Everything about how dungeons works! [GUIDE] (2024)

Hello,

I recently wrote a post about how to get started in dungeons, and than when it got a lot of feedback, I am now making a full post, not about gear, but about how the essence system, minibosses, wither keys, starred mobs, secrets, blessings, and classes work.

Essence System:

Most players take this for granted, but a new player has no idea what 'starring an item' means. Or salvaging. So, this is what this section is about. First of all we have starring. Any item you drop in dungeons is automatically a dungeon item, e.g. dreadlord sword. You can easily tell if an item is a dungeon item, because it will say 'gear score' at the top, and have grey text next to the stats. This grey text is the stats that your weapon has inside of dungeons. This grey number will get higher depending on two things: Your catacombs level (see levelling), and starring. Stars can be applied to ANY dungeon item, and an item can have 5 regular stars. Master stars aren't for early game, so I won't talk about those. Each 'star' buffs the item by 10% in dungeons, and ONLY in dungeons. It's complicated, but you get used to it. A sword you may have is the aspect of the dragons (AOTD). You may notice it has no grey text; it is NOT a dungeon item. However, for a price in essence, you can convert it INTO a dungeon item. (This allows you to use it properly in and out of dungeons). Essence can be looked at when you hold TAB in the dungeon hub, or look in skills, dungeons, essence. Each type of essence is used to 'star' a certain type of item. For example, dragon essence can star and dungeonize an AOTD, whereas spider essence can star a tarantula helmet. Wither essence is the most useful, as most good dungeon items use it, for example, the Livid Dagger and Flower Of Truth. The menu for this is called the essence crafting.

Salvaging items is when you sacrifice a dungeon item, for a certain amount of essence. For example, a 'zombie grunt chestplate', will destroy the chestplate and grant a certain amount of essence depending on the rarity.

Finally, the essence shop. Here, you can buy permanent buffs with essence, which are pretty minute, but well, end-game players use it a lot. I don't recommend spending that much essence as an early-game player.

If you have any questions, here are some helpful links:

Levelling:

You may have heard players, including myself in the 'essence system' paragraphs, talking about your 'cata-level'. This is your main dungeons level, and can be looked at by going into skills > dungeoneering > catacombs. It is not the only catacombs related skill. Your cata level influences how good your dungeon items are in dungeons. A player with cata 50 will have about 500% better stats in the same gear, as each catacombs level gives a massive increase, of around 10% better items PER level nearing the top, and a 5% increase each level near the bottom. The main way to get better at dungeons besides getting better armour, is having a higher cata level. For example, if you cannot survive floor 2, so you play more floor 1 until you are catacombs 9 instead of 3, you will have around 30% better stats. Your catacombs level is increased whenever you complete a dungeon run, and is given in reduced amounts whenever you fail. The higher score (see score) you get, the more exp you get, as well as the more milestone (see milestones) you get.

Classes, see (classes), are different types of gameplay you can choose, but your class level is the level of a particular class. For example, you might be catacombs 12, mage 10, and berserker 9. This increases a classes buffs, and also allows you to join better PF (see party finder) runs. Class level is nowhere near as important as cata. You get a decent chunk of class exp if someone else plays a different class. For example, you might be playing mage, and get 1000 exp for mage at the end of the run. Your friend is playing berserker. From him just... being in the run, you might get 400 berserker experience as well.

Score:

Score is the ranking you get at the end of the run, and is decided by how many deaths you have, which secrets you have obtained (see secrets), the final time of the run, and a few other things such as room completion (see rooms). Your score defines which chests you are allowed to open at the end of the run (see rewards), and also the amount of exp you get. The scores are as follows:
D: I'm pretty sure the only way to get this is too outright fail, with little secrets.
C: You can get this if you just bloodrush (see rooms), and do no secrets.
B: You unlock the diamond chest, and this is usually achieved by getting 60% completion.
A: You unlock the emerald chest, and this is usually obtained from clearing all the rooms.
S: You can unlock the obsidian chest. You either need a full completion with no deaths, or a full completion with several secrets. (270 score)
S+: The highest rank, you probably will not get this until later on. Unlocks the bedrock chest in floor 5+. Need full completion and many secrets.

Rooms:

Dungeons are split into different rooms.
There are brown rooms, or mob rooms. These are full of hostile enemies. These rooms will have either a miniboss (with a star next to its name), and a bunch of creatures, in which case you just need to kill the miniboss. In order to complete the room you need to kill ALL the mobs with a star next to their name. You can see the room is complete when it has a tick. When it has a green tick, it means it is complete with all secrets found. (See secrets). The enemies in these rooms as well as the secrets are always in the same place.

Yellow rooms. Often referred to as miniboss rooms, these rooms contain a single, considerably more powerful miniboss. There are no other mobs, and it can be one of 3 different types of room. A small circular room with red patterns ALWAYS contains a shadow assassin, see minibosses. The other two rooms can contain any of the minibosses, except for one room which has a large crypt in the middle, which is always king Midas, although it is pretty rare. There are no secrets, and the only thing that must happen is for the miniboss to be killed.

