Version 0.1 (Public Beta)
January 24, 2008

Howdy, Dungeon Runner! So, you’ve downloaded the client, logged onto the worlds and started your adventuring career. You’ve gone through the newbie quests in Dew Valley and kind of winged it in making an effective character. Your character seems ‘okay’ but you’re now wondering if you should have boosted your character’s endurance a little more or maybe not given her so much agility. Never fear, this guide will show you the ins and outs of making an effective Dungeon Runner.

**Basic Overview**

Okay, let’s talk about attributes: strength (str), agility (agi), endurance (end) and intellect (int). You’ve probably figured some of this out by now, but I’m going to review anyway.

Strength – adding points in strength increases melee damage and (oddly) defensive rating. It has no effect on ranged damage (from bows or guns) or magic damage.

Agility – adding points in agility increases ranged damage from bows and guns –and- increases your chance to hit (attack rating) for both ranged attacks and melee attacks. It has no effect on the ability of magic spells (like fire bolt or shadow lightning) to hit their targets. Unlike other MMOs, agility in DR does not increase your defensive rating (this ain't Dungeons and Dragons ).

Endurance – adding points to endurance increases health. It does not make your character more resistant to damage or increase your character's ability not to be stunned.

Intellect – adding points to intellect increase mana and increases magic damage for all spells except the fighter skills cleave and butcher. It also has no effect on spells like fire resistance or acidic blight - spells which do no damage. This is probably a point that many players may not understand: even fighter skills like holy roller and soul rend do more damage if your fighter has higher intellect. Increasing strength will increase your weapon damage but will not increase the effectiveness of magic damage done by these fighter ‘spells’.

In Dungeon Runners, you start at level 1 and can gain 99 levels to level 100. At each level, you are rewarded with 5 points that can be allocated to the four attributes. These means you can allocate potentially 495 (5 * 99) points to customize your character as desired. Based on the description of the attributes, you have probably figured out that mages need intellect, rangers need agility and fighters need strength and maybe some endurance. Well duh, FSeries, when are you getting to the good part?

**How to Allocate Points**

Well, the tricky thing in creating an effective character is that all classes can generally benefit from most of the attributes. All classes can always use endurance. More endurance equals more health which mean better survivability for your Dungeon Runner against hard hitting critters. Fighters and rangers both need agility. For rangers, agility represents their chance to hit and their ability to deliver damage. For fighters, it represents the ability to hit a critter to deliver melee damage that is augmented by their strength. Mages need intellect because it not only represent the pool of mana they can spend on spells but also how effective each offensive spell can damage a dungeon critter. Depending on the build, rangers and, to a lesser extent, fighters can also benefit from intellect.

There are some exceptions however. Mages don’t need strength or agility at all. Seriously. Unless you’re making some sort of mage-fighter combination, mages just don’t need these two attributes. Rangers don’t need strength. If you are equipping a bow or a gun then agility not strength determines how much damage you’re doing. Fighters can generally get by with zero allocation in intellect. Although, fighter skills do benefit from an investment in intellect, conventional wisdom states that it is better to probably forgo putting points in intellect so you can concentrate on boosting your strength, agility and endurance.

So in summary:

* Mages need intellect and endurance
* Rangers need agility, endurance and depending on build, intellect
* Fighters need strength, endurance and agility

So, you’ve gotten the basics. So how do I allocate these points to maximize the effectiveness of my Dungeon Runner?

For mages, you need a combination of intellect and endurance. How much of either depends on your preferences. Here are a few suggestions:

* All points into intellect. Use endurance enhancing items and/or the Blue Screen of Life skill (which transfer damage taken to mana points instead of hit points)
* Points to intellect and endurance, 4 / 1 split.
* Points to intellect and endurance, 3 / 2 split.

For fighters, you need a combination of strength, endurance and agility. Fighters generally need more endurance than agility since the passives Way of the Roo and Melee Mastery can both increase your attack rating without investing points into agility. Further, skills like Acidic Blight can lower enemy defenses, making them easier to hit them. How much your fighter needs of each attribute also depends on your preferences. A few suggestions:

* All points to strength. Use endurance and agility increasing items.
* All points to endurance. Use strength and agility increasing items.
* Points to strength, endurance and agility, 3 / 1 / 1 split.
* Points to strenght, endurance and agility, 2 / 2 / 1 split.

For rangers, you need a combination of agility and endurance. For poison rangers (rangers that use the poison ranger skills), you will also need intellect since intellect increases the damage of your poison skills. Poison rangers need enough agility to hit their targets as well otherwise the poison skill will not discharge. Again, how much your ranger needs of each attribute depends on your preferences. Suggestions:

Non-poison ranger
* All points to agility. Use endurance increasing items.
* All points to endurance. Use agility increasing items.

Poison ranger
* Points to agility and intellect, roughly 1 / 1 split (50% to each, alternating 3 / 2 splits). Use endurance increasing items.
* Points to agility, endurance and intellect, 2 / 1 / 2 split.
* Points to agility, endurance and intellect, 3 / 1 / 1 split.

