First Peek: Dungeon Classification

The Dungeoneer's Guild, not to be confused with the Adventurer's Guild, has four classifications they give for dungeon danger.  They are, in descending order of violence: Murderous, Belligerent, Cooperative, and Toy Box.  The dungeons themselves don't have much of a concept of these classifications, and don't see the need to conform to any of them, but the Guild has found them to be useful.

The most dangerous are the Murderous dungeons.  They not only attempt to destroy any delver that enters them, but will also send out hostile expeditions to attack people outside.  Many theorize that all monsters that exist outside of dungeons are either expeditions from murderous ones, or are the leftovers from a dungeon that has been destroyed, and managed to form a stable breeding population.  While the latter is the generally accepted theory, the former still has its advocates.

Murderous dungeons tend to focus on their monsters, and so often have no resource nodes at all.  Most will only make scions for what the dungeon perceives as its strongest monsters.  These may be kept inside the dungeon to protect the core, or sent outside to terrorize the surroundings.

Belligerents differ from Murderous in one simple way: they don't send hostile expeditions.  While the Guild will generally attempt to starve a Murderous dungeon, they tend to take a much lighter hand with the Belligerents.  This is partially because Belligerent dungeons are the vast majority of dungeons, so trying to starve or train them is just not a feasible option.

A Belligerent dungeon is seen by normal folk as simply a place to avoid.  They are only dangerous if you actually enter, so they are easily avoided.  The Adventurer's Guilds will often specialize in delving certain Belligerents, as the familiarity lessens the danger, and will allow for better gathering of experience and stuff.  

Belligerents tend to have few resource nodes, but often upgrade them to high levels.  The Guild debates on if this is because of these dungeons trying to lure in gatherers with tempting materials, or if their tendency to focus on their monsters makes them try to focus on just a few nodes.  Belligerents usually use their Scions to defend certain areas of the dungeon, like chests or even Dwellers and/or Residents.

Toy Boxes are as safe as dungeons get.  While no dungeon is truly harmless, Toy Boxes are generally no more dangerous than someone's home.  Of course, accidents happen, so even the most gentle of Toy Box will have at least a few bodies to their name.

Most Toy Boxes spend very little effort on their denizens, though some lean more into them and specialize their spawners for materials and support, rather than attack and magic.  They often have wide varieties of resource nodes at a variety of levels, trying to draw in as many interested delvers as possible.

Toy Boxes will often have Residents who help protect it, which allows the dungeon to focus more on peaceful methods of mana production.  They rarely will have Dwellers, as most of these dungeons never upgrade their spawners enough to get them.  Most will only have one scion, and even that is just to have a Voice, though some may have one or two extra to help with certain nodes.

Cooperative dungeons are the rarest type.  The designation is for dungeons that just don't fit into the others.  One might send out hostile expeditions, but use them more as thieves than as soldiers.  One might behave, or pretend to behave, like a Belligerent, but have monsters too weak to actually be a threat, or the monsters may pull their punches and soften blows to let delvers flee.  Or perhaps one will have bountiful resource nodes, but demand some kind of payment to gather them.

It's the classification meant to catch what falls through the cracks of the other classifications.  While research has been conducted, and still is being conducted, to further classify Cooperative dungeons, there simply aren't enough of them to make it useful.  Some have suggested renaming them to Wildcard dungeons to better fit, but Cooperative was the term first coined for them, so it has stuck.