Dungeoneering

Dungeoneering is a skill that was released in RuneScape on 12 April 2010 that is open to both free players and members, however a free player will be at a disadvantage when encountering technical difficulties. Free players can encounter members only content and puzzles which will generally halt their progress, and free players who have achieved a combat level of 90 or above will receive 50% less experience than a free player who has not yet achieved combat level 90 or above.

Dungeoneering features a castle named Daemonheim, which currently contains 35 underground floors. Within the castle players explore and use all other pre-existing skills to clear each floor, involving finding keys, fighting monsters, and solving puzzles. Unlike other skills which are performed alone, players can cooperate together venturing under the castle in groups of up to five people. Additionally, players may earn a small amount of experience in other skills by accomplishing various tasks.

The skill is trained entirely within Daemonheim, which essentially equates to a separate subsection of Gielinor. No items created or found within Daemonheim can be removed from the dungeon, likewise, no items found or created on Gielinor can be taken into Daemonheim, with the exceptions of the Ring of kinship and the Orb of Oculus only. Training Dungeoneering is heavily dependent on the other skills trained outside of Daemonheim. The items and skilling materials used within Daemonheim are all different and the skill is designed to be group-oriented rather than being individual-oriented, although it is possible and widespread for players to train by themselves.

Players can train Dungeoneering past level 99 all the way to level 120, at which point the player will have over 104 million experience. This new maximum level, which is only applied to dungeoneering, is called "True Skill Mastery".

However, no one has achieved level 120 yet. The closest player to achieve level 120 has 112 dungeoneering and 50,647,164 experience. The current rankings are visible at the Runescape Hiscores page.

Getting There
As the skill can only be trained within Daemonheim itself, players will need to travel to its location on a huge peninsula off of the east coast of the Wilderness. Fortunately, the peninsula itself does NOT count as being in the Wilderness, and can be reached without passing through any wilderness area. Players have three options they may chose from in order to make their way to Daemonheim:
 * Board the ship found on the dock behind the Al Kharid bank. Once the player has arrived at the landing, they will need to follow the path north-west up the moutain to the entrance of Daemonheim.


 * Teleport directly to Daemonheim using the Ring of Kinship. Note that this item is given by the Dungeoneering Tutor at Daemonheim, as such players must have to travel to Daemonheim at least once before being able to use this method.
 * Walking, the player will be venturing through the eastern part of the low Wilderness area and will find the peninsula easily. There are several methods available to get into the general area:
 * 1) The Games Necklace teleport to Clan Wars, followed by a walk South-East to Daemonheim.
 * 2) The Hot Air Balloon network can be used to travel to the Varrock sawmill, from which players then walk North.
 * 3) The Ring of Duelling teleport to Fist of Guthix, followed by a walk east to Daemonheim.
 * 4) Al Kharid's port will easily get you towards Daemonhein.

No Items
Players will need to bank all items from the general Runescape game before entering Daemonheim. Players cannot take items, including worn items, or familiars into or out of Daemonheim, with the sole exceptions of the Ring of Kinship and the Orb of oculus. Players who have not banked all items will be barred from entering the dungeon. When a player leaves, all items from the dungeon will simply vanish.

Nothing in the worn slots and inventory is allowed, except the Ring of kinship and Orb of oculus.

Familiars and Pets are not allowed either. If your familiar was carrying anything when last summoned, it will have to be re-summoned and those items banked, otherwise you will not be allowed to enter.

At Daemonheim


To enter the dungeon, players must bank all items. You do not have to have the Ring of Kinship with you; you only need it to form a party. There is a Dungeoneering Tutor and a Fremennik Banker standing at the entrance to the castle. Players who need to obtain the Ring of kinship for any reason, such as having lost it, should speak to the tutor to obtain one. All armour, weapons, runes, ammunition, and other supplies will be provided inside the dungeon.

In the castle courtyard, there are several energy barriers, and 2 entrances in the left and right walls that players can go through:
 * Free-for-all barrierEnterancetoDaemonhaim.png
 * Frozen floors barrier
 * Abandoned 1 floors barrier
 * Furnished floors barrier
 * Abandoned 2 floors barrier
 * The left and right entrances are for players who have manually created a party, and are the entrances used if the player wished to train solo.

