Pay-to-play Dungeoneering training

This article's aim is to teach the basics of successful Dungeoneering training that is not covered in the free-to-play guide. In it are described how to reset your progress, when to do so, the optimal sizes for dungeons and how best to approach each dungeon.

Useful Skills
Dungeoneering does not require any additional skills to train. However, it does incorporate every skill in its mechanics, meaning that having skills will better your Dungeoneering experience. Having many 99s will make you a welcome addition to any party, though don't think it's necessary to have one to get in. You should always be able to find people around your skill levels, if not on world 117 then on the forums. The following skills are handy to have in almost any dungeon or party. Improving your skills will go a long way to improving your Dungeoneering, but is not necessary.

Magic: Level 32 for the Create Gatestone spell and 64 for the Group Gatestone Teleport. These two are very useful for transportation. 71 and 94 with Lunar Diplomacy completed give Cure Me and Vengeance respectively, which can help in combat, though aren't critical.

Fishing: This allows the ability to catch higher fish. The best, cave moray, is caught at level 90.

Cooking: Minimizes the burning of food. Level 90 is required for cave morays, but higher will prevent all of it from burning. Note that fires in Daemonheim are tiered by logs used, so using a gravecreeper fire will have a much lower chance of burning compared to a tangle gum one.

Defence: The Shadow silk hood requires level 45. Higher defence allows for higher tiers of armour, tier 11 (boss drops) requiring 99. You will take a lot of damage while Dungeoneering, so higher Defence is advised.

Slayer: Night spiders, keepers of the Shadow silk hood, require a Slayer level of 41. The higher your Slayer level, the more special monsters will become available in the dungeons, and therefore the more special drops that can be acquired. At 99, the Soulgazer can be killed, which drops the Hexhunter bow. This bow requires level 98 Ranged, and is considered useful in dispatching mages, though the Sagittarian longbow has a higher ranged bonus at 99 Ranged.

Prayer: 43 Prayer allows for the Protection prayers, which can be useful in Daemonheim. If you don't have this level, you may rely more on food, and therefore your Fishing, Cooking and Firemaking. Also, you can use all the Deflection curses at level 71 Prayer if you've completed Temple at Senntisten, which are considered superior to Protection prayers in that they can deflect damage and have the same drain rate.

Construction: The highest Construction level requirement in Daemonheim is 75; this gives the ability to construct a prayer altar at base. Construction is useful by allowing for special facilities to be available in the base, or the odd skill door. The facilities themselves require resources to construct, the altar for example needing 5 each of zephyrium bars and bovistrangler branches.

Runecrafting: A Runecrafting level of 77 will allow you to make blood runes, which are needed for higher level magic spells, and level 99 will allow you to create an empowered catalytic staff, second only to a Celestial catalytic staff. Level 54 may also be helpful to create law runes used for transportation spells, and 65 for death runes as they help in making vengeance spells. At level 70 runecrafting, you may wield a Celestial surgebox, which is invaluable when tackling tough warriors.

Summoning: Summoning can be used to summon Beast of Burden to carry items for you and your teammates or to summon healing and combat familiars. At level 91, Sachem Bloodragers may be summoned, which are considered by many to be the most useful familiars due to their high damage output, invisible melee defence boost, and special attack, which lowers their target's defence.

Helpful Terminology
You may come across players using many terms and acronyms that can be confusing at first. Learning such acronyms is very beneficial however, so one should take the time to do so if one plans on training Dungeoneering with other players.


