Dungeons

Dungeon Guides
Beginners may wish to start with Introduction to Dungeons, and then return here to fill in the details.

For those interested in a complete guide that is constantly being worked on and kept up to date, check out Malfat's Guide:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xdMtMl_pbxB3uXXKUn61Rx72VN1eaRuvdd0eAwp99_c/edit?usp=sharing

Dungeon Rewards
Pets can gather resources and craft them into weapons, armor and accessories, which they can equip. Pet equipment improves Pet dungeon stats, and also improves your God's stats (player attack, player HP, player Mystic, build speed and creation speed). Walking sticks and their upgrades grant a bonus to all campaigns.

Pets who are exploring a dungeon can also encounter various events which give permanent rewards, depending on the dungeon. Some of these rewards include God Power, Lucky Draws, pet stones, pet growth increases, and extra crafting resources. Dungeon runs must be a minimum of 6 rooms in order for events to trigger. If runs are greater than or equal to 6 rooms, then events can occur at any point, rooms 1-48 (60 after NRDC). Less then 6, no events will occur. See the Dungeon Drops and the Items/Materials list for details. Note: Traps may still occur even on shorter runs.

Pets can be evolved to a variety of classes that benefit dungeons and campaigns. See the Pet Evolution and Class section for details.

Dungeon Exploration
''Note: Times listed here are assuming no NRDC completions. NRDC is a challenge that lowers the amount of time required per dungeon room.''

Pets must be organized into teams (also called parties) which explore a Dungeon as a group. By default, you may only have one team at a time. Up to 5 additional team slots may be purchased (as of August 2021), one each of the following:
 * 300k pet stones
 * 10k of each infinity point (obtained via Infinity Towers)
 * 2000 of each gem (obtained via Challenge Dungeons)
 * 1000 challenge points
 * 1500 challenge points

Pets who are in a team may not go on campaigns, even if that team is currently idle.

Teams consist of up to 6 of your Pets, organized in two rows of up to 3 Pets each. Pets in the front row get attacked more often; Pets in the back row (except Mages) deal less damage.

Each team can be sent into one Dungeon at a time. You may select which Dungeon, how deep to go, and how long to explore (at 15 minutes per room, from 15 minutes for 1 room, up to 12 hours for 48 rooms, or 12 hours for 60 rooms if all NRDCs are completed). You may also select extra difficulty (monsters have higher stats and give more experience, with a higher chance of drops).

The following Dungeons are available:
 * Newbie Ground
 * Scrapyard
 * Forest
 * Volcano
 * Mountain
 * Water Temple

When you're just starting out it's best to start at the Newbie Ground until your Pets gain some Dungeon Experience Levels. Other Dungeons can be attempted when your party is around level 10.

Each Dungeon other than the Newbie Ground has 3 Depth levels. Depth 2 is substantially more challenging than Depth 1, and Depth 3 is much more difficult than Depth 2. Explorers are advised to stick to Depth 1 until they feel confident against Depth 1 with the Difficulty setting at maximum.

Every 15 minutes of exploration lets your Pets explore 1 room of a Dungeon. If your exploration is 6 rooms (90 minutes) or longer, the 6th room will be a Depth 1 Boss fight. (Since game version 3.14.1016.)

If you choose to explore Depth 2 or Depth 3, be aware that your Pets must travel through Depth 1 to get to Depth 2, and through Depth 2 to reach Depth 3. So, the shortest possible Dungeon trip that will reach Depth 2 is 7 rooms (an hour and 45 minutes), which will consist of 5 regular Depth 1 rooms, a Depth 1 Boss fight, and a single Depth 2 room.

If your exploration reaches Depth 2 or beyond, the Depth 2 boss will be encountered in the 16th room overall (4 hours). If your exploration reaches Depth 3, the Depth 3 boss will be encountered in the 30th room overall (7 hours and 30 minutes).

Dungeon Stats and Combat
Your pets, and the enemies found in the dungeon, have an element, 4 basic combat stats, and 4 elemental levels. The basic combat stats are Health (also known as HP), Attack, Defense and Speed.

The combat stats and elemental levels of the enemies are determined by the enemy type, and the difficulty level that you selected when you entered the dungeon.

The combat stats and elemental levels of your pets are determined by the pet's element, its Dungeon Level (DL), its class, its total growth, and the equipment it's wearing. The exact formulas for combat stats are as follows:


 * Health = (10 + 24*DL) *(1 + Growth/200000) *(Class modifier) *(Equipment modifier)
 * Attack/Defense/Speed = (1 + 2.4*DL) *(1 + Growth/200000) *(Class modifier) * (Equipment modifier)

The class modifiers are shown in the next section.

