Map Reading & Pathing
By Tui
This guide is part of a series of guides written by DGS:
-- Map Reading & Pathing.
-- Puzzles.
-- Bosses.
-- Binds.
-- Acronyms.
-- Monster weaknesses.
-- Intro to Meta.
-- Abilities.
Table of Contents
1.0 - Basic Knowledge
2.0 - Identifying path sizes
3.0 - CGT & GGS MVT
4.0 - Smart Gating
5.0 - Pathing
6.0 - Crit
7.0 - Map rules
8.0 - Required communication
Version history
v1.00 - Intro, Section 4.0 & Example floor [06/06/2011]
v2.00 - Sections 2.0, 3.0, 5.0-7.0 added, example floor removed, heavily revised guide [15/09/2011]
v2.01 - Added glossary, table of contents, colours etc. [20/09/2011]
v2.02 - Added Map Opening Mechanics [01/12/2011]
v2.50 - Fixed out of date advice [07/05/2012]
v2.51 - Puzzle room xp formulae added [17/07/2012]
Glossary
Gt = Group tele, or the group gatestone
Gate/Gs = Personal gate / personal gatestone
Cover = Covering someone's previously claimed door
Mgt = Move gt (To your gated area)
Cgt = Carry gt (As you explore)
Bgt = Buy gt (So I can mgt or carry gt)
Sgt = Sell gt (So you can mgt)
Gd = Guardian door
Fg = Free gate
N, E, S, W = North, East, South, West
De, Dewk, Denk = Dead end, Dead end with key, Dead end no key
Crit = Critical path - the path that leads to boss
Bonus = Bonus rooms, the rest of the map
DGSweeper
Use DGSweeper.exe. It is a program that snapshots your map and pastes a picture of it in the top left corner of your screen each time you open your map. It was written by Wicked and can be found here:
the-dgsweeper-the-most-popular-dungeoneering-utility-t264.html
I don't care if you think it makes you reliant and hurts your pride. It is basically impossible to keep track of teammates with 0.6 seconds of seeing their dots on the map every once in a while. Anyone who's dged a while can glance at a map and take the ggs in the right direction. DGSweeper is about keeping track of teammates, vital for organization. If you are unable to use it, it is often worth it to open map & gaze at it until you understand what is going on in the map. It is better to be correct & slow than fast & wrong - you can work on speed as you improve.
1.0 - Basic Knowledge
This guide assumes you know the basics of dungeoneering, and does not explain how to do puzzles, efficient dps, or boss strategies. However, it is of vital importance for everyone to understand for fast floors.
Know your gates. Everyone should know each other's gates. At the very least you must know which path(s) and/or area(s) is gated by which player(s). It is extremely important to know which parts of the map are covered. Ignoring doors is unacceptable. If you don't know what a door is, ask. There is no shame asking something you've forgot or writing things down. In record time floors I still write some things down.
Keys should be called for:
- When you can call a key before you will pick it up (say "<Keyname> soon" if it's in a maze, vines, etc.)
- Noting whether the key is bonus or likely crit
The only efficient style of dging is everyone pathing. This does not mean avoid gds, it means that everyone must split up to open doors, gate areas, and be competent in all areas of dg. The keyer role is only slightly harder on an ideal team.
This is your map. It is a vital tool to helping you organize your team and knowing where to go next. The map cannot circle. A path can have forks, but paths can never connect except for the initial forking point of a path.
The icons each represent a player. Red being 1st, blue 2nd, green 3rd, yellow 4th, and grey 5th. DGSweeper can show who each icon is, use it.
Why use the map?
It allows the gt holder to always go in the direction that looks like it will have the most doors. This means the gt will be near lots of doors, allowing others to cleanup remaining paths. It allows you to prioritize big portions of the map, which allows you to branch out sooner.
It also lets you do smaller paths and rooms more likely to de when soloing small areas, which means less backtracking.
