Dungeon Guide

Introduction

The fact that the word "Dungeons" is part of the game title points to their importance in the game. Therefore, the biggest part of the game consists of visiting dungeons and making a group of heroes ready to finish them successfully. A group can find important items in dungeons, which can be an improvement to the group's equipment or can be sold for some extra gold. Another important gain consists of experience points ( ) and fame ( ). The are used to raise the heroes' skills and make the heroes stronger so that they are ready for even harder dungeons. Fame is needed as a common requirement for a number of stronger items. More about items and equipment can be found here Trading and Selling.

A dungeon is normally visited 10 hours after the last visit. It is advisable to shorten this limit to 7 hours as often as possible. To do this, one member of the group needs to click on "explore at..." at the top of the dungeons screen.

Classification of dungeons

All dungeons can be classified in four main categories: adventure, standard, appointment and quest. Adventures can be seen as small tutorials that are made to show how to play the game and teach basic knowledge about the game. The second type are standard dungeons which are always available, so you can visit them whenever you want and as often as you can each day.

The third category consists of all appointment dungeons, which are only available on specific days. This type of dungeon has a cycle in days which defines when the dungeon will become available again. So an appointment dungeon which was active today, with a cycle of 3, will become active again in three days. Another important fact is that a group can visit those special dungeons only once at the day they are available.

Quests have a special status, which creates another category of dungeons. Quests consist of a series of dungeons which may also include different paths with differing dungeons. They are bound to a certain level range at which you need to start and also finish the quest. Groups can always start and continue a quest if it is available at the current level. The chosen quest dungeon will then be visited as next dungeon. But be aware of the fact that quest dungeons can have a limit to the number of visits. So if you fail too often you might end the quest without success. Read the introduction of each quest dungeon carefully to get to know the rules.

A very good overview of all standard and appointment dungeons can be found in the "List of all dungeons" at the library. This list provides some pieces of information about each dungeon. You also have a sort and a search function there. So just look at the list to get to know the cycle of appointment dungeons and the date when they will be next available. Another important thing listed is the level restriction. Every dungeon is bound to a certain level range, just like the quests. You can only visit a dungeon if all heroes are in the requested level range.

Organizing dungeon visits: the dungeon schedule

A good start for planning the dungeon visits is to create a dungeon schedule. Such a schedule lists day of the visit, time of the visit and the name of the dungeon. This way the whole group knows when to attend which dungeon and can set the right settings or organize a vacation delegation early enough. Here is an example of how such a schedule should look like:

   Monday 12. April
   08:15 The Keilerei Pub
   15:15 The treasure map (appointment!)
   22:15 The Keilerei Pub

There might also be some tools that help you create such a dungeon schedule. Just check the game forum for known tools.

One common strategy behind the dungeon schedule is to have one standard dungeon which is visited all the time. This brings in stability and the group still knows what is up, even if the dungeon schedule isn't updated early enough. This standard dungeon should be constantly replaced by a more challenging one as soon as possible. This means you shouldn't stick too long to the same standard dungeon, especially if you advance in hero level and new dungeons are available.

Beside standard dungeons, a group should also visit appointment dungeons, quest dungeons and test new dungeons that are candidates as new standard. Therefore, a group needs to find a good point in time for these dungeons, because some or all heroes need to switch their settings accordingly. A moment when most of the players can log in before the visit is the best time. So discuss this topic in your group and don't forget the different time zones. It also helps to write a reminder message to the group some hours before the dungeon visit. That way all group members know what is up and can adjust the settings early enough.

Another helpful thing is that you can set your settings for the following two dungeons. Normally the function "Next Dungeon" in the settings section only defines which setting is temporarily used for the upcoming dungeon. But you can also use "Standard Dungeon" to define which setting should be used for the dungeon after the next dungeon. That way you just set the next setting as "Next Dungeon" and the following setting as "Standard Dungeon". So if you have enough consumables for the next two visits you don't need to log into the game for a longer time. But don't forget to set back the standard dungeon if necessary.

Guide to success in dungeons

A more advanced group surely wants to know how to master all these challenging dungeons as fast as possible. The most important thing for this goal is the used strategy for the dungeon. If one talks about the dungeon strategy he means the settings for each level for each group member. This is just a list that says what skill should be used in pre-round of level xy and which one should be set for the main round action.

You will also stumble upon the terms "buff" and "debuff" when talking about strategies. A buff is a skill that is used to strengthen one or more heroes. On the other side, a debuff is a skill that weakens one or more enemies. Those two classes of skills are very important in terms of strategies, and the main part of the strategy consists of these skills. Another popular term is "rolls" which is used for attack rolls, defense rolls or initiative rolls. It is compared to a dice roll because the actual value of the roll can diverse according to a fixed percentage range and, therefore, a certain part of the result is random.