In the central 'Free-for-all' barrier, players are automatically teamed up to form a party to any floor. Using any of the other barriers will allow you to enter a dungeon with other people in the room to that specific type of floor. If there are no other suitable adventurers waiting, the player will be allowed to enter the dungeon by themselves.

Objective
The main purpose of Dungeoneering is to progress through the various floors of the dungeon with teammates and kill the boss monster at the end of each level. To do so, players must travel through a series of rooms while using their collective skills to equip themselves and their teammates with items that will help themselves to complete the dungeon floor. Therefore, teamwork and division of labour will likely help in achieving better results and efficiency.

Gameplay

 * Upon entering, players will be transported to the home room where some armour, weapons and food are available according to the difficulty level the team has selected. The home teleport spell will bring players back to this room.


 * The team is linked by the Ring of kinship. The ring performs several functions within the dungeon, all within the extra interface tab that it generates in the bottom right hand window. The ring interface allows the toggling of shared experience, monitoring of team status, and allows teamates to view other teammates' inventory, familiar's inventory, stats, and worn items.
 * Dropped items do not vanish as they normally do in RuneScape, but instead appear immediately to all players as they are dropped. This includes monster drops, inventory management drops, and drops upon quitting. Some less useful items such as Ashes and Burnt Food, however, do disappear.
 * When typing in public chat while in a dungeon, all messages are visible to everyone in a party regardless of where a player is. Players on opposite sides of the dungeon will be able to communicate without using private messages.
 * Rooms of the dungeon are connected by doors. It is impossible to see into the next room until the door is first clicked on. This does not open it but reveals the room beyond the door. Some doors are locked or somehow blocked off and must first be somehow accessed via specialized techniques before the door can be used. Once the next room is revealed, players can then pass through the door into the room.
 * Upon death, players will respawn in the starting room with the smuggler, and their death counter will be increased by one. All items are kept on death, however Gatestones that are in the players inventory will be dropped in place.
 * The leader of a dungeoneering party can make a flashing arrow appear over a monster by right clicking on the monster and clicking "Mark". This can be used to guide the party in various ways, and sight powerful monsters.

Complexity


Complexity is a 6-tier scale that determines the number of other skills involved. Note that lower tiers will incur a penalty on the amount of experience gained at the end of a level as shown in the screenshot to the right. Each additional complexity level involves all skills from the level before plus some more. Complexities 6 and 5 includes every skill. Complexities 4, 5, and 6 include every skill available to free players.

Floors


Floor levels, (currently) from 1 to 35, and the combat levels of party members determine the combat levels of the monsters that players encounter; the higher the floor level, the higher the combat level of the monster.

Dungeoneering level required for a certain room is: Floor number times 2 minus 1 for every 2 levels past level 1. For example you need level 39 for floor 20 ((20 x 2) - 1 = 39). Plus, of course, you must have cleared all the previous floors.

If players are in a group, the floors other members have cleared would also be shown on separate columns. The highest floor accessible to a group is the deepest of the floors that all team members can access.

Dungeon Size
Dungeons are created in a small (4x4 grid), medium (4x8 grid), or large (8x8 grid). A dungeon may contain up to the maximum number of rooms possible from that grid, but usually contains fewer rooms, due to blank areas on the map.

Therefore theoretical maximum number of rooms per size is:
 * Small - up to 16 rooms
 * Medium - up to 32 rooms
 * Large - up to 64 rooms

When soloing, only small size dungeons are available. A party of 2 is the minimum needed for medium, and a party of 4 is needed for large.

Dungeon size is also a factor that affects the amount of experience.

Finding a team
When finding a team, many players use abbreviations. For example, the abbreviation for the floor of the dungeon is 'F'. It is common for players to say "trade me" if they wish to be the party leader and need members for their party. It is also common for players to say "invite me" if they wish to be invited to a party.