2.0 - Identifying path sizes
The purple room can branch in 3 directions. Paths like to go straight, so it’s likely that it will create a room 2 north of ht. Since the entire west portion of the map needs to exist, it is likely that the path will go west as well soon. The purple path is bigger than blue because it has space for 4 rooms north of ht, and thus a higher chance of going west. Blue has room for 3 rooms south of ht. Green has the potential to branch in only 2 directions because it’s against the edge of the map, and both of its doors have a lesser chance of existing because blue and purple rooms can spawn rooms where green would like to go.
In this example you see the lavender room that can only branch 1 door initially, so on that basis you would assume it’s a small path, however, since the northeast area can only branch from that 1 room, it will be a decent sized path. The map does not create 10 blank spaces beside each other.
While yellow and red are directly competing with each other, green is almost guaranteed to have a large path. This does not necessarily mean the ggs should be there, just always try and keep in mind how the map is likely to progress.
So the 3 things to remember for determining path size are:
- How many doors are branching from this room, and how many possible doors from the next room(s)
- The total size of area for the path to expand into
- How other paths may interfere
3.0 - CGT & GGS MVT
Cgt - CARRY GT.
The gt is used to redistribute players across the map. Good teamwork is paying attention to your team and always trying to make best use of yourself by completing paths or assisting teammates. Good communication is how you organize this.
It's ideal if you can keep track of everyone, but it is extremely hard to constantly pay attention to others while also completing your own rooms. Thus, you must learn to do all rooms on autopilot.
And at the very least, the gt holder must pay attention to the next biggest active path and, mostly if early map, the path that is crit if the gt is not on crit.
Meanwhile, everyone must pay attention to doors nearby their gate that they may possibly have to cover.
The gt should be carried ahead of the team, so people can clean up the rooms behind it and have something to do when they gt.
In this example, the team has just arrived at a gd and sr (silver rectangle) door with sr key going south:
Since south is a much bigger path than east, I cgt with me as I run south. It would be a huge waste of time to leave gt at the gd.
Gt Movement
The purpose of gt movement should be A) to get backup, or B) for players to have something useful to do.
The gt should generally be slightly ahead of the team, but carrying gt into say, a flowers room while there is an adjacent gd is not ideal. The gt should only generally be 'ahead' of the team so that everyone can make best use of themselves.
You want to mgt when a path is clearly going to be bigger than the current one, however, you must consider whether the players where the gt currently is are sufficient to complete that area of the map. Obviously if nobody is free gate, you can't mgt.
You should also mgt when your gate would be stretched so much that you need someone else to help gate. But again, this is situational, for these scenarios you must be keeping track of your teammates.
Grey and green have decent sized paths - the gt has a gate (and ht can break if necessary), so if either grey or more likely green start having a spread out gate, they should mgt.
Yellow cursor is at a gd. This gd should be solo'd, you should never move the gt to small paths unless absolutely vital for survival. In this case, it'd make more sense to request someone to run to your gd than mgt, as it's very close to a door gated 1n1w of yellow's gd, and the team is also 1n2w from yellow.
Moving the ggs costs about 1 room of movement for the player doing so. Moving it there and back would thus cost 2 rooms and requires more organization to pull off quickly.
When there are disputes in organization, the highest rank or the keyer has the final word. But do not expect others to organize you, it's everyone's responsibility to sort that out themselves. You MUST show initiative to gate things by yourself, cover nearby doors, tell who to mgt, etc.
For fast floors, low overall players & inexperienced players should stick to smaller paths. However, for teaching, it's beneficial for the newbs to get a decent sized path and thus a harder job. Every dgs'er is expected to be able to gate a door and complete a path. If you have a gate, you should not path unless nobody is fg. Generally completing very small paths is acceptable, but breaking your gate unnecessarily is treason!
Remember, the gt is a teleport to - it can cover doors for quite some time, especially if there are gds. Often someone will free up their gate before the gt gets far or has to be moved. Whoever has the least important gate should know, so they can break their gate if necessarily. Base doors also have 2 teleports (death and ht), so any rooms near home can generally be ran fairly easily.
4.0 - Smart Gating
A lot of people put their gate in the wrong spot.
The green icon is at a gd and also has ct door 2w gated.
So they should obviously gate the gd, so they can take the team there faster, and then run back to ct and regate it once the gt is at the gd.
