This guide contains some tips and tricks to make your experience under the mountain a little more enjoyable.


Changelog:

2024-12-13
Patch 1.4.1 info: farming Elbereth's Blessing, Durin's Axe mining buff

2024-12-09
Traversal: rolling to avoid grabbing edges

2024-11-23
Exploration: updated recipes, tip for avoiding enemies while singing, light from Eregion armour
Is My Game Broken: clarified writing
Added more pictures. Me like picture.

2024-11-11
Added help for Shazam Eggnog round 2 phase 2

2024-09-09
Added Tricksy Exits section.
Updated Sandbox Layout: L4 High Mansion Ruins

2024-09-07
Added Sandbox Layout section.
Progression: updated ironwood, Mazarbul objective.
Building: updated base location.

2024-09-06
Minor corrections.

2024-09-05
Traversal: added bunny-hopping.
Building: added base locations, snapping floors.
Progression: updated ironwood.

2024-09-04
Added Is My Game Broken section.

2024-09-03
Added DSHA section.
Added Progression section.
Survival: added meal table placement.

2024-09-02
Added General section.
Traversal: added tips for steam vents, callouts.
Combat: added block canceling, weapon types.
Building: added tips for rebuilding forges.
Exploration: added Ranger camp trail, break down doors, hoard collectibles, honouring fallen dwarves.

Return to Moria is inherently a slow game. You're supposed to take your time to explore the areas. There's lots of ways to move around, but you'll come to rely on platforms, ladders, and eventually, map stones.

That said: if you don't want it to feel like such a grind, change the difficulty! There's options for lots of things like enemy damage to drop rate. Especially if you're playing solo: the standard difficulty is, in the dev's own words, balanced for a group of players.

The game is very vertical. Always look up and around you. If there's a giant chasm or pit, chances are that you can actually go down it with enough ladders and platforms. Similarly, you can go up quite easily by building ladders upwards.

Playing it solo is very atmospheric, which is why I do recommend it, at least for a little bit. You really do feel like a dwarf exploring your own lost history, one torch-lit step at a time.

If you're having trouble finding ore, hit the "callout" button. It highlights ore in yellow-orange. Sometimes.

Quick-build platforms are "V" and rope ladders are "F". Always carry some wood and fibre on you if you plan to go exploring.

If you want to build something a little more permanent, you can always pop down a hearth, build your structure, then demolish the hearth.

You can fall down a pretty dang far distance before taking fall damage. That distance is, coincidentally, almost the full height of a rope ladder. Use this information responsibly.

If you're trying to fall into a gap or off a ledge and you keep grabbing the edge, you can roll in midair right after you start falling, which will stop you from grabbing anything. This has to be timed well, because you can't roll off an edge, the game tries to keep you safe from yourself. You have to roll after you start falling. Note: this is quite dangerous.

Speaking of ladders, you can enter build mode while on a ladder. If you're close enough to a wall, you can build a platform out from the wall and stick another ladder onto it if you need to descend a ridiculous distance.

While climbing a rope ladder, you can continually jump upwards to go slightly faster. Be careful you don't slip off though.

You can cross areas of Shadow (and Poison) by going above the floor. Build wooden platforms in the wall and walk past them. It takes a surprisingly small amount of height to get above Shadow.

In a hurry, you can also try to bunny-hop across Shadow. Please note that doing so is highly irresponsible and DSHA takes no responsibility for any injury or trauma that occurs to dwarves who do not abide by proper traversal safety regulations.

Map stones can be renamed! Click their icon on the map (or their name in the map sidebar) and hit "Edit".

Fast travel consumes some hunger and energy. You can still fast travel while starving, though.

There's a sneak button, "Z" by default. Just like Minecraft, you don't fall off ledges while sneaking, but don't push your luck. Geometry in this game is a little more unforgiving.

Use wall torches and floor torches to mark where you've already explored, especially once the map starts getting vertical. They're ridiculously cheap to build.

Steam vents are annoying. The best way to deal with them is to wait until right after they finish a spurt, and then run up to them and seal them. You can dodge roll away the instant their model changes and the rocks appear on top of them. If you need to get out in an emergency, you can cancel the sealing by dodge rolling as well.

Mark any interesting things you come across. The easiest way is to go right up to the thing in question, hit "M" to go into the map, and then "X" to drop a marker at your location. Important places to mark: ores, ancestor statue boxes, repairable structures, places you haven't explored, places to forage useful ingredients, danger zones, and especially tall areas that connect to overlapping areas.

