Dungeons

How many dungeon doors a zone has goes with how hard it is: none in Ashmoor and Saltmire, the first zones out of the city; one in a zone whose creatures reach level 10 or less (the Cinderwaste's is the Redwall Caverns, down in the Grand Canyon); two up to level 15; and three in the Bloodmarch and the Wakelands. Spitehold has one just outside its east wall, the Sewers, which is the first dungeon anyone goes into. Stand within 8 m of a door and press F.

Kinds of dungeon

Every door leads into one of nine kinds of place, and the kind decides what lives there, who keeps it, and how it is laid out. It also decides how the gate and the halls look and are lit. Each kind has a plan of its own, so you can tell one from another by the map alone.

• A crypt is a straight nave from the door to the great tomb at its end, with burial chambers in pairs either side of it.
• A warren is a knot of small rooms dug close together by goblins, with tunnels every which way, so there is always another way round.
• A vault is an antechamber with rows and columns of big, tall chambers behind it, and straight halls between them.
• A sewer is a long trunk of cisterns running both ways from the door. Branch runs leave it on one side and are joined again at their far ends, all of it flat and straight.
• A frost cavern is a few great caverns with alcoves broken into their sides, each opening from one before it, where yetis and the frozen dead live.
• A forge has a great hall behind a small antechamber, with workshops ringed round it and a spoke out to each, a storey taller than any other kind.
• A drowned grotto is one long chain of caves that coils like a stream, with pockets off it and a floor that heaves.
• A fungal hollow is several clumps of close, crowded rooms, far apart and each joined to the last by one long winding tunnel.
• A castle is not underground at all. See Castles below.

The rooms are shaped the same way, and none of them is square. What was built is even and matched side to side, its corners rounded: a crypt's chambers have apsed niches and are often a cross, a vault's halls are near round with an apse on every side, a sewer's cisterns end round and have bays, and a forge's halls have wings. What was dug or worn by water is a blob: warrens, caverns, grottos and hollows are round chambers and lumpy galleries with no straight wall in them.

A drowned grotto's caves heave underfoot and sag overhead, with stalactites, stalagmites and pillars of rock, and a cave may hold a chasm with a bridge over it and a ramp down at either end, a loft reached by a ramp along the curve of the wall, or a lookout crag. Where a passage of the storey above runs over a cave, the passage crosses the cave as a bridge high over its floor, with the drop at either hand: from below you see the way above crossing overhead.

Castles

A castle stands under the open sky. Its door in the world takes you to the forecourt before its gatehouse, which is its foyer: nothing comes for you there, and you wake there if you die. From there:

• The gate passage runs through the gatehouse, under its portcullis, into the bailey: an open yard inside the curtain walls, with a round tower at every corner. A castle out in the world is built to its zone's levels: four-square beside the city, five- to eight-sided further out, and in the hardest zones concentric: a second, lower wall stands round the first, and its gate is off to one side, so the way in bends between the two walls. Some are a D, straight across the front and rounded at the back, and some a prow, its walls coming to a point at the back: Mirrowmere's castle is a D and Cairnholt's a prow. Buildings stand about it, against the walls or out in the yard with room to walk round each: always a barracks, a chapel and a great hall, and as many more as there is room for: stables, a smithy, a storehouse, a kitchen, an armoury. Each is a single low storey with its door onto the yard.
• Stone stairs against the walls climb to the wall-walk, which runs right round the curtain, through each corner tower's upper room, the winch room over the gate, and the flank tower astride the north wall (and one or two on each side wall too, at the furthest castles). Its outer side is battlemented. You can see down into the bailey from it, but not out over the parapet.
• The keep stands toward the bailey's north end, across the line from the gate. It has three to five floors near the city and up to ten at the edge of the world, with an undercroft beneath them. You go in by its great door into the hall on its ground floor. A stair hall beside the hall climbs to the great hall and on, floor by floor, to the keep top, where the Castellan waits with the hoard. No two floors need be alike: one may be an open hall, another a hall of pillars, another a run of rooms one behind the next, another a corridor with chambers off it: bedchambers, libraries, solars, armouries, stores, chapels and kitchens. It also goes down to an undercroft of piers beneath.