 * A/Ab2/Abd - Refers to the second set of Abandoned floors (Floors 30-35).
 * Bgt/Sgt - Buying gatestone/Selling gatestone, buying when you have to move the gatestone but the holder hasn't dropped it, selling when the gatestone is available to be moved.
 * Buying/selling (key). - Give me/take this key off me (usually as a player has placed a gatestone by said door).
 * C1, c2, c3, etc. - Refers to different complexities.
 * Crim - Crimson (referring to charms or keys)
 * Cures - Refers to the spell which 'Cure' players from Poison. This spell can be used only if the player has completed Lunar Diplomacy. There are 3 different cure spells: Cure Me, Cure Other, Cure Group.
 * De - Dead end (room with no doors other than entrance). Other terms are: D/E
 * Denk - Dead End No Key (room with no doors other than entrance, does not have a key).
 * Dewk - Dead End With Key (room with no doors other than entrance, has a key).
 * F1, f2, f3, etc. - Refers to floor numbers.
 * F__+1/2/3/4 - Refers to the amount of people still needed to start that floor. +2 would mean need 2 more people.
 * Gc - Gravecreeper, either the wood or the boss
 * Ggs - Group Gatestone or Group Gatestone Teleport
 * Gd - Guardian door
 * Ggs Gd/Gtgd - Group gatestone for guardian door (meaning you must kill all monsters in the room to move on).
 * Ggs mage/range/melee - Group gatestone with that prayer on.
 * Ggs 88/93/99 crafting/smithing/herblore - Meaning to group gatestone to do a door/puzzle if you have the level.
 * GK- Got key (the key you just grabbed)
 * Gorg - Gorgonite
 * Gs - Gatestone (referring to the regular Gatestone, not the group one)
 * Gsed - Gatestoned (meaning the player has placed a gatestone near a door or resource. Later, they can bring the Group Gatestone there for other players to access)
 * Gt- Group Teleport (same as ggs)
 * Gtb - Group teleport for boss.
 * Gte- Group teleport end
 * HK - An enemy that is the only one in the room and is usually a very high level
 * HT - Home Teleport
 * Merc - Mercenary Puzzle Room
 * Mgt _ - Move (group) gatestone. Used when players are idle but one of them has a door to be done gated. Ex: Mgt crim tri door, meaning move the group gatestone to the locked crimson triangle door.
 * Mono - Monolith
 * Necro - Necrolord (boss) or Necromancer (monster)
 * Ns - Night Spider
 * O/Occ - Refers to the Occult floors ( Floors 36-47 )
 * Pent - Pentagon (referring to keys)
 * Prom - Promethium
 * Purp - Purple (referring to keys)
 * Rect - Rectangle (referring to keys)
 * Sag - Sagittare (boss) or a Sagittarian ranged item
 * Silv - Silver (Referring to keys)
 * Skiller - Two variants:
 * Rushing Skiller - This is someone who opens all skill doors that the keying/fighting team are not able to as well as making any potion that is needed for the team to boost if required. Also, they are put in charge of making armour if there is time. But most importantly, they are in charge of creating a home room altar for prayer and collecting food for killing the boss.
 * Relaxed Skiller - They are basically the same as above but they gather all of the ore and fish to be processed for boss. They also farm herbs if needed and only show up for group doors upon request of the keyer.
 * Small, Medium, Large - Refers to the Size of the floor
 * Ssh - Shadow Silk Hood (can also be the silver shield key)
 * T1, T2, etc. - Referring to Class Rings or Resources, saying they are "Tier 1, Tier 2, etc.
 * Tri - Triangle (referring to keys)
 * Tk - Tool kit
 * S/L - Suicide/Leech

Starting up (levels 1-6)
Upon first coming to Daemonheim, you will only have access to minimal dungeon set ups, namely Complexity 1 and Floor 1. For low Dungeoneering levels, it is recommended to solo.

Now you must follow these three rules: By unlocking all 6 Complexities, your experience bonus will be modified so that you'll receive the next Dungeoneering level, and so up to level 6. Now when you have unlocked all Complexities, keep doing Floors in solo, Small size, and remember to follow the first 3 Rules.
 * Talk to the Dungeoneering Tutor by Daemonheim's entrance; he will give you a Ring of Kinship.Ring of kinship party details.png
 * Form a party and enter a Dungeon entrance (either the one to the left or right, not the waiting rooms).
 * You will start on Floor 1 on Complexity 1. You will be provided with some equipment. With only level 1 dungeoneering, you may only bind one weapon. It is recommended to bind the highest level weapon available.
 * Complete the floor. On completion you will receive an experience penalty and bonus, the penalty for the low complexity, the bonus for your first run. The complexity will then be increased for the next dungeon. The Bonus experience will be modified so that you'll get Dungeoneering level 2.
 * Keep doing Floors on the highest Complexity you can.
 * 1) Do the Floor on the Highest Complexity you can on Small size, in solo.
 * 2) Open all the rooms you can. Try not to waste too much time killing things; you are only required to kill the boss and monsters in rooms with Guardian Doors.
 * 3) Do all the Floors you can (better in order) and only then Reset.

Prestige
Knowing when to reset prestige is key to getting greater amounts of Dungeoneering experience for completing higher-level floors. For example, you will get less experience from Floor 1 than from Floor 10; but once you have successfully raided Floors 1-10 and you do not have the Dungeoneering level to access the next floor, you should reset your progress.

By resetting your progress, you are setting all previously completed floors to incomplete, in order to receive optimal experience each time you complete them (because the completion of a floor that has already been completed severely reduces the XP reward at the end). Also, once you have completed all accessible floors again after resetting your progress, you will most likely have gained enough experience to reach the required Dungeoneering level to access deeper floors than your last previously accessible floor, yielding even more experience.

