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RuneScoop.com  >  The RuneScoop Ultimate Skill Guide for RuneScape       >  The RuneScoop Ultimate Skill Guide - Dungeoneering            >  The RuneScoop Ultimate Skill Guide - Dungeoneering - Raid Mechanics

Keeping Track of Locked Doors and Keys Resource Gathering and Inventory Management

Skill doors and challenge rooms are another place that separates “the men from the boys” when it comes to completing a dungeon efficiently. Again, this isn’t a critical issue when soloing small dungeons, but having smart procedures for dealing with these obstacles becomes more important with larger teams and larger floors.

A good toolkeeper carries a full set of tools needed to do skill doors and challenge rooms, and has high enough levels to do them in most cases. If you are lucky enough to get on a team with such a player, it is truly a pleasure: this individual will immediately do what is needed to get through the door or the room, generally without needing any prompting.

If the toolkeeper isn’t doing a good job, or doesn’t have high enough levels to handle some of the challenges, the team needs to help out. A good place to start is by asking for everyone to state their levels in the skill(s) needed for the door/room. Then those who have the required tools should give them to those who need them.

Also, be sure that for dangerous challenges, the person doing the work has enough food to heal damage taken.

It is fairly common to run into a skill door or a challenge room that requires a skill level higher than anyone in the party possesses. In this case you will need to make a potion to boost up the appropriate skill; the skill boost table and skill-potion cross-reference tables can be helpful here.

If the party has been smart enough to collect grimy herb drops, chances are that you already have the herb you need. Someone with high Herblore should drop a gatestone, teleport home, make the potion, and return. If you don’t have the necessary herb, buy a seed from the smuggler, grow the herb, and then make the potion.

Encourage players not to use any herbs for unnecessary potions until the dungeon has been cleared. I had one floor where we needed a large Smithing boost to get through a door. I was pretty sure I had found a lycopus and saved it, dropping it in the starting room to save inventory space, and I knew I could use that to make a strong artisan’s potion. But when I asked the team where it was, it turned out some moron had used it to make a super melee potion for the boss—even though the floor was only half-done. Grrr.

Another option is to skip the door or room; see below.

Only one player is needed for skill doors, and it should be the toolkeeper as mentioned above. With challenge rooms, the number of players required depends on the challenge itself. Many can be done by just one player, even in a team of five; some can be done by one player but are made more efficient if teammates help out; and others really require the whole team.

For puzzles where only one person is needed, especially time-consuming ones, the other members of the team shouldn’t just watch. Go explore a nearby room, kill some extra monsters to increase the level bonus, drop a gatestone and return home to make some armor, pick up extra food—anything is better than standing around picking your nose.

Many challenge rooms have monsters in them. So another way to be more efficient is to have one player do the challenge, while the rest of the players focus on killing the beasties.

Puzzles like the statue chessboard duplication room can be sped up if players help out. If each of four players choose one statue, the room can get done in a fraction of the time.

There are only two challenge rooms that really require all team members, or at least, a number equal to the difficulty setting of the dungeon. The monstrous monolith requires as much firepower as you can get to accomplish the task. And Follow the Leader absolutely requires the whole team to do it at all.

These rooms can cause slowdowns if the party isn’t traveling together as a team (which is another reason they should be!) If one of these rooms is discovered, it should be called out in public chat so other players know they need to converge on that room for the team to do it. Another option is to save the room for a later time, if many players are busy somewhere else.

Incidentally, this is one place where a lower difficulty (such as playing at 5:4 instead of 5:5) can be very handy.

I think nobody likes to duck a challenge, or to leave XP behind if they can avoid doing so. That’s why players will always try to do everything they can to get every door opened and every challenge room completed. Unfortunately, sometimes this leads to players not seeing the forest for the trees.

If the goal is to finish everything, then of course it makes sense to do everything. But if the goal is efficiency and maximizing XP, sometimes the best move with a particularly challenging obstacle is just to ignore it. I’m always amazed to see players who are rush-rush-rushing around the floor—and who gladly give up large XP bonuses by skipping as many monsters as possible—insist that the team absolutely has to do every room, no matter how long it takes.

Skipping a skill door or challenge room should be done when the amount of time and effort involved is not justified by the portion of the dungeon that will be opened up by completing it. This in turn depends entirely on the floor layout and the team.

You should only decide whether to skip a door after you’ve done as much of the dungeon as you can. Then, looking on the map should give you an idea of what you’ll lose out on if you don’t do it. If you only have one door left, and you’ve opened up so much of the floor that the room beyond it must be a dead end, you have little to lose by skipping that room. On the other hand, if you still have three rooms with locked doors, there’s a good chance that by skipping one skill door, you may miss out on four or even more rooms. In that case, definitely make a potion and open the door, even if it takes a couple of minutes.

Most challenges are simple and quick to do, but a couple of them really give teams fits. The worst is the monstrous monolith, which can take a team (especially an inexperienced one) many minutes to complete, and use up half of its food in the process. If it’s obvious that there are only one or two rooms beyond this challenge, leave it!

Keeping Track of Locked Doors and Keys Resource Gathering and Inventory Management