Dungeoneering





Dungeoneering is a skill that was released in RuneScape on 12 April 2010 that is open to both free players and members. It features a castle named Daemonheim, which contains 35 underground floors. There, players explore and use other existing skills to clear each level, which involves finding keys, fighting monsters, and solving puzzles involving a wide variety of skills. 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 - essentially an alternate portion of Gielinor - into which only the Ring of kinship and the Orb of oculus can be brought in and out of. It is heavily dependent on other skills trained outside of Dungeoneering. The items and skilling materials used within Daemonheim are all different and the game is group-oriented rather than being individual-oriented (although it is possible for players to train by themselves). In addition, players can train Dungeoneering past level 99 all the way to level 120, with over 104 million experience. This new maximum level is called "True Skill Mastery" as opposed to "Skill Mastery" (which is achieved at level 99). As of April the 23rd, the current minimum requirement to be ranked (at approximately rank 90,000) is level 30 with 13,363 xp.

Travel
Players may make their way to Daemonheim by one of three methods:
 * Take a ship from the dock behind Al Kharid bank.
 * Venture through the deep Wilderness to the eastern part.
 * Teleport using the Ring of Kinship given by the Dungeoneering Tutor at Daemonheim.

If using the ferry, players must walk from the Eastern side of the peninsula North-West to the central part of the castle.

At Daemonheim
There is a Dungeoneering tutor and a Fremennik Banker standing at the entrance to the castle. Players who are new to the skill or who have lost the Ring of kinship should speak to the tutor to obtain one. To gain access to Daemonheim, it is necessary to bank ALL worn items and all items carried, with the exception of the Orb of oculus and the Ring of kinship. All armour, weapons, runes, ammunition, and other supplies will be provided inside the dungeon.

After players have received a ring and banked all their items, they may proceed into the castle courtyard.

In the courtyard, there are three energy barriers that players can go through:
 * Left barrier
 * 'Free-for-all' barrier EnterancetoDaemonhaim.png
 * Right barrier

The left and right barriers are provided for players who would like to venture alone or with a team of up to 5 players. To pass through these barriers, players have to use their ring of kinship to set the settings before going through. In the central 'Free-for-all' barrier, players are automatically teamed up to form a party. If there are no other suitable adventurers waiting, the player will be allowed to enter the dungeon by themselves. Players should ensure that their companion list is empty before going in, or they will be rejected.

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; complexity level 6 includes every skill.

Floors


Floor levels, 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 or every 2 levels past level 1. For example you need level 39 for floor 20 (20 x 2 - 1 is 39). Plus, of course you must have cleared all the previous rooms.

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 minimum of the highest floors each individual player can access.

Size Choice
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 needed for medium, and 3 minimum for Large.

Party Size Choice
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/minigame 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 of 20% on your score.

If you choose a party size that includes all your members, and one or more leaves before the end and doesn't return, your team may become stuck and unable to complete the raid.

Starting out
The main purpose of starting out 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 level. Therefore, teamwork and division of labour will likely help in achieving better results and efficiency.

Finding a team:
 * 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.
 * When finding a team, many players use abbreviations. For example, the abbreviation for Floor (Dungeon level) is 'F', while the abbreviation for Complexity is 'C'. For example, a player forming a team may say: F20 C6, meaning floor 20 at level 6 complexity, and if ventrilo is being used a 'v' is added to the end. They may also say "Trade me for f20", which means players who want to join the team trade the leader, and the leader will then invite that person, seeing the pink trade notice. But the people who want to be invited to a party, say "invite me", or if they want to be invited to a "trade me" party, trade the team leader.

During gameplay

 * After going into the entrance, players will be first transported to a room with armours, weapons and food according to the difficulty they have selected. The team is linked by a Ring of kinship, which brings up an extra interface pane in the bottom right hand window, allowing sharing of experience, monitoring of team status, and visibility of other players' inventory, stats, and worn items.
 * Dropped items do not vanish as they normally do in RuneScape, but instead appear immediately as they are dropped. This includes monster drops, inventory management drops, and drops upon quitting (which are visible to others and may be picked up).