No two keeps look quite alike, either. Its stair hall may stand out from it as a tower of its own, rising a storey over its roof and making the keep an L, or rise over the roof as a caphouse. A low hall may be built against one side, entered from the ground hall. A guard tower may stand before the great door, so you go in through its guard room and turn or step aside to reach the keep's own door; or two round towers may flank the door instead. Round turrets may rise from its corners under slate cones or battlements, square towers may stand at every corner or at two corners across it, or buttresses clasp them; a square tower may stand out from one side; flat buttresses may run down its faces. Its roof may be open battlements, a hipped slate roof behind the parapet, or a parapet carried out over the walls on corbels. Keeps further from the city tend to have more of all of it.

It is held three times over:

• The garrison, living soldiers drawn from the same classes as players, holds the bailey, every building in it but the chapel, the towers (flank towers included) and the gatehouse. Warriors close to fight, rangers and mages stand off and shoot, and priests and bards keep the rest on their feet. A soldier in the yards sees you from 12 m off.
• The ramparts, mostly archers with a priest among them, hold the wall-walk. They stand at its inner edge, see you from 24 m off, and shoot down into the bailey 1.5× as far as they could on the ground.
• The dead the castle never let go hold the keep, its undercroft and the chapel: skeletons, zombies and ghosts.

A castle further from the city has a bigger bailey, more buildings, and a wider, taller keep.

Ziggurats and pyramids

Some castles have no keep. Inside the same curtain, gatehouse and bailey a monument stands in its place, and the bailey is made bigger to hold it.

• A ziggurat is three to six great tiers, each 6.25 m tall and set 8 m in from the one under it, so the top of every tier is a terrace walked right round the next. A low wall edges each terrace, and archers stand at its foot to shoot down into the bailey. A stone stair climbs each tier's south face along it, the next going back the other way, so the way up zigzags across the front to the summit. There the Castellan waits in a shrine with the hoard. A great door in the ziggurat's foot, beside the first flight, opens into a pillared sanctum held by the dead.
• A pyramid is built in steep courses, each 1.5 m high, too tall to climb, up to a capstone. A pylon stands before its south face, and its great door opens onto a passage into the hall of offerings, a pillared hall with a chamber on either side. From the hall's far wall a stair hall climbs, flight over flight, to the burial chamber above it, where the Castellan waits with the hoard. A big pyramid has an antechamber on the floor under that. The dead hold every room of it.

Either may lie behind a castle's door, more often far from the city. Out in the world, the Cinderwaste's castle is a ziggurat and Gravenwood's a pyramid.

Castles in the open

Not every castle is behind a door. Every wild zone has one standing out in the world, its gate turned toward the middle of the zone. It is built like the castles behind doors, with no loading screen: walk up to the gate and in.

Its walls and towers stop you as any wall does. The stone stairs climb to the wall-walk, and the keep's stair hall climbs from floor to floor to the keep top. Every floor in it is flagged stone. Its undercroft is sealed under the ground. Your pet and your hirelings climb the stairs after you.

It is held. Veteran soldiers keep their posts in the bailey and on the ground floors of its buildings, strolling about their rooms but never more than 10 m from them. They are warriors, rogues, rangers, mages, priests and bards, and they see you from 12 m off. The dead hold every floor of the keep, and the chapel, as veterans too, and they come down the stairs after you. The Castellan waits at the top of the keep with two veteran guards. A soldier or one of the dead you kill is replaced 5 minutes later, and the Castellan and the guards 20 minutes later, but never while anyone stands near the post. There is no hoard, and nothing of the zone's own wildlife lives inside its grounds.

The Hollow Heartwood

Gravenwood has a second hold beside its pyramid, and it is no castle at all: a hollow tree over seventy metres across at the root and a hundred and fifty high, the planet's own. Its great door opens in the bark to the south onto the root hall, where spiders, mushroom-folk and worse keep the ground. A stair climbs inside the trunk, between the halls' wall and the bark, landing at a door into each of three halls stacked over the first, each held by the dead and the rot, and at the top the heart chamber, where the Heartwood waits: a mushroom king grown into the tree, with two elders. It quakes the floor, calls more of the rot up out of the wood, and in its last quarter throws whoever stands near it across the chamber.