For example: A dungeon level 34 Assassin with 59337 growth, wearing armor with +27% Defense, has (1 + 2.4*34) *(1 + 59337/200000) *0.7 *1.27 = 95 Defense. The final values may be off by a few points due to inexact displayed equipment bonuses.

Element levels are calculated as follows:
 * If the pet is Neutral, each element level is 0.75 * DL.
 * If the pet is not Neutral, its primary element level is 50 + 2 * DL, its weak element level is -50, and the other two element levels are 0.
 * Elemental bonuses or penalties from equipment are added (or subtracted), never multiplied.

The weak element is the one above your pet's primary element on the dungeon list. Water is above fire, so fire is weak to water, and a fire pet will have -50 water element. Likewise, wind is weak to fire, earth is weak to wind, and water is weak to earth (wrapping around vertically).

Combat consists of one or more rounds (also called turns), in which your pets and the enemies attack each other. Your speed determines how many times you get to act in each round. At speed 0, you act once per round. For speeds up to 500, you get a (speed/5)% chance of a second action per round. Between 500 and 1500, you get a ((speed-500)/10)% chance of a third action per round, for a final cap of 3 actions per round at 1500 speed. Speed also determines the order of everyone's actions, with faster pets/enemies being more likely to act first.

Each time your pet acts, it will either use a special ability if it has one (e.g. Ghost's frightful scream or Hourglass's slowing power), or heal an injured pet (if it's a Supporter, and if any pets are sufficiently injured), or attack a random enemy (or several random enemies if it's a Mage).

In the case of a single enemy attack, damage is calculated as follows:
 * Start with the attacker's Attack value.
 * Subtract half of the defender's Defense value.
 * Determine which element is being used. For a non-Neutral attacker, this is the attacker's element.  For a Neutral attacker, the game looks at each element and uses whichever one has the largest difference between the attacker's and the defender's levels.
 * Multiply by the elemental factor: (1 + A/100) / (1 + D/100) where A is the attacker's element level and D is the defender's element level in the element that's being used. If D is negative, add abs(D) to A and set D to 0.
 * Multiply by the defense factor: 1 - (D / (D + 200)) where D is the defender's Defense value.
 * Apply class-specific factors.
 * Add speed damage: if the attacker's speed is higher than the defender's speed, subtract them, and then divide by 2. If the attacker's speed isn't higher, then there is no speed damage.
 * If the attacker is a pet in the back row, and isn't a Mage, then there's a 20% damage penalty.

Pet Evolution and Class
Each Pet has a separate dungeon level (and experience points) and class level (and experience points). These levels are independent of its normal stats and level. For example, a Pet may have normal level 1020, dungeon level 10, and class level 13.

The exp gained in dungeons contributes to both dungeon level and class level, except for a few cases. Adventurers and Alchemists gain dungeon levels like normal, but only earn class levels by campaigns/crafting respectively. Blacksmiths are unique, and gain class levels by crafting or doing dungeons since they have a use in both. The formula for crafting/campaign exp gain is 250 * (1 + growth/20000) * (hours crafting[in campaigns]) * (1 + crafter speed / 100)

The pet stone and ChP purchases that increase Adventurer XP are calculated afterward.

As you gather materials and fulfill special conditions you can also evolve your Pets, making them more useful in dungeons (or elsewhere). Evolution gives your Pets a new look, and lets you select a class. The following eight classes exist:
 * Adventurer - Gives a bonus to all regular Pet Campaigns. +2% per class level. This can be increased through Walking Sticks.
 * Alchemist - Refine materials from dungeons into higher tiers or consumables, or enchant equipment. The speed increases by 2% per class level. This can be increased with Pots.
 * Assassin - Deal increased damage to single targets. +5% damage to single targets per class level.
 * Blacksmith - Forge equipment your Pets can equip. Creation speed and quality increases by 2% per class level. This can be increased with Hammers. Also increases damage done by non-mages by 1% per class level when in dungeons.
 * Defender - Shields other Pets in the party and can take a lot of damage. It has a 50% chance to protect other pets and takes (10 + Class Level)% damage for other pets (maxed at Class Level 25). After CL 25, the defender's HP is increased by 1% for each additional Class Level.
 * Mage - Attacks multiple enemies per action and does full damage from the back row. Does only (35 + 1 * Class Level)% damage, but attacks 3 times per action. Every 20 class Levels, the number of attacks per action increases by 1.
 * Rogue - Very fast and boosts the drop chance of materials in dungeons. Increases drop chance by 3% per class level. Note, this buff to drop rate affects Ants and does not affect drop rate in Towers.
 * Supporter - Heals and buffs your party, still also attacks. The heal is equal to 10 + your attack * (Class level * 0.2). Starting at class level 10, it also reduces damage taken by 1% per class level to a max of 50%.

