World
Dungeons & Dynasties dungeon conditions
A delve can roll an environmental condition on top of its biome and danger tier, and each of the four Dungeons & Dynasties dungeon conditions bends the fight in a specific, measurable way. This page lists what every condition actually changes — the stat it touches, the size of the penalty, and who on your roster is immune to it — along with the gear that counters it and the odds of meeting one at all.
The four conditions and what each one costs you
There are exactly four. Each carries a small set of numeric fields, and a field that is absent simply does not apply — Cursed Ground has no effect at all on a party of rage and stamina users, and Pitch Dark costs a melee-only party nothing.
Flooded
appears in warren, crypt, ruin, cavernWaist-deep black water drags at every step, blades and footwork bog down where a steady aim does not.
- Melee slow30%Melee heroes only: movement speed × 0.70 and time between attacks × 1.30. Ranged and casters are untouched.
- Skill check DC+1Traps, locks and puzzles all read one point harder.
Countered by: Stormwax Waders · Sealskin Greaves
Pitch Dark
appears in den, crypt, ruin, cavernA smothering, unnatural dark. Bows and spells lose their aim in the black; only those fighting at arm's length see true.
- Ranged accuracy−6Everyone who is not a melee attacker loses 6 points of accuracy rating. Melee heroes are untouched.
- Skill check DC+1Traps, locks and puzzles all read one point harder.
Countered by: Everburning Torch · Sunstone Lantern
Cursed Ground
appears in crypt, ruin, infernalOld wards leach at the will of the living, mana and focus drain away faster than they can be drawn.
- Resource drain30%Mana and focus users only: maximum resource and regeneration are both × 0.70. Stamina and rage users are immune.
Countered by: Warding Charm · Spirit Ward
Deep Cold
appears in frozen, cavernA killing cold seeps into the bones. A wound that would mend turns mortal, and nerves fray with every room you press deeper.
- Injury risk× 1.50Multiplies the post-delve casualty roll for the whole party, on top of the base rate for how the run ended.
- Stress per room+4Added to every surviving member each time the party advances a room, so deep runs compound it.
- Skill check DC+1Traps, locks and puzzles all read one point harder.
Countered by: Furred Mantle · Rimeguard Cloak
How often a delve rolls a condition
A condition is not guaranteed. Each generated dungeon rolls once, and the chance scales with the danger tier — shallow contracts are usually clean, and by the deep tiers close to half of all runs carry one. The roll is capped, so past the eighth tier it stops getting worse.
- Tier 18%
- Tier 214%
- Tier 319%
- Tier 425%
- Tier 530%
- Tier 636%
- Tier 741%
- Tier 846%
- Tier 946%
- Tier 1046%
Guild Wars and other scripted encounters can force a condition regardless of this roll.
Biome decides which dungeon conditions can appear
This is the part the game never spells out. When a dungeon rolls a condition, it draws only from the conditions whose biome list contains that dungeon's biome. A den can only ever throw Pitch Dark at you; a cavern can throw three different things. So the biome of the region you are contracting into, not its flavour tag, is what tells you which parties are safe to send.
- The Ninefold ValeruinFlooded, Pitch Dark, Cursed Ground
- The Ironhold DeepscavernFlooded, Pitch Dark, Deep Cold
- The ElderwooddenPitch Dark
- The Ashen MarcheswarrenFlooded
- The Riven PeakscavernFlooded, Pitch Dark, Deep Cold
- The Pale ReachcryptFlooded, Pitch Dark, Cursed Ground
- The CindermoorruinFlooded, Pitch Dark, Cursed Ground
Full biome and kindred breakdown on the regions page.
Two regions carry a tag that does nothing
Every region displays a condition of its own, and five of the seven name one of the four real conditions. The other two do not. The Ashen Marches is tagged infernal and the Riven Peaks frozen, and neither of those exists in the condition table — they are biome-flavour keys that the game uses for naming rooms, not hazards with numbers behind them.
The tag is also not what gets rolled. A region's condition appears nowhere in the code that picks a delve's condition; that draw comes purely from the biome, as above. Treat the tag as the region's character rather than a promise about the fights you will get there — the Elderwood is tagged cursed, but its den biome can only ever produce Pitch Dark.
- The Ninefold Valedarknessreal condition
- The Ironhold Deepsdeepcoldreal condition
- The Elderwoodcursedreal condition
- The Ashen Marchesinfernalflavour only
- The Riven Peaksfrozenflavour only
- The Pale Reachfloodedreal condition
- The Cindermoorcursedreal condition
Building a party around the condition
Because every penalty is scoped to a subset of the roster, conditions reward lopsided parties rather than balanced ones. Flooded punishes only melee attackers, so a Ranger and an Arcanist keep their full output while a Blademaster loses roughly a third of both his movement and his swing rate. Pitch Dark inverts it exactly: the accuracy penalty lands on everyone who is not swinging at arm's length, which makes a shield-and-blade party the clean answer.
Cursed Ground is the sharpest filter of the four, because it checks the resource a class runs on rather than its role. Mana and focus classes lose nearly a third of both their pool and their regeneration, while stamina and rage classes never notice it — a Warden and a Blademaster walk through it untouched, and a Cleric and an Arcanist are close to halved over a long run. Deep Cold is the one that costs you people instead of damage: it multiplies the casualty roll by half again and piles stress on every room you push deeper, so it is the condition to retreat from early rather than play through.
Three of the four also make skill checks read one point harder, which quietly raises the failure rate on traps and locks. Only Cursed Ground leaves them alone. Trait and attribute breakdowns for the heroes making those checks live on the traits page and the attributes page.
Gear that counters a condition
Four item lines in the loot tables are tagged as counters, one for each condition, and the game flags them in the inventory when they match the delve you are about to run. They are ordinary drops rather than a shop you can plan around, so treat them as a reason to keep a condition-specific piece in the armoury rather than something to build toward.
- FloodedStormwax Waders · Sealskin Greaves
- Pitch DarkEverburning Torch · Sunstone Lantern
- Cursed GroundWarding Charm · Spirit Ward
- Deep ColdFurred Mantle · Rimeguard Cloak
Every counter piece rolls as normal loot, so its actual bonus still scales with the quality band it lands in.
What the advice line in game actually means
Flooded: Ranged and spellcasters keep their bite; melee fighters are slowed.
Pitch Dark: Bring blades, archers and mages lose accuracy in the dark.
Cursed Ground: Drains mana and focus, rage and stamina fighters fare best.
Deep Cold: A hero who falls here is far likelier to die, bring a Physician. Every room deeper frays nerves, and frozen locks read harder.
Those lines are the game's own wording, and they are accurate as far as they go — but they omit the sizes, and size is what decides whether a condition is worth re-rolling a contract over. A six point accuracy hit is a real dent in a Ranger's output; a single point of skill DC is close to noise. The numbers above are the ones the simulation actually applies.
Datamined from v1.9.7.3 · every condition traceable to its offset in the game bundle, see the data tables.