From each of the three middle halls two doors in the bark lead out along the boughs to round platforms, thirty metres and more across, with a low rim: a fight in the open high over the wood, and the watch stands there, spiders and skeleton mages that see and spit further than they would on the ground, with a warden of the bough among them. The higher the bough, the harder its warden: a veteran on the lowest, elites above it, each storey a level up and tougher again. Rouse the tree and more of its own come out of the great door. Kill the Heartwood and the tree is yours as a castle is: a sanctuary to rest in, and in time the wood comes to take it back, up to its great door.

A castle fights back

The first soldier to see you sounds the horn. Every soldier within 70 m comes for you, 3 more come out of the barracks, and if you are already through the gate its portcullis crashes down behind you: nothing passes it, you included, until someone fights up to the winch in the room over the gate, kills whatever guards it and raises it (F). The castle stands down once none of it has fought for 40 seconds.

While it is roused it defends itself:

• Boiling oil. Steam hisses from the murder holes over the gate passage, and 1.5 s later oil pours on whoever is still in it, for 25% of their health, slowing them.
• Ballistae on the walls loose a bolt every 7 s at anyone in the grounds within 70 m, throwing them back. Kill a ballista's crew and it is yours: select a creature and press F at it to loose.
• Archers in the towers shoot out through the arrow slits.

The Castellan

The Castellan fights in phases. At three quarters of his health he calls the archers on his walls, and red rings mark where their arrows will land on the keep top: step out of them. At half his guards come up the stair to him and he can slam the ground to fell everyone near. At a quarter he is reckless, quicker and harder, and can throw you clean off the battlements.

Taking a castle

Kill the Castellan of a castle standing in the open and it is the living's. Its garrison breaks and does not come back, and everyone in its grounds is paid. Its standards and banners turn from the garrison's red to the living's blue. While the living hold it, nothing wild comes inside its grounds, everyone in them recovers 1× faster than usual (Sanctuary).

The planet wants it back. About 45 minutes after it was taken, war drums warn the zone, and 2 minutes later the siege comes: 3 waves of the zone's raiders, marching on its gates and its keep. From the second wave rams come with them, which batter a lowered portcullis until it breaks, and with the last a siege warlord. Should he stand at the keep's great door for 20 s, the castle is lost and its garrison returns. Kill every one of the siege and it is held, and everyone in its grounds is paid again.

One way through

Below ground, there is exactly one way from the foyer to any room, the keeper's lair included, and nothing circles back. You arrive at one end, and the keeper's lair is at the far end: the last room you can walk to, furthest along the halls.

About 50% of halls run as one long curve instead of in straight legs, more in the dug and drowned places and fewer in what was built. Floors rise and fall from room to room as well, as much as 14 m, and the halls between climb as steeply as 45% of the ground they cover.

Storeys

A dungeon is not one flat floor. Over the storey you arrive on, a second is laid half across it with solid rock between, so a hall can have a gallery over it and a corridor can run above a room. A dungeon stacks up to 3 storeys. One long ramp joins each storey to the one below. It leaves a room at the edge of the lower storey and climbs across the gap to the upper one, rising no more than 55% of the ground it covers.

The rock between storeys is real. Nothing sees through it, nothing is struck through it, and a creature on the storey under your feet has to come round by the ramp to reach you. The keeper's lair is often upstairs. The minimap and the map (M) draw the storey you stand on brightly and the others faintly beneath it. Below ground the minimap marks only the creatures you can see: one behind a wall or on another storey shows up once it comes into sight, and Tab passes it over until then.

The 3D map, under the minimap, draws the whole dungeon in three dimensions while you are below, with only you marked on it. Drag to turn it, right-drag to slide it and the wheel to zoom; it follows you until you slide it, and ⌖ takes it back to you. It shows a castle you walk into out in the open the same way. O puts it away and brings it back.

The map (M) can show the dungeon the same way, large: tick 3D in its title bar below ground and the level's plan gives way to the whole level in three dimensions, the foyer and the keeper's lair named on it, turned, slid and zoomed the same way. It remembers the box for the next dungeon.

