RuneScoop.com - Dungeon Complexity Levels

Another of the key Dungeoneering parameters that determines the characteristics of a generated floor is the dungeon’s complexity level. There are six levels, with complexity increasing as you go from level 1 to level 6.

Lower complexity dungeons are simple to navigate, feature few puzzles, require little or no use of non-combat skills, have a simple room structure, easier monsters and bosses, and provide you with more combat items (such as weapons and armor) at the start of the level. They are faster to complete but give relatively little XP. Higher complexity dungeons require the use of more RuneScape skills, force you to make more of the items and supplies you need, have more puzzles and dead ends when trying to find the boss room, and take longer to complete. They give much more XP when the level is complete.

The complexity level chosen for a dungeon floor has a big impact on how that floor is designed and what is found within it:

I’ll provide more specifics on all of this later as I describe each complexity level individually.

Ironically, the existence of six complexity levels increases the complexity of the Dungeoneering skill itself. In essence, there are six different ways to do the skill, with gameplay being radically different on complexity 1 than it is on complexity 6. Jagex obviously put a lot of effort into making this system, and it seems to me there are two reasons why.

First, the complexity system acts a tutorial of sorts. Jagex may rightly have thought that plunging a new dungeoneer into a complexity 6 floor would have been overwhelming. The player would begin with minimal equipment, and would have to immediately learn all about the various resources, tiers, monsters, puzzle rooms, doors and so forth. The complexity system allows players to ease into the skill, starting out with nearly everything needed to finish the level right in the starting room.

In fact, this intention is made clear by the fact that you cannot select a higher complexity level until you’ve finished all of the complexity levels below it. Normally, then, your first level will have a complexity of 1, which will unlock complexity level 2 for the subsequent floor. This continues until you have complexity 6 unlocked, which is the “full skill”.

For more experienced players, I assumed that the idea behind complexity levels was to then provide a trade-off, much like the trade-offs that are represented by solo versus team play, various difficulty levels and floor sizes. Since there are XP penalties for doing lower complexity levels, the idea would be that if you wanted to do a floor quickly at a lower complexity level you could do so, taking the XP penalty; or you could do a higher complexity dungeon and get more XP.

The problem is that the way XP is calculated upon completing a floor causes multiple overlapping penalties for lower complexity levels. For example, if you do a complexity 1 dungeon you take all of the following penalties:

The result of all of the overlapping penalization is that doing anything but complexity 6 becomes utterly pointless, unless your only goal is to get a particular floor over with as quickly as possible. (You may want to do that, for example, if you have a couple of low-numbered floors to complete before resetting progress, or if deliberately “rushing” floors.)

To illustrate this, I did floor 1 six times in succession at all six different complexity levels. All six runs were done receiving a prestige value of zero, since I had done floor 1 before on this prestige run. The complexity 6 floor took me 19 minutes to complete and yielded me 72 XP. The complexity 1 floor took only 5 minutes, or about 1/4 of the time, and if it was only the nominal 50% penalty, this would have been a good trade-off. But I didn’t: I got just 7 XP, or 1/10th of what I got on the more complex floor.

As bad as floor 1 is in terms of XP, the middling floors (2 to 5) are even worse. They take increasing amounts of time to do, but still incur massive penalties. At complexity level 4 you are still losing 80% of your XP. Complexity 5 appears to be nearly indistinguishable from complexity 6, but gives you half the experience overall!

I think this unfortunate, and I hope Jagex will adjust the XP calculation system so that there is a valid trade-off here—as there is with team size, difficulty and floor size—as opposed to everyone rightly saying “always do complexity 6”. As it is, the only time lower complexity levels are used is to quickly finish off floors with low numbers to get to the ones that earn more XP.

Complexity level 1 creates the simplest dungeons, where only combat is used. You are given everything you need to fight up front, and some food to start out with as well. You don’t need to make use of non-combat skills, and the smuggler has no shop. The only rooms you can go to are ones on the critical path, and they contain no resources or items other than possibly keys, so you can breeze right through them. You don’t have to worry about making runes or buying tools or solving puzzles. Bosses tend to be very easy, often well below the combat level(s) of the player(s).

