Deep Dungeon
The deep dungeon community on CA is relatively small, but dedicated with many necromancers, lone heroes and Once and Future Kings/Queens.
While we haven't created any specific resources/guides, we have compiled some of the guides we have found that were created by the deep dungeon community below:
Deep Dungeon Resources/Guides
Guides
Guides with information and tips about the deep dungeons. These were written with approaching solo in mind and while much of the information is still useful for groups, do note that groups have a much greater flexibility when approaching things like pomander and time management.
Getting Started
Which Deep Dungeon is the best to start at?
All deep dungeons play relatively similar in a group, but they do differ quite a bit when playing solo (largely due to the various level caps when the content was released). Which Deep Dungeon you choose to start with is largely a point of preference, but you may wish to consider the comparison between the Deep Dungeons as well as the following when choosing where to start:
Which deep dungeon do you have the highest aetherpool and most of the Deep Dungeon specific potion available?
Which level are you most comfortable playing your job at?
Which level do you find the most fun?
How do the different dungeons compare?
Palace of the Dead - Level 60, 200 floors with relatively simple mobs and challenging bosses. RNG will play a factor in your clear based on your job.
Floors 1-100 are relatively easy, but "overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer" and getting greedy will often result in an early death.
Floors 101-150 are still relatively simple, but there are some dangerous mobs sprinkled throughout that you need to be very respectful towards.
Floors 151-200 get progressively tougher with increasingly dangerous mobs.
Heaven on High - Level 70, 100 floors with dangerous mobs and simple bosses. RNG will play a factor in your clear based on your job.
1-50 is quick and relatively simple for all jobs (though you still need to be respectful of many mechanics and traps that can lead to an early death).
51-70 are slower, but start to get more dangerous depending on your job.
71-100 is the "hard stuff" and will test you regardless of the job you choose.
Eureka Orthos - Level 90, 100 floors with simple mobs and simple bosses with dangerous telegraphs. RNG will rarely play a factor in your clear and jobs all play relatively similarly. Recommended to clear in a group at least once to learn the mob telegraphs (or thoroughly read a guide) due to almost all telegraphs being one hit KO abilities.
1-70 - Very slow, with very tanky mobs, but so long as you respect the telegraphs (and have the late/un-telegraphed moves memorized) is quite easy, bosses only rarely have instant kill mechanics.
71-80 - the hardest set, boss has an instant kill mechanic.
81-100 - Slightly easier than 71-80, but the bosses have multiple instant KO abilities that will end your run.
Which solo title is the easiest?
Lonely explorer (reach at least floor 101 in PotD)
Once and Future King/Queen (Reach floor 100 of Eureka Orthos)
Lone Hero (Reach floor 100 of Heaven on High)
Necromancer (reach floor 200 of PotD)
Note: Eureka Orthos -- while simpler than HoH or PotD -- may take longer to learn from scratch if solo due to the sheer number of "gotcha!" one hit KO mechanics that will end your run.
What do you need to start in a group?
Nothing other than 3 like-minded individuals. Just grab all the silver chests and play safe. Good luck!
What do you need to start solo?
Sufficient Aetherpool and Sustaining/Empyrean/Orthos potions depending on which Deep Dungeon you wish to tackle.
Aetherpool
For Aetherpool, ideally you would start your climb above 70/70, but depending on the job you can get away with less when starting your prog. You will need to be at or near 99/99 by the later floors if you want to clear*
If you don't have enough aetherpool, one of two things will happen:
If your weapon isn't sufficient, mobs take a long time to kill and you might time out or die.
If your armor is rated too low, you will have less HP which may get you killed faster.
*: If you are experienced in other deep dungeons, it may be possible to clear with less than max aetherpool depending on your job and which deep dungeon you are tackling, but it will be harder to secure your clear.
Potions
Unless you are a healer (or certain tanks depending on the dungeon), Sustaining/Empyrean/Orthos potions are your lifeblood. They are the most important thing that you need to have sufficient quantities of to survive. The number that you need will vary based on your job as well as your luck.
A good number to start a proper climb is 300 sustaining potions. You will never need more than 120 per floorset (120 potions assumes that you keep the effect running 100% of the time which is pretty unrealistic)
Some jobs will find more potsherds than they spend (potion positive), while others will consume far more than you are likely to find (potion negative).
Warrior, Machinist, Red Mage, Summoner, and healers will almost always be potion positive in all deep dungeons.
