Evil Genius 2 Beginner Guide: How to Build a Better Lair and Dispose of Body Bags

There is no single correct way to become an evil mastermind, but there are plenty of ways to make your life much harder than it needs to be. This Evil Genius 2: World Domination beginner guide explains how to build a stable lair, earn Gold through the World Stage, keep minions alive and productive, dispose of Body Bags, unlock advanced research, and choose a good island for your campaign.

Basic Tips for Evil Genius 2

Evil Genius 2 has many interconnected systems, and the tutorial does not explain every long-term consequence of your early decisions. If you are just starting out, keep these rules in mind:

1. Start with a compact lair and leave room to expand important rooms later.
2. Research new technology in the Laboratory whenever your economy can support it.
3. Keep progressing through the main Objectives because advanced systems and research tiers are tied to campaign progress.
4. Complete Side Stories to unlock specialist minions, Loot, Crime Lords, and Henchmen.
5. Expand Criminal Networks carefully. More networks mean more income and Schemes, but also more Heat to manage.
6. Protect your Evil Genius. If the Genius dies, the campaign is over.
7. Do not spend all your Gold on oversized rooms before your economy is stable.

How to Develop Your Lair Properly

One of the easiest beginner mistakes is building too much too early. You do not need an enormous Vault, Barracks, or Laboratory during the opening minutes.Your lair has an initial Gold capacity of $40,000 even without a proper Vault. That means Power and access to the World Stage are usually more important than filling a huge cavern with Gold Pallets immediately.A good early build order looks like this.

1. Power Station

Build a Power Station and install several Generators. Power demand rises constantly as you add Radio Repeaters, training equipment, security systems, Laboratory devices, and traps.Do not make the room enormous on day one, but place it somewhere that can be expanded later. Power equipment is critical infrastructure, so keeping the main generator room away from obvious agent routes is also a good idea.

Build a Power Station

2. Control Room

The Control Room is the foundation of your criminal economy.Radio Repeaters provide Broadcast Strength. Broadcast Strength lets you establish Criminal Networks on the World Stage. Those networks provide passive income and unlock Schemes that can earn much larger amounts of Gold.Build several Radio Repeaters early, then scout nearby regions and start establishing Criminal Networks. Add Intel-generating equipment as your needs increase.

Build a Control Room

As with the Power Station, leave space for expansion. A cramped Control Room becomes annoying very quickly once you need more Broadcast Strength and Intel.Do not connect to every region immediately. Each Criminal Network generates Heat over time. Expanding faster than you can manage Heat can leave multiple regions locked down when you need money or story Schemes.

3. Mess Hall

Your minions constantly spend their personal stats while working.The Mess Hall lets them eat and recover Vitality and Smarts. Basic food stations restore these stats up to their normal early-game limits.If Smarts falls to zero, a minion can no longer work properly. If Vitality is depleted in combat, the minion dies. Build enough food counters to prevent long queues as your workforce grows.

Build a Mess Hall

Later, remember that different rooms specialize in different needs:

• Staff Room is designed for Morale recovery.
• Archive is designed for Smarts recovery.
• Infirmary is designed for Vitality recovery.

4. Barracks

The Barracks contains two especially important item types:

• Beds let minions rest and restore Vitality and Morale.
• Lockers increase your maximum minion capacity.

Build Barracks

Do not pack Beds so tightly that minions cannot reach their interaction points. Lockers, on the other hand, do not need to occupy your most valuable central space. A dedicated locker room farther from heavy traffic works perfectly well.

5. Incinerators

Body Bags are one of the most dangerous indirect consequences of combat.Every dead character leaves a Body Bag. Minions who pass near Body Bags lose Morale, so a major firefight can create a nasty feedback loop. Your guards die, Body Bags pile up, surviving workers repeatedly walk past them, Morale collapses, and desertion can begin.The solution is the Incinerator, which is built inside a Power Station. Minions automatically carry Body Bags to available Incinerators.

Build Incinerators

Your main generator room does not need to sit beside the battlefield. Instead, create small Power Station sections containing Incinerators near places where people frequently die, such as:

• Prisons.
• Armouries and security choke points.
• Entrances used by hostile agents.
• Corridors where your defensive trap network ends.

This greatly reduces the distance workers must carry bodies.

6. Vault

You can delay a large Vault because the lair already stores up to $40,000 at the start.Once your World Stage income begins regularly reaching that limit, build a proper Vault. Gold Pallets increase storage capacity, while later research unlocks more efficient options such as Safe Racks and Megasafes.

Build a Vault

Keep the Vault away from entrances and common agent routes whenever possible. Rogues such as Symmetry are much more dangerous when valuable Gold is sitting close to the front door.

7. Prison

A Prison is required for many campaign Objectives and Side Stories. The basic setup includes:

• Holding Cells.
• Interrogation Chairs.

Holding Cells contain captured characters. Interrogation Chairs are used for story objectives, specialist-minion recruitment, and Intel generation.

Build Holding Cells and Interrogation Chairs

Specialist minions are generally unlocked through Side Stories. You perform a special Scheme on the World Stage, kidnap the required specialist, interrogate them, build the newly unlocked Trainer, and then train your own workers into that role.Do not build only one Holding Cell. Several Objectives ask you to capture multiple people, and enemy investigators can also be imprisoned. A small Prison with several cells is much more flexible.

