DUNGEONEERING

When I saw the update that Dungeoneering was out, I was intrigued. That is was the new skill in itself, I was completely pulled in. This is a new skill? The ability to explore dungeons?

Sweeeeeet.

Not just that, but explore randomly generated dungeons with four friends, increasing in the level of difficulty with each floor, and given limited resources to fight against in an attempt to stay alive for as much experience as possible. Double-sweet. Here I am, hoping that they would bring out some more multiplayer coop quests or something, and they respond by bringing out these fantastically coded dungeons and online multiplayer event that could last for hours on end should you find the right team.

And find the team, you should. The only best way to train is if you team up with a full group. Forget the experience from the other skills, having four strong buddies who know what they’re doing will get you the fastest possible Dungeoneering experience, and this is where being involved in a community comes into play. You have a bunch of guys that know you (for your wit, hopefully), you’re more likely going to not only get their help, but enjoy the experience.

Don’t get me wrong, though. If you solo, you have the opportunity to get tonnes of experience on your own. Especially runecrafting. But all in all, no matter how you train, tried, tested and true Runescape methods will forever surpass anything you find down there, so if you really want to improve yourself for better Dungeoneering ability, I suggest you do it outside Daemonheim.

So, all that in effect, I decided it was time to give it a try. I log on and find the majority of my friends are already level 20+, and none of them are willing to take a low-level like me through the earlier gauntlet because … well, they wouldn’t get much experience for levels, would they? A kind level 130 pulled me through a bunch of levels to bring me up to level 16, but I think I’m going to stay there for a while unless I gather up some friends who are lower levels than I, let myself go back up to an earlier floor, and help bring them through the dungeon.

I know you guys really want to train the skill and get the fastest possible experience, but come on! You all zoom ahead, you leave us poor, yes-lifers behind! What have we done to deserve this!

… I’m only kidding, you guys. All I gotta do is jump on a good world and let myself get invited by some newbie group, and they’ll help pull me through. Or I’ll help them. Either way, at one point we’ll all get to the same level, and then it’s only a matter of continuing the process together. Good way to make new friends, in my opinion.

TRAINING

So. Training. You want a high level, eh? Then this is what you do.

First off, if you have time, ALWAYS do complexity 6. I know it gets tough, with puzzles and whatnot, but if you do complexity level 6 at the lowest level floor you’ve got, you’re pretty much guaranteed a level or two in your skill. Repeat however necessary.

If you don’t quite have an hour to yourself and want some quick experience, do complexity 3. It’s enough for a challenge, some good experience, and a little bit of an experience boost in some good skills like mining, smithing, and runecafting.

If you only have 10 minutes, then go ahead and do complexity level 1. A quick bout of experience and tokens where you do nothing but run around and kill everything you see for food. Good for combat, good for Dungeoneering experience, but you’re going to have to do it several dozen times if you want a level. You’re much better off at complexity 6 if you want the levels.

I’ll summarize it a bit for you. If you have a couple of hours, you’ll do complexity 6 and get a bunch of levels. If you only have about 10-15 minutes at a time, do a couple of complexity 1-3 rounds for that bit of experience that will add up should you do it every day.

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

Everybody is complaining that this is no skill; it’s a mini-game! It’s a mini-game that you play, like Castle Wars, that you get experience and stuff the better you do at it. What sort of a skill involves you just playing some mini-game that hardly is used in the rest of the Runescape world?

Guys, look around you. If you have a better hatchet, you chop more wood. If you have better herbs, you make better potions. Are you having fun pulling those sharks out of the water with your bare arm?

Runescape IS A GAME! Adding a mini-game skill to a game is basically adding tomatoes to a burger! Sure, many people don’t like its taste, but to those that do, it’s an entirely new addition of flavor and excitement to an otherwise bland food object.

You play Runescape to train your skills. Dungeoneering is no different, except the manner of training is a little more complicated. Even still, it’s hardly all that different from slayer, now that I think about it. Slayer, you get an assignment and you go fight stuff, and you get experience after they’re dead. Dungeoneering, you enter a floor and you go fight stuff, and you get experience after they’re dead. … and you go up some stairs. Yeah.

And what’s wrong with having a mini-game based skill? Don’t you guys play Fist of Guthix and PK for ranking? How’s that any different from a skill level?

I think everybody is just annoyed that they didn’t get a skill like “sailing”. … as though anybody’d want a skill like that. I like what Jagex did. They presented us with something unique in an MMORPG (a variation of the Mystery Dungeon), and it’s familiar to all of us as a mini-game which portrays it’s optionality. A Runescape player does not have to train Dungeoneering to get good at Runescape.

And what if it did? We’d have riots. There was quibble over how summoning gave us combat levels and made the rest of us seemingly less strong.

No, they did good. I like it. So what if it’s a mini-game? Who cares? It’s fun, it’s useful, and it’s rewarding in the more important skills. So stop bickering about it and just enjoy it! If it took them this many months and experiments to make, that’s what they’d want you to do.

Cheers, cannoneers!