Paladin, Gunbreaker and Dark Knight will usually be potion positive, but if you get unlucky they may end up potion neutral or negative.
Melee and Blackmage are usually potion negative in most deep dungeons.
In addition, the drop rate of potsherds and aetherpool fragments used to purchase the potions increases the higher that you climb and much of the above is based on reaching the higher floors.
Farming Tips
For PotD, the best way is to just climb as far as possible. Usually joining a group and climbing as far as you can will be the fastest way to farm.
HoH and EO provide the alternative for running 21-30 for the guaranteed +1/+1 to aetherpool as well as the guaranteed potsherd drop.
Alternatively, you can just climb on one of the stronger jobs such as Warrior as high as possible while being conservative with your potion usage is a solid option for grinding. (Just be aware, that you may run into issues if your aetherpool is too low). Running two saves in parellel can be a good way to "double dip" on the aetherpool gains and let you climb further that you might otherwise.
Note: Climbing in two parallel save files can be useful for nearly doubling your aetherpool gain per floor (with a bonus of getting more potential potsherds as well)
General Solo Tips
Note: These tips are for people aiming to clear for the title, strategies and tips may differ depending on the goal, such as if you are attempting to speed run or do a scoring run.
What should you prepare before you start?
Current tier High Quality raid Food should always be used for the additional ~10% HP that you gain from (and free modest substat boost).
Note on stat priority in Deep Dungeons the stat priority is "Direct Hit > Skillspeed/Spellspeed > Determination > Critical Hit", but are mostly a negligible boost compared to the HP provided. You can safely use whatever current tier raid food you have on hand.
Grade 5 Tinctures for your job - While these will lock you out of your healing potion (but not your sustaining potion), and can help provide you a DPS boost, these are most useful in Heaven on High as bosses have very large HP pools.
Casters/Healers may opt to bring Echo Drops to help nullify the risk posed by Impeding Traps, but note that this locks you out of your Sustaining/Empyrean/Orthos potion for the duration of the Echo Drop cooldown.
Healing potions - Each deep dungeon will provide you with many healing potions appropriate to the deep dungeon. You should actively be using these throughout your climb. Make sure to bind these onto your hotbar
What job should I pick?
Every job has cleared every deep dungeon, but some jobs (such as Astrologian) are considered harder than others (such as Warrior, Machinst or Redmage).
In general, the following holds true:
DPS will never have an issue with time, but may not be able to safetly fight every mob and will need to be more careful with managing their pomanders.
Tanks will never have an issue fighting mobs and can be more flexible with their use of pomanders, but they will struggle with time..
Healers are typically considered hard mode since low DPS while being relatively fragile requires that they manage both their pomanders and their time.
Time Management
Each floorset has a maximum time of 60 minutes to complete all 10 floors, while you will rarely have an issue with earlier floorsets, as you progress those 60 minutes become much tighter to deal with.
There are many different methods to deal with time, but the following are key aspects of making the most of your time.
1. Be aware of the time - A safe estimate is that if you take an average of 5 minutes per floor, you are "on time" and will have 15 minutes for the boss. 15 minutes is enough time for at least one attempt on any boss for most jobs.
Important Note: 5 minutes per floor is an average across all the sets. If your strategy calls for using large time saving poms (such as Rage/Magicite/etc) it is perfectly acceptable to take more time on the earlier sets knowing that you will make up the time later.
Boss Time Note: Most bosses on most jobs do not take a full 15 minutes. If you go into a boss knowing that it will take you 10 minutes (based on poms/strategy/etc), you can use the additional 5 minutes as buffer for earlier floors.
Example: Floor 140 of PotD is vulnerable to `Pomander of Resolution` and can be killed in approximately 60 seconds by using a Resolution and Strength pomander on most jobs. Knowing this, you can use an additional 10+ minutes as a buffer for any floors that take additional time.
2. Multi-tasking - As the most efficient use of your time is to always be fighting something, to maximize your time, you also need to be thinking about your next objective at the same time. The worst use of your time is being idle* while you strategize, explore, and act.
Examples:
While fighting opening safe chests (bronze or silver when at max HP)
while opening safe chests and exploring (being mindful of how soon you can make your exit from a floor) are essential to making efficient use of your time. It is often more efficient with your time to lose some filler GCDs on a mob to take a peek at nearby rooms (using a ranged filler ability) than to wait to kill the enemy to do so. Multi-tasking saves small increments of time (5-10 seconds) many times throughout the floor set.