The Runescape forums are also a great way to find a team. It is under the "Dungeons of Daemonheim". Then click on the "Adventuring Parties" category. Here you can make a new thread stating what floor, what complexity, and specific requirements (ex. Cb 100+ only) you would like in your group. Another option is to look through the forums and find somebody that you can help.

Unofficial Dungeoneering worlds are World 1 (F2P), World 2 (P2P), and World 117 (P2P).

Due to the difficulty in those unofficial Dungeoneering worlds to find a team with the wanted floor, players often go to the world of the number of this floor or the number under depending on they are f2p or p2p (ex. A f2p searching a team for floor 27 will go in world 25).

For low-mid level none PvPers, teaming with a PvPer at the same level will speed up the round.

Party Size
Each dungeon is designed for a specific number of players. This governs the amount of loot/supplies, players required for puzzles, and characteristics of the boss. (For example, the Gluttonous behemoth will have 1 food source for 1 player dungeons, and 2 food sources for parties with 2 or more players. The Follow Me puzzle will have more pads to stand on for more people. And so on...)

If you choose a smaller party than what is recommended, you may receive a penalty on your score—this changes depending on how much lower it is set.

If you (for example) choose a party size that includes at least two members,and enough members leave that there are less than that number of members left, your team may become stuck and unable to complete the dungeon.

When working with other players, it is a good idea to collect extra resources and deposit them at the starting room, as your teammates may make good use of them.

The more players in a party the higher the average monster level will be(depending on the levels of the players to start off with).

Ending a Dungeon
A Dungeon ends when you or your teammates enter the ladder behind the boss. For tips on defeating the boss, see Bosses.

A raid is finished when the boss is defeated, and only then may the next raid be started. When the boss has been killed, a ladder to the next level appears on the wall. Additionally, at the end of each floor, one player will receive a random item. These items are often more powerful than ones dropped in the dungeon, and they may be worth binding.

You will advance to the next floor if your Dungeoneering level is high enough. Otherwise, the same floor will be repeated. In addition the complexity will also be increased (unless you are already on Complexity 6).

As soon as one person clicks on the ladder to leave the dungeon, a time based on the number of people in the party will start to count down. If every member of the party selects to leave, the dungeon finishes instantly.

Titles
After each floor has been completed, titles are awarded to some of the players based on their contributions to the team. However, the titles do not affect the amount of Dungeoneering experience received.

Binding Items
At the beginning of each raid, players have their inventories wiped. All items that players had gathered and crafted will vanish as the team moved down a level, and the team will need to start from scratch. There is, however, one small exception to this rule. Players can select an item which they feel is very important to have at all times, and "bind" it to themselves. Once an item is bound, the player will always begin a raid with this item in their inventory. Usually players select to bind a high level weapon, or armour such as a platebody. Bound items are noted with a (b) appended to the item's name. Players can only bind a very small number of items. The number of items a player may have bound at once depends on his/her Dungeoneering level.

''Note that bound items can not be traded, and un-binding an item requires it be destroyed. Also note that if your bound item is members and lose membership, when you go to bind a F2P item, you get an option to destroy all bound members items.''

Ammo is an Exception. Players may bind a selected type of rune or arrow, as well as their other selected item(s). Players may bind up to 125 units of ammo, the number of which is bound will always appear in the players beginning inventory. Players will begin a raid with the same amount of bound ammo, even if it is fully expended. There is no need to replenish your bound stackable item to 125 at the end of a dungeon, it will be replenished to the number that you bound when you begin the next floor (example, 76 blood runes are bound and are all used in a raid; at the beginning of the next floor the player will begin with 76 blood runes (b) in their inventory.) If you wish to poison your arrows, do so before binding as bound unpoisoned arrows cannot be poisoned. Items need not be in full stock to further bind. (For example, a player has bound 46 blood runes before raiding, she used up 20 of them and found another 13 blood runes from a drop of an monster. By binding these 13 runes she will have 59 blood runes bound in her next raid. Once the maximum amount of ammo binding is reached, further binding will cause new runes to combine with the bound ammo slot and be made untradeable.)