Having the team run 2 rooms is way worse than 1 person running 2 rooms to regate ct, obviously.
Even if both doors were key doors, always gate the one that is the bigger path. Dewks tend to give keys that are bigger paths first, and it also saves time moving the gt into the bigger area even if you have to do the de first.
Always regate an area. As you complete your path, check whether other nearby doors need gating. It is your responsibility to know all doors in your area & get them completed.
Backing up gates -
When a path looks large it is good to have multiple people gate it until they have something better to gate.
In this example 2 players gated 101 mine because it is fairly large. Multiple people gated YW door as well. Doubling gates is important for paths that look like they may need more than 1 person to complete.
Obviously it depends on how the rest of the map turns out, but at the current point in that map pic, crit has to be nearly complete, yet there are still plenty of doors on the map. Don't ever assume that bonus has to be small because it's bonus. 3/5ths or so of rooms are bonus. (Crit is ~19-23 rooms, maps are 50-64 rooms).
Green and yellow are correctly duoing a path - clearly it's going to branch a lot.
It is preferable to assign multiple people gates nearby if they lead to different paths. If you assign 1 person a dead end door + a door that looks like it'll be a large path, they will have to run back to regate the door later. The above example is 1 room, but obviously would be very difficult to cover with 1 gate.
Obviously if both doors were unable to be immediately opened you would still want 2 gates there unless it becomes absolutely necessary for 1 person to break. In that case, the gt will very likely be moved to this west path that was going to be duo'd.
Overgating
Sometimes you will run into a situation where you will arrive at a door you can't do but already have a gate. Based off the proximity of other player's gates it may save more time to break your old gate and gate a new area. Always ask your team first if you are unsure whether other players have gated nearby to where you are. Knowing when to break your gate is very important in hard maps (many many doors everywhere) and 3:3s (or with fillers who can’t really gate).
To avoid having to break your gate, if you have been assigned a gate, do not explore paths when others without gates can. Stick to the gds and really small paths.
Proper communication is required to solve complicated map issues. You can always say "gt fg" if you are incompetent at keeping track of others.
5.0 – Pathing
Credits to Rare Pain for the pic.
The main thing about pathing is prioritization.
You must have looked at your map so you can open larger paths while holding the ggs, and open smaller paths if alone.
Early map, the keyer should generally be gating each fork as they cgt so they can cover rooms if necessary or quickly mgt to the biggest room when that key is found.
If you become the only one who is fg, you should split the gt and your own gate so you can path smaller paths while someone else cgt's.
Mid map, whoever has what looks like the biggest door on the map gated should be cgt'ing so they can mgt as necessary.
Late map, the gt functions more to help complete small & mid-sized paths that would not be finished before boss is.
Skilling during “idle” time is a waste of time - it is better to have multiple people solving puzzle rooms together because some are helped by having multiple people and people will arrive at gds simultaneously. You should only ever loot chests during this time.
In base if you finish runes before the keyer, take a different path than them. This way the gt doesn't lag behind players.
Prioritizing the map means you want to complete rooms that branch off a lot first for the gt, but still complete solo paths fast enough as to have enough gates for the floor and get keys from dewks so you are never idle. And, most importantly, it means doing small paths before big ones when alone.
If you are exploring alone, and -not- on the biggest path of the entire map, it is beneficial to try and open smaller paths in your area first, and sometimes open both doors at forks. Occasionally 1 door at a fork will de, because paths compete with each other. Another thing to note is that bonus paths are usually smaller and do not branch as much. If you ARE on the biggest path of the entire map, you should most likely mgt to your path and drop gt for someone else to path with, while you cleanup smaller paths.
In the example above green icon is doing a small gd while 1n is a skill door. Clearly 1n is bigger, and pathing it immediately would just stretch your gate unnecessarily.
Carry gt through the biggest path, then cleanup rooms with your gate prioritizing small paths.
In this example, green cursor cgt'd through the biggest path while red and blue duo'd a ramo. Green drops the gt in the big path and pgt's to open the Red Square doors they have gated. The Blue Square door is a key door.
