Dungeon Maker 2: The Hidden War -- Dungeon Building Tips ////Table of Contents////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// To locate the section you wish to read, do a search for the text in the right-most column. Make sure to include the brackets, i.e. 1) Introduction/Versions (Who am I and why do you care ) 2) FAQ (or, ask and ye shall be noticed...) 3) Dungeon Basics (Dungeons for Dummies ) 4) Dungeon Depth (Got a shovel? Gonna need it. ) 5) Dungeon Rating (A+ report cards comin up ) 6) Elements (Burn, baby burn.... ) 7) Tips 'n Tricks (The better to watch you with ) 8) Contact Info (So you can pester me with 1337N355) 9) Legal Info (The better to please the lawyers. ) //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ////1)Introduction/Versions//////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// V1.00, Feb 13th 2009 Started writing the guide. Basics, Depth, and Rating sections mostly complete. Elements section started. Tips section started. Submit your suggestions via my contact info! To Do: Make a section for all the room/corridor modifications, what mobs they make appear, and other such things. Also To Do: Get someone to make me a nifty ASCII art. You'll get credit! So you're playing Dungeon Maker 2, eh? You want to make the most out of your day in the good 'ol hole? Well, read on, sir or madam, I'll try to make my words count. This guide is for people who are familiar with the basics of dungeoneering, in other words people who've played through the first couple floors of the dungeon. You should understand how to place rooms, how to move between floors, and other such concepts. PLEASE don't ever ask me how to do basic things, you won't like the response. Beyond that, I intend this guide to provide observations on the mechanics of dungeon making. Since I have no official guide to work from, this is purely from my own in-game experience. My goal here is to help you understand a bit of how the game dumps monsters into your dungeon, and to help you get more out of each trip. This guide is meant to be read from start to finish, and I get wordy, so I apologize in advance for length. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ////2)Frequently Asked Questions/////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Q) How do I open 's boss room? A) It's all a matter of rating and time. The higher the floor's rating, the faster the boss door will open. Oftentimes, just coming back and checking every couple days, you will find the door mysteriously open even though you changed nothing. In general, you'll need at least a 50 rating to get a door to open reasonably quickly. Q) How do I beat ? A) Learn to guard. Beyond that, save your game before you go in and die a lot. Alternately, ask someone else, or wait for me to get enough requests for a boss guide. Q) How do I find ? A) It's in your dungeon. Where? Don't ask me, that's not what this FAQ is for. Q) Your FAQ suxx! L2write, noob! A) In english, please, and next time, email me something constructive. I'm doing this the community's benefit, not my own - if you can do it better, please feel free to do so! I certainly won't mind. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ////3)Dungeon Basics/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// By now, you should know that your dungeon has floors. Each floor is slightly larger than the last, slightly 'deeper,' and has different monsters. In the course of this FAQ, we're going to cover how to get the most out of each floor. First, I want to point out that this game is very random in its selection of monsters and drops per floor. Don't ever expect to find something on the first try after you get to the fourth floor or so. Some drops will take you days of gametime to reach (I was on floor 9 before I got a silver wolf throat from floor 4.) I'm going to discuss corridors and rooms, and how they change how monsters appear in your dungeon. Later, we'll get into elements, rating, and depth. Monsters, the game tells us, like deep places in your dungeon that are hard to get to. In other words, they don't like dungeons full of straight lines and no intersections. Therefore, building lots of straight lines will get you worse monsters than a twisty maze of intersections and side branches. Rooms are a major part of your dungeon, because they can be changed to directly attract a certain type of monster. For instance, Trash Dumps attract slimes. Add one on a fire-element floor, and you'll get lots of fire-element slimes in that room. Rooms also add lots of points to your floor's rating, so be sure to have lots of rooms in your dungeon. Corridors can be one of five types: Dirt (unmodified,) Wood, Stone, Marble, and elemental. If there's any others, I haven't found them yet. Dirt corridors generally contain only beasts, such as bats, bugs, cats and dogs. Wood corridors contain lots of beasts, but more intelligent monsters such as goblins, kobolds, and orcs will begin to appear rarely. Stone corridors will contain much fewer beasts and quite a few more brainy monsters. Marble corridors are the 'best' non-elemental corridor, and will often contain rarer monsters. Elemental corridors GREATLY increase the odds of having monsters of their element appear. Certain monsters will only appear in a corridor of their element, so having lots of elemental corridors on the matching floor is a good thing. More on this later. Now, on to depth and rating, and how they influence monsters. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ////4)Dungeon Depth//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Your dungeon is rated based on two things: Depth and Rating. The deeper it is, the more monsters will appear. The higher the rating (per floor and overall,) the better the monsters that appear will be. This is GENERAL. Some days you'll find lots of mobs on a low depth floor. Some days you'll find few on a high depth one. Depth is measured from the entrance to the level to a particular point. The more corridors there are between the start and the point, the deeper that point is. The depth you see when you use 'Warp' magic to move between floors is the very deepest depth encountered on a floor. Depth is somewhat cumulative between floors. Building your higher floors deeper will increase the depth of the floors beneath them as well. Don't do what I did and scavenge materials from higher floors to build lower ones! Take a couple days of gametime to gather cash, if you have to, it'll be much easier. As I said, depth is measured point by point. Rooms near the start of the floor are less deep than rooms near the end. Put rooms where you want special monsters to appear toward the end of your floor. Boss rooms and Attribute Scale rooms especially. Related to this, stairways should be placed as deep from the entrance as is possible to maximize depth between floors. See the tips 'n tricks section for some good ways to build stairway rooms near each other, yet far 'n deep away, and thus maximize building space to make more depth. --===MAJOR TIP===-- TAKE THE TIME to move your stairways apart from each other, if they are right next to each other. My spur to write this guide was discovering that I could increase my floor nine from 124 depth to _477_ by shifting my stairways apart. It took me a couple hours to work out each floor to fit the new design, but it was well worth it. Again, see the Tips 'n Tricks section for how to accomplish this. