Cryt's (HIGHLY WIP) Super Dungeon Powerup Guide

Super Dungeons - Or How I learned to stop unlocking bad powerups and progress

* This guide is meant for progression up to clearing The Slime Hideout F100 for the first time. While parts of it may stay relevant after that, this guide doesn't really consider that.
* Also, the community at large is not in full agreement on the ranking of powerups, and this guide is highly influenced by my playstyle. If you have any questions regarding how this is ranked, please reach out on the Discord for alternate viewpoints and advice.
* Some of the community members have chipped in with their experience/advice at the bottom, and may have markers within the guide to act as footnotes for their input.

(Some concepts have one or more letters in parentheses () next to them, from that point on I will use those letters as shorthand for these concepts)

One of the cornerstones of Super Dungeon(SD) progression is kind of just thrown at you with no real fanfare or preparation beforehand, 21 powerups, and you can only see 6 of them at the start.

First, lets get some simple stuff out of the way. Powerups have ranks, which can be upgraded using Topaz, which you get when you leave a SD safely after clearing a new floor for the first time per character. However that rank is only available to upgrade after you purchase a powerup (ignoring the 6 that are unlocked at the start), which is replaced with a Dungeon Coin(DC) cost.

Each powerup has 2 effects, its on Purchase(P) effect, and its Permanent effect. The P effect resets after every SD run, and is basically just that amount times the number of times you've bought it in the current SD. The permanent effect is well... permanent. It will always be active (including outside of SD), even if you don't buy that specific powerup in an SD run, but in exchange its value scales based on the number of times you've purchased that powerup, and very slowly.

All of that said, there are 21 of them, and even by just random chance some of them have to be good, and some have to be bad. But even that is really subjective for the most part.

What may not be immediately apparent though, is the downside of unlocking the bad powerups. These are twofold:

* Every floor's safe zone allows you to buy powerups from a limited, randomized selection of all unlocked powerups you have that aren't currently filtered out. This means that powerups that don't help you progress aren't only not worth buying, but also prevent something that would be worth buying from being available in a given safe zone.
* The powerup filter can be very strong, especially since with the extra Epic Coin Purchase that allows you to buy up to the number you enter and then removes the powerup from showing up again until your next SD run. The issue being that the number of filter slots you get are incredibly restricted. You can buy 3 from Epic Coin Purchases, up to 5 using Topaz, and the rest from Modifier Milestones. This means, even if you invest a large amount of Topaz into unlocking them, you'll have no more than 6 or 7 total filter slots. Every useless powerup you have should realistically be filtered out with these, and there are already a few that are unlocked by default (3 to 5 depending on your playstyle)

But first a quick ranking system:

NOTE: This ranking is based on Pre-F100 and is HIGHLY subjective, I'm only ATTEMPTING to make this easier for people with no idea what is going on, and for some playstyles this guide may actively hinder progress. That said if you have any questions at all, ask in the Discord before buying ANY new powerup. Buying a powerup not useful for your build CAN (not necessary will) be actively hindering, and it gets worse the more you have.

1 - Must Have, basically the best of the best, no questions asked

2 - Good, depending on exactly what you are doing these could in theory not be necessary, but in general you don't suffer anything for getting them

3 - Iffy, for Niche reasons these could be good, e.g. a specific playstyle, but for the most common way people progress, they aren't really worth picking upgrade

4 - Bad, just objectively not worth the investment

So, from Top to Bottom, Left to Right:

Heal - 4, Its unlocked by default, so no way to not have it (until you get powerup filters going). Its P effect is basically useless. The Permanent effect however is somewhat useful for the first few levels, so buying this a handful of times to get extra HP for some early tanking. Notable breakpoints: 25HP at 11 purchases, 50HP at 32 purchases, 100HP at 90 purchases

Time Expansion - 3, The current meta is based on damage, so in theory if you are killing things fast enough, extra time shouldn't matter. Since for the most part you will be killing things nearly instantly, you're likely to be only spending about 2 to 2.5 minutes on the first 99 floors, with the remainder being however long it takes to clear F100. You can use the first couple of levels to get the extra time if you are consistently within just a few seconds, but in most cases just getting more damage fixes that issue, and helps progression anyway.

SD Damage Multiplier - 1, Bread and Butter damage multi, always get it, there is a reason there is an upgrade the guarantees it on the F0 safe room (after you have the F0 Safe Room upgrade unlock). One of the staples of general progression, always something to have.

SD Damage Cut - 3, Not bad per say, but with the current damage based meta, this kinda falls to near useless. It can be helpful at the very beginning, but eventually you just kill everything before it can attack, so it stops mattering.

Dodge Time - Apparently the single most highly contested powerup. I find buying the powerup (Not the mechanic) completely pointless (Pre your first F100 clear) and had no issues clearing F100 after only buying the powerup a single time in my very first run (which did not reach F100). Yet other members of the community argue its absolutely key to being able to play the game. To be clear Dodge does become valuable later on, but as this guide is somewhat limited by my own experience and within the scope of before your first F100 clear, I personally value this powerup fairly low.

