IdleMMO Dungeoneering Leveling Guide

Dungeoneering is the slowest-feeling skill in IdleMMO because you can't spam it: each run takes two hours or more, costs gold to enter and costs health. It is also one of the most rewarding, because every run pays Dungeoneering XP, Combat XP and a loot roll, and higher Dungeoneering levels unlock the harder dungeons where the best recipes live. This guide is about the XP side. For how dungeons work in general, read the dungeon guide first.

The rates

Every dungeon in our cached API data, sorted by level. XP per hour is XP per run divided by the base run length, before efficiency, boosts or membership.

Run lengths are the API's base values. The wiki lists slightly different times and costs for some dungeons; your in-game run time also drops with efficiency.

Reading the table

Three patterns stand out in our cached numbers:

• Run length barely changes. Millstone Mines is 2 hours; The Nexus is 3. So XP per hour tracks XP per run almost one for one, and moving up is nearly always worth it on XP alone.
• The level 40 to 60 jump is the biggest. Sylvan Sanctum pays about 7,300 XP/hr, Whispering Catacombs about 12,800, a rise of roughly 74% for one step. If you are stuck at 40, getting your combat stats up to chain Catacombs is the single best improvement.
• Gold cost grows faster than XP at the top. From Crystal Forge (level 70) the entry cost per hour climbs from about 5,000 to 15,000 gold. Each run also pays shards from level 70, which offsets part of it, but budget for it.

Chainable beats enterable

You can enter a dungeon at 70% of its difficulty, but at 70% the run costs all your health, and a run that costs 60% of your HP can't be chained at all. The wiki's numbers: at 100% of the difficulty you lose about half your health, at 130% almost none. So in practice:

1. Find the highest dungeon where your combat stats are at or above its difficulty (not 70%). That is usually the one you can chain.
2. Compare one run of the dungeon above with a full idle window of the one you can chain. Unless you are about to log back in, the chain wins.
3. Move up once your stats clear the next dungeon's difficulty. Gear, your equipped pet and potions all count toward combat stats.

Worked example from the table: in an 8-hour window (a main character with membership), chaining Sylvan Sanctum at 130 minutes a run fits three full runs, 47,736 XP. A single Whispering Catacombs run that leaves you unable to chain is 28,400 XP. Catacombs is the better dungeon per hour, but in that session the Sylvan chain earns about 68% more.

Speeding it up

• Efficiency cuts run time: +100% halves it. Sources are potions, essence crystals and equipment. A shorter run means more runs per idle window. See food and potions.
• Dungeon EXP boosts are their own category. Conquest ruler guilds get up to +25% Dungeon EXP, and membership adds +15% to actions that support XP boosts. See Conquest and Meditation.
• Boost before you start. Rewards are fixed when the run begins. A potion taken mid-run does nothing for it.
• More health. Slayer's max HP bonus (up to +100% at Slayer 100) means less health lost per run in relative terms, which helps chaining. See the Slayer guide.

Side benefits while you level

Every run also pays Combat XP: about a sixth of the Dungeoneering amount in our cached data (900 Combat XP per Millstone Mines run, 17,010 per Nexus run). And every dungeon you fully complete adds permanent Magic Find. If you are levelling through the early dungeons anyway, stay long enough to finish their completion count before moving on.

Event dungeons

Festivals add their own dungeons: per the wiki, four at level 25 (1,500 gold, 1-hour runs) and four at level 50 (4,000 gold, 1-hour runs). We don't have their XP values in our cached data, so we can't rank them against the standing list. What we can say is that a one-hour run suits short sessions much better than a two-to-three-hour standing dungeon, and that they are only around while their event runs. If you can't stay logged in long enough to chain a standing dungeon, check whether an event dungeon is open.

After level 100

Dungeoneering is one of the skills with Ascension. Past level 100 you gain one Ascension Level for every 1,000,000 XP, up to Ascension Level 500, and Ascension Points activate temporary perks for efficiency, XP or Magic Find. At about 35,000 XP an hour at The Nexus, one Ascension Level is roughly 29 hours of runs before boosts.

To compare dungeons at your own level and boosts, use the Dungeoneering calculator, and see how far you have to go with the XP table.

Frequently asked questions