On raiding and razing
The one way to gather leather from the start of the game is, off course, to raid elven villages.
The three orcs from the tutorial are strong enough to do it, kill one or two guards and come back with 450 units of stuff, some leather and randomly either more leather, gold, primordials, or occassionally a piece of furniture or a steel chest.
But, Orcs are slow. Even the shortest trip to the nearest village will take over half an hour to get there, and the same amount of time to get back home and be able to raid again.
That allows for less than one raid per hour. Beginning with Dungeon Lord level 12, you will be able to send out two attacks simultaneously (level 2 orcs to 8, and they will be easily capable to raid a village alone), but really, 2 raids per hour is still much too slow. Waiting till level 27 to get a third simultaneous attack is not an option.
So, the first thing the wiley aspiring Overlord should invest his newly gathered leather in is Thieves.
Research Creature Mastery IV, "Ways of Subterfuge", upgrade your workshop and your Tavern to Level 3, craft a Trapdoor and place it in the Tavern, wait some time, and welcome your very first Thief.
Thieves move much faster over land than Orcs and can reach the village on your front porch in 10 minutes, so they can make 3 raids per hour per thief, allowing for 6 raids per hour per dungeon.
Constant question in chat is, "how much levels does my Thief need to solo a village?"
Actually, you can send him out, once he reaches lvl 6. He wont succeed to raid half of the time, and might occassionally come back badly hurt, but he is already too clever to get himself killed by a village guard, if he is given enough time to heal before he is sent out gain.
But, the biggest disadvantage of Thieves vs Orcs is, that they can carry much less. At level 6 he can carry only 250 stuff, which means, he will leave half of the booty behind, while even looting a lowly village. So, better get a second Trapdoor, and send in 2 lvl 6 Thieves as a pair. They will carry out all that is there, and will get hurt much less, if they come up against anything other than a pair of footmen. While your thieves are at that low level, you can continue to use Orcish labor for your second attack.
To carry all the possible loot from a village alone, a single thief has to be lvl 13. To get to that level a Dark Nook has to be placed into the tavern, but the ability of your thieves to solo a village is easily worth the crystal for the nook and all the reinforced leather for the training.
As I said, with 2 grown-up solo Thieves, attacking simultaneously from your dungeon, the village can be raided 6 times per hour, which is nice, but not as nice as burning the village down.
To burn down a village, 20 of its defenders have to be killed in raids, and it has to be done quite fast, as 2 defenders per hour grow back. Given that even on a successful raid a lowly lvl 13 thief is about as likely to kill only one defender as he is to kill two, and will still very often not kill any defenders at all, but instead get hurt in return and need a healing break, killing that amount of elves is hard and can drag on for several hours of sending the thieves back in over and over, only to then watch how some noob from the hood has send in a couple of orcs, and killed the last defenders you had left and snatched your rightful loot from you.
The trick to efficient village razing is to have thieves in two dungeons, that are close to the same village, so either in the sme mountain as your starter and in an adjacent one, or in your 2nd and 3rd dungeon anywhere on the map, but close enough to each other. From lvl 12 to lvl 27 you can send out only 2 attacks simultaneously, but luckily that is per dungeon. So, two dungeons can send out 4 attacks. With thieves attacking next door, those are possible 12 attacks per hour.
Lvl 13 thieves kill an estimated average of 1 guard per attack, so it can still take two hours or more for them, but with the massive amount of leather you will gather over time now, it shouldnt be a problem to lvl your thieves higher and higher, reducing the amount of time they have to spend to heal their wounds and raising their kill efficiency towards 2 kills per raid.
Approaching lvl 25 for your thieves, that darned village should burn within maybe a bit more than an hour. And with the possibilty to send out series of raids at Dungeon Lord level 17, you only have to check their progress after about all 40 minutes.
On serious loot
Burning down a village will make it inaccessible for new raids for a few minutes. (Refresh your browser, if you want to start a new series of attack, else the burned icon will be visible for much longer), but, and this is the reason, why you are doing this, it will give you a guaranteed
500 primordial Water
500 primordial Earth
1000 gold
plus usually more than 1000 food, 500 leather and 100 iron
Oh, and off course on top of all the loot from the prepriatory raids.
Great thing is, all of that bonus stuff your thieves dont have to carry home, it just pops up in your dungeon.
Here is the solution to all your crystite and steel ingot needs.
Oh, btw. The elves will totally hate you for burning down their villages. But this guide was about getting the optimum loot out of raiding at low levels, not about surviving the reaction. I might do another guide to that problem soon, or you might just ask panicked questions in the chat, about what to do, when the first angry elves appoint themselves for a visit in your dungeon.
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