Malignus · Beginner guide

Welcome to Malignus

Your goal is to keep your Boss alive for as long as you can.

Orders

A good first step is to claim the ground around your minions, then mark rock for them to dig.

Building

In your first days, you'll want shelves for your items and bedrolls for your minions.

Grumbles and spite

Those first days are the time to set up food, beds and fun.

Rooms

Rooms help workstations the most, because one alone in its room gets both speed bonuses.

Treasure and the sanctum

Early on, you'll want a throne inside a room. It gives your Boss a home, so minions don't grumble about a missing sanctum.

Traps

A good trap puts its trigger where adventurers walk, with a mechanism that reaches that tile.

Every trap has two parts, a trigger and a mechanism, connected by a wire.

• Trigger: The part that starts the trap. Tripwires and pressure plates start the trap when an enemy or a wild creature walks over them. Sensors start it when they see an enemy or a wild creature. A lever starts its trap when you switch it on. Minions switch levers on too. They do it only when an enemy stands where the mechanism hits, and nobody from your dungeon stands there.

• Mechanism: The part that hurts or stops the enemy, such as blades, darts, fire or webs. Some mechanisms have Trap in their name, like the Web Trap. Each one is only a mechanism and still needs a trigger.

• Wire: With the Wiring tool in the Traps menu, you drag a wire from a trigger to a mechanism. A trigger can have only one mechanism, and a mechanism can have only one trigger. The wire can be as long as you need. A part with no wire does nothing.

Doors and locks

A locked door in front of your most important room gives you time to gather your minions.

You build archways from this menu. Selecting an archway lets you add a door, and selecting a door lets you add a padlock.

• Your minions unlock a locked door and walk through.

• Adventurers have to pick the lock or bash the door open. Bashing takes twice as long. Sturdy and fortified doors hold out longer.

• When adventurers reach a closed door and see another way around, they take that way half the time. So a door can steer them away from a room.

Lairs

Lairs take time to fill, so it's worth placing one early.

Co-op

Share one dungeon and agree on who handles building, supplies and defense. Coordinate new orders so that you do not overwrite each other’s plans.