Game Guide

This is a comprehensive guide to playing Age of Dungeons. If you just want the fast version, you can do the /tutorial command in-game which quickly covers the most important topics without going into too much detail.

Intro

Age of Dungeons is a dungeon-crawler RPG gamemode. The dungeon is randomly generated every two hours, and has unique features and enemy combinations on each floor. Each time you descend deeper, the overall difficulty increases significantly; but the chances for rare loot also substantially increase.

You find gold and various items along the way, and can spend the gold to buy specific items from the starting town or from randomly generated shops inside the dungeon.

You'll also gradually gain EXP and level up; levels increase all your stats, and increase your capacity to carry items.

Table of Contents

• Intro
• Table of Contents
• Parties
• Combat
• Melee
• Ranged
• Magic
• Death
• Altars & Alignment
• Banking
• Trading
• Guilds

Parties

Parties are a temporary system for sharing EXP with other players who are adventuring with you.

When in a party, any EXP gained from monster kills is increased slightly and then split up among nearby party members.

Being in a party helps ensure the other members of the party continue to get EXP even if their position puts them at a disadvantage for getting kill credit on monsters.

To create a party, simply do /party and all players nearby you will be immediately invited to join your party.

Any member of a party can do /party again to extend the invite to any other nearby players.

Parties have no control structure or leader. For party management features, you likely want to create a guild instead.

Combat

Health is the universal resource you must always keep an eye on. You only regenerate health naturally when you level-up, otherwise you'll have to eat food or drink health potions. Spells which can help mitigate your health losses are also available, but no magic can truly regenerate your health. If you're low on health and have no ways to restore your health, you should consider using your recall scroll to return to town.

There are three primary combat classes, Melee, Ranged, and Magic.

Melee has the least concern with their ability to continue attacking, but they have to get up close and personal with their targets. Melee has access to the best defensive armors, but these metal armors completely prohibit spellcasting.

Rangers have high range and accuracy; but have to reload their ammo which cuts down their ability to sustain DPS. They have access to medium protective armor which enhances their weapon abilities, and can acquire items which give their ranged attacks special effects.

Mages have the best access to DPS and burst damage from a range, but they suffer in terms of defense. Mages must maintain their mana to cast spells, which means either using channeling crystals to recharge mana or consuming costly mana potions for burst recharges. Mages have access to armor that greatly increases their damage output, but also causes them to take extra damage from attacks.

Classes are not rigidly defined by the game though, it is possible to mix-and-match just by picking up the items for multiple classes. However, most class-related abilities and items are mechanically designed to provide greatest benefit to someone focusing their efforts on that class.

Melee

The melee class is by far the least complicated to play, and so is recommended for newer players.

Melee weapons are divided up into four major types. Every type is useful but come with its own strengths and weaknesses.

1. Daggers
   • Daggers have the highest DPS per tier.
   • Daggers have the quickest draw time, making them ideal as sidearms for other classes.
   • Daggers have a very short range, which makes playing defensively with them very difficult since you will need to be very up close and personal with anything you're attacking.
   • When wearing melee class armor, a dagger will be paired with a holster of throwing daggers. You can occasionally throw daggers with your alt-fire.
2. Shortswords
   • Shortswords are the jack of all trades. They have defensive ability, more range than daggers, cleave all enemies in range of swings, and have average damage.
   • When wearing melee class armor, a shortsword will be paired with a buckler which you can alt-fire to raise up. While the buckler is raised, you will reduce incoming damage by a small amount and also block all incoming ranged attacks from the front. Movement speed is greatly reduced while the buckler is raised. You can still attack while the buckler is raised.
3. Axes
   • Axes are the heavy hitters, with a slow attack speed but with high damage per swing.
   • Axes alternate between a wide cleaving slash which deals lower damage to all enemies in the arc, and a crushing downswing which hits only one target but deals much higher damage.
   • Axe attacks also push enemies backwards slightly.
   • When wearing melee class armor, axes have a forward dash ability you can activate with alt-fire. The dash requires aiming and being within range of a valid target, but has a very quick cooldown.
4. Longswords
   • Longswords embody "The best defense is a good offense".
   • Longswords have the highest range of any typical melee weapon, making it easy to engage melee enemies without letting them return a hit on you.
   • Longswords have average DPS, but deal much greater damage when attacking from the 'sweet spot' near the edge of its range.
   • Longswords have a very long draw time, making them especially awkward to use within a multi-class loadout.
5. Spears
   • Spears are the oddball of melee weapons. They have extreme range, but are completely unable to hit enemies that are too close.
   • Spears have relatively low DPS, but can enable an ultra-defensive playstyle. Positioning is required to prevent enemies from getting too close.
   • When wearing melee class armor, spears have a backwards dash ability you can activate with alt-fire. The dash requires aiming and being within range of a valid target. Use this ability to get more distance between you and your target!

