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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 - Core Concepts

Understanding Progress and Prestige Combat in Daemonheim

One of the more interesting aspects of Dungeoneering is that it is conducted entirely within what I call a “pocket world”, completely separate from the rest of RuneScape. You cannot take any items into a dungeon except the ring of kinship (and an orb of Oculus if you want to use one); everything else has to be banked. Similarly, none of the items you get while Dungeoneering come back out with you; you exit the dungeon with just the ring (and possibly orb).

The roleplaying reason for this is that the Fremenniks are worried about the corrupting influence of Daemonheim, and thus sealed it off from the rest of Gielinor. The more practical reason is that setting things up in this way allowed Jagex to take considerable liberties with how combat and other skills work in the dungeons, without having to worry about how this would impact gameplay in the rest of RuneScape.

Dungeoneering keeps many of the same skill concepts, but changes the names of most of the resources. For example, you still mine ores and smelt them into bars and make armor and weapons out of them, but there’s no copper or iron or runite here; instead, you have novite and marmaros and promethium. You make ranging armor not from dragon hides, but the hides of odd creatures called bovimastyx, and so forth. There are herbs like in regular Herblore, but none you’d recognize; and potions that do similar things to what you’re used to, but that are often different in their specific effects.

This change gives the skill unique flavor, but can be very confusing to new players. It takes a while to get used to this, and to learn what resources and materials are “good” or “bad”. One way that Jagex helps with this is by assigning materials to “tiers”; you can see the tier of most items by examining them.

Not only are items segregated between the Daemonheim dungeon and the “outside world”, the floors are also effectively segregated from each other. Every time you start a new dungeon raid, you are beginning essentially from scratch.

You always get a selection of equipment and resources (like food), depending on your levels, the number of people in the party and your chosen complexity level. As you explore the dungeon you accumulate more materials, and may gather or make items like runes, arrows, armor and so forth. But once you reach the end of the dungeon, defeat the boss and exit the level, all the items you made disappear, and you start over again “fresh” on the new floor.

This setup makes the skill unique from a gameplay standpoint, and is what makes it as much about preparing for the boss as fighting it. This is also necessary to avoid the need to essentially set up a separate “Dungeoneering bank” for each player to hold items between sessions.

The exception to the “start fresh on each floor” rule is that the game allows you to bind a certain number of items. These really are treated as if placed in a separate “bank” just for Dungeoneering—they re-appear at the start of each floor under normal circumstances.

Jagex decided to be rather stingy with the number of items you are allowed to bind, which is based on your Dungeoneering level as shown in Table 43.

Most of us will never get to level 100 Dungeoneering, so this effectively means they are limited to one bound item while learning the skill and two items thereafter. Many players consider this number to be too low, and hopefully Jagex will update it to be a bit more generous some time in the future.

In addition to the equipment bindings, you are also allowed to bind one set of ammunition: up to 125 of one type of rune or arrow.

Deciding which items to bind is largely a matter of personal taste and is a part of each player’s strategy for training the skill. However, most players use their first slot to bind the best quality melee weapon they are able to make or find, since that is arguably the overall most important piece of gear.

A few relevant tips:

• Spears are commonly bound weapons because they have the ability to attack with all three melee styles.
  
  
• Arrows and runes come back on every floor even if you use them up, but regular equipment doesn’t, so don’t sell or alch your bound weapon or armor item.
  
  
• One easy way to get a decent item to bind at the start is to do a dungeon on complexity level 1, where you begin with an assortment of level-appropriate gear.
  
  
• If you want a better melee weapon but don’t have high Smithing, do a level with a friend and have him or her make you one. There are no trade limitations within Daemonheim.

If you have an item already bound and wish to replace it, you must first destroy the old one. For whatever reason, there is no way to “unbind” something.

Understanding Progress and Prestige Combat in Daemonheim