**More Customization: Passive Skills**

Okay, you probably got the attribute thing down, but before you go traipsing back into that dungeon, I want to also talk about passive skills. (Yeah, really, these are important! ) Of all the skills you have at your disposal, passive skills can have the most effect in altering the effectiveness of your character. Your character, depending on your class, already come with at least two passive skills.

* Fighters get Gym Freak (which increase health, strength and agility at the cost of mana points, intellect and endurance) and Way of the Roo (increase melee attack speed and melee attack rating, lowers ranged attack speed and magic damage)

* Mages get Bookworm (which increases mana points, intellect and endurance at the cost of health, strength and agility) and Mental Prowess (increases magic damage, lowers ranged and melee attack speed)

* Rangers get Average BMI (which inreases health, endurance and agility at the cost of mana points, intellect and strength) and Trigger Happy (increases ranged attack speed, decreases melee attack speed and magic damage)

Your starting passive skills already shapes your character into a particular template. Gym Freak makes fighters tougher while Bookworm makes them weaker but better spellcasters. However, there are more passive skills than just these. Further, passive skills can be mixed and match to get some rather optimum results. In DR, any character can grab skills from any skill trainer (if I had a nickel for everytime a newbie asked about this... ), so you can mix and match passives from the mage skills with fighter skills.

I won't go over every passive skill combination, but here are a few suggestions:

* Average BMI or Gym Freak for mages. At first, this sounds like a bad deal. (You trying to sell me swamp land in Florida, FSeries?!?) Why take either skill since both lower the total amount of mana available? Because both passives significantly increases health, something a mage (if you're investing everything into intellect) often has in short supply. You may find at times that while you never run out of mana, you often find yourself low on health. Take one of these passives to boost survivability.

* Mental Prowess for poison rangers. Poison rangers deliver their damage through their poison spells. Mental prowess adds a 7% increase in spell damage for ranger poison skills. Most ranger poison skills also have a relatively longish cool down so the cost of ranged attack speed is not much of an issue for a poison ranger. Furthermore, many poison rangers also remove their starting passive Trigger Happy since that passive reduces magic damage by 5%.

* Average BMI + Couch Potato. This is an odd combination of two potentially conflicting passives, but the net gain of combining the two are rather interesting.

Average BMI: +10% health per point of endurance, +5 agility, + 5 endurance, -5% mana per point of intellect, -5 strength, -5 intellect
Couch Potato: -5% health per point of endurance, -5 agility, -5 endurance, +20% mana per point of intellect, +5 strength, +5 intellect
Net gain: +5% health per point of endurance, +15% mana per point of intellect

* Gym Freak + Bookworm. Like Average BMI and Couch Potato, these two skills are also reflections of each other.

Gym Freak: +50% health per point of endurance, +5 strength, +5 agility, -25% mana per point of intellect, -5 endurance, -5 intellect
Bookworm: -25% health per point of endurance, -5 strength, -5 agility, +100% mana per point of intellect, +5 endurance, +5 intellect
Net gain: +25% health per point of endurance, +75% mana per point of intellect

**Items and Elemental Bonuses**

Dungeon Runners has a bewildering and staggering collection of loot that can be dropped from monsters. The good news is that, excepting level requirements, your character can equip anything that you find. The bad news is that you actually may have to use something called the Sphincter's Drill of the Brown Eye. I already discussed a bit how you can use attribute bonuses from items to augment weaknesses in your character. For example, a mage who allocates all his points into Intellect will benefit from items that add endurance points. Endurance items will make the mage much more survivable. You'll also find that items also confer other types of bonuses. The most common of these are bonuses to a type of damage. The differing types of these bonuses are rather staggering, but you can find items that increase shadow damage, fire damage, ranged damage, piercing damage, crushing damage, etc. Generally, you'll want to match these damage bonuses with the weapon or skills your character is using.

For example, let's assume you find the following items:

Dreary Eidolon Gloves of the Hardy Wallaby
+121 per second to shadow attacks

Sissirat's Brother's Cousin's Roomate's Staff of Something Really Awesome
+350 per second to shadow attacks

Bi-partisan's Royal Boots of the Stubborn Unicorn
+40 per second to shadow attacks

These three items stack to increase any shadow attack skill damage by +511 per second. If you happen to find these, you'd probably want to use skills like Shadow Bolt, Shadow Lightning or Shadow Word: Smackdown. Unless the crittters you face happen to be highly resistant to shadow damage, these would be your preferred skills.

If you're a fighter, you'll want to do the same thing and match the bonus damage type with the weapon you're using. For example, if you find a lot of gear that gives +crushing damage, you wouldn't want to use a sword that does slashing damage. You would instead look for a nice hammer or mace that can take advantage of the crushing damage bonuses. This holds true for rangers as well since crossbows do piercing damage and shotguns do slashing damage.

**Final Words**

Hopefully, you got something out of this guide in making your character a wee more effective in bashing or burning all those dungeon critters. Don't over obsess in min-maxing every little thing about your character. If you screw up, well, you can respec at any time (no one will know, promise! ). Part of the fun is trying new combinations to see what works, and what doesn't. Thanks for reading this guide. May you find Rainbows in every treasure chest.

