Introduction to Dungeons

Initially made and edited by nonomo4 with the information provided by the ITRTG discord. This guide was built with the help of the discord community, so please feel free to add your input if there's something that isn't right. After all, this is just a community guide at the end of the day.

Introduction
Welcome. This guide is here to help you with your dungeon progression. This will hopefully help you understand what you should be doing to start progressing in dungeons for all players alike.

The New Player (non-token)
When you are just starting, you generally won't have enough pets until you reach Odin. But once you obtain your 6th pet, you are ready to begin your dungeon journey. Trust me when I say it's better than doing normal Pet Campaigns.


 * Note: There's a pet called Bug that you can unlock if you press the feedback button. I'd recommend making it into a Blacksmith(BS), as a non-specialist fire BS is decent for this stage of the game if you aren't using tokens. As for the other pets, I'd still recommend the roles mentioned below. 3 BSs may feel like a lot, but you'll eventually find yourself making good use of the sheer number of BSs you have.

Initial Team
Unless you used a token or obtained a pet via an event, these will likely be your first six pets. Your first task is to send them into the Newbie Training Grounds to get enough levels(~10) for your first elemental dungeon.

Eventually, you will send your pets to the Mountain Dungeon, which will help your pet growth and pet level.

For D1 dungeons, pet level is the main deciding factor. A team of level 50s should do well at this depth, regardless of class, gear and items. I'm not saying that you should do this, but this is something to keep in mind.

Swapping Out Pets
As you progress outside of dungeons, you gradually acquire more pets. While you can obtain pets via tokens, we are assuming you haven't spent any yet. At this point, you will likely have Squirrel, Rabbit and God Power. Out of the three, Squirrel and Rabbit will replace Bee and Mouse respectively.

Now your team should be the following:

Evolving Your Pets
Bee should be your first Alchemist and Mouse should be a Blacksmith. Having a Blacksmith early will help you prepare the minimal pet gear that's recommended to reach depth 2.

For more details on the importance of Blacksmiths and Alchemists, please see Crafting.

As I said, you can depth 2 with sheer levels, but it's definitely faster to work on gears, items, and classes.

Team Setup
Your pets should be well on their way, levelling up slowly but surely. As they do this, we can begin thinking about the classes and gear of the pets.

Classes

If you still have the same team, then it is recommended you chose the following classes for your team.

A pet's class decides their role in a team. Defenders help protect other pets. Supporters make sure everyone stays healthy. Rogues improve the loot. Assassins and Mages provide most of the damage.

At this point, team positioning becomes more important. Each pet should have a place in either the front row or back row. You want to make sure your Cupid, Armadillo, and Egg are in front, with the other 3 in the back.


 * * While Cupid's special ability only activates as an Adventurer, we will replace Cupid with Fairy in our dungeon team pretty early on. Thus, instead of an Adventurer, we will be turning Cupid into a Blacksmith for the extra crafting help in preperation of the swap, which will remove the need for an expensive class change later on.


 * * This guide is mainly to give you the basic information you need to progress. Please refer to Dungeons for details about each class.

Gear

Your Mouse (and Bug, if you have it) should be hard at work crafting the gear you need at this point. The gear listed above is specifically for Mountain. If you move these pets to other dungeons, the required gear may be different.

Note: While fire gear may add increased damage in mountain, many players advise wind armor instead to increase survivability.

Before upgrading any gear, you will want to craft at least something to fill the slots. After all, something is better than nothing. Only when your team is properly geared and the starting rank is good enough that you begin upgrading pieces of gear.

Do note that you want to upgrade your Mage's gear above the rest, as they are your primary damage dealer. After all, a good offence can power your way through.

Players should look at Equip to understand the value of the stats on each piece of gear. Knowing what each stat is for is essential for maximizing your pets' potential, as the combination gear stats can determine a party's success or failure.

Now you have learned a bit about pet gear, you may be wondering how you get the material for these? You will have the material for wind gear because you've been working on Mountain, but fire and earth material will be in shorter supply. As a result, you'll need to send a team to the respective dungeons for resources.

Items

You may want to start using party items as well. For Mountain, you can bring flying boots to mitigate damage and prevent your pets from being stalled in the dungeon. You can bring healing potions so that pets are less likely to die. Feathers from the pet trader can be used to revive your pets if they die, saving your resources. For those with tons of Pet Stones (likely not the new player), there are talismans that give exp and drop boosts.

Items are valuable, as they make dungeons easier and more valuable. D1 dungeons will not require items, but they will matter more as you reach more depth.

Two More Dungeons
At a certain point, you probably should have 2 dungeons teams unlocked. However, it's possible that this isn't the case. This next section will be split into two to cover both dungeons.

Second Dungeon Team Locked
Your biggest roadblock would likely be not having the second team slot. That, or you don't have 12 pets. This means that you'll be sending your Mountain team straight into Volcano and Forest for gear materials. As I mentioned earlier, depth 1 is all about levels. If your team is levelled enough, you can power through anything.

