How to play guide for Dungeon Maker

Welcome to the New Players Guide! My name is /u/Metalmine and I will be your guide(for the first little bit)!

**NOTE:** As we proceed through the guide there will be many words that you may not be familiar with. I will link them to their appropriate pages to find out more about them.

(For people coming from Discord: Please make sure to read the #rules channel. I cannot stress this enough. Really not hard.)

## Basic gameplay

***Dungeon Maker*** is a game about building up a dungeon as an evil Dark Lord and defeating all Heroes that come to fight you. In order to vanquish all that challenge you, you must hatch new monsters, find rare relics and study old magical tomes.

## Controls

When you start a new game, you choose between the two Dark Lords that are unlocked from the start Lilith and Elizabeth. I recommend you begin with Elizabeth as she is better at keeping herself alive at this point in the game, however, you can definitely do well with Lilith if you so choose, though you might struggle a little bit more.

After picking your Dark Lord, you are sent to a screen with a lot of cards. These are called Fate cards. You will always have the choice between three fates unless you are at the edge of the "map" of fates.

After picking the fate of your choice, which should be a battle, you will be taken to your dungeon with your Dark Lord in a large room to the left followed by a 3x3 grid with some monsters in the center tile. These tiles are called rooms. The center tile with monsters in it is called a battle room.

What follows will be combat.

## Combat

Here, there are several things you need to be aware of.

1. The bottom right corner of your screen will have a grey hexagon that is filling up with blue. This is your mana.
2. A grey bar to its right that is empty, it will be filled with buffs and negative status effects on your dark lord. You cannot view your monsters buffs and status effects.
3. The bottom right of your screen will have one icon in a black square. This is your first ability. If you're playing Lilith, this will be Whip, if you are playing Elizabeth, this will be Bite.

Every Dark Lord will have 4 abilities after leveling them up to their maximum levels with the following Mana costs: [1,4,10,20].

**Question:** How can I cast a 20 Mana ability if my max Mana is 10?

**Answer:** You will be able to find Relics as a result of defeating Elite Battle, Treasure Chests or Boss Battles fates that will enhance your maximum Mana directly or through rests.

## First 100 Days

So you reached day 100! Congratulations, you have unlocked Hard Difficulty 1. Where do you proceed from here? Well, in order to unlock a lot of cool new monsters, rooms, weapons, abilities, dark lords, and other really important mechanics, you will need Abyss Stones, which you'll be able to use at the Abyss Store. However, it isn't easy to progress very far without some of those upgrades.

The recommended way is to hit day 100, withdraw, then go to the next difficulty level until you hit one you can't beat to day 100. Then go back to the previous difficulty and go as far as you can. Then continue doing day 100 runs until you've reached Trial difficulty 1. At this point, hard difficulty challenges no longer apply and a new set of challenges exist. HOWEVER, if you complete [Trial 1] day 200 for example, you also achieve [Hard 1] through [Hard 10]'s day 200 achievement. This means you'll get a ton of abyss stones. Furthermore, do so on Trial 1 until day 340 and you'll be able to unlock most of the essentials from the original and awakening packs.

## Dark Lord Leveling Strategies

For new players that are first leveling up a Dark Lord, information is provided about some basic strategies to use. These are geared primarily for Normal to Hard 10 difficulty. There are different ways to play each Dark Lord once you reach Trials and unlock new options in the Abyss Store.

* **Style:** Each Dark Lord has a different approach. Some prefer to do most of the damage to the enemy heroes, while others prefer to sit back and let traps or monsters do their dirty work.
* **Key Buffs/Debuffs:** Which buffs or debuffs the Dark Lord has the most synergy with and should be prioritized.
* **Dungeon Design:** Whether a new player should build Battle Rooms, Traps, certain kinds of Facilities, etc.
* **Boss Skills:** How each skill should be used.
* **Key Relics:** Relics can be found in Treasure and Elite Battle cards. Listed are a few that can make the most difference for each Dark Lord.
* **Key Unlocks:** What to look for in the Abyss Shop that will help the Dark Lord out most.
* **Leveling Difficulty:** How easy each Dark Lord is to play before getting unlocks and their Awakening.

### Lilith

Lilith is the more difficult of the initial two dark lords to begin with. Her best synergies are locked in Awakening packs. While working on unlocking those, level her up by relying on monsters while using Charm to convince the enemy heroes to fight each other instead of you!

