Welcome Back Dungeon Crawlers
This week I want to dive a little bit deeper into some of the knowledge I have picked up while playing Dungeon Cities and share it with you all.
Nothing super hardcore math stuff just practical things I ran into while grinding the dungeons.
This Week Topics
- Monster Dex
- Counter Attack
- Bonus tip I really wish I knew earlier hack or no hack
So let’s jump straight in.
The Monster Dex
One of the things I really like about this game is the find them all feeling.
Discovering monsters one by one and slowly learning what they drop is honestly pretty addictive.
When you encounter a monster for the first time it gets added to your Monster Dex.
As you can see I am playing for around three to four weeks now and I have only discovered 44 out of 200 monsters.
That already tells me there is still a lot of game left to explore.
I expect the discovery rate to slow down when reaching higher cities and deeper floors but that is something I will see later on.
Right now I am still busy with the last two floors in Brighthollow.
There is also a leaderboard for monster discovery which is a nice extra motivation.
At the moment they are sitting at 44 percent while I am at 22 percent.
Still not bad in my opinion with a rank around #13.
When you click on a monster in the dex you get more detailed information.
You can see where you first encountered it and some raw stats like how many times you fought or killed it.
But the most important part is the drop information.
Here you can see exactly what items a monster can drop and the drop chances.
You might notice some weird looking numbers like 1500 percent.
That actually represents a 15 percent drop chance. and the number of items is random... (this how i interpreted at this point i have a outstanding question for the dev on it is this is correct)
When you encounter a monster for the first time you will see question marks instead of percentages.
It is not officially confirmed but it looks like after around ten kills the drop chance stats become visible.
That gives you another small progression goal while grinding.
Monster Dex Improvements I Would Love to See
Just my two cents but these would be great additions:
- A button to directly travel to the dungeon where the monster was first seen or where its drop chance of the monster is highest
- Change discovery percentage or add full discovery percentage metric when a monster is fully discovered after killing it ten times.
- A search function to filter monsters by specific resources (already mentioned it in a other blog post)
Still overall a very solid system and one of my favorite parts of the game.
Counter Attack
This was my biggest discovery of the week.
I currently have pretty solid gear and I am one shotting monsters in Brighthollow.
Still I noticed my health was going down.
At first I was really confused.
With my defense stats these monsters should not even touch me.
Turns out there is a counter attack mechanic.
After you attack a monster it can perform a counter attack.
Important detail even if you one shot kill the monster it can still counter attack.
This counter attack completely ignores your defense.
So even with top gear you will always take some damage.
I tracked some data and I was honestly surprised.
I lost around 35% of my health from what felt like very weak monsters.
So I went to Discord to ask about it and got an official response.
After an update the counter attack damage will look like this:
The new data that I added puts this monster at 7–14% counter attack. I haven’t checked the old data.
You can already see counter attack information in the battle log.
In longer fights where monsters take multiple hits it becomes much more obvious because you see the damage during the fight.
Counter Attack Improvements
One improvement I would really like to see
When a counter attack happens after the fight ends it should be visible on the loot screen.
That way you instantly know you took damage and can prepare better for the next battle.
Right now it can feel a bit surprising when your next fight suddenly sees the health impact.
Bonus Tip Biggest Tip for New Players
This is honestly the tip I really wish I knew earlier.
When you start as a new player you enter Aldoria.
The grind there is very well balanced and progression feels smooth.
But once you reach the second half of Brighthollow things slow down hard.
Around floor 11 I simply could not generate enough resources to craft keys at a decent pace.
It felt frustrating and honestly I was close to giving up.
Then I got a tip that matched my own theory
Jump to the 4th city and farm DR there.
The Tip
Even as a new player in Aldoria. Sell everything you can. Chest loot / monster drop / plant / rocks. On the market or in the shop. Especially Aldoria Core chest on the market they are worth a lot at the moment.
Save up around 7K DR.
It sounds like a lot but you earn it back quickly.
- Buy the Stargrave Crucible Key of Druantia for 5K DR
- Travel to the 4th city for 2K DR
- Farm floor 1 for chests
- Flee from monsters to save time stamina loss is fine (you cannot beat them yet)
- Sell chest loot in the shop
- Buy a full B-class gear set from the shop (there is a set bonus when you have a complete 13 piece set equiped)
After that farm a bit more to build up spare DR.
Then go back to the city where you left off and continue normally.
For me this was a total game changer.
The game became fun again instead of feeling stuck.
Some players call this a hack.
Others say it is fully intended and that the real game starts after the 3rd and 4th city.
Either way
You still need a lot of time to craft keys from Brighthollow to Caelum.
And later you still need specific items from earlier cities to properly progress in Druantia.
So you are not skipping content.
You are just smoothing out the early grind.
Closing
There you have it.
Some deeper insights from my recent dungeon crawling adventures.
Next week I will share more new player tips.
If you have any yourself feel free to drop them in the comments.
Hope you enjoyed this Dungeon Cities post.
If you did an upvote and a comment are always appreciated.
Beaker signing off
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