Make sure to adjust the difficulty, as your team isn't normally meant for these two dungeons and thus will have a harder time doing them. If you have extra pets, you will want to adjust the team to better fight the dungeon. For Volcano, you want 3 fire element pets. For Forest, you want pet food in your items to gain growth (the growth depends on the food used). Paying close attention to these requirements will help you get extra value from the dungeons.

Unlocking More Dungeon Teams
There are a few ways to obtain extra team slots. If you are a new player, then the easiest is to do daily Challenge Dungeons. Challenge Dungeons give gems, which can be traded in for a second team slot.

The other option is to spend 300k Pet Stones to unlock it. This can be obtained over time through various methods, but the easiest way to obtain this amount is just by buying it directly or getting lucky with your Lucky Draws.

The last option is to spend 1k Challenge Points to obtain it. If you're a veteran player, this should be relatively easy. For most people, this is likely their 4th ChP purchase, right after UB damage reduction, Exp Overflow, and Auto Half Stat.

Regardless of which method you pick, the second main requirement for a second dungeon team is to have enough pets.

Newer players will have to make a choice. Either divert pets away from their Growth Campaign, or not use a 2nd dungeon team. Growth is important, so not using a second team isn't a bad choice if your growth campaign is developing.

Fielding your second team with random pets can be acceptable. The main goal is to have this team obtain resources to help grow your first team. Even if they are farming the first difficulty of a dungeon, that is still growth.

Of course, eventually, you should have a proper second team, but that's later down the line for a new player.

Depth 2
If you've been following this guide, you should be ready for D2 dungeons. This section will go over a list of things that you either should be working towards or have done to beat depth 2. While you don't need to do everything listed, having them done would make your first D2 easier.

Preperation

 * Your pets should be working on reaching levels 35-45. At level 35 and with proper class evolutions, they could potentially beat D2 with a lot of gear and items. However, reaching higher levels significantly reduces the gear, item and class requirements. At 45 and above, you should be able to brute force it with minimal gear and barely any class levels.
 * Pet Gear should still be T1's around this point. This is because most of your resources should go towards making a good hammer. Getting a T2 SSS+20 hammer is much better than spending resources on other things. Of course, it isn't expected for you to have the hammer at this point, but this is what you should focus on. For the exact gear you should have, everyone except your defender should have elemental matching weapons, fire swords, or knives depending on what gear you can/have available. Defenders should have a pot or knives. Your armor and accessories for your damage dealer should match the pet element. Your armor and accessories for your non-damage dealers should match the dungeon element.

The Veteran/Token Player
Even veterans and token players will start with Scrapyard and move into Mountain. However, they likely have more pets or have the ability to gain pets faster. As a result, this next section will be targeted at the veteran players who have a decent number of pets and are looking to get into dungeons with a better team.

Building Your Team
The key to building this team is to understand what you need for D2 and D3 Mountain. For example, you will need 2 defenders once you get into Mountain D2 and above. You will also want 2 wind pets to take advantage of the Mountain D1 growth event, and/or 2 neutral pets for the Mountain D3 growth event. With this in mind, you can look through your pets and determine which fits these criteria the best.

For example, Armadillo and Valkyrie are often cited as two solid defenders you can bring. Armadillo is easy to evolve, meaning that you will have one defender within D1. Valkyrie will take more time to evolve due to her evolution requirements.

Looking ahead to D3, satisfying all the events requires a well-selected party. Valkyrie fulfils one of the two defenders for the D2 event, as well as one of the two wind pets for the D1 growth event. Dog is a great choice for the second defender, as it also satisfies one of the neutral pets needed for the D3 growth event.

If you find yourself swapping pets as you progress. This is perfectly normal. Replacing Armadillo with Dog is just one example, and remember that this will free up Armadillo to serve elsewhere (perhaps Forest, Scrapyard or RTI).

Tier List of Dungeon Pets to Token

 * Also refer to Early Token Pets

Last updated July 2021 This list of token pets that I recommend if you don't care much for pets that help your god or if you have these pets and want to know which non-god pets are good picks. I'll explain each option and go into detail on why they are in their current spots. Note: Despite me tiering them, certain pets can be priorities over other pets depending on your circumstances. As a result, determine if a pet fits your needs first before tokening them.


 * Tier 1: Hermit Crab, Ghost, Question, Donut
 * Tier 2: Penguin, Rudolph, Santa, Wizard, Elephant, Pegasus, Phoenix
 * Tier 3: Fire Fox, Tanuki, Panda, Raven, Vaccina, Robot

Tier 1 pets are either key pets or useful pets that are easy to evolve.
 * Hermit Crab is a first-choice pet for 2 reasons. The first is that early on, you want a Blacksmith as fast as possible. While Mouse is a good choice and while I do recommend Cupid, both of them are wild-cards and not specialist pets. Specialist pets are better than their non-specialist counterparts since they eventually out-scale non-specialists with their class bonus. Since crab is an easy-to-evolve Blacksmith, you generally should get it first unless you can get another Blacksmith specialist pet online faster.


