Here's 2 different scenarios of the way people might play Notorious :
A casual gamer starts off and designates a large cavern to be dug initially. 1/2 way through digging it all out they decide to pick up some gobbos to protect the front door and choose a regenerative contract/agreement. They leave the game for a day, and come back to a completely dug out cavern, in which the gobbos are currently wiping out a level 2 warrior. They tinker with 'Gobfast', the elite leader to help gain a win in the battle. They then review the summary reports and find out that they have managed to kill a level 3 mage at some point (named Dorf the Magnificent) so they are now rated at level 3, and they have had 5 'wipes' by seeing 5 other elite gobbo names in the death register. They go about designating another 3 caves to be dug out, and also upgrades the contract to get more out of the open space that's available.
Next day they have gone through another 7 wipes, but the improved contract means they managed to squeeze the life out of a level 4 druid named Fenris. 1 of the 3 caverns have been dug out, so they go about setting up another regenrative contract in the new area. After viewing a couple of their friend's dungeons, they decide to change the layout a little to set up a trap room first up, as well as a space for tresure toward the back. They also manage to pinch some villiagers to get the digging going. Logging back in the next day they see another 2 rooms have been opened up, but it looks like there's just been a wipe. Instead of waiting for the place to repopulate through the contract, they cancel it and set up a few new ones to try out skeletons instead. The trap room needs a bit of investment, so they raid the villiage for money, then spend it on buying traps. They tinker with exploring a couple of other dungeons before logging off.
An active gamer starts the game and designates a large room. After a couple of minutes poking around they realise that they can get in villiagers to help dig. With virtually no cash, they sign up an ogre with 80% salvage rights in the new space dug out. The ogre is sent off to the villiage to grab some farmers. The ogre arrives back with 5 farmers and they are immediately pressganged into digging. While they dig, the player looks into the rumours and sees that the ogre has attracted attention. He successfully plants a rumour that the ogre headed east instead of south. Most other rumours from the east seem to be also talking about an ogre, so he elects to pay 5 gold to share sight with Rofl, a human invoker heading east. Rofl successfully navigates a trap field (through a map from previous heroes that have wiped the dungeon), but gets nailed by a boss ogre that rushes out of a hidden door. With new information about a neighbour and dungeon layouts, the player then looks into picking up some hidden doors and decides to immediately start building a vault room with secret door instead of finishing the main room.
More rumours surface that the ransom for the missing farmers is now 10 gold each, and Flippit the thief managed to find the dungeon and excape before being pasted by the ogre. Fearing a big attack, the player ransoms the farmers to drop his notoriety and gain some cash. He puts in some low level bandits into the 1/2 built vault, and puts them to work digging. The bandits impression of the player drops pretty quickly and before long they are revolting. they go out into the main hall to protest, but fall victim to an ogre club through the brain. Oh well, at least the ogre is a little more experienced. The player sends out the ogre again to pinch some peasants, while installing a skeleton into the 1/2 built vault. The ogre dies in the attempt, so the player sets up another contract for a goblin elite to stay in the 1/2 dug main hall with up to 5 goblin minions, then logs off. They log on in a couple of hours and the report shows that the goblins managed to kill 5 heroes (Highest lvl 3) before they fell, but the skeletons haven't been touched. The player then goes about recruiting more goblins for the space freed and replacing the skeletons with a paid outright ogre (since the vault has survived and is now large enough to house an ogre).
After the first day, the active player has a little more space due to the farmers in use early, and has been able to react to new information more quickly to advance his dungeon layout. He has also had more fun interacting with the world and other players. The causal player sees greater increases in play between sessions because things set in motion (digging out rooms, etc) have come to pass by the time they log in. If played well (eg; a restarting player), the casual player could be very close to the level of an active player as ultimately dungeon design and size is what opens up higher and higher levels.