This guide is in public beta. Based on comment and feedback, I'll revise and update. Thanks in advance for reading.

Nice guide =)

Nice guide =)

Nicely put together!
Cohesive, clearly written and easy to understand.

Very well done. I bought the "Official Strategy Guide", and you are on par with the information it offered.

I don't agree with the ranger build I wear crit gear, plate piecer with billygoat helm and bone mamba armor both with fire resist and put 100 points into endurance and the rest in agil and can solo abby on extream you can look me up name is Hipy just trying to help no offense but 7 days to 100 I don't think you should brag about being PLed

Edited by Hipster (02/22/08 02:54 PM)

I don't agree with the ranger build I wear crit gear, plate piecer with billygoat helm and bone mamba armor both with fire resist and put 100 points into endurance and the rest in agil and can solo abby on extream you can look me up name is Hipy just trying to help no offense but 7 days to 100 I don't think you should brag about being PLed

wow... i should check some of the forums i normally don't more often:)


F great job on 7 days:) and grats since I normally play world 4:)

to take nothing away from 7 days it is by no means anything out of the ordinary or spectacular. I know several people have made it in well under 7 days and none of them were pl'd either.

admittedly I don't mind people following me through the dungeons at my lvl so the I still get xp and if they die for it so be it.....


Ranger ideas are well thought as are all the other info F posted here....


Gary


if i made no sense and rambled i blame it on oldage!!!

Well i can see everyone is a little upset that i acused you of being PLed oh well if you say you were not ok was really just trying to be helpful guess next time I should not rush it and put a little more effort into it I don't ever remember someone giving me that helm but maybe ya did dunno I do know that LR was out of line bringing this into game chat as it disturbed the other players and that was not right send me an e-mail something but there are lots of other people who pay to play just like me and do not want to be disturbed in game and called names that is not verry mature plus it just makes you look bad next time I post something just do this say something I am willing to admit mistakes if I am wrong or in this case mostly misunderstood sorry if I caused you any grief and I would like to add that my ranger build is still better lol will post my trials and errors later gotta get all the facts straight and wrote down so I can atempt to make it simi understandable


hope this helps but LR your still staying on my ignore list for now chill out man it is only a game after all =)

Well i can see everyone is a little upset that i acused you of being PLed oh well if you say you were not ok was really just trying to be helpful guess next time I should not rush it and put a little more effort into it I don't ever remember someone giving me that helm but maybe ya did dunno I do know that LR was out of line bringing this into game chat as it disturbed the other players and that was not right send me an e-mail something but there are lots of other people who pay to play just like me and do not want to be disturbed in game and called names that is not verry mature plus it just makes you look bad next time I post something just do this say something I am willing to admit mistakes if I am wrong or in this case mostly misunderstood sorry if I caused you any grief and I would like to add that my ranger build is still better lol will post my trials and errors later gotta get all the facts straight and wrote down so I can atempt to make it simi understandable


hope this helps but LR your still staying on my ignore list for now chill out man it is only a game after all =)

Sigh, let this be my last post on this thread.
Saying I was the one acting immature is kind of low, and you wont come far with it here on the boards. We tried to talk it out, but alas, you couldnt resist to ignore me and thereby give up. Bringing it to the forums is lame, and blaming me for taking it to the world chat and saying I was the one disturbing other players is even more lame. Dont try to act like the Hero of the story, your just another civilian.

I'll repost this guide at a later date, probably after the implementation of the next heave. I'll try to keep the negativity out of that new thread. I am however always open to constructive and well informed opinions.

Well I see we are gonna act like children so what ever ok glad to see you rushed right threw the game instead of enjoying it that would be why you beat me to 100 makeing me so jelous glad ya pointed that out because this is a race to the finish lol oh well think what you want of me I don't really care enjoy your time on the forums I will be playing the game instead of talking about it and this is pretty childish but what ever

Edited by Hipster (02/25/08 12:09 PM)

Been awhile since I have Been on here and man are you kidding me lmao you are lame sitting up there on your high horse correcting grammer and puncuation telling me how inferior I am lmao cause you know the game mechanics and i am ignorant for thinking you could have been PLed lol wow is all I can say hope this gives you plenty to correct hope I made enough errors here for you lmao


LAME !!!!!!!

You dug up an eight month old thread to say that? That is beyond pathetic.

You dug up an eight month old thread to say that? That is beyond pathetic.

Yea totally, resurrecting 8, 9, and 10 month old threads is my job!
Where do you get off dude?

lol, "dude"? Khaz, have you made a sudden sex-change? :p

lol, "dude"? Khaz, have you made a sudden sex-change? :p

I hope not. Um... my husband would have told me, right? Right?

By 'dude' I was referring to "h_i_p_y"
I wouldn't tell Khaz "where do you get off"

Bedroom, over that way. *points*

Ohhh, I'll be quoting that one, count on it.