*: There are times when you should break this rule -- such as when the passage is open and it will take more time to fight something than wait for it to move or if there's a mob that you don't have the resources to fight -- the important part is that you choose to remain idle instead of defaulting to idling.
3. Efficient exploration - When exploring it is often best to pick a single direction and fully explore it before choosing another route (if there is one). Backtracking once -- while not ideal -- is much better than backtracking multiple times. In addition, many jobs can opt to explore while kiting easier mobs around. Even a small 100 potency attack can contribute significantly when you are running between rooms.
4. Pomander use - Strength, Flight and Serenity (on a floor with bad debuffs) can help you to catch up on time if you are behind. Maximizing the usage of pomanders like strength/frailty/sight/etc is an important aspect to making gains on your time (e.g. always fighting while strength is up, using sight early into the floor)
It's also important to know which pomanders are "cheap" (e.g. Strength/Flight/Alteration/Sight/etc) and pomanders that are and "expensive" (Steel/Serenity/Rage/Dread/Magicite). If you use a "cheap" pomander like strength earlier in the set, you can usually mitigate the need to use an "expensive" pomander (e.g. Rage/Dread/Magicite) on the last floors of the set.
Example:
If you are leaving floor X4 at 35 minutes, you are five minutes behind pace. With 35 minutes remaining, you can usually catch up by using a strength or a flight.
If you are entering floor X9 with 15 minutes remaining, you are also five minutes behind pace and (depending on the boss) you may need to use a big pom like magicite/rage to have enough time for them (Or you may have to use additional resources on the boss).
5. Mimic Management - There are few things that will set you behind more than an unfortunately timed mimic (such as fighting a mimic after passage opens, while fighting another mob, etc). Mimics have hard hitting auto-attacks, periodically have an interruptible cast which will inflict pox, and have a lot of HP to burn through. It is always preferable to fight a mimic before the passage has opened so that you are guaranteed some progress from killing it.
When in doubt, the safest play is to skip any chests that you don't need or are too risky to open. A good rule of thumb when you want to open a mimic spawning chest is the following:
Can you survive fight a mimic safely with your current buffs/debuffs?
Is the passage still closed? And if not, can you afford the time to kill it?
Do you have an interrupt available? If not, can you afford a purity/witching/deal with getting pox?
The more of the above questions are "yes" the less risky it is to open the chest. Mimic spawning chests should always be treated as a calculated risk and -- if the risk is too great for the potential gain -- not opening the chest is the safest course of action.
6. If your burst is up, kill something - This aspect is more job dependent than the above tips, but if your job has a well defined burst phase -- Inner Release, No Mercy/Fight or Flight, Bahamut, etc -- you should always have a target to kill when it's ready until you've opened the passage.
With all of the above in mind, it's important to always make your decisions quickly. It is usually better to make a sub-optimal decision quickly rather than waste time thinking in order to make an "optimal decision".
A final factor to remember is that time is a resource just as much as pomanders are, it is all right to finish sets with less than 5 minutes remaining, and if you are able to comfortably do so without using extra resources, it will always benefit you in the future sets*
*: Does not apply to the last set of the DD, use all your poms that you can to get the clear, you can't bring them out when you leave.
Floor Debuffs
Sprint/Haste/HP Increased - Nice buffs, not game breaking, but very welcome.
No Knockback - Often neutral, can be a nice benefit if there are mobs that have dangerous draw-in effects, but nullifies the value of Pomander of Rage/Dread as those poms require knockback to kill enemies.
Gloom - Give the mobs a vulnerability down, damage up and movement speed up buff. This causes enemies to hit harder, take less damage and move faster. The movement speed increase impacts patrols as well as makes it more difficult to kite mobs. Mobs that mostly do auto-attacks are much more dangerous on a gloomed floor.
Damage Down/Blind - Lower the amount of damage that you deal through the mobs by causing you do deal less damage or periodically miss your attacks. Note that missing your attacks will cancel your combos on jobs where that is relevant.
Max HP Down - Can be very dangerous on DPS or Healers as it removes some of the much needed HP needed to survive certain autoattacks from monsters.
No HP Regen - Not especially dangerous unless paired with no Item on a DPS job.
No Item - Very dangerous if you rely on the sustaining potion to survive. If you don't rely on potions, it gets downgraded to annoying if you are capped on pomanders and find freebies that you cannot use.
No Ability - Easily the worst debuff to face. Even when it is possible to comfortably fight through it, it will slow you down massively. Almost always worth using some kind of pomander unless mobs are still squishy or you have some other answer for the floor (such as a free floor wipe, it's been flighted, you got a korrigan treasure room, etc).