* NOTE: Dodge comes unlocked by default, so its impossible to do any real harm to your SD progression by buying it or not. It is incredibly easy to swap to either side if you decide you dont like whichever you tried first.

Move Speed - 3 (just barely above 4), Technically move speed could help you a bit, as it does ease in kiting and moving between targets for low range heros, and there is a cap on its Permanent effect (though its a huge number), For the earliest SD runs, Buying a level or two could be helpful, but you'll quickly move past the need for it.

Dodge Heal - 4, The first one you could unlock, and actually useless. 1% +.1% per rank HP heal on dodge is useless, and the Permanent effect is just Max MP. The Permanent scales so much slower than just putting some points into INT or AGI, pretty unanimously bad.

* NOTE: The following 3 (or since 2 are paired into one section) powerups are in regards to critical hits. Critical hits and their damage can be incredibly unreliable early on, and may not be worth investing into initially. I'm going to generally recommend you reach out to the discord before investing into Crit and Crit Damage, as the current meta is still in its incredibly early phases and there is still some disagreement on when it should be unlocked.

Pairing the next 2 Phys and Magical Crit - 1(kinda). So this is one of the 2 pairs of damage type multis, for the most part the meta has been you only buy ONE type of these buffs. While it isn't impossible to go hybrid, adding more potential powerups to the pool only dilute your chances of finding something you want, as well as the opportunity cost of potentially having enough filters to get more reliable auto clearing running. For that reason I'd recommend consulting the Discord if you are considering going hybrid. The effect is 2% +.1% per rank, with the Permanent being some more crit chance. Considering how easily crit damage scales with the next powerup, its a definite pick, just probably not both at this early in SD.

Critical Damage - 1, 50% + 25% per rank, scales really quickly for really cheap, its limiting factor of course being your chance to crit to begin with. The potential inconsistency of crit can make it a poor choice at the start of SD.

Skill Cast Speed - 2, 10% +.1% per rank, with a fairly bad Permanent effect of SPD. The extra cast speed can be nice, but it is on diminishing returns. For low cast speed or low area skills, this can help somewhat, but with its in SD cost scaling and diminishing returns, I can see an argument where this may not be worth getting, so kinda unsure exactly where this powerup sits as far as raw powerup.

Physical/Magical Damage - 1, 100% +50% per rank, the other pair of powerups, similarly to the crit chance powerups, I'd generally recommend only buying one of these two, based on which damage type you want to run for now. These two are a massive damage boost to their respective type, scale well on rank and the cost doesn't ramp up too fast in SD.

Physical/Magical Absorption - 4, I don't even have these unlocked to get their scaling numbers. Just generally bad because they scale abhorrently poorly, if I remember correctly it was like .1 per powerup in the alpha. Just not worth it this early.

Dungeon Coin Gain - 2, 1+.1 coin per kill, with a very slow scaling coin gain multi as a Permanent effect. I don't think you should try to buy this pre-F10, under any circumstances. Past that is kind of a per person thing. DC Gain does have a very valuable long term return in its Permanent effect, and can help in manual DC farming, however for passive farming, where you randomly buy upgrades, you cant guarantee getting this one early enough for it to pay for itself, and the later you buy it the less return it gives. For a quick example, assume you manage to buy the upgrade after finishing F10, and you can clear to F50. There are roughly 10 enemies per floor, meaning in those 40 floors you get 400 coins per upgrade. The first costs 50, and doubles each level. So you actually only get a 350 DC profit from the first, then a 300, then 200, then you don't make a profit from the 4th. So just buying the 3 that you would make a profit from, it returns 850 coins. A regular run will make roughly between 8-10k coins, so you are getting 10% down to 8% more coins, in exchange for diluting the upgrade pool, and that is if you even manage to get 3 levels before F10, each extra floor it takes reduces the return pretty sharply. Again not bad, but I'd definitely reach out on the Discord before committing to it too early.

Fame Gain - 3, 5% +.5% per rank, personally, the return on this is rather low for its cost, considering you don't have to get to some extremely high Grade to clear F100. It does technically shorten the average number of runs it takes to clear F100, but in my opinion not enough to really matter. Assuming you buy 2 levels every SD run, it took me about 400 runs to clear F100 (First time so pretty inefficient) so Fame Gain would have saved me about 40 runs or about 1 Refresh Ticket worth. This powerup has incredible value later on, but I'd argue it isn't worth it this early.

   Skill Hit Count - 1, 1+.25 per rank, absolutely amazing. The reason Angel is used as a starter for SD is because of its innate multihit, this powerup scales hard. It even has a strong Permanent effect in Skill Levels. One of the strongest powerups by far.

SD Challenge Boss Damage Multiplier - 1, 10% +10% per rank. Pretty obvious why this is strong, helps a ton for pushing through the multiples of 10 Floors

Equipment Drop Chance - 3, I don't have this one unlocked either, but because it is very niche. The increase to equip drop chance is fairly low, however its value comes in its Permanent effect, which is Artifact Proficiency gain, of which the only other available source this early is from the Super Guild Ability. If it wern't for trying to not dilute your powerup pool, this would be a must by, but because it doesn't help you clear F100 at the same rate other upgrades do, I'd argue it isn't worth it for a while.