 * When typing in public chat while in a dungeon, all messages are visible to everyone in a party regardless of where a player is.
 * Rooms of the dungeon are connected by doors. It is impossible to see into the next room until the door is opened.
 * 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.

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.

Titles
After the floor has been completed, titles are awarded to some of the players, giving no extra experience. See Titles for a full list.

Ending a raid and starting another
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 elects to leave, the dungeon finishes instantly.

Binding Items
No items may be brought to the next level, with the exception of bound items. When an item is bound, it appears in the player's starting inventory and a (b) is appended to the item's name. The number of items a player may have bound at once depends on his/her Dungeoneering level. Players with 1 Dungeoneering may only bind 1 item and 125 of a single stackable item. At level 50, 2 items may be bound, at level 100, 3 may be bound, and at level 120, 4 items may be bound.

In addition, you may always bind one type of rune or arrow, and up to 125 of these will be kept in your starting inventory. However, there is no need to replenish your bound stackable item to 125 at the end of a dungeon, since the game remembers the initial amount bound, and will replenish your stackable item to that number when you get to the next floor.

Attempting to bind more items than a player can will do nothing, except elicit a message stating that a currently bound item must be destroyed before another item may be bound. It is possible, however, to bind more of the same item than technically allowed, but at the beginning of a new level players will be left with the maximum.

Weapon poison (of any strength) can be added to a bound dagger or spear, but cannot be added to bound arrows - you have to poison the arrows first and then bind them. Any cloth in Daemonheim can be used like a Cleaning cloth elsewhere 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, 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 and once an item is sold, there is no getting it back.

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.

For a descriptive list of the skills and their uses in the Daemonheim, see Dungeoneering Skills List

Combat
Combat while Dungeoneering consists of the three attack types: Magic, Ranged, and Melee. Magic only allows a few spells out of the RuneScape Beginning and Lunar spellbooks, with some additional spells only found in Dungeoneering. (see the following section: Magic) While 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
For guidance on how to defeat individual bosses, click on their name to be directed.

Food
Most food available in the dungeon is fish, cave potatoes, and mushrooms.

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, 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.

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

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 1/10 of the experience received, rounded down. 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.

Quests Providing Dungeoneering Experience
Two weeks have passed since the release of Dungeoneering, so you can now claim experience in it from Tears of Guthix, Penguin Points and various reward lamps (excluding the reward for While Guthix Sleeps; this quest reward will be enabled at a later date).

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

Controversy
In the wake of its release, there was debate about whether Dungeoneering was really a skill or rather just an activity similar to a minigame. 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 many 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.

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. For example, chaotic equipment costs the equivalent of level 88 in experience tokens, but required only level 80 to use. The costs of items were lowered to a more reasonable level on 21 April 2010.

Another source of controversy is the 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 that require members' skills to open. They may consider this unfair, since it is impossible to open such doors as a free player.

Unfixed

 * For some players, Guide Mode cannot be turned off. -This is not actually a glitch. Jagex has stated that on complexity levels 1-4 you will be penalized with "Guide Mode" after completing dungeons because there are no bonus rooms for Guide Mode to steer you away from anyway.AttackObjGlitch.png


 * Free players cannot set the skill as an objective; it is considered members-only by the Objectives system.


 * If a player does not progress through the dungeon fast enough, an unlocked door will re-lock itself, possibly making it impossible to proceed through the dungeon.


 * Sometimes the entire game window goes black or white while in a dungeon. There is nothing that can be done to fix this.


 * The Fremennik captain outside of the Al Kharid bank addresses female players as "Sir".


 * After logging out in certain places, your character will appear inside a staircase. You can get out by walking to the side.


 * When eating a raw cave potato the player reports that they have eaten a baked cave potato even though it is not cooked.


 * Clicking on the life points globe near the minimap while poisoned and carrying antipoison displays an error message and will not cure the poison. Using the item from the inventory cures the poison.


