Depth 4 Dungeons Guide

Depth 4 Dungeons are substantially more difficult than previous depths. Strategies for these dungeons are still being developed, and will shift as the game changes. This page contains some starting points and tips.

Overview

One of the defining characteristics of Depth 4 dungeons is an event which gives a substantial reward if your team's pets all match the dungeon's element (e.g. Earth pets in the Forest). Adventuring in the Depth 4 dungeons can be done before this is feasible, but many players recommend sticking with Depth 3 until you can handle the Depth 4 bosses with a single-element team.

This guide was originally written before the Dojo, the Strategy Room, and many of the current best pets were introduced. This guide also originally assumed that you would begin Depth 4 dungeons with a mixed-element team which stopped short of the bosses, and move up to single-element boss-slaying teams as you grew in strength. Rewriting the guide to meet current strategies is a work in progress.

Your ability to handle these dungeons will depend on many different factors (pet unlocks, growth and levels, Dojo, SR, equipment, etc.). No single guide can describe the best path for everybody. When in doubt, use the Simulate button to judge whether your team is ready.

Each depth 4 dungeon has 2 regular (preventable) traps, 1 unpreventable trap, and 2 events. The events are consistent across all dungeons. Passing the first event requires a key which matches the dungeon's element, and if passed, gives 1 crafting bar of the dungeon's element (e.g. Titanium Bar) and 30 god power, and increases the monster attack and health by 50%. Passing the second event requires all 6 team members to match the dungeon's element, and gives one tier 4 crafting material (e.g. Mythril), (15 + 1.5*difficulty) growth to each pet in the party, 25% more experience, and increases monster attack and health by 50%.

The keys for the first event may be crafted by an Alchemist from the stones found in the matching element's Infinity Tower, or purchased with pet stones, or looted from the depth 4 boss. A team with 2-3 strong Rogues (and Lucky Talismans, and the SpaceDim Timeline Manipulation bonus) may loot more keys from the boss than are used along the way. Before that point, however, keeping keys in stock may require some effort.

Speaking of which: each depth 4 dungeon also has a boss room, which occurs as the 60th room (or slightly earlier, if the D4 Boss Room boost is purchased with Challenge Points). Reaching room 60 requires that all NRDC have been completed, and needs a full 12-hour expedition. The boss room is significantly more challenging than regular depth 4 rooms.

Alchemists may also craft Nanotraps and Freezing Bombs. Nanotraps act against the Nanobot monsters in the depth 4 Scrapyard. Freezing Bombs reduce the speed of depth 4 monsters by 50%, but may not be used together with Nanotraps or keys.

General Tips

All of your team's equipment should be at minimum fully maxed tier 3 (SSS +20 with 20 enchantment and a level 10+ gem). A scattering of tier 4 gear will help, even if it's not fully upgraded. (Exception: knives should always be SSS +20. Stick with tier 3 knives if you can't fully reforge and upgrade your tier 4 knives.) Due to the large amount of damage you may receive, a higher than average number of water gems is strongly advised when starting out.

Speaking of knives, every pet should use a knife unless there is a reason not to. Mages can't use knives effectively, so those are the main exception. Any pet whose special ability requires a different weapon (like Archer's double shots) also qualifies for an exemption. Finally, any pet being trained with Gram or an Ego Sword is also exempted, but make sure you have enough knives on the other pets to compensate.

Most teams will have a small number of damage-dealing pets, but these pets need to be exemplary at their craft. A good damage-dealing pet:

• Should have a class matching its evolution bonus, for the extra damage (no wildcards). The higher the evolution bonus, the better. There's one exception to this rule -- see Volcano, below.
• Should have a gimmick or the raw stats needed to deal damage despite matching the element of the chosen dungeon.
• Should have full tier 4 gear if possible.
• Should use mostly fire (attack) gems, unless the pet's gimmick is speed damage, in which case use only wind gems.

Pets that have a special dungeon ability, such as Hourglass's enemy speed debuff or Archer's double shots, may be extremely helpful in some cases.

The pets who are acting in a supporting role (Defenders, Supporters and Rogues, or occasionally a Blacksmith) have less strict requirements. Usually they just need to survive. Defenders should have neutral gear with earth and water gems. For Supporters and Rogues, the equipment choices can be more complicated.

Supporters and Rogues will typically use knives, as Supporters will attack when nobody needs healing. Note that a maxed tier 3 knife reduces a monster's defense by 1% per hit. A tier 4 knife that's not SSS +20 will delevel enemy defense by less than 1% (but also delevels enemy elements). If your tier 4 knives aren't SSS +20 yet, it's better to stick with tier 3 SSS +20 knives.

Supporters may need to have their speed adjusted through trial and error. Ideally, you want them to act after monsters have done their first attacks, then again after a second round of monster attacks, and so on. Since monster speeds vary, it's impossible to find a perfect Supporter speed, so just do your best.

When attempting a depth 4 dungeon for the first time, you may be unable to defeat the bosses, or any room that gains 50% monster stats from passing the events. If you still want to try depth 4 at this power level, don't use a single-element team, don't bring keys, and don't go for the full 60 rooms. You may also need to bring Freezing Bombs or Nanotraps, depending on the strength of your team and which dungeon you're attempting.