Melee weapons are tiered by their material. Better material tier is a sure way to tell which weapon has better damage output.

These material tiers are, in order:

1. Rusty
2. Iron
3. Steel
4. Mithril
5. Adamantite

Beyond these simple tiers, there also exist legendary melee weapons which do not conform to the types and tiers of the main weapon sets.

The melee class armors have the highest defensive bonuses in the game. In addition to resisting a percentage of damage, they also reduce damage by a flat amount first. The major drawback of melee armor is the fact that it will fully prohibit spellcasting while worn.

Ranged

Rangers have the most reliable ranged attacks and have access to defensive armor, but have low DPS compared to mages.

The primary two weapons rangers have access to are Swiftbows and Crossbows.

• Swiftbows have reliable attack speed and maintain their accuracy while moving. When wearing ranger armor, swiftbows will have an alt-fire ability which occasionally allows the wielder to rapidly fire off a couple arrows.
• Crossbows have extreme damage, but are very slow to reload and so require precise aim to make good use of. As a side effect, crossbows consume ammo much more slowly. When wearing ranger armor, crossbows will have an alt-fire ability which occasionally allows the wielder to simultaneously fire off multiple shots in a fanning formation.

These bows are tiered by name prefix, with each being stronger than the last:

1. Hunter's
2. Ranger's
3. Elvish/Dwarven

Rangers must maintain their ammo in order to continue fighting with their ranged weapons. There are two ways to reload ammo:

1. With a consumable quiver item which fully restores your ammo reserve all at once
2. With a reloading quiver item which you click and hold to reload as much as you need. Different tiers of these are available which can reload faster than others.

Rangers also have access to an assortment of items which can be used to temporarily add effects to their projectiles. These effects vary from a slowing paralysis toxin to small bombs to make your arrows explosive!

Rangers have access to medium defensive armor which reduces damage from incoming attacks by a percentage. Ranger armor increases ammo capacity, makes ammo modifier items more effective, and enables the use of ranged weapon skills.

Magic

Mages excel in dealing high amounts of damage from a range. Magic armor greatly enhances spell damage, giving mages access to the highest levels of DPS in the game in exchange for taking more damage from incoming attacks.

In order to do magic, you must learn spells. To learn a spell, you usually will want to buy a sealed spell tube at the magic shop in town. Upon using the spell tube, it will be consumed and you will learn the spell permanently.

There are also spell scrolls which are consumable items that cast a spell once only without a mana cost and without learning the spell. You should not mix these up with the sealed spell tubes.

To cast a spell you have learned, you can do /cast [spellname] in the chat (or /c [spellname] for shorthand). This cannot be done in combat, but you might find yourself using this a bit if you pick up any utility spells.

To use magic during combat, you will need a staff. After you buy a magic staff from the magic shop, you can bind a spell to it by doing /autocast [spellname] while holding the staff. Once a spell is bound to the staff, you can simply click while holding the staff to cast the spell. Depending on the type of staff, you can also get a significant refund on the manacost of a spell bound to the staff.

If you can't remember the name of a spell you learned, you can do /spells to view all spells you have learned.

Maintaining mana in combat can be crucial to victory in long battles. There are two primary sources of fast mana regeneration: mana crystals and mana potions.

Mana crystals (and orbs) are items which you channel to more quickly regenerate large portions of mana. You are unable to move or fight while channeling a mana crystal, and the rate of restoration takes time to ramp up. Using these in combat is only practical if you are not currently under direct attack.

Mana potions are consumable items which instantly restore a large portion of mana. Mana potions can even overcharge your mana pool temporarily, which reduces the risk of wasted mana when using them. Mana potions are ideal for restoring mana during combat since they cause no downtime from use.

Mages (and anyone who is able to cast spells) have access to damage mitigation spells which heal you for a portion of the health you have recently lost. The basic spell for this is Cauterize, which can be found in the town magic shop for cheap.

Death

Upon dying, your death will have a gold price calculated based upon your current total EXP. This cost starts at 100 gold for level 1, and scales up to a maximum of 100,000 gold by level 54.

If you can pay the entire price with half of your on-hand gold, you will do so and lose nothing else.

