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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 - Understanding Floors, Rooms, Doors and Related Features

Dungeon Floor Map Sizes Dungeon Complexity Levels

When a floor is created within Daemonheim for a team, it is dynamically generated based on the characteristics of the team and parameters provided by the team leader. An important factor in deciding how difficult to make the dungeon is the number of players on the team. After all, a floor that’s a challenge for a single player would be a cakewalk for a team of five, while a floor intended for a large team would be impossible for someone going solo.

Jagex could have simply made the game use the number of players in the team as a fixed parameter, but implemented something much smarter instead. The team leader has the option of manually adjusting the intended difficulty level of the dungeon, by selecting any number from one up to the size of the team; the game will then design the floor as if that number of players were doing it. This allows the difficulty of the dungeon to be tailored based on the team’s composition and needs—at an XP cost, of course.

The difficulty of a floor is expressed using the notation “N:D” where “N” is the real number of players in the team, and “D” is the difficulty, or number of players the dungeon is geared towards. For example, “3:2” means a team of 3 players is raiding a dungeon set up as it normally would be for 2 players.

It is not possible to set a difficulty higher than the size of the team. So there is no “3:4” or “4:5”, for example. For the same reason, difficulty settings are irrelevant to solo play: the “N” can never be 1.

A natural question is why you’d want to reduce difficulty and take an XP hit when Dungeoneering with a team. If you have four players, for example, why not do a dungeon designed for four? And indeed, that is what you’d want to do much of the time.

However, it’s important to remember that a floor designed for a bigger team doesn’t just have more monsters and a tougher boss in it; the number of players also influences resource availability, how puzzles work, the behavior of bosses and more. Thus, there are some valid reasons for setting a lower difficulty level:

• Speed: If you want to just get through a level quickly, setting it to a difficulty level of 1 is the way to go. Some players like to do this for the low-numbered floors to complete them as fast as possible, then use higher difficulty settings for the deeper floors that grant more XP.
  
  
• Reduced Combat Difficulty: Some players don’t want to spend as much time fighting mundane monsters, and a lower difficulty level will knock the monsters’ levels down. This is also useful if one or more of the party members has a much lower combat level than the others, or if one member of a large party is spending much of his or her time running keys around or making armor and weapons.
  
  
• Easier Bosses: Some Dungeoneering bosses are so difficult that it can be better to take an XP penalty by making them easier than risking XP penalties due to deaths, or taking a lot of extra time preparing.
  
  
• Simplifying Challenges: With the difficulty set to the same number as the team size, some puzzles become more annoying than usual. For example, if you have a team of five and run into a room containing the Follow the Leader puzzle, you won’t be able to even attempt it until all five players are present, which may mean everyone having to drop what they’re doing and come to the room where the puzzle is. With a lower difficulty level you can save time by doing it without needing everyone.
  
  
• “Dropout Insurance”: If you set up a large 5:5 map and someone quits for any reason, the other four players may not be able to finish the floor at all if they run into a puzzle that requires all 5 people. With a 5:4 map, one person can leave without this happening.

The cost of less difficult floors is a reduction in the bonus normally given for large teams at high difficulty, which can potentially turn into a negative bonus (penalty. For example, a two person team playing at a difficulty setting of two (2:2) will receive a +5% difficulty bonus on the XP rewards screen, but if the difficulty is reduced (to 2:1), this becomes a -7% penalty.

Again, whether the reduced difficulty is worth the cost depends on your priorities. If a team duoing the upper floors can finish a 2:1 dungeon in 30% less time than it takes them to do a 2:2 dungeon, the XP penalty is often worth taking.

When playing at the highest possible difficulty—that is, difficulty settings 2:2, 3:3, 4:4 or 5:5—the game takes into account the combat and skill levels of all players. When the difficulty is reduced, the game then uses the levels of only that number of players, starting with the lowest levels first. So if you are playing a 4:3 map, it will ignore the skills of the highest-level player. (How it determines which players to use when each player is higher in some areas and lower in others, is not known).

If you think about it, though, this presents a real opportunity for exploitation. For example, I am combat level 137, and my youngest son’s character is combat level 65. If I set up a 2:1 dungeon with him, the game will tailor the floor exclusively to his levels, resulting in a very easy affair. (In fact, I did this once and we got a boss with a combat level of 40!)

To prevent high-level players from abusing the difficulty settings this way, Jagex imposes a severe XP penalty for unbalanced teams. This XP penalty can be as high as 60%, and is applied on top of any normal penalties for low difficulty. This normally does not even appear on the XP rewards screen, showing up only when necessary.

Note that this unbalanced team penalty does not apply to unbalanced teams that do not reduce the difficulty of the dungeon. When I play with my son at 2:2, we get a +5% difficulty bonus and no unbalanced penalty.

Dungeon Floor Map Sizes Dungeon Complexity Levels