* **Style:** Lilith gets heroes to fight for her. She relies on her monsters to keep heroes from reaching the Dark Lord's Room and overwhelming her. She isn't much of a fighter on her own at first.
* **Key Buffs/Debuffs:** Charm, Betrayal, Obey. Unfortunately most ways to apply these debuffs outside of your Boss Skills must be unlocked.
* **Dungeon Design:** Build Battle Rooms. Fill with the strongest monsters you can find.
* **Boss Skills:** Use Whip (1 mana) until you have Charm (4 mana) and 5 full battle rooms, since Charm only affects heroes who are in combat. Forbidden Love (10 mana) should only be used if the heal is needed, or if heroes are spending a lot of time running around (not in combat).
* **Key Relics:** Traitor's Dagger (3\*) doubles damage when heroes attack each other. Assassin's Dagger (4\*) charmed enemies take 35% more damage. Staff of Authority (2\*) reduces cost of Charm by 1. Armor of Power (2\*) causes Charm to give vulnerable as well.
* **Key Unlocks:** Rooms: Betrayal, Temptation, Mirror Room, Prism. Monsters: Siren, Cleopatra (fusion).
* **Leveling Difficulty:** Hard. Lilith relies heavily on the rooms listed above, and her Level 12 ability, which causes Charmed heroes to take more damage.

### Irea

Irea is acquired from the Challenge Mode Protect Your Lord (Normal), while her Awakening is acquired from Protect Your Lord (Hard). Her theme is light and electricity, and she has a number of status effect synergies. She is unique in being the only Dark Lord who doesn't gain starting monsters as level 5 and 9 bonuses. She can be played both with heavy monsters or heavy traps, but the former is much simpler to execute.

* **Style:** Irea relies on sitting back and spamming her abilities to give heroes Blind and Shock. She doesn't really want heroes to reach the Dark Lord room until she gets her Awakening, which gives a big boost to her personal fighting power.
* **Key Buffs/Debuffs:** Her most important debuffs are Blind, Shock, and Recharge. Of secondary importance is Slow, Frostbite, and Stun. Panic is great too, because it both prevents Shock from being dispelled, and a Blind and Panicked enemy is basically taking no action at all. After her Awakening, Shield becomes hugely important too. You may wish to avoid Poison since it can undermine Shock's stacking ability even more than usual.
* **Dungeon Design:** Build mostly Battle Rooms, mixing in Shock traps if you wish. Your dungeon entrance should be Darkness so that all heroes who walk in will be Blind, and thus get Shock from Irea's Blinding Flash skill. Focus on rooms that give debuffs such as Blind, Slow, and Panic. Pick monsters who can apply these debuffs as well, including those with the skill Sandstorm.
* **Boss Skills:** Use Thunderbolt(1 mana) until you have Blinding Flash (4 mana) and 5 full battle rooms, since it only affects heroes in combat. Blinding Flash causes damage and gives Blind, and as Irea levels up, it will also cause Shock to enemies under the effect of Blind and Slow.
* **Key Relics:** Thunder Bracelet causes Shocked enemies who take damage to sometimes be Stunned. Solar Key gives Recharge when Blind enemies take damage. Thunberbolt boosts Shock damage by 75%. Unfortunately these are all unlocks. Relics that apply or improve Slow, Frostbite, Stun, and Panic are also valuable.
* **Key Unlocks:** Irea's Awakening, and the above-mentioned Relics. Monsters: Water Elemental, Sea Drake.
* **Leveling Difficulty:** Easy. Irea is unlocked through Challenges, so anyone who gets her should have a solid grasp of the basics.

## Useful Tips

this section is focused on players that have already unlocked Trial 1.

* When buying a pack, you should go in order: first Original Pack, then Awakening Pack, Advanced Pack, Corruption Pack and then Adventurer Pack. You don't have to buy everything from the pack, you should focus on picking only the important and unique things that the pack contain, while ignoring things like DL starting Level UP and Starting Gold UP. (If you are not sure what to pick, you can ask on the Discord server for an opinion of what you should pick)
* After Trial 10 you will find Legend 1, you should ignore this difficulty because it doesn't have achievements and it's a lot harder than trials.
* From the above section, it is recommended to clear Trial 1 D-340 before advancing in the game.
* Rewards
	+ In this game your reward is based on the ★ of the monster, room or equipment. The specific thing that you get is decided after this roll. For this reason having more 6★ equipment doesn't mean that you will find more of them, so is a good idea to only enable the equipment that you want to find in a run.
		- Generally, it is better to pick higher ★ monster over level, hp, atk, etc. When you become more comfortable playing the game, then begin to read and memorize skills so you can pick the right synergies for your boss.
		- The general guidance starting out is to max out number of rooms (boss relic selections, unlocked via buying packs), then max out with battle rooms and to make the most out of your succession Warhorn.
* In the mid-game (~10-100 hours of playing), Floria can carry you quite far.
* Read the FAQ. Update the Wiki when you have better understanding of the mechanics

## See also

* Frequently Asked Questions
* Release date
* System requirements
* Abyss shop guide

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