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ////5)Dungeon Rating/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Dungeon rating is measured in two ways: Floor and Overall. The Overall rating may just be the Floor rating added up, I'll check that and look back later. There's a reward from the town castle via the Old Soldier for getting your Overall rating over 500. What it is, I don't remember, so don't ask. Floor rating determines the rarity of monsters that can appear on a floor. Unlike depth, I don't think rating is influenced by how deep a point in the floor is, but rather is a general rating that pushes monsters to be better, drop more money and items, and increase the odds of special rooms/doors opening up for you. To increase rating, simply build rooms and modify them. Modifying corridors has yet to give me any noticable increase in overall rating at the end of the day, so you don't need to spaz out getting marble on every floor (although it DOES tend to produce rarer monsters if you can afford it.) Larger rooms can have more monsters appear in them. Unmodified rooms, just like unmodified corridors, will only have beasts and the occasional humanoid in them to distract you. Modified rooms have MUCH better monsters, and by better I mean more likely to drop more gold and items. Also of note are two special rooms, the Fountain and Fruit Tree rooms. These rooms increase the monster density in and near their location. They don't change what monsters appear, but can make them more likely to do so. Being non- elemental, they also won't mess up your floors by using them. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ////6)Dungeon Elements///////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Certain floors have elements that modify what monsters are likely to appear. You will first encounter these elements on floor 3, which is strongly Fire by default. The other elemental floors (that I have discovered) are: 4: water 5: wind 6: Holy 7: Eastern* 8: Dark 9: Earth *Eastern isn't an 'element', per se, and doesn't show up as one in the floor info, but can be treated as an element for purposes of floor design. The four base elemental floors (fire, water, wind, earth) have a special room that can be placed in them to unlock a 'ruin' sub-dungeon of that element. To do so, build up that floor's element and place an Attribute Scale (4d room) in that floor. The game will direct you to do this as you play. Building up a floor's element is a matter of modifying corridors and rooms on that floor with materials that affect that element. For instance, Smithy rooms on the fire floor, and Prayer rooms for the Holy floor, or Wind Corridors to increase the wind attribute. When modifying a room or corridor, the tooltip will indicate whether that room or corridor piece will affect an element. Changing a floor's element can be done, I believe, but is so not worth it that I have never considered trying to do it. I'll test it out sometime when I get bored and have money to waste on such a project. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ////7)Tips 'n Tricks/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// -----------Tip #1: Weather Vanes.---------------------------------------------- Weather Vane rooms are WONDERFUL for preserving a floor's depth while allowing you the ability to backtrack into earlier parts of a floor, either to check up on a room or reach the stairway to the previous level. Also See tip #4. -----------Tip #2: Sell the Elevator!------------------------------------------ You can sell every elevator room aside from the one on the first floor. Selling the Elevator Kit nets a handsome 7,500 gil! And proper dungeon design entirely negates the need for an elevator, anyway! To get on this cash train, when you build to a new floor, immediately place corridors to reach the elevator that is by default in the center of the floor. When you are next to it, pop the menu, hit 'architecture,' 'erase block', and select the elevator room. The room and the kit will both be added to your building materials. Sell it to the building shop for easy money to build your floor! -----------Tip #3: Treasure Rooms---------------------------------------------- Treasure rooms should ALWAYS be placed close to the end of a floor, around a corner from line of sight of the stairway down. This ensures proper depth, and nets you better stuff from your chests. Being out of line of sight of the exit helps as well, it seems. -----------Tip #4: Stairway rooms.--------------------------------------------- Placing your stairways in a corner of your dungeon greatly increases the floor building space, allowing for maximum depth per floor. With the use of weather vanes, you can place both stairways in close proximity to each other without losing any depth. Consider the two patterns below, depending on need. The one on the right is the 'ideal' room, but the one on the left is easier to work in if your floor gets messed up or you build close into corners like me. +----+ +----+ +----+ +---+-----+ + | +-----+ | | --> Up + |Down --> Up | | +-+-----+ + | +-----+ | + + +----+ +----+ +----+ ++ ++ | | |Dwn| | | --> denotes a Weather Vane room. +---+ I'm sure the competent Dungeon Maker can figure out what these mean. -----------Tip #4: Get credit!------------------------------------------------- Got tips of your own? email 'em to me via the contact info below. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ////8)Contact Info///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// I can be contacted via email at: alaricbartlett@hotmail.com Please put "Dungeon Maker 2" or "DM2" somewhere in the subject line, or your email will be filtered into my junk mail (which I check about once in never.) Spam will be deleted and the spammer blocked. Good ideas will be worked into the guide and the writer credited. I'll even write you back and thank you! If you have gameplay questions, I will answer those on a limited basis. I'm a full-time college student, and thus my time is fairly limited. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ////9)Legal Info/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// This guide is copyright 2009 by Alaric Bartlett. If you want to use any part of the guide in your own work, please give me credit for my time, thoughts, and energy. Under no circumstances may any part of this guide be published with the intent to sell without signed and dated approval by me. This guide in its entirety may only be posted on gamefaqs.com. If you find this guide elsewhere, it is not by my permission and I would love to know about it. All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders, whether or not I have mentioned them directly.