Dungeoneering… wtf?
It appears to me that there are great benefits to this skill when you get high enough to do a scroll, or get an item with tokens, but soloing is only possible if you play very low settings or you are 99 in all your combat skills, and you better hope that you don’t get disconnected, because there is no way of recovering your dungeon progress without a team to rejoin… and that is just lame as hell when you are in a big dungeon. (please note I was too lazy to research and find out if there is a better way / workaround of approaching it)
I got raped like a frail prison inmate when I went up against the ice thing that drops ice stuff from the ceiling, and I consider myself fairly skilled (I think I am a 118 or so combat now).
Now I have looked into dungeoneering a little bit more and here are some tidbits of information for the new dungeoneerer, that may protect you from unwarranted pummeling:
- Groups are definitely better if you want difficult settings.
- If you solo, don’t just go into a queueing room (like the one between the stairs), instead create a party with your ring with just you. Through this interface you can set the level and difficulty that you want.
- Go through every room that you can, and click on doors once (to see what is in the room without going in), and then when you are confident in your wielded weapon and armor, click again to go in.
- When you find the bosses room, don’t go in until you have decided the best armor, and maybe even gone through the whole dungeon again, to pick up any remaining resources (fishing spots, rocks to mine, etc.) or drops. You should also look for the boss in online guides if you haven’t played them before for useful weaknesses or powers. Please note that you cannot leave the boss room in the middle of the fight…
- If you are blocked by any high level obstacles (rocks requiring 105 mining, etc.), look into the various potions you can make to look for the right stat booster. Rewards can be quite high for getting through these.
- Read online guides that have information on the puzzles. Some of them are very, very easy if you understand the concept (ie running around the room flipping levers, arming statues with weapons, etc.), but just winging it can easily get you killed.
With all this in mind, the skill is approachable, but there are a number of things that they should work on to allow easier soloing.
In an FAQ session, the RS mods stated that they wanted to encourage teamwork with this skill. That is all well and good, but I don’t think that soloer (aka people who don’t want to be annoyed by group decisions, like splitting resources, or Obama’s healthcare) shouldn’t be held back by the way the skill is designed.
If nothing else, I hope they make it possible to go back into a partially completed dungeon that you were soloing. This would remedy the biggest problem.
I hope all is well with the readers, and I hope that this has been helpful to those of you getting started in Dungeoneering.
Thanks!
Warmstool