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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

Teamwork and Considerate Gameplay Keeping Track of Locked Doors and Keys

Most of the time you spend in a dungeon will be devoted to exploring the floor. The primary goal is to go from one room to the next in search of the boss room, but there are other reasons to explore the dungeon as well. You need to open every door and room, if possible, to maximize the XP you get, especially on large floors. Exploration is also the way to find important resources you’ll need to beat the boss.

Small dungeons have only at most 16 rooms, and often fewer than that, so exploring them is pretty simple and quick. But with medium-sized dungeons (32 rooms maximum) and especially large dungeons (up to 64 rooms), exploration is a major undertaking.

The exact approach used to explore and clear the dungeon depends largely on the particular floor clearing strategy you are using. At one extreme, there are players who do nothing but collect keys and open doors, not even stopping to kill monsters unless it is necessary to open guardian doors. And at the other extreme are players who kill every monster, fish every spot and chop every tree. Most parties fall somewhere in the middle, often killing most monsters but not all, and taking resources only when they are needed.

Here are a few basic suggestions and tips for exploring floors. Note that these are geared more towards larger floors, since again, small dungeons are pretty quick and easy. There’s also a fair bit of advice specific to teams since, again, solo parties don’t require much coordination. :)

Think about a typical tree: it has a trunk at the bottom, which splits into large branches (limbs), then smaller branches and so forth. The rooms in a dungeon are laid out in similar a tree structure—it’s just a very oddly shaped tree. :) You begin at the starting room, which has one or more doors coming from it. These doors open up rooms that in turn have doors, forming pathways or branches through the dungeon. One of these will eventually lead to the boss room, while the others all lead to “dead ends”.

There’s no way to know which branch will lead to the boss, so at the beginning, you have to just pick a door and “go for it”. Once you do, though, it is best to follow a branch as far as it will go until you get “stuck”, which usually occurs because a door requires a key you haven’t found yet, or there’s a challenge or skill door that can’t be done immediately.

When you can’t proceed any further, you should backtrack, looking for other rooms near you that you passed by. Go back to those rooms and see if you can open them. Repeat the process as necessary to explore as much of the dungeon as you can.

You have an unlimited, free spell to take you back the dungeon’s starting room, so don’t be afraid to use it. This is particularly handy if you’ve followed a branch of the dungeon and found only doors that can’t be opened. Sometimes, if you are far from the home room and there aren’t any doors in the immediate area that warrant investigation, it’s easier to have every teleport home and start a new branch of exploration.

In a team, usually the team leader or the person managing keys will determine that there are no more openable doors in the team’s immediate area, and say something like “home tele” or “ht”.

Home Teleport is particularly powerful used in combination with Gatestone Teleport. If you find yourself in a spot where you cannot progress any further, drop a gatestone there, then return home and explore another part of the dungeon. You can then teleport quickly later on when you get the key or other item needed to open the door you were stuck on.

Most of the rooms will have monsters in them; killing the monsters is usually called clearing the room. Which rooms to clear is a major decision point in choosing a dungeon raiding strategy. As mentioned earlier, some teams will clear every room, while others will clear only the bare minimum necessary to open the next door.

Pretty much all teams, except for ones with the most casual of players, skip “dead end” rooms. These are rooms at the end of a branch of the dungeon but that do not contain the boss. There is really no need to kill the monsters in these rooms, since they don’t have any doors leading to rooms behind them. You do lose a little XP (in the form of a lower level modifier) but not much compared to the time saved by not killing dozens of high-level monsters.

An exception to the usual dead end policy is if a room has a valuable resource in it. Sometimes even the quickest rushers will clear a dead end room if it has a prayer altar in it and one hasn’t been found elsewhere.

Under normal circumstances, it is a wise idea to clear any rooms that are in the middle of long branches of the dungeon. Even though this takes some time and may make for a “less than optimal rush”, your team can really take a pounding if they have to keep running through monster-laden rooms that haven’t been cleaned out. I can recall one party that left rooms with tons of combat level 100+ monsters in them right next to the starting room. This meant that any time someone left the home base, they’d get pummelled, and if a player died and respawned at home without any food, they were stuck there. Pretty dumb, short-sighted way to play, in this author’s opinion.

Speaking of dying, beware the potential for disaster if you go into a room in a large, high-difficulty dungeon by yourself. A single room can have multiple monsters each capable of doing over 200 LP of damage per attack, and often using all three combat styles. I die more often in regular monster rooms than I do to bosses.

It is best to clear rooms by starting with the most dangerous or annoying monsters first, to get them out of the way and eliminate the threat they represent. High on my list of annoying/dangerous monsters are poisonous spiders (not ice spider), mysterious shades and forgotten mages, warriors and rangers. You should also prioritize higher-level monsters over lower-level ones; an ice elemental may not be more dangerous overall than a mysterious shade, but if the elemental is level 100+ and the shade is level 2, that’s an easy choice.

This is definitely in the “last but not least” category—when you are in a team, communication is absolutely crucial. You need to tell your teammates what you are doing, and ask for help if needed, and they should do the same. Only with a steady flow of information can everyone work together well. A silent team is a bad team, in my opinion. (Amusingly, I’ve seen famous chefs say the same thing about restaurant kitchens: if nobody is talking, something is probably wrong.)

Of course I don’t mean you should spam the chatbox with everything you’re doing, but you should say when you find something or do something that other teammates may want to know about. This is essential especially if some members of the team are in different rooms, but useful even when they are in the same room. Some examples:

• If you’re not handling keys but find a key on the floor that the keymaster appears likely to miss, say “key”.
  
  
• Tell teammates if you find an important resource, especially a prayer altar.
  
  
• If you are teleporting home to do something but have set a gatestone, say “brb” so they understand what you’re doing.
  
  
• If you need food or a poison cure, ask. If you have plenty of food to share or the ability to cure, offer.
  
  
• If you’re leading a group and you open a door to a room that is a dead end, say “de” so players who aren’t there yet know not to bother.
  
  
• Say when you find a challenge room that requires the whole team, like Follow the Leader.
  
  
• Tell everyone if you set a gatestone somewhere important, like a locked door, and which key it needs.
  
  
• If you find a door that requires a key, tell the keymaster which one it is.
  
  
• When you find the boss room, tell everyone, and also tell them what the boss is.

In addition to those gameplay-related examples, if for whatever reason you have to go AFK, or worse, leave the team temporarily, definitely tell everyone! It’s very confusing and irritating when someone just disappears without warning.

Teamwork and Considerate Gameplay Keeping Track of Locked Doors and Keys