Some Pets get an additional bonus if you evolve them into a particular class. For example, the Rabbit gets a damage bonus if it's a Mage. In some cases, it's best to match the Pet's class to its special bonus; in other cases, it isn't.

A Pet that you plan to use primarily in campaigns (e.g. the Robot) should be evolved as an Adventurer class.

You will want at least one Blacksmith and one Alchemist as soon as you can reasonably get them, in order to begin crafting equipment, consumables and higher tier resources.

Dungeon Drops
All Depth 1 dungeons drop Tier 1 Materials of their Element which can be used by Alchemists and Blacksmiths to create other things. The boss for each dungeon (except Newbie Ground) also has a chance to drop matching Tier 2 Materials.

Depth 1
(*) Boss drop only.

Depth 2
(*) Boss drop only.

Depth 3
(*) Boss drop only.

Monsters
Each Dungeon and Depth has a pool of possible enemies:

Newbie Ground:

Scrapyard

Water Temple:

Volcano:

Mountain:

Forest:

Special Bosses
There are a variety of special fights you can trigger in the dungeons which provide a variety of unlocks and bonuses. Typically related to pets.

Mimic
Mimics are an elite mob that can be encountered at Depth 3 in any of the dungeons if your party items include the Nothing item. Each mimic encountered causes you to lose 1 Nothing you were carrying regardless of victory or loss. Mimics are tough fights that might require you to reduce the dungeon difficulty level, but compensate for it by providing you with massive amounts of XP when killed. If you can reliably kill them it is a good way to accelerate the dungeon level and class level of your pets, currently being the best available source of XP. They are also used to farm Mimic Points, which are used by the Treasure/Mimic pet. You will receive 1 Mimic Point per difficulty level you fight the mimic. For example, fighting a mimic at Difficulty 5 will give 5 mimic points per mimic defeated. Therefore, it is not recommended to fight mimics on Difficulty 0, since they do not give points (they will still be good XP, however).

Being a neutral enemy, it is recommended to have +20 enchanted gear with a neutral gem or two depending on gear. A maxed alchemist cape could be good for fighting mimics, since it boosts all elements as well as all stats. Having all pet elements > 0 is almost necessary for survival due to the way neutral element enemies deal damage. Because mimics have much higher stats than normal dungeon enemies, it is recommended to drop down a couple difficulty levels when first starting. It depends on your gear and pet levels, but typically if you are able to run D3-10 without mimics, you should be able to do D3-6 or D3-7 with mimics and then gradually work up to D3-10 mimics.

Chameleon
Chameleon is a special boss you will encounter in Depth 2 in the 5 specific element dungeon if your party items include at least 1 tier 3 mat for that dungeon (magic wood for forest, magic ore for scrapyard, etc) 'and' at least one pet of that element. It is around the difficulty of a Depth 2 Difficulty 2 boss. Once you defeat chameleon in a specific element it will no longer appear. Once you defeated all 5 you will you be able to recruit Chameleon as a pet. The strategy for each boss is about the same as the normal dungeon boss that appears. Have the ability to run each dungeon at D2-2 or D2-3 before attempting these fights.

Chameleon's element values change depending on the dungeon it is fought in. For example, Volcano Chameleon has 250 Fire and 50 for all other elements. Forest Chameleon has 250 Earth and 50 for all others. Etc. The exception is with Scrapyard Chameleon, who has 120 for all elements.

Nothing
Nothing is a special boss that will replace the D2 boss for scrapyard if you fulfill the required conditions. Defeating it will unlock the pet Nothing (Other). Strategies for the Nothing fight can be found on the Nothing (Other) pet page.

Evolved Balrog
Evolved Balrog comes in two different forms depending on whether you defeated it before or not. It replaces the D3 boss of the volcano if your volcano team contains the pet Balrog and you are doing difficulty 10. It is stronger than the normal D3-10 boss in volcano. The first evolved Balrog you fight is stronger, has 1 million HP initially, and retains HP damage between fights so you can kill it slowly over multiple encounters. Subsequent Evolved Balrogs you fight will have 200k HP and it will not be retained between different dungeon instances.

