this strategy: –

A DRL list, you need a list of the DRL’s in this area, refer to Vincent’s list for this. It’s not updated though. I’m too lazy to compile one, laziness that’s probably why my web page never came out.
Build lots of scouting units. Units I like to use for this purposes are light cav, aarakocra militia, orc light infantry, elf light infantry, 40mp militia, & skirmishers, in that order. All these are found in the area.
A fast moving stack with minimum 87 ++ MP that can demolish any stack with 20 hit point total or less

By time the last requirement can be met, you usually need it somewhere else, therefore the need for speed to be more cost effective. And why do you need such high requirements? Well the thing about DRL’s is that any decent Dungeon or Ruins contains a secret item (Lairs don’t). This is totally random, it can be as lousy as an enchanted leather, useful item like an oil of burning or very useful item like a luck blade or any other non-unique item less than 50 GP value, usually something only cities can craft, like a heavy catapult. The last can only be found in ruins. I’ve collected at least 3 enchanted leathers in my experiences in any D & R in any part of the map and once or twice oil of burning. Please inform me where your experiences say different. Back to my point, these items can only be gained by demolishing the D or R inhabitants TOTALLY; any retreating survivor will sometimes result in this secret item lost.

A thing about DRL’s, most DRLs’ contain between 1 to 3 (very rare) items. Most as you can see from the list, contains a single or two items, therefore, there will be 1 to 3 items to be found at each DRL’s, including the secret item.

How to make such a stack, that’s not my problem, you can have dozens of mages that cause 20-hp damage more or less. A missile stack; magic & missile stack; a balanced magic, missile and melee stack; or a combination of your choice. Mine was a minor magic and major missile stack.

Use your scouts and scour the mountains & desert areas. Other part of the maps may have DRL’s, wandering R0’s bearing items but this area is unique is that you might find settlements with powerful creatures resident in these communities, there are those here that bear items as well, just like some cities.

This strategy is simple, use your scouts to find R0’s with items, use them to find the DRL’s. Hunt down the R0’s and kill the DRL’s inhabitants. From the R0’s bearing items, you gain items and from the DRL’s, you find items and GOLD to build more units, chars or items. Therefore you can have a high entity value army with a low gold production. Never underestimate DRL’s as a source of income, the higher ratio of these being found because of the lower density of communities in the area. If you don’t go for the DRL’s in the area, you will loose out in comparison to another realm like R13, R4, R8, … etc that has easier access to a lot of communities and therefore a substantially larger gold production base who will be better using a rapid expansion strategy instead. You will lose out in army strength against such realms if you neglect them.

Plan your movement correctly so you wouldn’t waste time double tracking. The Anarouch Desert has made my realm richer. Though I was nowhere near the top 3 gold producing realm, I’ve managed to retain a top 3 position in the entity value table. There are other realms that can adopt this strategy, R26, R47, among the few.