Your previous progress also affects the amount of experience you receive from each individual dungeon. Your previous progress will be equal to the number of floors you had completed before resetting your progress; so, in the example above, your previous progress after resetting would be 10, as you would have raided 10 floors successfully. After resetting, each dungeon will give you experience based on the average of the floor completed and your previous progress. If completing Floor 1 after resetting with a previous progress of 10, the experience reward would be an average of the base experience from completing Floor 1 and the prestige bonus from Floor 10.



Suggestions

 * Go to the deepest floor as you can with the Dungeoneering level you have and reset prestige when you have done all the floors you can.


 * It is best to do the floors in order. Do not go to the deepest floor as soon as it is unlocked, but rather wait until you've completed all previous floors. It is better to do a deep floor with its equal prestige than with the prestige you had from your previous circuit. This allows you to gain even more XP from the new floor then an old floor at a huge amount.


 * Maximize your experience on the deeper floors. Do them on large, 5:5 difficulty and complexity 6. It'll give you much better experience for the deeper floors. The XP rate is increased drastically when you do this on any Furnished-Warped Floors.


 * Party with people like you: It is always a good idea to group up with people near your combat level and with similar skill levels. This ensures that the monsters in the dungeon and skill requirements will not be too hard for any one person. Also, you should be able to agree on how you progress through a dungeon, killing everything, skilling all the way or rushing.


 * Pick a keybearer: It is common for teams in large dungeons to assign one person the role of "Key runner." This person picks up all the keys and notes down where the key doors are so that he/she can come back to them later with the correct key. Often they will also be given the group gatestone. The assignment of a key runner will mean others don't have to worry about who has which keys. The key runner will still be useful in other areas, such as guardian doors and puzzles, so still explore as a group if possible. Players who are not the key runner may also set a gatestone near far-away key doors so that they can be given the key and the door can be opened quickly.


 * Maximize your mods: Set the complexity and difficulty to the highest possible, kill as much as you can and open all doors you have access to. Complexity 6 has no experience penalty, complexity 5 has a 30% experience penalty, and each complexity thereafter has another 5% penalty, all the way down to 50% penalty for complexity 1. Difficulty won't give a penalty unless there is a large range in player levels, but can give a big bonus for sometimes little work. Additionally, using a lower complexity and difficulty actually carries a much larger penalty than the 30%-50% modifier that you see. The base floor experience and base prestige experience are affected by several unseen factors, two of which, either directly or indirectly are complexity level and difficulty ratio. The only time you would want to set a lower complexity is when you are trying to move through the low floors (typically 1-30 if you have over 40 floors unlocked) at maximum speed in order to maximize your experience rate by spending more time doing deep large floors. Killing things will increase your level mod, but that can be time consuming, and it is up to you to decide whether it's worth an extra 10%. Bonus rooms should always be opened, as they offer up to 13% extra experience for almost nothing.


 * Turn off guide mode: Always set guide mode to off as this gives a negative bonus of -2 to -12% (possibly more) which can seriously affect your experience and token gain.


 * Be the survivor: Don't die. Dying can have a huge penalty (between 4% and 70%, you can die up to 15 times, any deaths after 15 don't count). If it looks like you're going to die, run out as fast as you can; your teammates will understand. One or two deaths won't carry so much of a penalty, however.


 * Fight wisely: As Melee is the strongest combat class in dungeoneering and Ranged is the weakest, you rarely want to use a bow. Binding a celestial surgebox in the ammo slot is a great idea as it greatly improves your ability to switch to Magic when you need it in dungeons. Ranging is weak but accurate (if you use a longbow, as shortbows do not give good bonuses), as many of the enemies and bosses in dungeons are weak to Range. When using ranged always use the rapid stance (in tandem with a Desperado class ring if possible).


 * Be a team player: Join your team when they call out 'gd', as this is a guardian door and they'll want your help. If you see a key, make sure your keybearer knows about it, same with doors. Don't go into a room if they say 'de', its a dead end they don't want to explore. If a team member asks you to make them some armour, ask them to get you the materials, and vice versa. If someone needs food and they're out, do some good and feed them some of yours. All this can speed up a run through the dungeon. However, there are some people who think skilling is bad, and is mostly useless.