This complexity level makes the fastest, easiest dungeon floors; I can usually do a complexity 1 small map in about 4 to 5 minutes total from the time I click my ring of kinship to the time I land on the next floor. However, these also grant very little XP due to all the penalties mentioned above; generally, you get about 10% of the XP at complexity level 6.

Note that it is possible to get poisoned on complexity 1 floors, and there is no way to get an antidote!

This complexity is usually only chosen by players who are trying to blast through a floor. This is often done to get a stray floor done to allow a prestige reset, or as part of a longer-term strategy for maximizing XP by spending more time on deeper dungeon levels.

The second complexity level is only slightly more involved than the first, adding just the ability to cut branches from trees, make fires from them and use the fires to cook fish you catch. You are still given a full complement of melee, ranged and magic weapons, armor and ammunition. You are still effectively guided through the dungeon with no side rooms to distract you. There are either few or no puzzles and the dungeon is very quick.

While you can catch fish and cook them on this level, you generally don’t need to, as you have good equipment and can use food dropped by monsters. Sometimes, though, there may not be enough monsters and you’ll have to dip into those pools.

This complexity level incurs nearly the same penalties as complexity level 1, resulting in a net of around 12% of the XP you would get at level 6.

Complexity 2 incurs nearly the same XP penalties as complexity 1 and takes longer to do, so it is rarely employed.

Complexity level 3 adds ore mining and weapon smithing (including arrowheads) to the list of activities. It is here that Dungeoneering starts to transition into more of a “DIY” skill, since you are no longer given starting weapons and runes, and must make them yourself (or use bound items). You are still given armor for all three combat styles.

The dungeons themselves are pretty much still as simple as on complexity level 1 and 2, though now you see more resources related to the skills you’ve unlocked. You continue to be effectively guided through the dungeon with no side rooms to distract you, and there are also either few or no puzzles to contend with.

Again here you will get lots of food drops, so fishing and cooking usually isn’t needed. And with an appropriate bound weapon and ammunition, you can go through a complexity level 3 dungeon usually without needing to actually make anything. However, you may find yourself needing to make a bow and arrows, or craft runes, depending on the boss.

This is the first complexity level where you are able to make runes, and thus able to access most of the Dungeoneering spellbook.

This complexity level incurs nearly the same penalties as complexity levels 1 and 2, resulting in a net of about 15% of the XP you would get at level 6.

Complexity level 3 can potentially require more work and time than the levels below it, yet still incurs massive XP penalties; not recommended.

The main change at complexity level 4 is that you gain the ability to make your own armor. This means you get the full Smithing skill for metal armor, along with the ability to pick textile plants for cloth for mage robes, hunt mastyx for leather, and then craft these items into mage robes and ranging armor. Since you are able to make armor you are not supplied with any, and from this level on get no equipment in your backpack to start (except bound items).

The dungeon itself is still largely unchanged in complexity level 4. You will see resources like textile plants and bovimastyx creatures, and you get slightly more resources in the smuggler shop. But you still only see rooms necessary to complete the level with no side rooms to navigate. There are also few if any puzzles.

Finishing a level here is more difficult than on complexity 3, because you don’t start out with full sets of armor for all combat styles. Yet the XP penalties are still excessive, resulting in a net XP of maybe 20% of what you’d get at complexity level 6.

Complexity level 4 can potentially require even more work and time than the levels below it, especially since you start out with no armor. Despite this, it still incurs massive XP penalties, so it is not recommended.

Gameplay with complexity level 5 appears to be identical to that of level 6. Jagex has thus far not specified what might be in level 6 and not level 5, and I’ve been unable to find anything. There has been some speculation that you get fewer puzzles, but that hasn’t been my experience.

In fact, the only difference I can find between complexity 5 and complexity 6 is that with the former you get about half as much XP as the latter. Next!