Evolved Balrog has a massive self-heal that can be prevented if your party contains the pet Wizard in it, making it effectively mandatory. Also bringing in shiny stone and magic ore will weaken Evolved Balrog. The reward for beating the first Evolved Balrog is allowing you to evolve your own pet Balrog. The reward for subsequent victories is that it drops Balrog Horn. The pet Balrog gets additional HP which scales linearly with the number of Balrog Horns you own

Super Rogue Shadow Clone
Super Rogue Shadow Clone (SRSC) is a special boss that replaces the newbie ground boss if your party items include at least 1 Shadow Essence which is not consumed. Shadow Essence is obtained by defeating the newbie grounds boss with Undine in the party. SRSC is roughly as strong as the Scrapyard D2-5 boss. It drops Magic Shadow Essence with a base drop rate of 50%. This drop rate can be increased with Rogues and Lucky Talismans. Be sure to bring along enough Rogues (usually 1 or 2) to buff that rate to at least 100% to speed up the process. Magic Shadow Essence is used during the creation and improvement of the pet Undine

Note: Undine does not need to be in the party for SRSC to spawn. You do, however, need to bring regular Shadow Essence (the non-magical variant) to get SRSC to spawn.

loof slirpa
loof slirpa is aprils fool spelled backwards. it is a special boss that replaces the newbie ground boss if your party items include at least 1 A.F. coin. It has scaling difficulty based on the number of coins you bring in with you. It does not drop any reward so fighting it is pointless beyond the joke factor.

Wolf of Nobina
You can fight this boss if you take 1 Runestone with you to the Newbie Ground and fight 6 rooms. Winning this fight will give you Gram.

This boss has an incredibly high amount of speed and can quickly overwhelm your team if you aren't prepared. A team with an average dl of 160-170 should be fine here as long as you have Hourglass and Elephant in the team. If you do not have these pets or would rather fight without them, you could need a team of dl 200+.

Since the boss has so much speed, it is recommended that you utilize speed gear/gems to minimize the bonus damage it will be inflicting as well as having enough speed to be able to hit the boss since it has the ability to dodge your attacks if you're too slow.

Best Team Composition For This Fight
Front row: Elephant, Dog, Archer

Back row: Hourglass, Supporter, Dragon

Team Example
The following team is to give you an idea of the setup required to win this fight. This team was able to defeat the boss on turn 49.



Fawn/Wisps
You can fight this battle if you take 2 Runestones and only 5 party members with you to the Newbie Ground and reach the boss room. This fight can only happen after you have defeated Nobina previously and received Gram. Note that this boss will not show up if Gram is being gemmed by a blacksmith.

The goal in this fight is to heal Fawn to 4 million hp. The percent based heal power of your supporters is disabled in this fight. The Wisps do a lot of damage so your whole front row needs very good defense, and because the percent based heal power is disabled, water gems on your equip are not very useful. The back row supporters should go for full attack and hope they don't get attacked often.

A good team in this battle would be 2 defenders and 3 supporters. Neutral pets are at an advantage and hourglass helps to keep your supporters on 3 actions because the enemies will slow your pets down, potentially halving your speed. Both defenders want to have at least 4000 defense with all elements positive and hourglass, in the front row, wants to have more than 1000 defense with all elements positive. It is best to have all, or most pets in the team higher than level 200/55 with 150k+ growth or you will likely lose. This implies that you use maxed T3 equip. With T4 equip it would be easier but getting T4 equip is still very costly.

Winning this fight will upgrade Gram to SSS +22 (22). This will increase the attack to 79, all elements to 90 and the extra exp gained to 22%.

Good Team Composition For This Fight
Front row: Dog, Anything (defender, maxed titanium equip with earth gems), Hourglass (supporter, Titanium Armor with earth gem, Inferno Sword + Inferno Gloves with fire gem)

Back row: Any two supporter specialists (supporter, one supporter Gram with fire gem, all other equip inferno with fire gem)

Zombie General
You can fight this battle if you take 3 Runestones with you to the Newbie Ground and reach the boss room. This fight can only happen after you have defeated both Nobina and Fawn/Wisps previously and received Gram and its upgrade. Note that this boss will not show up if Gram is being gemmed by a blacksmith.

The Zombie General has a shield, which is impenetrable by dungeon class pets. This means you need adventurers to destroy the shield. For this fight, you need a high damage output and because you also need ~2 adventurers, there is no place for a defender in the team. The Zombie General also has a defense buff, which gives him high defense for a set amount of hits. This means it is highely reccommended to use mages in this fight.