Orange rooms. This room is trap room. There are 3 - 4 secrets in each, and you can watch a youtube video on how to do them. I recommend doing this, as it is helpful to know. There are two varieties, the crusher room, and the arrow room. The arrow room is significantly harder.

Purple rooms. These rooms are puzzles, and must be solved. Some puzzles are failable, meaning you can screw it up. For this reason, I recommend using Solvers, (see mods). These reward a powerful blessing (see blessings), when completed, and may contain the following.
Quiz: Failable, medium (team will often help)
Blaze Failable, HARD. Failable Need bow, solvers recommended.
Tic-tac-toe, medium, Failable (Solvers recommended)
3 wierdos, Failable, medium. (Solvers recommended)
waterboard, easy, slow, cant fail
boulders, easy, fast, can fail, but you can cheese it. (Don't fail)
ice-fill, easy, slow, cant fail
silverfish, fast, kinda can fail, pain

Green room. Starter room, see classes.

Red room. Commonly referred to as blood room, this room can be reached by following the wither doors. (Rooms with black doors.) After killing all the mobs with stars, you will be rewarded with a wither key. This room spawns waves of mobs with incredibly high defence, and sometimes, the previous floors boss mob. This room MUST be cleared in order for you to enter the boss. Bloodrushing is when someone goes through the wither doors only, to reach bloodroom as fast as possible.

Pink room. The fairy room is a checkpoint halfway through the line of wither doors (bloodrush), and contains healing water, and fairies. The fairies can be killed for a revive stone, or can revive people directly. These may be killed as a ghost, which will revive you.

Classes:

There are 5 classes, just like you can have five people in a dungeon.

Mage: Magic weapons. Mage gives bonus intelligence, and perks include an exploding sheep most commonly used to break weak walls, (see secrets), and it also allows you to cast spells easier, and to fire a mage beam when you left click. This ability is extremely helpful when used with LCM, or left-click-mage, but I will not get into that here. Mages are good for area of effect damage.

Tank: Support class. Higher floors (f5+), will be extremely difficult without a tank. The tank takes 80% of his allies damage, meaning he has to be INCREDIBLY tanky, hence the name. Tanks do very little damage, so they are taking one for the team. Tanks can also throw waves of earth dealing massive damage, (seismic wave), and also have an ability that lets you take 70% less damage for 10 seconds.

Berserk: Sword. This is usually the best early-game class, and directly buffs sword damage. This class is great for damage, and is fairly tanky. Berserkers stack damage over time, and have greater healing and speed than the other classes. Berserkers can also summon minions to help them in the fight.

Healer: This class does a lot less damage than berserker, mage or archer, but does a bit more than tank. They are usually more squishy (they die faster) than tanks, but their incredible healing makes up for it. They are able to heal a team-mate to full health in mere seconds.

Archer: Arguably the best class, archer allows for players to shoot around 6 arrows PER SECOND, each dealing massive damage. However, in the earlier stages of the game, there are no good archer weapons or gear.

Secrets and blessings:

Blessings are a glowing red orb which comes out of either a secret, or a puzzle. These orbs buff certain stats depending on how much of it you already have. When opening any chest, it is a good idea to hold your main weapon, as if the blessings is a blessing of power, it will greatly increase how much stats you gain from the blessing. Blessings apply to every team-mate in the dungeon, and last until the end of the dungeon. Over the course of a dungeon, if all blessings are found, you will likely double all of your stats.

Secrets are hidden in some puzzles, and almost every brown room. Learning the secrets are heard (refer to solvers), so it is recommended you use a solver for them. A secret can come in many forms: a chest, usually hidden behind a wall of cracked stone which must be detonated, or behind leaves, a bat, hiding in a cave, or an item dropped on the floor. These items can be worth up to 400 thousand coins above floor 4. Secrets directly influence the final score of the run, and are a major part of dungeons. Superboom tnt can be used to break this cracked brick walls, often revealing a secret behind. I cannot stress how important these are.

Milestones:

Often a confusing concept, milestones are actually incredibly important. If you have a good setup for a floor, than you will likely not need to worry about milestones, however, if you are being carried, or are out of your comfort zone, milestones can be a real problem. A milestone is a certain achievement for your class, for example, berserker milestones are melee damage. If you reach less than milestone 3, you cannot open all the chests, and your exp is greatly reduced. If you play down a floor for what you are suited for, you will easily hit the highest milestone.

Solvers & mods:

This is a pretty controversial topic, although I highly recommend using some form of solvers. These assist you in completing puzzles, e.g. highlighting correct chests or blazes, and will speed up your runs significantly if you use them to find secrets, which IS allowed. Mods such as these can either be used seperately using forge, or you can use a client such as Badlion. I highly recommend badlion due to the excess amount of solvers it has.

Thank you for reading this absolute BEAST of a post, I hope you enjoyed it! Please like the post, I put a LOT OF EFFORT into it!

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