Complexity level 6 provides the “full” breadth of activities and resources present in the Dungeoneering skill. You are able to use a full complement of skills to make equipment, supplies, potions and more, and to exploit resources like trees, Summoning familiars and treasure chests. You also frequently have to get by skill doors, solve puzzles, figure out what rooms are on the critical path, and make potions to raise skill levels as needed. You start only with your bound items in your inventory and some fish and a few odd items on the tables.

As mentioned earlier, this is the default complexity setting and the only one where you don’t get whacked multiple times on XP. It appears to be identical to complexity 5, so that is not even worth considering. Complexity 6 is the level used most often by most players.

Table 49 shows in summary form the relationship between Dungeoneering activities, skills and complexity levels.

**Table 49: Dungeoneering Activities and Skill Use by Complexity Level**
Activities	Skills Used	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4	Level 5	Level 6
Combat	Attack, Defence, Magic, Prayer, Ranged, Strength	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Cutting Branches, Making Fires, Catching Fish and Cooking Them	Cooking (partial), Firemaking, Fishing, Woodcutting		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Mining Ores, Smelting Bars, Smithing Weapons and Arrowheads, Fletching Bows, Arrows and Staves, Runecrafting Runes and Staves	Fletching (partial), Mining, Smithing (partial), Runecrafting			Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Smithing Armor, Fletching Hunter Traps, Crafting Ranged Armor, Crafting Mage Robes, Harvesting Plants, Hunting Mastyx	Crafting, Farming (partial), Fletching (all), Hunter, Smithing (all)				Yes	Yes	Yes
Cooking Topped Potatoes, Farming Food, Farming Herbs, Cleaning Herbs, Making Potions, Making and Using Pouches, Thieving Locked Chests	Cooking (all), Farming (all), Herblore, Summoning, Thieving					Yes	Yes

Table 50 summarizes other characteristics about floors generated using the various complexity levels.

**Table 50: Dungeoneering Floor Characteristics by Complexity Level**
Characteristic	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4	Level 5	Level 6
Guide Mode	Forced On	Forced On	Forced On	Forced On	Optional
Equipment in Starting Inventory	Melee, ranged and magic armor/robe top and bottom; rapier and battleaxe; combat runes; magic staff; bow and arrows	<<	Melee, ranged and magic armor/robe top and bottom	None
Items On Tables in Starting Room (When Soloing)	9 fish (random tiers)	9 fish (random tiers); coins; hatchet	9 fish (random tiers); coins; possible random weapon, bow and/or arrows	7 fish (random tiers); coins; level-appropriate armor item; random selection of: weapons, bows, arrows, pickaxes, hatchets and anti-dragon shield.
Smuggler Shop Stock	None	Tier 1 raw fish and branches, skill-appropriate tools; antipoison	Tier 1 to 3 ores, raw fish and branches; rune essence; tier 1 weapons, pickaxe, hatchet and arrows, skill-appropriate tools; antipoison	Tier 1 to 3 ores, plants, leather, raw fish and branches; rune essence; tier 1 weapons, pickaxe, hatchet and arrows, skill-appropriate tools; antipoison	Tier 1 to 10 ores, plants, leather, raw fish and branches; rune essence; all herb seeds; all food seeds; tier 1 to 5 arrows; potion secondaries; tier 1 weapons; tier 1 to 3 pickaxe and hatchet; full complement of skill tools; antipoison
Nominal XP Penalty	-50%	-45%	-40%	-35%	-30%	--
“Real World” Effective XP Penalty	-90%	-88%	-85%	-80%	-50%	--

Dungeon Difficulty Settings

Dungeon Structure and Room Structure

Home - Table Of Contents - Contact Us

RuneScoop.com (http://www.RuneScoop.com) - Premium RuneScape Info for Expert Players
Last Site Update: May 23, 2012

© Copyright 2007-2010 Charles M. Kozierok. All Rights Reserved.
All information is provided for use at your own risk. Not responsible for any loss resulting from the use of this site.
WARNING: All content on RuneScoop is protected by relevant copyright laws in the United States and other countries, and may not be reproduced in any form without expressed written permission. Violators will be prosecuted to the maximum extent permissible by law.

Please Whitelist This Site?