Attempting to bind more items than a player can will do nothing, except showing a message stating that a currently bound item must be destroyed before another item may be bound. Ammo, however, can have far over the maximum number of items actually bound, as unbound ammo and bound ammo technically count as 2 separate items and take additional inventory space. If an excess amount is bound, at the beginning of the next raid players will begin with only 125 of the bound item.

Weapon poison (of any strength) can be added to a bound dagger or spear, but cannot be added to bound arrows - players must poison the arrows first and then bind them. Also, any type of cloth (rosebleed, wildercress, etc.) can be used like a Cleaning cloth to remove poison from a weapon. This allows you to replace a weak weapon poison with a stronger one.

Bound weapons and armour can be sold or alched, but bound runes and arrows cannot be sold. When selling items, one must be careful as there is no check to see if a weapon or piece of armour is a bound version. If a bound item is sold or destroyed, there is no way to get it back, so be careful.

Skills
Main article: Dungeoneering Skills

Every skill can be used in some way while raiding the dungeons. They can give advantages, such as access to bonus rooms, or are sometimes necessary to complete a dungeon. The uses of skills while in a Dungeon are unique to Daemonheim. Doors that require skills to open start at Complexity 5.

Combat
Combat while Dungeoneering consists of the three attack types: Magic, Ranged, and Melee. Daemonheim has its own spellbook with a combination of normal spellbook and lunar spellbook, with some new spells too. Ranged and Melee only use weapons specific to Dungeoneering, all of which can be player made provided the resources can be found or bought AND the player has high enough skill to smith, fletch and/or craft them.

Bosses
Once you enter a boss room it will be nearly impossible to exit through the door during the fight. It's highly recommended that you create a gatestone before entering the boss room to minimise the number of deaths.

Food
Most food available in the dungeon are fish, cave potatoes, and mushrooms. Cave potatoes and mushroom's seeds are found mostly by killing monsters.

As you progress through the dungeon, you will be able to grow and cook cave potatoes, which you can then combine with fish and/or mushrooms to form more complex foods.

For example, Cave potatoes and mushrooms are grown in a farm patch and take about 1 minute to grow. To cook them you need a cooker, some logs, and a tinderbox OR just logs and a tinderbox. Note that unlike on the surface, cave potatoes can be cooked over ordinary fires, although there is a significantly increased chance of burning them. Use the logs with the range and then the potatoes with the range. Then add the fish, and/or your choice of mushrooms. There are two kinds of mushroom, Gissel mushroom and Edicap mushroom, which heal 30 and 90 LP, respectively. Gissel mushrooms require a Farming level of 34, and Edicap mushrooms require level 68 Farming. Baked cave potatoes heal 30 LP plus the total amount of LP healed by the ingredient(s) they are combined with. For example, a Gissel mushroom and Salve eel potato will heal 260 LP, whereas the Salve eel itself heals 200 LP.

You may also "use" food items with other players to heal them. They will get a message saying "[Player's Name] gives you a heim crab, which you eat." They will then make the motions of eating. If they already have full life points and you try to use food with them, you will get a message saying "As tasty as a heim crab is, [Player's Name] already has full life points".

A complete experience table for Cooking, complete with life points for the potatoes can be found here.

Spellbook
The spellbook contains a combination of the Lunar and Standard spellbook spells. There are three new spells which help a player teleport around while Dungeoneering: Dungeon Home Teleport, Create Gatestone, and Gatestone Teleport.



Puzzles
In addition to regular monster-filled rooms, a dungeon may contain one or more puzzle rooms. These puzzles range in difficulty and complexity. Many puzzles require certain skill levels to be performed and accomplished, and others may cause the player(s) to suffer damage if the puzzle was not done properly.

Rewards
Upon completion of a dungeon raid, players will receive Dungeoneering skill experience and a number of tokens equal to a 1:10 ratio of the experience received. These tokens are smuggled outside of Daemonheim so that they may be traded with the rewards trader in the Daemonheim camp for items to be used outside of the dungeons. Players may also receive weapons, armour, or other things that they can bind and take to the next floor.