Many recipes are unlocked by building structures and exploring. Ranger journal entries are turned in at Ranger camps (little outposts usually with a couple of farming plots). Ancestor statue boxes always contain a blueprint. Other blueprints are found by repairing the statues you see around the place, by building certain buildings (mostly Hearths and crafting buildings), and by crafting certain items.

Speaking of Ranger camps, if you see tiny piles of little green stones on the ground, that's the trail to a camp. You can look up pictures of them.

You can break down doors (and walls, while we're at it). Many areas in Dwarrowdelf have underground areas that are accessed by breaking a door in a corner. Dwarf "towers" also have many doors and walls in them that can be broken down. Basically, when in doubt, hit it with a pickaxe.

Hoard all the collectibles you find. The ancestor carvings, for example. I've had a box that needed 12 of them.

Honour all the fallen dwarves you find. The Hero Tokens they give you let you build monuments, which give you the same buff repeatedly.

If you need to sing to a monument / lamp, you need to wait for the entire song to finish. This takes a long time, so wait until you get the Undaunted buff before you start moving away. Don't change your equipment or go into menus / inventory either. If you get jumped by enemies, you'll need to restart the singing.


If you need just a few more seconds to finish singing to a lamp / monument, but an enemy's already investigating, you can walk around the lamp to hide from them and buy a little more time. They won't actually aggro until they have line of sight to you.

Once you get to the Elven Quarter, look for Elbereth's Blessing at her statue, and return to pick it every couple of days. It accumulates up to 4. Heck, you might even want to plant a map stone right by it.

Orc camps have a central totem that drops a key which unlocks the nearby chest. This chest almost always contains Black Diamonds and other gemstones, so it's worth picking up.

When ranging far away instead of purposefully clearing a room, consider bringing along enough materials to place a hearth and map stone at minimum, and a bedroll, repair table, and meal table optionally.

If you see a broken lamp around a shadow vent, you can just run in and rebuild it. You should finish building and singing before you die from it, and then it will fully heal you.

The miner hat is surprisingly useful. You can stick it onto your toolbar and hotswap it with your combat helmet. I greatly prefer using that instead of a torch. You can do the same with Eregion armour pieces.

You can cook something just before you go to bed and have it ready to eat in the morning.

The type of meal you cook (breakfast, lunch, dinner) only affects if you get the buff. You can still cook and eat anything at any time. Medley Skewers only needs mushrooms and sunion, both of which are easily available right beside the very first campsite you find (sunions are on the rocks by the river), and fills you up completely. A great breakfast option is Roasted Fruit.


Meals always appear on the same side of the Meal Table. Stand on one of the long sides of the table; the candles should form a triangle. If the tip of the triangle is pointing towards you, the meal will be on your right. Alternatively if you're standing on one of the short sides of the table, the triangle should be pointing left if you want the meal to appear on your side. No more having to walk into walls just to eat breakfast!

Stock up on Lembas rations. Aulë's Bloom and Khuzdul Oat can be farmed, while Elbereth's Blessing spawns around one specific statue in the Elven Quarter and can be farmed once you unlock the appropriate blueprint. They fully restore health and energy, making them invaluable for exploration and combat.

Farms are built with Bat Droppings. You'll also need sunlight for everything except mushrooms, and you can check a plot's light status by looking at it and checking the icon that pops up. Note that plots in a 3-planter track their light individually. You can create light by building a Sun Lamp. Some areas are considered naturally lit, and don't need Sun Lamps.

Hordes are triggered by noise. When the eye in the bottom right of your screen gets really antsy, you're close to triggering one. Yeah, that's what that's for. Once you clear out the local orc town (red areas on the minimap) by killing its boss, hordes stop spawning.

Healing items are made in the Oven. It's food. You heal by eating food.

You'll eventually unlock very useful brews, so make sure you set up a brewery. You'll get more recipes from Ranger camps and eventually repairing a King's Brew tank.

It only costs scrap metal to repair your equipment, and you'll be swimming in it very quickly, so don't be shy about keeping everything in perfect condition.

The structure snapping system takes a little while to get used to. If the preview is red, it's unsupported and will self-destruct if placed, dropping its materials.

Floors snapping to each other juuuuust a little out of line? Try approaching from a different direction. Buildable objects have slight variations in size, so if your floor is snapping to the top of a column for example, it could be slightly off. You want it to snap to other floors, so stand on those other floors first and build from there.