 * Get the most out of your bound weapons: Bind the best weapon you can find. Remember, you can bind a weapon as a normal item and runes/arrows as an ammunition item. So, you can bind a Katagon longsword and Gorgonite arrows. However, there is a limit on how many runes/arrow you can bind, a maximum of 125 (225 if Salt in the Wound is completed). Note: A tier 7 Two-handed sword might be worth binding over a tier 8 rapier or dagger, keep that in mind. Binding a spear is also very useful, as monsters are vulnerable to many different attack styles. Upon reaching 50 Dungeoneering, you can also bind a 2nd item. 2nd bound item should be a Shadow silk hood or a piece of armour.

To gain the best experience per hour then you must take into account whether it's worth getting small boosts. For example, if you don't kill ALL the monsters in the map then you can miss out on about 5% experience, but if you spend over 5% of your time in the dungeon doing this then it generally won't be worth it.

Dungeoneering is unique in many ways, one of which is its use of all other skills. You may find that by levelling your other skills dungeons will progress faster, as you have access to more resources and methods of obtaining them, giving you better armour, food, and familiars. It is also advised to keep your skills fairly even; at 80 woodcutting, you'll be getting corpsethorn and entgallow trees, but if your fletching and/or firemaking isn't up to the levels for these trees, you will usually be forced to buy them from the smuggler, or ask your teammates for some help. Also be aware that your teammates levels are incorporated into the dungeon, and if their levels are higher than yours, you may find yourself surrounded by resources you can't use, let alone gather.

Optimizing floors
This is the fastest method to train Dungeoneering. This table shows how to do different floors at different Dungeoneering levels.


 * Rush: Small size, Complexity 1, you can be in a party of 5 people to storm through floors with a difficulty of 5:1 which could make it faster. Your goal of rushing low floors is just to get them done quickly, not to gain experience.


 * Small: Small size, Complexity 6. Decide whether you want more people in or not.


 * Large: Large size, Complexity 6. Be in a party of 5 players.

Resource Dungeons
It is also possible to get large amounts of experience (a total of 86,600 XP for members or 12,000 XP for non-members) for uncovering the Resource dungeons spread throughout RuneScape. As soon as you get to the required level, head to the dungeon. For lower levels, (1-20) it is guaranteed that you will level up 1-5 levels per visit to a dungeon. Please note that if you gain the level requirement for a new floor, you must also complete the floor before it to unlock it in Daemonheim.

Small Floors
This size allows for fastest completion. Strategies will change for how much you value experience per floor and overall experience per hour. Maximising Small floors involves doing them as quickly as possible while on Complexity 6. Rushing them is only different in that they use Complexity 1. In either case, certain loose guidelines should be regarded:


 * Avoid skilling; armour, food, potions and familiars are not often necessary for defeating the boss, or even completing the dungeon. When you see a resource of a tier you know you work well with, it may not be the best idea to waste time collecting it. Some 5 minutes can be needlessly expended by collecting ores, woods and hides only to find that the boss can be killed without any of it. For a boss fight on a small floor, you shouldn't need anymore than half an inventory of food, half of your equipment slots filled, a somewhat decent familiar and prayer points. Potions will likely take too long to make, and make little difference. If your charm hasn't dropped or you've lost it, don't bother looking for one, you'll most likely survive. In Small floors, hesitation will cost you valuable time.


 * Bonus rooms will give at most an extra 13% at the end of the dungeon, but it is not worth the time to making potions for doors on small floors. If you require a potion, ignore the door and move on.


 * Killing everything in the dungeon may give a few extra experience points, but is rarely worth all the effort. Kill everything when a guardian door is involved, but never when it's a dead end.

Medium Floors
This is recommended for those who are soloing or find they are having a hard time with large floors. Here is a small guideline depending on the floor type and your combat level.
 * On any room with a hard boss such as the Skeletal Trio or Runebound Behemoth, its best to get any food from other rooms to fight them to avoid XP penalties.
 * If on a Frozen/Abandoned floor, skip everything, unless the boss is hard for you to kill (e.g. a high level Bulwark beast)
 * Avoid doing every room. It is most likely that you will take around an hour if you do so, which is almost equal from doing 3-4 small sized dungeons.

Large Floors
This strategy for larger floors is generally agreed upon by most players. However, different parties have different preferences. As always, this is just a guideline. Listed below are the suggested requirements for various roles.

Keyer: (Also see Dungeoneering/Keying ) Often, the leader of the group is the keyer. This is because the leader is able to mark enemies and direct the other members of the group as needed. The player who collects all the keys and opens the key doors. The keyer should have a high defence, constitution, and prayer levels. This is to enable them to run through a room full of monsters, grab a key, and run back out again without taking too much damage. As well as being able to "tank" dead-end rooms with a key on the floor, the keyer needs to be able to memorise the locations of locked doors. Having the Shadow silk hood is a huge advantage for the keyer.