Journal
While Dungeoneering, one can find parts of different journals usually after a boss is defeated, or they can be dropped by monsters (uncommon); they can be viewed by right clicking the Ring of kinship, then selecting "Open journal".

Music Unlocking Tips

 * All Glacialis tracks are unlocked on the Frozen floors, all Desolo tracks are unlocked on the Abandoned floors, and all Adorno tracks are unlocked on the Furnished floors.
 * All three themes will have 10 possible music tracks to unlock.
 * Every time you enter a room with an enemy in it, the music player will randomly select a track. If you repeatedly enter and exit any of those rooms, you can unlock these music tracks very quickly.
 * All bosses have their own music, so it is recommended to fight each boss at least once (although it doesn't really matter because you can't pick the boss you want to fight).

Controversy
In the week of its release, there was debate about whether Dungeoneering was really a skill or rather just an activity. Many players felt that Dungeoneering did not meet certain requirements to fulfill the definition of a skill. The reasons given for this include the inability to take any items outside of the dungeons, the fact that it is dependent upon all other skills, the limitation of its training to only one area, and the lack of integration with the rest of the game.

Since Dungeoneering was in development for a long time - with the players aware of its development for many years of that time - much hype was built up (usually in the form of threads in the Future Updates forum). When Dungeoneering was finally released, it may not have been what some people had hoped for, and a number of players have refused to train the skill for the above reasons.

Another source of controversy was the original token cost of the rewards available. Many players felt these costs were too high, citing that they do not receive sufficient tokens to buy any rewards until past level 50 Dungeoneering. Other players cited the mismatch between the Dungeoneering levels and the number of tokens required for a reward, which made it so that players could wield a reward they could not afford. The costs of items were lowered to a more reasonable level on 21 April 2010.

There was also a discrepancy between members and free players. Since many members were going on free worlds to take advantage of the easier monsters, an update shortly after the release halved the amount of experience earned by players with level 90+ combat on free worlds. (A very steep drop in experience between combat 89 and 90.) Thus, Jagex reduced the advantages of simply being a high combat free player because they were able to kill monsters faster.

Additionally, free players will sometimes encounter doors and puzzles that require members' skills to open and solve. They may consider this unfair, since it is impossible to open such doors or solve such puzzles as a free player.

The Skill

 * There were 48 new music tracks released with this skill, making the most songs released with an update. This makes it a good method of unlocking the "Air Guitar" emote.
 * This is the only skill that visibly changes after reaching level 99.
 * After 1 week there were approximately 65,000 players ranked, the highest level being level 79. After 3 weeks there were approximately 90,000 players ranked, the highest level being level 99.
 * Many pures/skillers were ruined when the skill was released by other players opening doors which gave magic, prayer and strength experience or other players attacking monsters as this gave shared experience. This can be countered by simply turning off shared experience with the ring.
 * It has an indirect relation to your combat level, the only other skill that does this is Slayer.
 * Dungeoneering is one of the only four skills not used in Stealing Creation, the others being Firemaking, Farming, and Slayer.
 * When you complete the Tears of Guthix activity, the message for increasing your Dungeoneering skill is "You feel the mysteries of Daemonheim unravel."
 * Jagex stated here(Swedish RuneScape Forums) that the reason why Dungeoneering can be levelled all the way up to 120 is because the developers couldn't fit everything they wanted in the skill with only level 99.
 * Jagex has announced that they will add 2 new floor environments (chaotic and warped) and several new bosses and challenges to Dungeoneering.

The Skillcape

 * Players with level 99 Dungeoneering are entitled to wear the Dungeoneering cape, despite the fact that the number of maximum attainable levels is 120 - every other skill requires the player to reach the level cap in order to wield the skill's respective Achievement cape.
 * The emote includes the player changing into the tier 11 type armours found in dungeoneering corresponding what weapon they have wielded it could be either Celestial (magic), Primal (melee) or Sagittarian (range). If a player has no weapon wielded, a random emote will be performed.
 * The Dungeoneering skill cape is the first one to offer more than one performable emote when worn.
 * It is possible to get the skillcape at combat level 3, the first player to do so was imbued luck.

