If you don’t know what a dungeon is, then you’ve probably never encountered online games in the MMORPG genre or the Minecraft project, as well as its clones. For many gamers, this word has several meanings, but all have one essence. A dungeon is a place for farming, gold mining, items, unique items for completing tasks, and so on. The following is a general description of such raids, based on the collective image of dungeons from various game projects.
Name Meaning
First of all, we will understand in the sense of the name of the location. Dungeon is translated into Russian as a "dungeon." If we consider the dungeon in general for all computer games, then it represents a separate location or a long tangled level, filled with awards and enemies. Usually, the player needs to completely eliminate the threat in the entire dungeon before going to the surface (if the dungeon is only part of the game).
The roots of the genre
If you look at the question of what dungeon is from afar, then you need to say about the computer game Dungeon Crawl. It was she who, in 1997, determined the basic rules for such places in role-playing games. The concept is quite simple - the hero moves through an endless underground labyrinth, kills enemies, pumps equipment and skills. At death, everything begins anew. The game was one solid dungeon. Dungeon Crawl also marked the beginning of most modern rougelike projects. Good examples of such projects are games such as Enter the Gungeon, Hollow Knight, Rouge Legacy and the like.
Board games with a similar structure are also very popular. Some of them imitated the dungeon only in the imagination of the players - according to the descriptions of monsters and locations from the cards. And in others, the creators tried to implement a full-fledged maze, through which players could move the figures during their actions and moves.
Solo Dungeons
Now let's talk about what dungeon is in single-player role-playing games. Basically, in modern dungeon projects, they perform only the function of one of the ordinary locations. Occasionally a hero is sent to kill a difficult boss or complete a quest. Such a system is found in many games, for example in the Dragon Age series.
In the popular The Elder Scrolls, on the other hand, dungeon is a separate world. In addition to exploring locations on the surface, the player constantly enters dungeons that are filled with monsters and bandits of high levels. A distinctive feature of all the dungeons in TES is its length and complexity. In one dungeon, a player can spend up to 2 hours if the game is played at a high level of difficulty.
In Skyrim, this system has been greatly simplified. And in the progenitor of the Arena series or in Daggerfall, the dungeons were a real test for an unprepared person. They were created randomly before the player came in, so sometimes there were too complicated and complicated examples.
Multiplayer Games
The word "dungeon" has a slightly different meaning in MMORPG. It still means a separate location in which the main goal is to kill everyone and get to the end. However, there are online instances of instance dungeon. They create a separate copy of the dungeon into which players are loaded. After the completion of time, the successful passage or death of all players, this dungeon closes, and all the characters fall back into the common world.
It is worth saying that dungeons can be not only dungeons. In MMORPG, this term can be called any "instance". Almost all of them are divided into categories - single, group, by level and access to individuals / clans. The most difficult dungeons need thorough preparation - this is the selection of the correct composition of characters and classes, crafting equipment, the development of tactics. Even with such preparation, one can be defeated without a worthy leader who will manage the actions of the entire group.
Dungeon in Minecraft
In the Minecraft computer game, it is customary to call individual treasures a dungeon. Finding this room is not so simple, as it is buried deep in the ground. Unlike other games, here you have to dig a dungeon yourself, as well as look for a treasury without identification marks. This adds an element of exploration and adventure, for which they love Minecraft. There are many dungeon mods on the web for this game. They add various tests and difficult locations.
We figured out what dungeon is in most computer games. This type of location and gameplay appeared 20 years ago, but is developing and appears in modern projects to this day.