The positioning of the heroes is also very important. Normally there is one blocker located at the front. He receives most of the hits from the enemies and is supported by the other heroes to push his defense as high as possible. The detailed placement strongly depends on the enemies you face in the dungeon you want to visit. The melee enemies are bound to a fixed order of positions they can attack, whereas ranged or magic attackers can attack every position but might be limited to a few.
One main rule for hero positioning is that you should position your weakest heroes where they get hit the fewest of all. It is also a good idea to place attackers with high specific defense, for example ranged defense, on a position where this attack type will hit. Another thing to mention is that you should consider the number of heroes at one spot. Most of the support skills are limited in number of targets so positioning fewer heroes on one position leads to a better chance to support them all at once. Also separating melee and ranged attackers can lead to a more effective offensive support.

Concerning positioning, you should also keep the melee attack modifiers and defense bonuses in mind. See Combat System - Melee

Most experienced groups define a strategy before the first dungeon visit, based on their former knowledge and older dungeon reports. If you don't have access to this kind of information you should develop the strategy based on your own visits. So constantly improving the levels you fail in will lead to a successful visit and a well working strategy. That way you also get a feeling of which skills and consumables are more effective. This also improves the chance of preparing a good standard settings for visiting unknown dungeons for the first time.

So if you don't have old reports available, analyze your former visits. Here are some questions that you should ask yourself while browsing the dungeon reports:

• why did the group fail?
• is the positioning right or can more heroes survive on other positions?
• are there better defensive support skills or better consumables? ("we need to block their attacks better")
• are there better offensive support skills or other useful weapons? ("we need to hit them more often")
• is the attack order of ranged and magic attacks the best possible way? ("we need to hit the right enemies first")
• are there more dangerous attacks so that the support should rather focus on them instead of others?
• is the whole dungeon too dangerous for our current heroes' level?
• where can we save consumables? ("are there pushes we don't really need?")
  
  

To improve the strategy, the group must get to know the effects of all available skills and consumables. Only if a group knows what it is able to do, it can create an effective strategy. A very good way to learn the effects of skills is to browse the skill lists of the classes and races of the group members. If something looks interesting it is important if the hero raised the skill or if he plans to do so before the dungeon visit. Another option consists of overviews of each hero in the group forum. This is easily done with the help of little tools, which are called skill converters. The effects of consumables lists are collected in the official game forum and can be found here: Ministry of Information

Another important key to success is activity, which is the most critical variable among all. The ideal situation would be that each member of the group is able to refill the pocket with consumables and change settings after each dungeon visit - every 7 hours. Setting up vacation delegation might help to get close to this, but you must be pretty careful when changing dungeons too often.

An additional fact to know about a dungeon is what types of enemies you will face there. Be aware of the different types of creatures and attacks that will await you! Some enemies are immune to specific types of damage, others can only be attacked by magic or ranged attacks. All needed information is listed in the dungeon report, so try to analyze your offense and defense as detailed as possible. If you wonder why your group does low damage, try to look for a tool tip bound to the damage roll. After moving the mouse over the damage roll, details about the damage calculation will pop up if available.

Item drops

In dungeons you can find pretty valuable items, which can be sold, traded, or used in the group. This process is called "Drop". The most valuable drops, called the uniques, are bound to a specific dungeon, at least in many cases. There are also unique items that have a certain drop rate in a group of dungeons. The usage of the uniques is limited, so they can only carried once by a hero or even once in group.
So if you get to know an interesting item, you should find out where it drops. Therefore, you can consider this thread in the forum for more information about this issue: Dungeon Uniques And Where To Find Them

In general, each hero can carry a maximum of 10 items out of a dungeon. If more than 10 items are found, the hero needs to choose which ones to keep and which ones to leave behind. This maximum quota also counts for the following dungeon visits, so be careful. Each time you click on your storage after a dungeon run, the counter is resetted. If you don't empty your dungeon loots regularly, you will only lose items if you find more than 10 items in one dungeon run.

There is another maximum of 50 items if you don't reset the counter. If you reach this border, you won't find any common items until you click on your storage and sort out what you want to leave behind. So it is strongly recommended not to let this happen. Unique items are still collected and will be put into the Treasure Vault automatically.
Each hero also has an overall maximum of items he can keep. For premium accounts, the limit is set to 6000 items and non-premium accounts can keep only up to 600 items. Reaching this limit has the same result as the one just described.

Items can also be a trigger for a specific dungeon. This means they unlock a bonus level or an extra reward if carried while visiting the dungeon. It is always good to read the item description. Hints about triggers might also be found in the official game forum.

See also

Dungeons