Field Manual
The Game
Dungeon Divers is built around one idea: victory is decided before the first blade is drawn. Your heroes fight on their own. Whatever happens next is your fault.
01 · Your Heroes
The battle fights itself. The build doesn't.
A class is only the beginning. Every recall is a roll: the Crucible draws each Awakened's talents at random from its specialization's pools, and two heroes of the same class can come back as completely different fighters.
- Passives
- They change the rules: damage conversions, defensive engines, resource loops, effects that only make sense once several talents start interacting.
- Active abilities
- Each hero brings three into battle, triggered automatically. Their selection decides what the hero actually does once you surrender control.
- The Ultimate
- One manual ability per hero. You cannot micromanage the fight, but one decision made at the right second can save a run.
Finding the perfect hero is only the start of progression.
02 · The Pool
Hundreds of talents. Thousands of builds.
Each recall rolls its talents from an enormous pool of offensive, defensive, utility and transformative effects, and a roll can mix specializations: the same archetype can come back a purist, a deviant, or a hybrid nobody planned.
The Heroic exception
Heroic classes break rules. Each brings an innate mechanic of its own: resources, forms, stances, contracts, weather, summons, curses, and stranger systems buried deeper still. Their talents determine what you do with it.
You do not need the perfect roll to make a Heroic work. But finding the right talents can turn one into something absurd.
03 · Sacrifice
The Crucible gives. The Crucible takes back.
Not every Awakened will remain with you. Heroes can be sacrificed, and their talents do not necessarily end with them: through sacrifice, a valuable talent transfers to another hero, slowly turning a lucky recruit into something deliberately engineered. A bad roll is never worthless, a mediocre duplicate becomes raw material, and a rare talent can matter more than the hero carrying it.
You built them out of the dead.
04 · The Squad
The squad is the real build
A powerful hero can still belong to a terrible team. Dungeon Divers is about the interactions between builds.
- A tank that turns incoming damage into a resource.
- A support that makes taking that damage worthwhile.
- A damage dealer whose entire engine depends on conditions the other two create.
- A strange talent you ignored for ten hours, suddenly the missing piece of something disgusting.
The question is rarely which hero is strongest. It is: what happens if I put these together?
That question is the game.
05 · The Campaign
A story-driven descent
At first you are doing what generations of Tunnelers have done before you: map the galleries, secure routes, recover what the village needs, go deeper. It does not stay that simple.
The campaign is story-driven and spans multiple worlds, following the village's descent from familiar galleries into increasingly impossible regions. Along the way you will meet Orsen, Veyr, Ayllend and others who do not agree on what should be done with what lies below. None of them has the whole truth. None of their answers come without a price.
06 · Endgame
The campaign is only the descent
Finishing the story changes what you are preparing for. Your roster becomes the foundation for endgame activities, each asking something different from the builds you have created.
- 01
Plunder of the Depths
Go where expeditions were never intended to survive. Push through the deeper network, extract what you can, and decide how much farther you are willing to risk the run.
In development
- 02
Halls of Dreams
A descent through a labyrinthine mystery, where the pressure climbs room after room and nothing fully recovers. How deep can one composition go as attrition mounts?
In development
- 03
Descent of No Return
A roguelite gauntlet through the paradoxical abysses. No single squad carries it to the end; what is really tested is the entire roster of Awakened you have built.
In development
- 04
Chains of the Rift
Squads of enemy Awakened, each a question of composition and synergy. Your build is the answer, and something down there is building teams too. Comfortable answers die here.
In development
- 05
Village Defense
Sometimes the dungeon comes to you. A miniature PvE MOBA where the assault pushes toward the village in waves: hold the lanes, control the space, and build the team that keeps it out.
In development
07 · The Loop
Every system feeds the next decision
- 01
Recall
Draw a new Awakened, inspect the roll, and notice a talent you have never built around.
- 02
Rebuild
Change the squad, the equipment, the talents. Sacrifice another Awakened to make the build stronger.
- 03
Descend
Take it into the dungeon and watch the plan meet reality.
- 04
Again
Understand why it failed. Change one thing. Descend again.
The battle is the exam. Preparation is the game.