Alright... I'll need to update the respective sections of the guide when I can. In the meantime, let me answer your questions in this response:
Dr Brad wrote:
Where you say in your guide, "“As you should know (hopefully), the only floors you should be keying large floors for are abandoned, occult, and warped floors..†I assume you mean abandoned2 (ab2). Correct? For new readers, this may be confusing.
Yes, I do mean abandoned 2 floors for those. Abandoned 2, Occult, and Warped floors are the only floors you should be doing larges in once you get into the groove of training dungeoneering. Occasionally, people do abandoned 1 floors, but that's mainly just to set record times and other things. You could do furnished larges if you want, but once you start to unlock a couple abandoned 2s, I advise against it for both boss difficulty reasons and xp/time-saving reasons.
Dr Brad wrote:
You state, "“You do not, however, want to open the boss door last unless you have to.†Why is this? So that someone can solo the remaining part if needed while others do the boss?
Depending on the situation, sometimes it is better to have one or two people do the boss while the others are completing the dungeon. If the majority of the map is open, I'd say have one person start the boss by him/herself. It's also a pain sometimes to open the boss last because it's the only thing you can do before ending the dungeon, and the boss can take several minutes sometimes, stretching your dungeon time that ideally, you would probably want to be short. And of course, if you miss a key and it so happens to be the last room, which is the boss... which has happened many times to me by the way... your life gets really hard really fast, and people get annoyed.
Dr Brad wrote:
You state, "“Here is a good question though: Let's say all 4 rooms are guardian door rooms. Which one should the group gatestone be moved to first? If you go back to thinking about path sizes and directions, you'll see that you should be moving it to the east-most of the four rooms.†In the example you provide, the critical path has already been established. The boss room is already open. Why does it matter which one you open next?
Despite the critical path being a major determining factor in planning out where the group gatestone should be, it is still important to have these things in your mind even after the boss is open so that the rest of the dungeon can be done as soon as possible. If you first think about it, it seems like the order doesn't really matter because in the end, the same amount of work will be done to complete everything. But in this case, establishing and completing the east path is important because it has the potential to be a rather large path, and when the boss is opened, it's nice to have people finish their paths and then go help with the boss for a smooth ending to the dungeon. You don't want to leave someone with a large path he/she can't complete and have to go back to it after the boss or something. (Let me know if that makes sense, it's somewhat hard to explain.)
Dr Brad wrote:
You state, "“If it seems like you won't be able to solo the rest of the dungeon, move the group gatestone immediately and notify your team immediately. Do not wait. It is a mistake to wait because you ideally want both the map and the boss completed at the same time, rather than having to go back to doing the map after the boss is already dead.†So, you move the GGS. Is the team who is fighting the boss supposed to come to the GGS to finish the map and then return to the boss later? Unclear for me.
This really depends on the amount of the dungeon left, who each person is, and the binds people have. With a huge portion of the dungeon left, yes, you should move the GGS right away and get everyone to help out (and have somebody gate the boss of course). With a medium-sized path, maybe one or two people could stay behind at the boss (one or two people can deal a significant amount of damage to the boss alone). With this, you need to keep in mind people's combat stats as well as their skill stats and their binds. With hexable bosses, you definitely want your hexes at the boss, and you ideally want higher combat stats at the boss (unless there are high monster level guardian rooms). In addition, you want your best skillers on the path to open skill doors that may show up. Sometimes, these all conflict, and it's up to you to think about the situation and figure out the best plan to go forward with.
Dr Brad wrote:
Under DgSweeper, can you add some screenshots of what we would see if we were to use it? (at the website link, none of the DgSweeper images load for me)
I probably need to update this link, as DgSweeper moved to a new host, tipit. But generally it's just a square window with the map right next to the RS game screen, with 2 columns next to the map for color and shape options (1-clickable options with picture icons), and a timer underneath the map that counts the dungeon time. Other options are tray-available options and settings, and there are some code-specific keyboard shortcuts and helpful additions to the utility. Go here for more information and for the download link:
http://www.tip.it/runescape/?page=dgsweeper.htm
Dr Brad wrote:
You state, "“In abandoned and warped floors, if possible and if you have time, I recommend creating the highest tier bloodrager you can for the boss…†Not for occults?