Extra After Damage - 1, 25% +25% per rank, basically just one extra damage multi at the end of all other calculations. Hits hard, scales fast.

Comments from other members of the community past this point

Notes from Darnavir

* Value of some powerups is extremely playstyle dependent. What works for one playstyle can be really bad for another.
* Each super dungeon increases mob level by 100, effectively 20 floors. If you can't push in the current one, you might try the alter ones you have unlocked. The topaz/rubies are worth it for progression. Reaching the 3rd one is very reasonable before clearing F100 of the first. You might get to the 4th one as well.
* For me, move speed, cast speed and dodge are connected - missing them all is very bad, at least for all my DPS heavy builds. They are what prevents you from getting attacked.
* Cast speed is extremely important - its DPS boost isn't that good (compared to pure dps boosters), but it significantly lowers clear times and gives enemies less time to attack. It can be the key to survival as a defensive powerup, especially against bats/fairies. It can be the difference between a clear and a timeout. It also can be the difference between clearing green slimes/magicslimes (and similar enemies) and getting attacked by them because your skills didn't attack them all in time.
* Move speed is situational, but can be very good. If you can't significantly outrange enemies, you have to get closer or further away a lot. The base 0.5m/s per powerup is decent even when not leveled. If you have the range/dodge, move speed does little. Having no range enchants (less maneuvering space available) or cast speed powerups makes it more important for kiting, things like yellow/green slimes can be bad otherwise - you need to run from them before they attack you. Running in circles around florz with green slimes following you is a valid strategy.
* Dodge is heavily dependent on cast speed, skill range, enemies faced and later some modifiers. You definitely need it for the last boss. Many build require it to survive because they can't avoid being attacked and taking any hit is instant death to them. It is mandatory for auto progression - you will be running into things that oneshot you otherwise. If you don't have any range enchants, some characters won't get far without it (especially without skill tenacity).
* Max dodge time is important for most bosses. The only one not heavily affected is high level florz - he can heal himself, the rest of bosses can't. And Florz is the one who can be cleared without dodge as long as you can deal with summons. The rest is about winning before you run out of dodge, he's about taking him down faster than he heals.
* Time expansion is a tricky one - if you don't run out of time, it's useless, if you do, it's good. It is less tied to DPS (if you can't kill stuff, more time rarely helps you) and more to cast/move speed. IMO one of the worst offenders can be archer - range, rather slow early clear speed combined with movement speed upgrades can make him easily survive and then needing to slowly kill the enemies. You can get a bunch of floors with it.
* Of these mentioned, only cast speed warrants significant amount of topaz spent. I'm not sure cast speed should get any topaz before clearing F10, its returns aren't that impactful until you get more topaz/bought per run.

BlueOrange:

First, a note on my playstyle: I only just qualify for Super Dungeons, and I’m good at rhythm games. I’ve also injured my wrist on my mouse-holding hand, so I enjoy using Super Dungeon as an arcade game that only needs WASD and the spacebar. (It doesn’t turn me on, but I play one-handed anyway.) This advice is therefore for people who intend to be playing Super Dungeon very actively, and not doing bulk runs.

There are two ways to keep your heroes alive in Super Dungeon: kiting and dodging. Kiting is easy with Archer, somewhat achievable with Angel, and not really an option for other heroes at first. Therefore, to get your dungeon bonuses, you’ll need to use dodge.

With practice, you can hold down the spacebar for 0.1 to 0.2 seconds and dodge an attack. This means that ten seconds of dodge will allow you to ignore 50-100 attacks.

If you’re not buying dodge upgrades (maybe you plan on doing bulk runs in the nearish future), then I advise that you don’t start dodging attacks until you are down to 60% health or so. That means that you’ll get hit by the early (weaker) attacks, and you don’t start consuming your dodge time until the stronger attacks start coming in. At the same time, you haven’t waited so long that mis-timing a few dodges will kill you.

If you don’t commit to this strategy, it can still be worthwhile to buy a level or two of dodge time early in a run. Getting a second of dodge time back after a level means you can dodge 5-10 times during a level. Depending on your DPS, that might be enough to cancel 50% of the incoming damage.

The synergy between Dodge Time and Dodge Heal is great. You let your health drop for a while, then you start dodging. If your health builds up past 90%, you stop dodging for a little while. If you’re slow on the spacebar and only get 30 dodges done in a run, one level of Dodge Heal is equivalent to a +30% HP multiplier. 3 seconds of dodge time per level as well, then that’s not hard to convert into 10 successful dodges, which means a further 10% heal per level.

Note that this strategy will fail completely if you use the automatic dodge automation: automatic dodge will use up all your dodge time at the beginning of the run, when the attacks are weakest, and there’s no damage for you to heal.