Dungeoneering: Beyond the Release

Since the release of Dungeoneering, a plethora of adventurers have been delving the depths of Daemonheim and uncovering its many secrets. As we�ve watched and listened to the feedback of these adventurers and observed how they�ve been reacting, we came up with a bunch of cool ideas of how we could improve the Dungeoneering experience, and so, alongside building the new content for the batch 2 release, we�ve been working on doing them! These updates are in addition to the new floors, challenge rooms and bosses that we�ll be adding to Daemonheim as part of Dungeoneering batch 2, and are likely to be added to the game before batch 2 comes out.

One thing we�ve noticed when watching people play together in parties is that they often specialise in certain roles to help each other out - things like warriors in heavy armour protecting the more vulnerable mages and rangers while also dealing damage, or other players preventing skillers from being attacked while they�re providing their party with tasty fish, protective gear and sharp sticks to poke their enemies with.

We thought it would be nice to encourage and reward these player-created classes, so we�ve been hard at work designing a system to upgrade your Ring of Kinship (using Dungeoneering tokens) for use inside a dungeon.

These upgrades will allow you to specialise in a role, and will provide unique benefits for doing so. There will be specialisations available for each type of player in Daemonheim - be you a noble warrior, an archer extraordinaire, a prodigal mage or an artisan of non-combat skills, there�s a Ring of Kinship for you!

Are you constantly slaving over a hot furnace to make items, and wish you could waste less material, and maybe squeeze an extra dagger out of those five bars you made into a platebody? There�s a Ring of Kinship for that! Do you spend a lot of time behind a kiteshield, taking all the attacks that would otherwise smush your magic-wielding partner, and wish you could take less damage to make your food last longer? There�s a Ring of Kinship for that! Or perhaps you simply spend a lot of time sniping enemies from a distance, and wish your arrows would fly straighter and truer to deal your maximum potential damage more often? There�s a Ring of kinship for that, too!

We noticed that one of the most common things said is that getting around dungeons could be easier. This is what we originally introduced the Gatestone spell for, but it soon became evident that it wasn�t sufficient. For a start, it has a Magic level requirement, plus it takes quite a few different runes.

We also noticed that a few skills - namely Herblore, Farming and Construction - weren�t being used as much as we had anticipated within Daemonheim. We deduced that this too was because of accessibility - most skills can be performed within the start room, but Farming and, therefore, Herblore could not, and you can�t make potions if you don�t have herbs!

On top of this, we realised that the only use for Construction in Daemonheim is in skill challenges. While these do benefit the party by allowing progress, there�s nothing that a high Construction level can do for you unless you happen to come across a very specific challenge.

With these issues in mind we came up with something pretty nifty: a Construction hotspot in the start room!

This hotspot will start life as a �Groupstone portal�, a conduit anyone can use to teleport to the new Groupstone (which is similar to the Gatestone, except that everyone in the group can use it and it will never shatter on use). The hotspot can be replaced with various other states, including a Farming patch or a Cooking range. We�ve also had a second look at the rune cost of the Create Gatestone spell to make it more accessible.

We�ve taken some time to consider the surface world applications of Dungeoneering - things your character can do outside of Daemonheim thanks to their hard work at levelling the new skill. We�ve come up with the concept of reward dungeons.

Several places across RuneScape will have extra nooks and crannies added that only those skilled in delving the depths of Daemonheim will fathom how to enter. These areas may contain a few extra spawns of that over-camped monster you�re trying to kill; or perhaps some additional resources for you to collect with less competition from other players; or maybe, just maybe, a fearsome creature new to the surface of RuneScape, freshly escaped from the frozen depths of Daemonheim itself!

We�ve also been wracking our brains to come up with some new awards for the dungeon end interface (or, as we affectionately call it, the 'WIN-terface'), so that you can have all new reasons to show off to your friends (or hang your head in shame) after a bout of Dungeoneering.

And, last but not least, we haven�t forgotten the plight of all you solo adventurers. From a technical standpoint, we�ve been making a fair bit of progress with allowing single players to re-enter dungeons after disconnecting; however, this is a very big project and is technically very costly, so it will still take us some time to perfect the system. As such, this particular update may not be released at the same time as everything else covered in this blog. All we can do is thank you for your patience and assure you that we are definitely working on it .

Well, that�s enough blogging for now. All this awesome stuff isn�t going to code itself!

Visit this forum thread if you want to discuss the 'Beyond the Release' blog.