I've been thinking about this... you definitely want them for abandoned and warped floor bosses, as they're extremely helpful. It's basically useless on thunderous, flesh spoiler, necrolord, and the runebound behemoth because of their respective weaknesses already. The only boss I might use a bloodrager ever on in an occult floor is gravecreeper, because a ragered down gravecreeper is easily hexable. Apart from that, the skeletal trio should be handled according to the combat triangle.
Dr Brad wrote:
You state, "“With suicide keying, deaths will provide opportunities for an additional quick three special moves from the bloodrager each time, tremendously lowering boss defenses.†Sorry. I don't understand. When you die, the bloodrager attacks the boss 3 times?
When you're killing a boss with a bloodrager, the first thing you should do is attack it, attack it with your bloodrager, and use your 3 special attacks with the bloodrager to lower the bosses' defence 10% 3 times. It takes a long time for familiar special moves to recharge, so when you die, you should use that to your advantage because the special move bar is fully recharged. This can be a helpful way of lowering the defence of the boss well over 3 times within a minute.
Ooh I didn't know Evan's page was down. To be quite honest, I'm pretty sure I've covered nearly all, if not all of the abbreviations you're ever going to want to use / need when you dungeoneer in my guide, so just stick with those. Evan's link was just an addendum to give some credit and to provide an alternative source.
Dr Brad wrote:
You state, "“Polter – Poltergeist – Spam your number pad by holding down the right number. Helps to have anti lurers too to tank monster hits†– I don't understand what you're trying to convey here.
Poltergeist rooms can be annoying because you have to take the herbs from the farming patch. Holding down the correct number on your keyboard according to the herb you need is useful for making sure you take the herb instead of getting interrupted by combat. You still may be interrupted by combat because there are too many monsters in the room attacking you to pick any herbs. In this case, it's nice to have one or two other people killing monsters in the room or tanking hits from the monsters to distract them while you pick the herbs. This is probably one of the very few cases left in dungeoneering where I would be glad if somebody has a shadow silk hood =p.
Dr Brad wrote:
You state, "“Ramokee Familiars Room – If you're hexed, you should be targeting stormbringer, while if you don't have a hex, you should be attacking the deathslinger.†Every ramokee room I've ever gone into, everyone started attacking the skinweaver. Do you advise against this?
I pretty much assumed people would know to kill the skinweaver first, and I was jumping ahead to the technique of clearing the room. The skinweaver is an absolute must to kill first, and then proceed as stated: hexers on stormbringer, meleers on deathslinger, magers on bloodrager.
Dr Brad wrote:
I'd add a section about team communication in the dung. It's much more than just abbreviations. Right?
Absolutely. Abbreviations just make it convenient to type, and it's just a common dungeoneering language everyone can use. Team cohesiveness, experience, and so many other factors play a role in team communication. Depending on your skill level as a dungeoneerer personally as well, some teams may not even need to say much more than a few short snippets in a whole dungeon. The experience goes a long way.
Dr Brad wrote:
You state in one of your responses to Dave's comments, "“Too many people have the baxe and attack the wrong monsters with it, which is unfortunate.†Can you please say more about this? Which are the wrong monsters for a baxe (or a 2h)?
For this I refer you to one of DungeonSweeper's finest guides:
http://www.xp-waste.com/monster-weaknes ... t2260.html. Let me know if you need more information or don't understand, but this should be self-explanatory and easy to understand.
Dr Brad wrote:
I'm looking forward to your video.
Thanks again.
No problem, fire away any more questions if you ever have them and I'll reply when I have the chance to. And I'm still trying to figure out when/how I'm going to do this video haha, so we'll see about that =p.