 * In the event that a dungeon is completed and one of the party members log off while the game is showing the stat window, the team will spawn in next round but they can move only on minimap because the stat window doesn't go away. The team must then leave the party and start the round again.


 * If a player loses connection during the Dungeon Completion, all of their stats will turn to 120 for about 10 seconds then revert back to normal.


 * When a player levels up from 70 to 71 smithing and the player clicks on the flashing icon indicating the level up, it will say that you can now smith a Katagon Hatchet, even though it requires level 72 Smithing.


 * If you are following someone (and they are part of your team) and they enter a dungeon, you will be facing their direction no matter where you move.


 * If a player invites another player and then deletes the party, the other player will see an empty list once he accepts the invitation. (see image)


 * In the Lodestone room in a dungeon if a player jumps across a gap exactly when another player opens a new door in the room the player jumping will be flung outside of the room and will be standing in nothing for about 5 seconds then will appear back inside the room. This is also true if you click too fast while attempting to cross the agility spike traps.


 * The Boss To'Kash the Bloodchiller seems to have a larger size of around 7x7, yet players are able to attack him with melee from 2-3 tiles away while there still is a relatively large distance between them.


 * Sometimes when starting a dungeon, looking at the quest bar will show up the party log completely blank.


 * The objective tab says that at level 20 you gain the ability to go to floor 10, however this is at level 19 in the skill guide.


 * There's a glitch when you right click anywhere on the map it shows the option of cancel and examine (nothing). When clicked on the examine option there's no response in the chat box except for a blank line.


 * There is a glitch where Forgotten warriors may hold their weapons in an odd way, as if it were another weapon. For example, a Forgotten warrior holding a dagger like a 2h sword while still having a shield.


 * There is a glitch where a player can get unlimited Rings of kinship. The player must join or make a party, bank the ring, go in a dungeon, exit dungeon, join or form another party, and bank the ring. Repeating this process allows the player to get any amount of rings they want.


 * If the final lever in the lever room puzzle is pulled by 2 members of a party at the same time, it will not register as being pulled.


 * If a player sits down with a Bryll robe bottom, the top of the robes turn grey.


 * In the barrel puzzle you can open the door once the barrel is full without pushing it to the pressure pad.


 * When setting an objective for 99 attack, you will see the message: You can wield a White Warhammer, it was meant to be Primal Warhammer. This glitch also occurs when you set the objective to 90 attack.


 * Non-members may create members ranged armour from the hides of various animals. For example, a non-member can kill a Stegomastyx, receive its hide and then create a piece of armour from it. As all Stegoleather items are Tier 7 and non-members are only allowed to use up to Tier 5 items, they will have created a members object.


 * All spinning wheels positioned north of a wall cannot be used. Upon clicking the "Spin" option one receives the message "I can't reach that," because the spinning wheels are used from the southern face.


 * If you level up dungeoneering from 20 to 22 in one dungeon, you won't be able to do floor 11 even though the guide says you can.