Don't be scared of carrying the gt. It should never lag behind the team. Even if you are inexperienced and carry it to a small path you learn from your mistake.
6.0 - Crit
The crit path is 19-23 rooms. All regular skill requirements in these rooms will range from the highest level on the team to 9 levels under that. So, if someone is maxed, a crit rc door has to be 90-99 level requirement.
The formula for the xp gained from a skill req is Level * 5 + 10.
So all crit doors with a maxed player will be 460-505 xp gained.
Xp share makes it so you get xp from what other players do. Thus, if anyone has it on, you won't get regular xp from doors. Unless an entire team is maxed, it is nigh well impossible to calculate which doors are crit/bonus. Even with the team being maxed, xp share off is ideal since you could leech xp in the same tick as you open a skill door.
It should be noted that bonus rooms can ALSO have requirements that are 90+. So less than 460 xp gained is bonus, but 460+ is not necessarily crit.
Also overloading before floors likely puts you at 105+ str/mage/range. 510+ xp doors are obviously bonus - you were able to complete them because of the overload.
Mining room rocks, Statue bridge rock/repair and Unhappy ghost use the formula Level * 5 + 1. So <451 is bonus.
Polter (except thief req) use the formula Level * 1.5 + 2.5. So <137 is bonus.
Vine room flowers use the formula Level * 1.5. So <135 is bonus.
Coloured lodestones follow an unknown formula. See this post for research.
Many things in puzzle rooms give ~0.5 xp, such as 10s/3s weapon crafting, catching hunt fer, fletching trap, imbue arm, craft arm, repair bridge, cooking vile fish, throw grapple hook, and possibly more. (Since it's ~0.5 xp, you will get 0xp sometimes and 1xp other times.)
Most xp gains in puzzle rooms can only be gained once, i.e. first rock you mine gets xp, first 3 vile fish, etc.
If the party difficulty is set to less than the amount of players (i.e. a 4:5 large) then crit rooms will be designed for the 2nd highest skill level on team. Bonus can still do whatever it wants.
Resources on the crit path with a maxed player will be t9+. T9 thieving chests are about 1.1k xp, t10 1.4k xp.
The gt should generally be on crit early map.
But as the map progresses, gt shouldn't stick to crit - there are a lot more bonus rooms than crit, you generally don't want to start boss early, and crit does not have to be the biggest portion of map.
Having the gt at de crit gds is generally rather silly. The gt is used to redistribute players across the map - it's better to have it in the biggest area in general.
If gt isn't on crit, just pay attention to where crit is in case it becomes 1 way.
Crit generally branches the most, but is not necessarily that big.
The crit path also tends to have more key doors, as it must lock itself from continuing so it's not just a 1 way gd -> puzzle -> gd -> gd etc.
Keys on the critical path are not necessarily crit keys, unless it's the last key you get on that crit path, obviously.
Boss guessing without crit path tracking
A room is more likely to be boss if it’s closer to ht. Boss is often a de, and occasionally adjacent to ht. It is also usually a key door, occasionally it’s a gd, and rarely is it a puzzle room or skill door. You will often find boss path blocked by a key door early on, so if you have a section of the map closed by a key door near ht, it is more likely the section of the map that has the boss.
Often it can save a few seconds to mgt to a de key door if you are confident it's boss.
Post-boss Map
The boss acts like a tough corner gd. It requires completion to end the map, but does not lead to anywhere, and often you won’t want the ggs there. You’ll want the team to be doing boss if remainder of map can easily be solo’d. If the paths are decent sized or big after boss has been found, you’ll likely want to cgt as you explore the rest. Boss is a good place to be if you are otherwise idle.
Attempting boss without many players is generally inefficient, even while suiciding. So obviously if the gt is there you should start boss, but if the gt has gds, its best to do those first.
7.0 - Map tendencies
Generally the more a bonus path turns &/or the further it gets from ht or the crit path, the sooner it'll die.
Random de's.
They are called random for a reason. They aren't that likely to happen.