Make full use of all your building controls. "G" gives you a higher camera position and makes it easier to place walls. The scroll wheel and shift-scroll let you tune the distance and height of the structure you're trying to place.

You can overlap most floors and platforms. Sometimes quick platforms won't snap to each other, so overlap them. You should see the preview change from red to yellow, or a lighter red if you're getting quite far away from a wall.

After you rebuild a structure that you didn't place (by using materials, not by using the hammer), you can actually sometimes demolish it with "X" to retrieve its full material cost. This always gets you more materials than just smashing it with your pickaxe.

Building bases works best if you place down a grid of floors first. When you place floors without them touching anything else except terrain and other floors and foundations, they will create a (free) foundation underneath them, allowing them to act as fully supporting structures.

Structures can only be supported a certain distance away from a vertical support such as a wall or column. If they're placed too far away / in midair, or their supports are destroyed, they will self-destruct and drop their materials. You can mitigate that by using different materials to extend their range, building crossbeams and columns, and making sure that any floors you place are properly snapped to each other.

Want to build better bases? Many buildings are unlocked by building better tiers of hearths, and better hammers. Check out the "Furnishings" section as well for some great lights.

When rebuilding forges, if you build a platform "staircase" that is shallow enough, you can walk up it without needing to jump or climb. You can pick up parts from under you. This means that you can build a staircase of platforms up to the damaged section and slowly carry / drop the part on one platform, climb up to the next one, and pick it up from below you. Alternatively you could just build a hearth and build a proper stairway. Note that rebuilding a forge causes a horde to spawn.

One of my favourite places to build a base is on the huge lake where the pumping station is. You can place floors that will create foundations (make sure they're high enough so that you don't cause the water ripple effect when you walk), and then you have a gigantic flat space to build your base on. The only enemies that spawn in range are bats and occasionally spiders, which is great for farming… well, farming. You will still get sieges, though orcs only spawn on the staircase side, and if your base is far enough from land, they can't get to you.

The very bottom of Crystal Descent is another good and extremely safe place, but it seems to take forever to load in.

Black diamonds won't stay by your side forever, so don't forget their beauty.

There are several weapon types: swords, axes, hammers, and spears, and two-handed versions of them. The most generally useful weapons are actually one-handed hammers. They interrupt most basic enemies with their light attack, and a one-charge attack will knock most orcs down and interrupt even the toughest enemies. Hammers are also more effective against armoured enemies, while still being great against basic enemies.

There's a dodge roll button. It's "Ctrl" by default. Yeah. Dodging is the best way to fight trolls and other big nasties. Dodge canceling is almost instant, and has a lot of invincibility frames.

Just like in the books, trolls turn to stone in sunlight. If there's a sunbeam nearby, lure them to it. Once they turn into stone, you can actually break the stone to get additional gems.

Blocking shortly before an enemy attack hits, especially with a shield, is the best way to avoid damage when you're being surrounded. The block timing is extremely forgiving, and you can block multiple enemy attacks with a single press.

Block-canceling is incredibly powerful. In the middle of pretty much any action (even charged attacks), you can block to cancel the action and negate incoming damage. This happens almost instantly as well, so instead of panic-rolling, consider panic-blocking.

Hordes have a kill limit. Going for the weakest goblins first (the small green ones that die in one hit) will actually end the horde quite quickly.

All remaining orcs in a horde will run away once the horde event is over. This also applies to the mooks when fighting the boss of an orc town, so clear out the little green ones first if you're having trouble. However, the horde also immediately runs away once you kill the warchief, so if you're confident, focus on the big guy.


You can rebind the keys for each toolbar slot. I rebind the Masterwork key to "1". "0" seems like an absolutely ridiculous hotkey for it.

There is actually also a key to lock onto a target. It's... not very useful. Just saying it's there.

I've found that the most useful rune early on is Orcbane, but once you complete the game, Radiance is better.

How to delve deep and greedily, but also safely.


In various areas, starting in the Lower Deeps, you'll find an area with mushroom trees surrounding a deep fissure in the ground. This is an entrance to the Darkest Depths!

The depths in each area contain different resources. Diamonds (regular ones, not black diamonds) can be found in the Dwarrowdelf / Desolation Depths. Mithril can only be mined in the Barazinbar Depths.

Start out by preparing enough resources to build a small encampment at the top, and put down a map stone there. In case you die, you'll want to be able to get back quickly.