Curiosities

 * When you click Rejoin Party, if you enter your own user name it will say "You want to party with yourself?" This means if you leave a dungeon when you are the last or only person in it, you can't rejoin.
 * Currently, the game filter does not work in Daemonheim, so players still receive messages like "You cook the blue crab" repeatedly.
 * Unlike other chickens, the chickens on the Daemonheim peninsula cannot be attacked and when examined it says "Who are you calling chicken?".
 * When the skill was released, players found doors which needed over 99 in other skills creating speculation they were raising the other skills. However Jagex has stated that they have no plans to increase the level cap on other skills; you can open some of these doors by making potions to increase your level over 99 for a short time. However, on non-member servers it is impossible to complete the level.105Crafting.png
 * Dungeoneering has many similarities to and may have been inspired by board based Role-playing games. Most notably HeroQuest and Warhammer Quest. These similarities include the use of "board sections", the ability to look through doors to plan your attack and the unique boss at the end of each dungeon level. It also has many similarities with Jagex's FunOrb game Dungeon Assault.
 * Free to play players can make runes that normally only members can make as long as they have the Runecrafting level required, but they are limited to runes used for free spells. For example, Death runes, which are only possible to craft as a member, can be crafted here as long as the player has level 65 Runecrafting. Runes used exclusively in members only spells, such as blood runes or astral runes, can never be crafted by free players.
 * When Dungeoneering first came out, the P2P and F2P difficulty was not well balanced, as it was a lot easier to train in F2P. This was fixed with a game update that gave an exp penalty of 50% on F2Pers with 90+ combat the next day.
 * It's possible to have two or more of the same puzzle in a dungeon, like on the picture to the right.
 * If this happens, materials from the first puzzle room may still be used to complete second room (especially useful if the second room has a higher requirement).
 * When levelling up, some boss monsters are written in plural and some are singular (see picture to the right). The names are not capitalized, however, which would indicate that this is not actually the monster's name, but instead is its species or group (i.e. Rammernauts are a division of heavy guard, similar to brutes).
 * When the party leader invites himself/herself while already Dungeoneering, this message will appear:  is not on the Daemonheim peninsula and cannot be invited.
 * In the recent Dungeoneering Q&A with Jagex, the moderators tell anyone who asked about the skill's mini-game qualities to refer to the Dungeoneering FAQ's section. However, this is not listed as a frequently asked question.
 * On one of the doors you "force-bar", but the chat says "You pull the plank off the door."
 * Sometimes after completing a dungeon, there are slight errors due to displaying rounded percentages.
 * In some dungeons there are shelves and drawers. When hovering the mouse beneath them, on the floor, an extra option will be displayed "Examine". Upon examining, it will not display the examine text on the chatbox.
 * It may be useful to note that one can recharge prayer points, remove a skull above the player, or restore life points by entering and leaving a dungeon.
 * When crafting protoleather bodies in dungeons, occasionally for a split second, you can see a bit in the text box where it says 'null' instead of 'What would you like to make?'.

Rollback and System Updates
On 14 April 2010, at approximately 5:00pm (UTC), Jagex had to shut down the RuneScape servers due to a Dungeoneering related bug where the XP for crafting nature runes was accidentally increased exponentially (2000 XP per rune) instead of being decreased. All accounts were rolled back by about 30 minutes. The login server went offline for about an hour.

There were also numerous system updates throughout the first week Dungeoneering was released as developers scrambled to fix a number of bugs as they were uncovered, many of which made certain rooms impossible to complete, even with all the required skill levels. There were instances of multiple updates within one hour, which made training the new skill extremely frustrating to players who were unable to finish a dungeon before the update occurred. They also cut the experience that combat 90+ free players would gain in half so low levels can level faster than high levels and members can level faster than free players. This update was mostly made because many members logged into free worlds to train dungeoneering because the levels of monsters in free worlds are less that those in member worlds.

Videos
Jagex Dungeoneering Trailer

Dungeoneering Skillcape Emote