Dungeons in Enshrouded are amazing. Sometimes part of the adventure is just trying to get to one of them. While some of them can be rather short, or more of you raiding a village. This one went on for a while and kicked our behinds.
On the map, this place did not appear to be too far away. It’s around one of the question marks on the far bottom left showing on the map. With mountains, towns, and shrouded areas. Getting there would be anything but simple.
The location was, however, high up on a mountain. While true, there ended up being a road leading up to it. That was both quite a long journey to find and not known at the time. There really is no such thing as trying to go in a simple strength line in this game. Unless you want to try and dig up and down mountains by creating your own stairs, which ends up being even more time-consuming.
Along the way, we passed up a couple of decaying towns. Since these were not our main focus. We quickly did some looting but were not looking to spend an evening at any of these locations. If it was in our way, we cleared it. Unless we could see a shiny silver or gold chest, it was hard to drag our eyes away from looking for a more direct path to the dungeon we wanted to run.
The biggest thing we hit along the way was a flame sanctum. As on the map, we thought we were getting close to the actual dungeon itself. It would turn out that the route to get up to it would be a long way away. We would be entering from the other side.
When I started this adventure, I only had a couple of levels and some rather basic gear to my name. This dungeon we were about to hit was quite a lot levels higher than I was. While I did not feel totally useless, I was being quite heavily carried. Anytime the person I was playing with got killed, it was only a matter of time before I did.
Once we got inside the dungeon, you could just tell this was a bad idea in both good and bad ways. It was going to be a lot of fun. There was a chance of huge equipment upgrades. There were also a few checkpoints along the way to revive at, and they were going to be needed.
This place quite lived up to the necromancer feel it had going on. There were lots of skeletons, piles of bones, and some other things inside as well. There was quite a lot of this ghostly blue glow throughout the place. Behind almost every corner was yet another ambush.
Usually, when it came to large packs of creatures, I'd just sit around doing not much of anything. I had a wand for some range damage, but I quickly found out it has quite a short range. Since this place was not easy for either of us. Anything that could be killed at range first was the primary target.
In the instance above, I had a skeleton on me that took a few arrows to the face. With a little health remaining, I did not fear having any trouble with it. What was going to cause me trouble was its friend that came charging at me. We were hoping to have many more finished off before getting charged at. It did not work out that way this time around.
This place has lots of indications that it was not a short dungeon by any means. Between the four or so revival points. There were also lots of places to repair weapons. I also lost count of how many times my weapon was nearing breaking, and we found another spot to repair it.
Sometimes, while in the wild, far before this dungeon. I’d have to cut an adventure short due to not finding anywhere to repair my weapons. I’d later start carrying two backup weapons to ensure I could always get the job done.
There were also lots of places of bone piles and rubble. We did attempt to dig out some spots. The game developer loves to hide chests and hidden doors. I’m quite certain we missed all of them. We had zero luck finding anything extra.
This place mostly had this strange crafting material that we could not craft with. At least not yet, anyway. I’m rather glad I made room for it, as later on, I'd be making these summoning balls that allow you to spawn your own skeleton army for a short amount of time. With each one summing another skeleton to your side.
The last thing you want to do when in a dungeon that is clearly above what you should be running is charge head-on into any situation. A room like this gave rise to concern as it was massive. There were also platforms with things on them.
A lot of the paths forward in this dungeon were sealed. The only way to break the seal was to collect these soul-looking things. Sometimes they would be creatures that you had to defeat. Other times, they were just on the ground or on a platform that you had to reach and jump to collect.
After taking out what we could from above. We glided down. It became clear that I could have glided onto several platforms and collected one of the many souls needed to unlock the barrier to move forward. Not knowing any better, my first time around, I just landed on the ground. Making things harder than they needed to be.
This single section alone had six of these souls we had to fine. I ended up finding a hook loop I could grapple up to. On top of that was a platform with one of them. Then there were another two across the room. I attempted to glide to them but was short and landed below. It became clear that my glider and not picking up a skill called updraft, was going to be an issue. I climbed up to the same platform, and on my second attempt, I just barely landed on one of the two platforms. I then repeated the process for the third one.
I ended up finding another one behind some stairs and one next to the barrier to move forward. Once everything was collected, it opened as the others had. This, however, ended up being as far as we would get on this adventure.
Up till this point, we must have both died like twenty times. We were out of healing potions, bandages, and I no longer had any charges to use my wand. There was also another issue. The person I was with got double-killed and instead of respawning back at our last checkpoint. He respawned all the way back at the Flame Sanctum due to some kind of odd bug. While he managed to get back to the dungeon by then, the first sections had already respawned, and that was of the run.
I’m kind of glad we ended up calling this dungeon where we were. Much later on, with a lot better gear and quite a few levels gained. We would return here and discover just how much harder even progressing a little further would be. I doubt we had much of a chance of clearing this thing the first time around, even if the bug did not occur.
You know it’s a good dungeon when even in failure, you had a blast. For days after this run, I could not wait to get back and try it again. It’s funny, however, as you get distracted by other things and start running the insane amount of quests in this game. How you tend to forget about attempting a dungeon again till a lot later on. There are also other Hollow Halls, so this will not be the last time I talk about one of these.
Screenshots were taken, and content was written by @Enjar about Enshrouded.
Disclosure: A review copy of the game was received for free.
Disclosure: This content was written during early access.
