Dungeoneering Skill







Dungeoneering:


Dungeoneering is hardly a word that rolls off the tongue, before you even begin to understand what it means. When you do, you (and I, and everyone well) will quickly consider it absurd. Why? Because it means what Jagex has created; a dungeon crawling "skill" in Runescape.

There's a number of different angles I won't go into; is it a rip off of WoW? Does it really count as a skill? Are the rewards worth it? How does it affect Runescape as a whole? You can discuss those in your own time, or someone else can approach it in a future article. Instead, I'm going to tell you what it is.

I like to think of Dungeoneering as Runescape in a very condensed form. You have combat, skilling, puzzles and adventuring rolled into one package, and all of those elements are put to good use. When entering Daemonheim, you are dropped into a randomized dungeon of customisable difficulty, and left to it. Ideally, you're going to go in with at least a friend or two. The more people you bring the more help you have, but also the greater the difficulty and reward. You must mine ores to smith your own armours, catch your own food and must pit yourself against randomly placed enemies covering all three corners of the combat triangle. There's also a boss guarding every exit door, and you gain no experience until you've passed through it.

Speaking of experience, it's calculated based on god-only-knows how many variables, and from that you'll also earn a paltry amount of tokens to spend on those rewards I mentioned. Some of them are good, some are bad, all are ridiculously expensive and you won't be getting ahold of them any time soon. You'll find yourself amassing huge amounts of cash and items within the dungeons themselves but don't expect to make yourself a fortune; they vanish completely when you leave (which by the way, makes it a very good idea to just buy stuff you're going to need while down there. I recommend food, something I kept finding myself short on). As Dungeoneering is trained and played entirely in one place, don't expect it to have much of an impact on the rest of your game either.

When you find this all out, you might wonder what the whole point of this skill is. Well I happen to know the answer, and it may surprise you.

It is insanely fun.

Runescape is a game where we create goals upon goals, and within them. Each step we take is part of a journey to another goal, which is in turn another step towards another goal. It's an endless loop, and given how long it takes to actually achieve anything noteworthy (a few months for a 99 at least) we end up not knowing what we really want. Dungeoneering acts as a final stopping point; an Endgame. All your skills accumulate into these engaging challenges. Train up your combat stats to face off the monsters within, hone your skills to perfection to utilise the scattered resources and adventure to sharpen your intuition and know how to make the best out of what you have. And all that before you drag your friends into it.

When you play with other people the nature of the beast shifts again, and here is where you have to pool your skills with your teammates to survive, as well as compete with them for the best available resources. There's no hard feelings if you don't get the good stuff because it all vanishes at the end of the game anyway, and it still goes towards your ultimate goal of victory. So, naturally, playing like a complete jackass will get you nowhere, and Runescape has a way of encouraging jackass behaviour. When you mine in Falador the guy next to you is a competator; when you mine in Dungeoneering he is a valuable ally. You'll get nowhere if you spend your time fighting.

There's not really a whole lot more that can be put into words. It's something you need to actually experience. Every play-through of Dungeoneering is unique, even though everything feels so familiar. When I heard the word Dungeoneering I had my doubts; it's a silly name and a silly concept for a skill. But, when you spend hours of grinding and grinding, cutting down ivy or mining granite, running in endless loops to make runes, you don't see what you've achieved. Even when you hit a new level the number means nothing; it's just another step towards another number. Dungeoneering puts those numbers into something tangible, something you can actually enjoy.

I don't find fun in watching numbers slowly rising and chances are neither of you. We all find some satisfaction in seeing the results of our hard work, and that's why we sit and level up even when it's a chore. That moment of self-gratification when the level pops shows you've achieved something is what many of us play for. It's in Dungeoneering that I think we can experience that sense of accomplishment again and again, and enjoy the journey we take as we complete floor after floor, then replay them for a different challenge.

I said it in my argument for Constitution; it's the very turbulent nature of Runescape that keeps me playing, and it's this element that blends everything together. Combat, skilling, puzzles and exploration, and never truly knowing what to expect.

Well, you might be fine clicking away rigidly at trees all day. If you want to play the game that way, well that's your business. But, if you ever feel like a change then you can join me for some adventure, challenge, quick-thinking, resourcefulness, teamwork, a healthy dose of self-satisfaction and all-round amusement, then feel free.