Winning this fight will upgrade Gram to SSS +24 (24). This will increase the attack to 86, all elements to 97 and the extra exp gained to 24%.

Good Team Compositions For This Fight
Front row: Supporter (Neutral is best), Assassin (Archer with bow or mimic), 1 adventurer (bursting knives, 1000+ speed)

Back row: 2 Mages (BHC + Balrog. Full damage, but should survive a hit, so Balrog might want full inferno with at least one neutral gem, or above 10k hp, BHC will easily survive with full inferno with fire gems), 1 adventurer (bursting knives, 1000+ speed)

About dungeon level 100 is enough for the adventurers. The other pets should all be above level 250/60 and 150k growth.

Lernean Hydra
You can fight this battle if you take 4 Runestones with you to the Newbie Ground and reach the boss room. This fight can only happen after you have defeated all previous Patreon bosses and received Gram and its upgrades. Note that this boss will not show up if Gram is being gemmed by a blacksmith.

When one of your pets kills a head, two more heads will spawn (up to 25), which typically causes an ultimate combined attack, and a loss. The only way to prevent this is to have Heracles (PBaal v32) join the team. He will auto-join once there are 25 Hydra Heads...if you left them an empty spot on the team.

With every attack, the Hydra Heads will also poison your pets with a unique toxin. This poison will stack, and will deal damage based on the number of stacks the pet has every turn. You can use an Antidote every turn to reduce these stacks by one per pet per round. Alternatively, you can bring the Hydra pet to the fight, who prevents the poison from being applied in the first place. This makes it easier, but is not mandatary.

Heracles has another ability vital for the fight...only he can prevent the heads from doubling on death. Your own damage dealers should kill less than one head per turn at average, otherwise the fight will never end and the room will collapse at round 50. Even Heracles can't save you from rocks falling.

Each Hydra Head has 40,000 hp, low Defense, and good Elements.

A level 350+/100 Archer with 200k growth + a cl 100 Blacksmith would do too much damage. If you have pets that strong, consider a Defender instead of a Blacksmith. Or bring a slightly weaker Assassin. Mages will not help you as much as you would think in this fight.

That all is phase one. There is another one that happens once Heracles has crushed enough heads...but it is fairly straight forward.

For the second phase, the Lernean Hydra's main body comes to fight you. It has almost 1.5 million HP, and scales that prevent Knives from reducing its Defense all the way to 0...so have fun with that. Heracles is your pinch hitter.

Good Team Composition For This Fight
Front row: 2 Assassins (Archer + Mimic) or Assassin + Defender, and 1 Blacksmith

Back row: 1 Supporter, Hydra

The Blacksmith and Supporter should both use T3 Knives. Blacksmith and Hydra should have above 1000 speed, better 1500. Water element would be best to mitigate damage taken, otherwise using at least one T3 Water equip for pets with less than 100 water helps. For the Hydra pet, a dungeon level of 120-150 is enough, but your Assassins might want to be level 280+ with ~200k growth and a mimic multiplier of > 2. The Blacksmith should have a class level of 65+.

I would suggest making the Hydra the Blacksmith, if there are enough Pet Stones / CC Tokens to spare.

Ghost is a possibility, but they can only scream at six Hydra Heads out of 25-ish, and there is no guarantee that they will be the ones hit that round. That said, it can be helpful.

Winning this fight will upgrade Gram to SSS +26 (26). This will increase the attack to 93, all elements to 104 and the extra exp gained to 26%.

Delirious Essence of the Forgotten
When you go into newbie ground with Aether Ring in your party items, you will fight this boss. It becomes stronger each time it is defeated. Each time it is defeated it will improve the Aether Ring, which improves the Aether pet. The ring's item name changes to Aether Ring +n, and the pet improves its growth campaign penalties/bonuses and also gains a growth bonus of (0.2 * Total Challenge Points) You will need to defeat it 25 times to evolve Aether.

Party formation will change the more fights you have completed. Keep a close eye on the battle logs to see where you may need to swap out a pet for another. For the later fights, you will most likely need at least 2 defenders and at least 2 supporters. Being a Neutral-type enemy, having all pet elements > 0 is vital due to the way Neutral enemies attack. Examples of team compositions are available on the Aether pet page. As of now, not many late-game players have Tier 4 equipment. As good Tier 4 equipment becomes easier to get through higher level blacksmiths and higher Infinity Tower floors, the later Essence fights will become accessible. Currently there is a softcap around fight 50, as the difficulty is too high for current equipment.