Take with you some natural fiber and lots of wood and scrap metal for torches. The mining hat and / or Eregion armour are extremely useful here. Also bring healing items / buffs / ales. Past a certain depth, you will get hit with Darkness that cannot be dispelled by any light source, so you'll end up taking constant damage. Prepare to out-heal that and take some emergency healing.

After you complete the game, you get access to Dawnbreak Pale Ale after (re-)building a King's Brew Tank, which prevents Despair while it lasts. Drink a mug before you leave home and carry a brewskin full of the stuff with you into the Depths.

Descend slowly and methodically. Remember that you can enter the build menu while climbing down a ladder. Build platforms at regular intervals so you don't need to worry about falling off, then build another ladder downwards. You should also place torches on those platforms so that the next time you descend, you can see where you're going.

Once you're at the bottom (or near, sometimes the path forward isn't at rock bottom), place a couple of floor torches to mark your entry point. You'll suffer from despair regardless, but the light is essential for navigation. You can also place down a map stone for easy return.

As you explore the depths, you'll need to maintain a system of finding your way back. I like to use a tried-and-tested Minecraft system: wall torches. As you explore, place torches only on one side of the walls, e.g. on your right side. When you need to return, just follow the torches back by keeping them on your other side (your left side in this example). This will always ensure that you'll be able to find your way back.

The game is lying to you, ingots aren't the best way to store materials. Don't craft ingots until you need them. Many ores are used in multiple recipes, so you'll end up having to go back and mine some more if you use up all of one ore.


At the pumping station, you will always need to build 3 pipe sections yourself, so be prepared with materials for a hearth, forge, iron, and stairs. After you replace all the missing parts, you'll still need to activate it by hitting the lever on the machine inside the building. The door to the forge also needs to be opened with a lever at its entrance.

The Quarrymaster can mine everything in the game. This doesn't let you sequence break, but it does allow you to get rare resources early on without having to backtrack. As of patch 1.4.1, it seems that Durin's Axe is equal to or better than Quarrymaster for mining.

If you're really desperate for a particular resource, you can always start a Sandbox world and bring Quarrymaster with you. All areas are open from the start, so if you don't mind exploring a little, you'll be able to get all the resources you want. Sandbox worlds in particular have incredible amounts of true-silver.

The Chamber of Mazarbul is NOT the room with the chest in the centre and the journal / book on the side, though those are needed for campaign progression. It's the room with Balin's tomb and a diagonal ray of light shining onto it. Something for you Sandbox players having difficulty completing the objective to search the Chamber even though you've picked up the book and journal.

Some harder-to-find resources:

• Black Diamonds are found most commonly in Orc chests. Defeat orc camps, destroy the totems, and loot the boxes. Orctowns usually contain quite a few of them. Bolgakh in particular drops a lot of them. Orcs also very rarely drop them. You can also mine them in the Deeps, well, Depths, but they are extremely rare. If you're desperate, you can demolish a map stone for some.
  
• Bat droppings are found wherever, well, bats spawn. You want some place where they're allowed to spawn, but where orc spawns are restricted. I've tried Crystal Descent and it didn't work very well for me, but I do get relatively consistent bat spawns at the Pump Station. There's already a map stone there too.
  
• Ironwood is naturally found by breaking furniture in Dwarrowdelf, but the ironwood enchantment is much better than it might appear– it seems to work on all objects that drop wood (and some that drop stone)! Go to an orc encampment and start swinging an enchanted battleaxe around. I picked up 50 in a few minutes that way. I haven't had much luck with demolishing entire buildings, so go up and break the furniture manually. It also sometimes drops from the random wooden doodads lying around. If you're constantly falling down, switch to your weapon instead of using your pickaxe. It will destroy objects, stairs, and walls, but it won't damage the floor.
  
• Diamonds are a very rare drop, and can be found in the Dwarrowdelf Depths. Mine the veins and hit the boulders. Also, I'm not sure if it's because I'm on a postgame world, but I've found diamonds in random buildings as early as Westgate by demolishing crates.
  
• Sun Stone can also be found in the Dwarrowdelf depths, both in mining nodes and boulders. If you absolutely need some to progress, you can demolish your Salt Bath after you're done with it, as well as any elf lamps you've built. After that, it can be mined commonly in Barazinbar.
  
• Mithril can't actually be mined in the Mithril Lode area (except for a tiny amount in the depleted veins). You'll need to descend to the Depths to find it. It's extremely common in mithril areas in Sandbox.
  
• Scales: Explore and kill Drakes and Fell-Beasts. Also a rare drop from orcs.