Fixed

 * For the first four days that Dungeoneering was released, a glitch existed where you could smuggle items from a dungeon into Runescape; this has since been fixed. This glitch was done by having a partner enter a dungeon of complexity level one while one item was put up in the price checker. This meant that that player couldn't enter the dungeon, but had the items that spawn with level 1 complexity added to their inventory in real RuneScape. Since you can't get spawned with anything higher than tier 8, this means that a player cannot gain a significant advantage from using items from the dungeon in PvP since tier 8 is the equivalent of barrows or a dragon weapon. However, it is possible to use any of the glitched items in PvP if desired. Only a few accounts have such glitched items in their possession, however, as the glitch has been fixed.
 * On the day of release, there was a condition where you could raise Runecrafting perpetually. Rune essence cost 50 coins each, but all elemental runes sold for 12 coins each. If you had a level close to 44 or above, you would earn more than 50 coins by making Air runes, thus enabling you to make progressively more runes per batch. There was an update within a few hours which reduced the value of Earth runes to 9 coins, Water runes to 6 coins and left Air at 12 coins. A few minutes later Air runes were reduced to their current 4 coins. The rollback that fixed the nature rune glitch had reinstated this 12 coins per air rune, giving once again perpetual Runecrafting experience, though at 1xp per 10 essence instead of the previous 5xp. Yet again, the day after the rollback, the Air runes sell for 4 coins each.
 * On the day of release, there was a glitch where players on other spellbooks would find that after leaving Daemonheim their book was changed back to normal spells.
 * On the day of release, the Orb of oculus could not be taken into Daemonheim. The Game Guide states that the Orb can in fact be brought into the castle.
 * When you left a party while you had the Orb of oculus, it would disappear. This was fixed on 14 April 2010.
 * On the day of release, players who unlocked music tracks in the dungeon and who reached 463 tracks were able to perform the Air Guitar emote even though the requirement for it was 500.
 * For the first 2 days, the lever room puzzle was impossible to complete by some people. The levers would not register being pulled and the doors would never unlock. However, players would still be damaged when the time limit had expired after the action of clicking the first lever.
 * For the first 3 days upon release, one could light a pile of logs they received from a drop or cut all on the same spot, this glitch has since then been fixed.
 * For the first week, floor 18 in the Dungeoneering skill guide had the same colour of the abandoned floors when it is actually part of the furnished floor series.
 * Previously, Dungeoneering would not appear as a possible task for the Objectives system.
 * Players were able light a fire on the tables in the starting room if they placed some branches on a table and then used a tinderbox on them.
 * For the first 2 days, the room where players must mine a path through the rocks was impossible to complete. The last large rock before the door had no 'Mine Rock' option. The only option for players was to leave the dungeon and start over.
 * Previously, the Rammernaut boss would not move if players stayed around the edges of the room and attacked him with magic or ranged, which made him extremely easy to kill. This bug was fixed by the first weekend of the release, although Rammernaut still frequently gets 'stuck' chasing players around the room.
 * Previously, many of the bosses were encountered at one Dungeoneering level lower than claimed by the Knowledge Base. For example, Stomp can be encountered at level 35 rather than level 36.
 * Previously, if a member had bound a member's item and then logged into a free server, the member's item wouldn't appear and had no option to destroy it.
 * Free players were able to smith arrowtips, which were members' object.
 * On the third day after the release of this new skill, a System update was used to fix various issues. After the update there was a bug that allowed players inside the Dungeons to get very high amounts of Runecrafting experience, (2000 experience per nature rune crafted). A rollback was used to fix this issue.

Curiosities

 * When you click Rejoin Party, if you enter your own username 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 cant rejoin.
 * As of now, the game filter does not appear to work in Daemonheim; so players still receive messages like "You cook the Blue crab." It is unknown if this is a glitch or not; if so, it has yet to be fixed.
 * There are ghosts walking the grounds with currently no known purpose, but one to the far west is aggressive and will attack you if you are in its area.
 * Unlike other chickens, the chickens in Daemonheim 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.105Crafting.png
 * Dungeoneering has many similarities to and may have been inspired by board based Role Playing Games. Most notably the 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.
 * Free to play players can make runes that normally only members can make, but limited to runes used for free spells as long as they have the Runecrafting level required. For example, Death runes, which were 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 limited F2P xp the next day.
 * Dungeoneering currently can be leveled using penguin points, Tears of Guthix, or a Genie lamp. The 2 week waiting period is over.
 * There is a glitch where sometimes when a floor is completed, the ladder does not actually appear. This is yet to be fixed.
 * There is a glitch in the lever puzzle. It is unknown how it occurs but it can trigger the trap after completing the puzzle. This is yet to be fixed.
 * As you go deeper into the dungeon you'll notice that some of the rooms require member skills even when your in F2P world

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 exp for crafting runes was accidentally increased exponentially instead of being decreased. All accounts were rolled back by about 30 minutes. The login server went offline for about an hour. Consequently, this caused several people to lose whatever item they had bound prior to the rollback, even if it was bound more than 30 minutes beforehand.

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.

Video
Jagex Dungeoneering Video