Dungeons
(Dungeons may be referred to by other terms, such as settlements, villages, or structures.)
Dungeons are open world structures that the player comes across while exploring. Randomly generated quests use above-ground dungeons, microdungeons, small structures, and land features as landmarks. The number of dungeons on a planet depend on that planet's size:
- Small Planet: 1 dungeon
- Medium Planet: 1 to 2 dungeons
- Large Planet: 2 to 3 dungeons
Some dungeons, such as a Hylotl Underwater City, have a shield generator inside them that protects all blocks and furniture within dungeon boundaries from being mined, as well as hiding any wiring located within the area. Disabling this shield will allow players to pickup locked objects and blocks.
Village dungeons are usually a collection of many buildings on the surface of a planet. They have many NPCs of all kinds in them, from simple villagers and merchants to guards and kings. NPCs in villages are not automatically hostile to the player. If the player steals 3 items in view of NPCs (one NPC catches you stealing 3 or more furniture items) they will become hostile or call guards to attack you. As of version 1.3.0, NPCs only check if items were destroyed or dismantled by a Matter Manipulator. This means breakable items or items destroyed by inclement weather are not considered to be theft by NPCs, even if the player picks up any items or furniture destroyed in this fashion. However, be careful about placing your own furniture inside of a village, as NPCs will still accuse you of stealing, even if you were the original owner of a furniture item.
Contents
Types of Dungeons
Major Dungeons
| VILLAGES (FRIENDLY) | DUNGEONS (HOSTILE) |
|---|---|
Notes
Most dungeons have a higher chance to appear on planets of a particular primary biome. For instance, all four Floran dungeons are more likely to be found on forest planets than any other planet type. Note that this does not mean that this is the only planet type that a dungeon can generate on.
There are some planet types which have restrictions on dungeon spawning:
- Moons, Asteroid Fields, and Barren planets will not generate any dungeons. The ocean-like Toxic, Arctic, and Magma planets also do not generate dungeons.
- Ocean planets can spawn only the Hylotl Underwater City and Hylotl Underwater Ruins dungeons. Because a large-sized world is guaranteed to have at least two dungeons, this means that every large-sized Ocean planet is guaranteed to contain both Hylotl underwater dungeons. Ocean planets are the only type of planets on which the Hylotl underwater dungeons spawn.
- Garden planets can only contain the Mines dungeon, and are the only type of planet on which this dungeon spawns.
Space Dungeons
With the 1.3.0 Update, three types of space dungeons were added to the game: Space Encounters, NPC Ships, and NPC Space Stations. These can be encountered while inspecting star systems in the Navigation Console. All space dungeons require a mech for exploration. With the 1.4.0 Update, some bounty quests repurpose space encounters and hostile NPC ships as parts of the quest.
Microdungeons
There can be many microdungeons on the surface and underground. Microdungeons are small buildings or landforms, usually only comprising of one or two rooms.
Bounty Microdungeons
With the 1.4.0 Update, new types of microdungeons were added to the game: bounty microdungeons. These consist of small buildings inhabited by hostile NPC gangs. These microdungeons are dynamically spawned into specific worlds when a player has a bounty quest. Note that these microdungeons spawn only in chunks of a world not yet explored by any player, so players may want to avoid unnecessary planetary exploration in star systems near an active Peacekeeper base until after completing that base's Peacekeeper missions, to avoid the annoyance of having bounty microdungeons spawn into inconvenient places like near the core of a planet or in its asteroids layer.
Disabled and Removed Structures
| Disabled Dungeons | Removed Dungeons |
|---|---|
Treasure
Dungeons are a great place to get rare and valuable treasures. Dungeons often have a unique pool of items along with a common pool, depending on the type of container. Basic Treasure often appears in non-chest containers such as boxes and crates, while Valuable Treasure usually appears in dungeon-themed chests.
Most dungeons (including villages) also have a single special chest which contains one Large Dungeon Reward.
Large Dungeon Reward
| Large Dungeon Reward | Quantity | Weight | Chance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Treasure | 2 | Always | Appears |
| Good Weapon | 1 | 0.5 | 50% |
| Unique Weapon | 1 | 0.5 | 50% |
| Total Weight | 1.0 |
Dungeon IDs
Dungeon IDs play an important role in defining the functional aspects of dungeons, including tile protection, breathability, and gravity. Each major dungeon on a planet is assigned its own dungeonid, from 0 to 2, depending on the order in which it was generated on the planet. All minor dungeons on a planet, both above and below ground, are assigned the dungeonid 65533.
Generation
Dungeons are procedurally generated by assembling pre-built rooms and attaching them to produce a unique design. The game uses color 'maps' like the one below to determine how the elements are built, then the game engine checks that map against a dungeon key and places all of the rooms, objects, monster spawns, and loot chests.[1]
In early 2015 Chucklefish transitioned to using the map editing program Tiled for dungeon generation instead of PNG maps.[2]
|
 A Glitch dungeon key. |