If you cannot pay the entire price, you will first pay up to half of your on-hand gold to reduce the remaining price. After that, items from your inventory will be picked at random to be considered for dropping. The max number of items dropped will be 1/3 of the total items in your inventory; but if you would be left with less than three items left, you will not drop any more items. Items can only be dropped if their value is less than the remaining gold cost of your death. Each item dropped will reduce your remaining death cost by their value. Each curse lost this way will increase your remaining death cost instead.

After dropping items, any remaining death cost is paid by losing EXP.

Altars & Alignment

Altars and alignment exist for the sole purpose of being able to fulfill prayers when you need special requests granted.

In order to increase your alignment, you first must find an altar representing the alignment you intend to increase.

Upon finding the altar, drop items you want to sacrifice onto the altar. After a few seconds, the items will be destroyed and you will receive piety for that alignment based on the value of the item.

The alignment you see in your HUD represents the alignment you have the greatest amount of piety with. Despite this, piety is still tracked independently for all three alignments. You can gain and retain piety with multiple alignments, but making sacrifices will reduce your piety with every other alignment. As a result, it is very inefficient to maintain piety with multiple alignments.

Once you have some alignment (which means you have piety to spend), you can begin using the /pray command.

You can /pray for a variety of things:

• food
• healing
• cure/cure for poison
• curse removal
• crafting/divine crafting
• crowning

Each alignment specializes in something a bit different with regard to prayers.

• Law specializes in curse removal and frequent prayers, but has the highest crowning cost.
• Neutrality specializes in food, healing, and poison curing
• Chaos specializes in crowning, with the lowest crowning cost. Chaos has the longest prayer cooldown

Each prayer you successfully make will drain your connection to the gods. Once your connection is depleted, you will need to reconnect by clicking any alignment's altar and paying a tithe to the alignment of that altar.

Despite being able to sacrifice to and hold piety with multiple alignments, only the alignment you currently have the highest piety with will represent your alignment and handle your prayers.

Banking

The bank in AoD is the Safe Deposit Chest located in the stall east of the town fountain.

Items stored in the bank are completely safe from being lost on death.

Clicking the chest will display a dialog allowing you to browse your stored items. You only start with a couple bank slots, but you can purchase more for a considerable amount of gold. Additional bank slots can also be obtained via Bank Upgrade Contracts from achievement rewards, and donors can get up to two additional slots automatically. There is no limit to the number of bank slots you can have, but they become ridiculously expensive.

To put an item in the bank, first make sure you have clicked the chest recently and are standing nearby it, then hold the item you want to store and do /deposit to store it.

To retrieve an item from the bank, after checking the chest, do /withdraw [slot number]. The slot number is indicated next to the item in the bank's dialog.

To buy an additional bank slot, do /upgradeBank. The price for the upgrade is 5000 + 5000 x [the number of slots you have purchased previously] gold. So the first slot you buy is 5000 gold, the second 10000 gold, the third 15000 gold...

Trading

In order to trade with another player, you must both be alive and be standing relatively close to each other. To begin the trade, do /trade [playername] and the target player will be prompted to do /acceptTrade in order to begin the trade. Either player can also do /declineTrade at any time in order to cancel the trade completely.

Once the trade has been accepted, either player can do the /offer [slot] command to offer an item in their inventory. The item at the top of your inventory is slot 1, the next one down is slot 2, and so on...

You can also offer gold in a trade. The only limitation to this is that you must offer more than 50 gold. To offer gold simply do /offer [amount] where amount is greater than 50.

Once you are satisfied with the trade, do /confirmTrade to indicate that you are ready to complete the trade. When both players do this command, the trade will complete and the offered items and gold will be exchanged. If either player adds more to their offer, you will have to do /confirmTrade again.

Guilds

Guilds are a grouping system which allow players to share EXP and chat privately while adventuring together in the dungeon. The guild has its own chat channel that members can access using team chat (default keybind for team chat is the 'Y' key).

To create your own guild, do /createGuild [guildname].

Once your guild is created, you can do /invite [playername] to invite other players to your guild. If you recieve an offer to join a guild, you simply do /accept to accept the invite and join the guild.

You can only be part of one guild at a time, and while you're in a guild other players will not be able to invite you to their guilds. To leave the guild you're in, do /leaveGuild. If you're currently the leader of a guild, you'll have to either appoint someone else in the guild as the leader first with /promoteLeader [playername], or disband the guild completely with /disbandGuild.

The guild leader can also kick/dismiss people from their guild using /dismiss [playername].

To view general information about your guild and the list of members, do /guildInfo.

Unlike most things in Age of Dungeons, guilds are world-specific and are not cloud saved. Your guild will only exist in the specific world it was created on, and players can belong to different guilds as long as they are on different worlds. This might change in the future, but for now this is how it works.