An hour below

A party of five at the zone's level takes about an hour from the foyer to the keeper, side rooms extra: fifteen to twenty rooms on the way, each a fight of three to ten elites, and the keeper at the end. A forge is the exception: its workshops ring one great hall, so the way to its keeper is short and its side rooms many. How many rooms each kind has, and how many of them stand on the way from the foyer to the keeper's lair (the furthest doors from the city dig bigger, see Far from the city):

Your own instance

A dungeon is new each time your party, or you alone, first goes in, and it belongs to you. Go into another dungeon and come back, and the first is as you left it, cleared rooms and all. You can reroll it at any time if you are alone or lead the party. Everyone who was in the old one is moved to the new foyer; anyone outside it stays where they are.

When anyone in a party goes in at a door, the whole party goes in with them: every member who is alive and out in the open is taken to the same foyer from wherever they stood, as the finder takes its group, and is told who led them in. Nobody is left waiting at the door. A member lying dead stays behind.

The dungeon finder

Press I, or choose Dungeon finder from the menu, to see every dungeon in the world with its zone and the levels of its creatures. You can open it anywhere out in the open.

Join puts you in a group waiting for that dungeon, wherever in the world you stand. The group goes in by itself once it holds 5 seats, your hirelings counting one each, and whoever joined it first can take it in sooner with Go in now. Everyone in it is taken straight to the dungeon's foyer, from any zone, as a party of their own, into a fresh instance made for that group. Anyone who has died or gone below by then is left behind. You wait for one dungeon at a time: joining another leaves the first, and going in at a door yourself leaves it too.

Teleport puts you on the doorstep of that dungeon at once, facing its gate, so you can go in by the door with whoever you came with.

What is down there

Every dungeon starts in a foyer with nothing in it. You arrive there, and you wake there if you die. The rest is full of Deep creatures of the dungeon's kind, all of them elite: their kind from above with 1.5× the health, 1.3× the blow and 2 levels more, then raised again for the zone the door is in. Nothing down here comes in packs. Anything that can see a fight joins it, which usually means the whole room.

The far end of the halls holds the keeper's lair, where a boss waits with two veteran guards over its hoard. There is no reaching the hoard without the fight. Every kind has its own keeper, from the fallen king of the crypts to the Rot King of the fungal hollows, and every keeper is as hard as the next: 3× the blow of the body it is made from, and in Cairnholt Downs's crypt 27.42 a blow. Bring a tank. Some keepers, and every guard, throw players back or knock them down (see combat and aggro). The hoard opens once the keeper and every guard still in the lair are dead, and you must be within 4 m of the chest. Every member takes their own share, once: a piece of their class's dungeon set where the dungeon has sets (see gear), else a rare item, and one uncommon or rare, minted at the top of the zone's levels, and moved with the dungeon's own level (see below). A reroll brings a new chest, and you can take a share of that one too.

Everything below drops gear for the zone the dungeon is in, not for the creature's tier: an elite or the keeper is harder than the zone's creatures, but what it leaves is minted without the levels its tier added, so you can wear it there.

When a keeper falls, everyone in the dungeon, the dead included, is given a rare item, all but whoever struck the killing blow, who has the keeper's own loot instead. You get it once a run. Those who fought it also have its coins and runeshards, each their own, as for any kill (see levelling). The pieces of a dungeon set come only from the hoard, one at random each run, so a full set takes several runs. The Sewers under Spitehold and the Hollow Hill on Cairnholt Downs have sets.

Made for whoever rolls it

Each player past the first adds 60% to every creature's health and 10% to its blow. Gear moves its level: every whole item level your party's average gear stands above the middle of the zone's creature levels raises everything below by one, up to 5, and every whole level under it eases it by one, up to 2. A harder dungeon's hoard pays better. You are told what it was made for as you go in.

Whoever joins later finds it as it was made. A reroll makes it again for whoever is in the party at the time.

Far from the city

The further a door stands from Spitehold, the harder and bigger the dungeon behind it, whoever goes in. Even the five doors of one zone differ: the one out at its far edge is meaner than the one near its outpost.

At the very furthest door, everything below is 3 levels higher, with 50% more health and 25% more to its blow, and a door halfway out gets half of that. The hoard is minted at the raised level, so it pays for the trip.

It is laid out bigger too: up to 60% more rooms, up to 1 more storeys stacked over it, and halls that wind and curve more often, where its kind has halls that wind at all. The line you are shown as you go in says how far out you are.