This danger level of No Ability also differs between the deep dungeons and on how dependent your job is on Abilities for survivability and damage.
Least detrimental in Palace of the Dead
Pretty harsh in Heaven on High
Incredibly harsh in Eureka Orthos
Dangerous Debuff Combos
No Item + No Ability - The "Deep Dungeon has declared that you must use a serenity" level of bad.
No item + No Regen - "Very few jobs can effectively fight this kind of floor" level of bad.
Gloom + Max HP Reduced - Dangerous for any non-tank due to low HP and increased damage from mobs. Can usually be fought through if careful, with steel, but dangerous.
Gloom + Damage Down/Blind - If you are not ahead on time, you will likely need to counter this with some kind of resource. If ahead on time, you may choose to fight it knowing that it is going to take a long time.
Pomander Management
The most important aspect to Pomander Management is understanding that "hoarding everything at three" and "only using freebies" is letting the dungeon manage your poms, which is a bad habit to fall into (especially on later floorsets which require efficient and effective usage of your pomanders).
The second most important point is that when you die (without a raising) you lose all your poms, so it's usually better to die with an empty holster on a later floor than to die with a full holster.
Critical Pomanders
When approaching pomander management, it's important to identify which pomanders are critical to your strategy, and which you can opt to use more flexibly.
For example: Raisings are very valuable for safety in certain dangerous floorsets. It is typically optimal to try to use anything else other than a raising until you reach those specific floorsets that are the highest risk.
General Pomander Uses
Beyond your critical pomanders, you should keep in mind what you can use to fit your situation (be it a floorset mobs or emergency). Some rules of thumb that I use are as follows:
Sight/Safety/Conceal are to deal with traps (or to help increase the space that you have available to fight).
Affluence/Alteration/Fortune are for chests (affluence also pairs well with flight since you can more easily navigate around to collect chests).
Flight/Alteration are great for floors that might have undesirable mobs (sometimes a room full of mimics is better than extra HoH Kubinashi or EO monkeys).
Strength/Steel/Frailty are for time and survivability.
Strength increases both damage dealt as well as healing by 30%, this also affects healing abilities like Second Wind/Bloodbath/Raw Intuition; weaponskills like Storm's Path and Solid Barrel; and spells like Cure/Ver Cure/Clemency. This makes it a great time boost as well as a minor survivability boost on jobs with relevant abilities.
Steel is 40% damage reduction and makes all mobs safer to fight with some mobs possible to fight.
Witching is your default panic button. When indoubt, pop a witching to give yourself some leeway to adjust to the situation.
Steel/Strength/Lethargy/Storms can also be used as secondary panic button.
Rage/Petri/Conceal/Storms/Dread can be used to deal with a treasure room, skip a floor with dangerous debuffs or when you find yourself falling severely behind on time.
etc
When to use a pom vs when to save
Note: If you deem a pomander critical to your strategy (such as a raising, magicite/petrifies, onion knight, rage, etc), it is always better to try to save them than use them haphazardly and you should fight your hardest to save them unless the run would otherwise be doomed.
Outside of those "critical pomanders", pom management is about ensuring that you use your pomanders smartly. While you can opt to only use "free" pomanders (i.e. any pomanders you cannot pick up), this is rarely an efficient use for them.
Some examples:
Using a free sight or safety at the end of a floor doesn't provide any value
You don't always find a Serenity on a floors where you should use the serenity.
Staying at three strength will end up being a waste anytime you find a multiple strength of a floorset (not an uncommon occurrence)
You can't use more than one affluence/alteration/flight/fortune per floor
Examples of Inefficient Use:
Picking up two of the same type of pomander when you already have three. This will still happen when you are trying to use pomanders efficiently, but becomes much more important on the later sets. Some examples are as follows:
Fighting thought bad debuffs only to find a free serenity at the end or on the next floor.
Fighting through a treasure room taking a long time only to find a free rage/floor wipe/etc on the other side.
Using a strength or steel and then exploring the floor without fighting anything while they are running.
Using a floor wipe when behind to get back on time as it is usually easier/cheaper to use less valuable pomanders (like strength/flight) to get ahead.
(Heaven on High) Not constantly fighting while Frailty is running or opening a mimic spawning chest as they will not be affected by frailty.
(Eureka Orthos) Using a Dread for a boss instead of a floor wipe.