Some resources you should stock up on when you can:

• Elbereth's Blessing, from the Elvish Quarter. It's an ingredient in Lembas, which restores all health and energy. Stock up on it. You unlock a way to farm it later in the game.
  
• Good quality hide, from the mountain deer in the Elvish Quarter, as well as bears. You'll need lots of it to make leather eventually.
  
• Feathers, if you plan on making a lot of arrows. They can be found in nests, scattered around caves and the Elven Quarter.
  
• Precious gemstones such as diamond, ruby, and sapphire. They'll eventually become necessary to craft better equipment and to enchant them. Semi-precious ones are used to craft quartz lamps.

Don't worry if you're going for the brewing achievement and can't find the Ranger camps. Once you rebuild one of the King's Brew Tanks around the place (you'll usually find a couple in Dwarrowdelf, maybe one in Westgate near the beginning) you'll unlock all the recipes.

For the brewing achievement, it's not enough to start the brewing process. You need to finish the process, and at that point, it's probably a good idea to taste each brew. You can speed up the whole thing by building Brew Kettles instead of the larger tanks, which cost less resources per brew but definitely still count.

For those wondering how to find places in Sandbox.

WARNING: VISIT THE CHAMBER OF MAZARBUL BEFORE PICKING UP THE KHAZADSTONE. YOU NEED TO BE IN THE CHAMBER WITH BALIN'S TOMB, NOT THE ONE WITH THE JOURNALS.

Note: Entrances can overlap each other on the map. Be extremely careful, especially with Descents and Stairs. There can be two entrances to the same area, one on top of the other, so check for exits extremely carefully every time you see a vertical section and mark all of them clearly with torches and map markers.

Note: Pilgrim Deeps notably has two layers and sometimes generates with objectives on different layers, there should be a tall area inside the Deeps itself that links them.

Each "Level" on the map actually contains multiple layers. So for example with Pilgrim Deeps, both of its layers will appear on the same map, at level Deep 3.

Resources appear in each area according to their biomes in Campaign:

• Gateway [white] (Iron, Coal)
  
• Elven areas [green] (Elven wood, Elbereth's Blessing)
  
• Mines [brown] (Copper, Tin)
  
• Mushroom Deeps [pinkish] (True Quartz, Ubâsam Wood, Silver, Salt)
  
• Dwarrowdelf [yellow] (Ironwood, Gold)
  
• Desolation [orange] (Ironwood, Gold, Resin, Star Metal)
  
• Mithril Lode [purple] (Mithril, Sun Stone [rare])
  
• Orctown [red] (Sun Stone)

List of objectives by area.
Durin Monuments: L1 Westgate, L2 Elven Refuge, L3 Chamber Hall Ruins, D1 Mansion Halls, D3 Pilgrim Deeps, D4 Mithril Lode
Forges: Narvi's Forge L1 Elven Workshops, Belegost Forge D3 Pilgrim Deeps, Nogrod Forge D4 Inner Bastion Ruins, Durin's Forge D3 Durin's Capital Ruins, Mithril Forge L4 Last Stand
Orc Leaders: Bolgakh L1 Orctown, Deep Orc D3 Orc Warren, Red Eye L4 Red Eye Stronghold, Gundabad L3 Gundabad Encampment, Shadow Orc D3 Shadow Orc Domain

L4:
Red Eye Stronghold (Chieftain)
Last Stand (Mithril Forge, Telchar Muznakan)
Bright Halls
High Mansion Ruins (Ranger)

L3:
First Mines (Ranger)
Upper Halls (Fundin Muznakan)
Chamber Hall Ruins (Mazarbul, Durin Monument)
Gundabad Encampment (Chieftain)

L2:
Elven Refuge (Durin Monument)
Elven Gardens (Elbereth's Blessing)
Marketgate
Stonegate

L1:
Westgate (Durin Monument)
Elven Workshops (Narvi Forge, Narvi Muznakan)
Crossroads (Ranger)
Orctown (Chieftain)
Eastern Bastion (Bridge, Ranger)

D1:
Iron Mines / Spiral Mines (Muznakan)
Mansion Halls (Durin Monument)

D2:
Flooded Deeps (Pump Station, Muznakan)
Cavern Deeps (Ranger)
King's Mines (Durin's Grave)
Forgotten Descent (Path D2-3-4)

D3:
Forgotten Descent (Path D2-3-4)
Pilgrim Deeps (Belegost Forge, Durin Monument)
Durin's Capital Ruins (Durin's Forge, Muznakan)
Redhorn Lode (Path to Well of Shadows, Shadow Orc Domain)
Orc Warren (Chieftain)
Shadow Orc Domain (Chieftain)
Well of Shadows (Final Boss)
Nameless Descent (Path D3-D4)

D4:
Forgotten Descent (Path D2-3-4)
Nameless Descent (Path D3-D4)
Mithil Lode (Durin Monument)
Inner Bastion Ruins (Nogrod Forge)

As of patch 1.3.4, I've found a relatively consistent setup to kill ol' Shazzy without taking any damage. In the second phase, after you've broken the pillars.