Which Island Should You Choose?

The base game has three tropical island lairs:

Choose Your Starting Island

If you own the Oceans Campaign Pack, you also gain a fourth lair, Icicle Point. It is an Arctic base with a temperature system. Minions and equipment can suffer when the lair becomes too hot or too cold, so heaters and air conditioning become part of normal base management.For a first standard campaign, Crown Gold is easy to understand. Caine Key is also very beginner-friendly because of its huge starting area and predictable visitor route.

Dispose of Body Bags Quickly

This deserves its own section because ignoring Body Bags can destroy an otherwise healthy workforce.After a large battle, immediately check the combat area. If dozens of bodies are waiting to be moved, surviving minions repeatedly passing through the area will suffer Morale loss.

Dispose of Body Bags Quickly

A few ways to reduce the problem:

• Build extra Incinerators near frequent combat areas.
• Place your Armoury and Muscle minion response points where they can intercept enemies without forcing every Worker through the fight.
• Use ranged weapons once they are available so your Muscle minions spend less time brawling in dangerous trap corridors.
• Avoid creating narrow combat zones that force friendly minions to stand inside deadly traps.
• Use nonlethal traps in high-traffic areas when you want to weaken or capture agents rather than create mountains of bodies.

Morale can be restored. The real problem is allowing Body Bags to remain on the floor long enough that the same minions repeatedly suffer the penalty.

Where Do New Minions Come From?

Worker minions arrive automatically.Under the standard rules, two Workers arrive every 60 seconds. They do not cost Gold.If you lose a large number of minions in combat or send many of them away on Schemes, automatic recruitment can be too slow. Open the Minion Manager and use Hire Now.The standard instant-hire option costs $10,000 for 5 Workers.This is especially useful when your Vault is full and your economy is already generating more Gold than you can store. Spending $10,000 to restore the workforce can be much better than leaving World Stage income capped.

Do Not Ignore Decor

Decor is not purely cosmetic.Many decor objects create a small local effect around them. Depending on the item, they can reduce stat drain or improve recovery for nearby minions.For example, Air Con Units can reduce Morale drain near relevant work areas, while other utility decor affects Vitality or Morale restoration.The important detail is range. These effects are local, not global. Place useful decor next to equipment where minions spend long periods working instead of scattering it randomly through enormous rooms.This is especially useful in:

• Control Rooms.
• Armouries.
• Barracks.
• Prisons.
• Laboratories.

How to Unlock Higher-Tier Research

Research progression is partly tied to the main campaign.If Tier 3 research appears locked, continue your main Objectives until the Side Story for recruiting a Biologist becomes available.Complete that Side Story by kidnapping a Biologist through a special Scheme, interrogating the captive, building the Biologist Trainer, and training your own Biologist.This unlocks the advanced Laboratory equipment needed for Tier 3 research.Higher research tiers similarly depend on campaign progress, specialist science minions, and the correct Laboratory equipment. You cannot simply rush the entire technology tree during the first hour.

Build Trap Networks, Not Isolated Traps

A single trap is easy for skilled agents to disable. Trap combinations are much more effective.The best trap corridors use one device to place an agent into the path of another. Movement traps are particularly useful because they can separate groups and reset the agent's position.Useful principles include:

• Use traps that knock, pull, push, or blow agents into other traps.
• Use corridor corners to prevent agents from seeing every trap from far away.
• Do not place your entire defense in one tiny space. Agents may disable the first trap and walk through the rest.
• Mix Resolve-draining Casino distractions with traps before ordering lethal combat.
• Keep lethal trap corridors away from normal minion traffic whenever possible.

Pinball-style traps and Boxing Gloves are particularly good for breaking up groups, while movement effects can feed targets into more damaging devices.

Use Fire Extinguishers

Most important base equipment has Durability and eventually needs repairs from Technicians. Saboteurs and several story events can also start fires.A fire is dangerous because it can spread from one object to the next.Place Fire Extinguishers around rooms with expensive or critical equipment, especially:

• Power Stations.
• Control Rooms.
• Laboratories.
• Vaults.
• Areas frequently attacked by Saboteurs.

Use Fire Extinguishers

Also maintain enough Technicians. Fire Extinguishers help during emergencies, but preventing important machines from falling into terrible condition is even better.

Final Beginner Tips

Your lair works best when every system supports the others. The Control Room funds expansion. The Laboratory unlocks better equipment. The Barracks, Mess Hall, Staff Room, Archive, and Infirmary keep the workforce functioning. The Armoury handles security. The Prison supports Intel and campaign objectives. Incinerators clean up the consequences when security fails.Do not rush to build the largest possible base. Build only what you need, leave expansion space around critical rooms, and invest your Gold in the systems that remove your current bottleneck.

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The strongest early-game plan in Evil Genius 2 is simple: build enough Power, establish Criminal Networks through the Control Room, keep minion stats stable, add several Holding Cells, dispose of Body Bags immediately, and keep advancing the main campaign until new specialist minions and research tiers become available.