Other players: Everyone should have tools (including the keyer), all players should also have laws/cosmics for gatestone/group gatestone spells. Other players should be ready to do any task the keyer assigns them, the most common one being clearing a guardian door. They will also need to place gatestones at doors that can not be unlocked yet. This will enable the team to complete the dungeon in the shortest amount of time. The keyer sets the pace for the speed of the dungeon but the other players, the carriers, are a huge factor as they can save a lot of running time.

Starting in a Large Dungeon:

First thing after you spawn, you might want to pick everything from the tables, especially armour and food. But listen to other people as you might have just picked an item they really wanted, in which case if you don't really need the item, you should give it to them. Take a fair amount of food and sell the junk to the smuggler, or you can use the high alchemy spell to gain a better profit than selling them to the smuggler. First off, buy a Toolkit and then buy Rune Essence with the cash that remained. Make some Cosmics, Laws and Astrals (around 30 each). If you are on an Abandoned floor, it is also worthwhile to craft some Nature runes to cure poison from Dungeon and Night Spiders. Drop any spare Essence that remains, as other people will need it.

Leave the starting area, and proceed into the surrounding rooms. Kill all monsters in Guardian rooms; try to ignore the rest. Pick up every key you find. You should notify the keyer of all keys that you have encountered, and every door you cannot open. If you don't need to be looking at your own inventory, you should open the keyer's inventory via the Party Interface so that you can see what keys they have, and let them know if you see any of the doors they have keys for. If you cannot open a door, you should create a gatestone near it so that you can teleport back to it quickly when you find the key, or bring the Group Gatestone to the door so that someone with the appropriate levels can open it. Gating key doors and guardian doors on the main path tends to take priority over skill doors. Try not to let the keyer do all of the work; it is very difficult for one person to key a floor effectively. If you encounter a room with a Guardian Door that you can't solo, you should gate it. If the team isn't busy tackling other rooms, bring the group gatestone to the Guardian Door by teleporting back to your personal gatestone, so that your team can quickly come to your aid.

Do NOT waste time skilling, unless the group has agreed that time isn't a concern. Sometimes, it is better to suffer the exp penalty from dying than to waste time making food and armour.

Tips

 * Unless you have agreed to finish the dungeon completely, avoid entering "dead-end" rooms (rooms with only one door). It is likely you will take massive damage from all the monsters attacking you at once.
 * It's generally not a good idea to attack bovimastyx because you can hunt them for more hides than they would drop. Using Soul Split, some players find it a great idea to attack them just to heal (but watch for people that want to hunt the bovimastyx!). Additionally, it is worth noting that, contrary to popular belief, killing bovimastyx of ANY type will NOT lower the final exp of the dungeon. This is just a myth that has been disproven on multiple occasions as only deaths, the floor modifier (not killing aggressive monsters), lower complexity, and leaving doors unopened will contribute to experience loss.
 * Generally, on high level teams they will leave a pot door if there is a maximum of 2-3 doors behind it unless the herb is available immediately as it can waste time for 1% bonus rooms.
 * Pick up herbs, and drop them back in the smuggler room the next time you are there. This helps you out a lot when you encounter a skill door that you don't have the levels for, as you are able to make the potion needed much faster, though the time varies depending on where the closest farming patch is.
 * Having sufficient food and prayer before attempting the boss will make the boss battle smoother.
 * Creating potions with Herblore before facing the boss (most notably defence potions and potions that boost the combat class(es) that your party uses) significantly reduces chance of dying and increases speed to kill the boss, but usually it's not worth it, unless you already happen to have the herbs.
 * In most cases, you should not solo a boss, particularly if it is a very high level (400+). Generally, you should enter the boss room as a team together. If it's a boss such as Icy Bones or Gravecreeper, you can drop a gatestone outside of the room and hit that boss once, and then teleport out to deal a little amount of damage. Remember, any damage is good damage! It can also work on other bosses, but it is not recommended to do that with a behemoth boss (Stomp and the Gluttonous Behemoth).
 * ALWAYS share the food the monsters drop. A person with a medic ring will heal more people. Food should also be shared, and should be given to the players who took a lot of damage and are about to die.
 * Upgrade your ring of kinship as much as possible. The main classes worth using are Berserker, Tactician, Desperado, Blazer, and Gatherer.
 * Decide what weapon you want to bind. The best weapons are the two-handed sword and the battleaxe, as they can deal large amounts of damage in both slash and crush mode. Other weapons worth considering are the maul, the longsword, and the rapier. See this article for more details.