1. Stand on this spot. It's past the rear left pillar (farther from you when you enter the arena).


2. She'll do a sequence of attacks where she bites once, then bites two more times quickly. After the two quick bites, she'll swing her head left right past you, which brings her in range for you to attack. She won't have enough range to damage you at all, so, yeah. Yee-haw!

Chances are actually that it's not; the game has a lot of idiosyncrasies and some glaring problems with the map.

The usual problem is that the map is completely 2D; it does not differentiate between different layers, and simply overlays them on top of each other. This can cause major problems with navigation, so use map markers to mark out locations where you can move upwards and downwards. Campaign shouldn't break because of this, but Sandbox can get extremely frustrating.


You should be able to; look around for little nooks and crannies, or mine out ore veins in that direction.

Another possibility is that you can only transition between these two areas at a different height, i.e. there are two or more areas stacked in the same map square. Keep an eye on your depth, and note if something seems higher or lower than it should be.

If you can't seem to find your destination even though you've explored all of the map, make sure you haven't missed a square that's above or below your location. This is especially misleading because additional exits on the map won't appear until you've entered a square that has them, so for example if a higher square has only 1 exit, while the lower square has 4, you won't see that the map square has multiple exits until you enter the lower area.


This can happen in a very nasty way in Sandbox. I had a seed where two entrances to the same area were stacked on top of each other, both leading from a crystal descent, so there was no way to tell. I eventually figured it out by descending further and looking very carefully for the second entrance.

The Mithril Node frequently generates with areas stacked on top of each other, but any area can have this problem, notably Dwarrowdelf and the Mines. Explore carefully and mark all height transitions very carefully on your map.


This commonly happens when your destination is a huge vertical area, and if your map stone is not quite on the same level as your floor. My guess is that the game looks for a suitable nearby location to spawn you in, and if it can't (e.g. tried to spawn you in the floor), it teleports you to the nearest suitable location either directly above or below. Things to try: rebuild the map stone on a solid floor, or even rebuild the floor the stone is standing on.

If you were in somewhere like the Crystal Depths... hope you're carrying some wood and fibre. Never leave home without those anyhow.


In Sandbox, the map is much larger (generating with 8 separate layers linked by multiple staircases and descents), has frequent overlaps, and allows you to access areas out of the normal campaign progression sequence. If you created a Sandbox world before completing Campaign, it'll definitely be confusing. I'd recommend completing Campaign first so at least you'll know the basics and have a good set of equipment.

After a period of initial confusion, I've figured out how Sandbox maps work. Each Sandbox area belongs to one main campaign area biome, with a subtype that determines what objectives spawn in it. For example, instead of a single Crystal Deeps as in the campaign, you'll get Flooded Deeps with the pump station, Pilgrim Deeps with the forge, and Cavern Deeps with the... cavern, spread out over multiple levels.

So if you're in a biome but can't find the appropriate campaign element, just keep exploring and look for other areas of the same biome but with a different name / subtype. These individual areas seem to always generate at a consistent level regardless of seed, as detailed in the Sandbox Layout section.

Of note, I found my Mithril Forge in Last Stand, on the Fourth Level instead of the Fourth Deep as I expected.

Can't find an exit on the map? The Descents in particular have many, many possible exits that may stack on top of each other, making them very difficult to find. Here's a brief guide to finding them.


Pretty obvious exits, found around the flat areas where Spiders spawn.


In the side areas with Shadow vents and Spiders, there's usually an exit or two.


Another exit in one of those side areas with Shadow and Spiders.


Exits are common around the perimeter of the Descent, you'll have to build your way to them. They're not always illuminated, so keep an eye out for them and trust your map when it says there's a connection.


These ones are extremely tricksy. They look like dead ends from the outside…


But when you go inside, you'll a find a path going upwards that you'll need to climb.