 * Ghost is one of the best pets to push difficulties with and is one of the few Rogue pets in the game. Due to Rogues being used to farm resources and meet event conditions, having more Rogues is generally a good thing. Even without its class bonus, the Ghost's special ability makes it a great pet to help with fights. Ghost can reduce the attack and defence of enemies if their attack is higher than their defence. This can mean a boss that is killing you suddenly does less damage and takes more damage, leading to an easy kill.


 * Question is one of the few easy-to-evolve Alchemists. As an Alchemist specialist, Question will craft materials faster than non-specialists. Alternatively, you can turn Question into a Wildcard due to how easy it is to evolve. If you don't have many Alchemists, then Question can serve as a dungeon filler pet to fill a class. Keep in mind that class changes cost resources, so you may just want to keep it an Alchemist at the start.


 * Donuts bonus can be completely ignored, making it the perfect easy to evolve wild-card. Early on, having more Alchemists and Blacksmiths can really speed up your progress. Other than that, it can perfectly fill any dungeon role you need without worrying about class change. Despite the importance of mighty food, it becomes more available later on and the need for Donut to do food camps eventually disappears.

Tier 2 are good choices, but not priority. They are more conditional compared to tier 1 pets.
 * Penguin is one of two water Assassins specialists. The other, Shark, often becomes an Adventurer because of its growth camp bonus. As a result, Penguin is ab obvious choice for a water Assassin. The need for a water Assassin can vary, but it generally is used to kill bosses faster, especially in Volcano - one of the most common dungeons to run. The Penguin's element and special ability make it a top choice of tier 2.


 * Rudolph is an easy Rogue to evolve. As I mentioned above, Rogues are very important for meeting dungeon requirements and improving loot, making it another top choice of tier.


 * Santa is a recommended pet for Volcano. As Volcano generally requires 3 fire pets for the main team in D3, Santa will be filling the roles along with Squirrel and Elephant. While Squirrel is the easiest of the 3 to get, Santa is arguably the most important. As the only fire supporter specialist, you'll end up trusting in it to heal your team. Due to the importance of a specialist in D2 onward, it is strongly recommended to unlock Santa at some point before D3 Volcano.


 * Wizard is often a good choice early on as a Mage to beat Forest. Mages are the main damage dealers in a team and having a mage with elemental advantage makes life way easier. That being said, Forest isn't a high-priority dungeon early on. Due to this, you may opt to get Wizard later when you have unlocked more teams or if you need to farm Forest a lot.


 * Elephant is one of the 3 key pets, just like Santa. However, it's hard to evolve with the 30k growth requirement. Due to this, it's a good late choice since you may still need to develop your Growth Chamber (10 top growth pets) to be able to raise a pet to 30k growth. If you can get a pet easily to 30k growth, then you can get Elephant sooner. It's also a fine pet to get way before the evolution if you want to train it up to be ready as soon as it gets enough growth.


 * Pegasus is not a super easy pet to evolve without decent god progress. That is why it's not a higher priority. However, since it is a specialist wind Blacksmith, it still is a pet to consider getting at some point.


 * Phoenix is an Alchemist that is moderately easy to evolve. It's a good choice only if you are trying to get more Alchemists.

Tier 3 are by no means bad token pets. These are just in tier 3 due to them having high evolution difficulties (excluding Robot). If you want to argue they should be a higher priority, it probably means you need them already and should token them.
 * Fire Fox is the best fire Blacksmith. The only reason it is in T3 is that it has a lower evolution priority (in my opinion) over its counterparts (Santa and Elephant). Once you do have those two evolved, then I highly recommend getting and evolving Fire Fox.


 * Tanuki has the same priority as Panda. Tanuki is the only neutral Supporter specialist, and is important when you eventually a need neutral Supporter. However, you will generally want to get an elemental Supporter specialist before it. If you are in a position to get and evolve it, then I do recommend picking it.


 * Panda has the same priority as Tanuki. However, as an earth supporter, you will use him in Forest. His value is only slightly higher than Tanuki, so you can get either. You should pick the one you can evolve easier.


 * Raven is a wind Rogue specialist. Its priority is this low because you'll probably evolve Rudolph before Raven, decreasing the need for another wind specialist. However, it's not wrong to get more if you can evolve it.


 * Vaccina is a harder-to-evolve Alchemist. Due to this, its priority as a token pet is generally low, but you can get it earlier if you want to start the path to unlocking and evolving both Corona and Vaccina.


 * Robot is at the bottom because won't get Robot for its specialist role until extremely late game. Besides that, it's generally a top pick that I will not argue against. Just understand it won't help with dungeons directly. It'd only help with growth camps, which indirectly help dungeons. If you ask me, growth chamber pets are probably top priority, but they don't directly help with dungeons.