But in this pic for example, it looks like Red Square might de because all of the other facing east doors have. This scenario tends to happen because it's more awkward for the map to fill in odd gaps - the big path has to turn more to do so, rather than go straight with a lot of offshoot paths.
It is still most likely that red will have boss and a considerable portion of the map, but random de's often look like that, because of how the map fills in best.
Map gaps.
The map doesn't like to fill in the gaps of other paths. It is likely that the white circles will be blank spaces on the map.
8.0 - Required Communication.
Tui wrote:
I posted this a few months ago to dgs ranks, and while a lot of this is in the map guide, it is apparently necessary to stress the importance of how much you really need to communicate.
Decisions should be stated as a fact or command, simply because it’s faster. You will usually waste time if you ask “May I gate this? You also want to gate it? Who will break it?”. In the case of multiple people gating something, one person should state that they are [probably] keeping that gate.
Know your rank. From an efficiency standpoint it is helpful to know who in the team will gate the smallest/first doors - generally it’s accepted that less experienced players will. Of course, you should vary teammates and your order of gating to learn better. If players have similar proficiencies in dng, then value them by total level, favouring the higher levels to gate bigger paths, obviously. Regardless of experience, the keyer should always try and get a good gate, as they are carrying the gt. Though gating a small door at the beginning can be mundane, it also usually puts the pressure of being the first to have to break their gate if necessary.
As the floor proceeds, at the very least you should keep track of who’s freegate and who isn’t. It is very important to pay attention to your teammates. If someone is in an unfavourable position (soloing a med-sized path, stuck with a long gd, etc.) you want to offer assistance. It’s a teamwork game, don’t make the overall floor longer just so you can randomly spree.
With dgsweeper & its player legend, you can very easily pay attention to who’s where on the map. Especially if you’re the gt holder, you NEED to know what the 2nd biggest path is, room wise. You should also naturally be aware if you’re the next most important path, as you may need to mgt at any time. People will often say "sgt <idiot>" but you should be ready to offer to bgt if their path turns unfavourable, and hopefully have your pgt already laid down. Even if you don’t have that much, it’s nice to keep the team updated. Gt does need to be moved to dewk gds on rare occasion!
Personally I communicate unnecessarily sometimes, as the info ends up being useless, but just treat it as complaining about the rooms you get, or whatever. It’s better to give too much info than not enough. I can go through floors fine without talking, and assume you’re gating the best possible, and mgt when you hit a de, etc. But even if you trust someone a lot, it’s nice to confirm they are doing exactly as you would expect. There is nobody who has agreed with a gating/map decision of mine 100% of the time - not that I claim to be right all the time, just that people make mistakes, or oversee things due to lack of communication, and we all have a very slightly different style of dungeoneering. Stating the contents of rooms can be vital at times. Too often have I heard “mgt ne” “no, am vines” or similar situations where the team idle time stacks up due to silence. A one way spree can also be reason to temporarily not want the gt, if you know the next most important path could use it. It truly is not necessary to always state which rooms you have or where you are on map, but it is easier to get used to always doing so and gradually only mention said info when you are crit or 2nd or even 3rd biggest path for gt to potentially go to. Naturally, it is also vital to call what the gt runs into, for others to understand where they're best situated, and branching from that, informing others what you have if they are offering to cover doors or duo paths with you is important. There is really no reason to worry about spamming the chat anymore with your keys displayed for you and dgsweeper reminding you of where things are. If you are truly concerned about searching through chat for other's gates, write it down with notepad, dev console, dgsweeper or whatever, and restate your gate often.
If put simply, just call out all slow rooms you come across, restate your gate often, and ask what others have.
Thanks for reading
If you're interested in pathing lessons, check out this thread:
pathing-workshop-t1514.html
Written by Tui
Special thanks to Blade, Sal, Toad, Jet, and Usa.
additional thanks to Thai tong, Don draper, and the minions in dgs
ps according to a final calculation the map branches infinitely as the rc quotient derives itself from nothing ergo degrading infinitely - true story inspired by a happy aero dreamz copyright 2011 registered trademark of Tuicide industries
Statistics: Posted by Bachigaluup — Mon May 26, 2014 11:19 pm