Having large Dojo dungeon buffs and Strategy Room occupants will also help.

Single-element Teams

Making the transition to a single-element team is actually easier than it sounds. Having all your pets match the dungeon's element greatly reduces the damage they take (apart from Scrapyard, or off-element or neutral monsters in other dungeons). This allows you to shift equipment to favor attack/speed a bit more.

With your pets mostly acting as tanks, you'll still need at least one good damage dealer -- usually a Mage or Assassin. Building up your best attacking pet's levels (via Ego Swords, free XP, etc.) should be considered a prerequisite step. Aim for dungeon level 300. Everyone who's not a dedicated damage dealer will be doing smaller amounts of damage. Therefore, knives should be your go-to weapon of choice for Supporters and Rogues, and even Defenders, to help weaken the enemies for your big damage dealer(s).

Of special note here, the Volcano dungeon at difficulty 1 or higher reduces your pets' fire element over time. This will obliterate your ability to damage the enemies, if your big damage dealer is a fire pet. Strategies for dealing with depth 4 Volcano are still evolving -- see Volcano, below.

Next, we'll look at each dungeon.

Scrapyard

The unpreventable trap is a Railgun that shoots one random pet at the start of each turn for 20k damage (more at increased difficulty levels) which ignores defense. A pet hit by the Railgun, even if it survives, can't be revived by phoenix feathers in this room. This table shows the Railgun damage by difficulty level:

Difficulty	Railgun damage
0	20,000
1	28,286
2	40,004
3	56,577
4	80,016
5	113,165
6	160,047
7	226,351
8	320,124
9	452,746
10	640,310

Due to the Railgun trap, pet Health is critically important. You'll want all pets to have at least 30k Health for difficulty 0. Use water gems, or metal/earth equipment, as needed to ensure survival.

One of the monsters is a Nanobot which can replicate itself, unless prevented by Nanotraps. Nanotraps prevent the use of Freezing Bombs. There's also a monster which can Heal.

The good news is that once you've taken all of the above into account, the monsters aren't terribly strong. Sure, they're neutral, so you want to avoid having negative elements, but if you're going with an all-neutral or mostly-neutral team here, elemental resistance holes shouldn't be a major concern.

Sample all-neutral team: Dog (Defender), Carno (Assassin), Archer (Assassin), Black Hole Chan (Mage), Tanuki (Supporter), Ghost (Rogue). Other variants are possible (e.g. Gray kid 2 or Anything can be used in place of whatever pet you like here).

If you can't handle an all-neutral team yet, Salamander is a good choice for Supporter, since it gives an extra burst of healing at the start of every turn, right after the Railgun fires.

Water Temple

The unpreventable trap is a Lethal Poison which inflicts stacking poison to pets every turn, causing pets to receive 1.5 x stacks% max hp damage each action. It cannot be removed, except by completing the room, at which point it goes away by itself. Do not question the magic.

The Deep Sea Undine monster is a very strong healer, and can also inflict a Frozen Aura, which does additional damage per turn.

The key to this dungeon is dealing enough damage to defeat the monsters (including surpassing the Deep Sea Undine's powerful healing. particularly when there are 2 or more of them) before the Lethal Poison reaches high enough damage to kill your team.

Sample all-Water team: Whale (Defender), Chameleon (Neutral, Defender), Clam (Rogue), Undine (Rogue), Frog (Supporter), Witch (Mage). Chameleon counts as Water for the event. You could use Black Tortoise or Gray kid 2 as a second Water Defender if needed. Witch is the primary damage dealer, but Clam and Undine act as secondary damage dealers with good equipment, levels and growth.

Note that this team fails the depth 2 & 3 Hidden Library event (which needs 2 Supporters), so it may lose a small number of rooms per trip. This makes it unsuitable for fighting the depth 4 bosses. Mist Sphere may be used as another Supporter, replacing Undine or one of the Defenders, when aiming for the boss room. Leviathan will be a suitable Defender once it's unlocked.

One of the bosses (Cursed Pirate King) is an item thief, and will steal 1-3 of one of the items from your party inventory with each attack. He appears to take the first item added to your inventory list, so be sure to put something easily replaced in the first inventory slot.

Volcano

The unpreventable trap is Oilburn, which deals 5% of max HP damage per turn, and reduces pets' Fire element by 100 * difficulty level per turn.

This dungeon also features the Hell Rabbit, which can replicate itself (a Mage is helpful), the regenerating Obsidian Giant (fully heals after each hit, so you have to one-shot it), and the Infernal Salamander with a Healing Aura.

Finally, this particular dungeon is noteworthy for the extra rooms that you can receive. Stopping at room 59 to avoid the boss fight will not be viable. You'll need to be boss-ready before attempting this one.

Sample difficulty 0 all-Fire team: Elephant (Defender), Succubus (Assassin), Firefox (Blacksmith), Salamander (Supporter), Squirrel (Rogue), Tödlicher Löffel (Mage).

Volcano difficulty levels

At difficulty 1 or higher, the Oilburn trap begins to delevel all pets' Fire element each turn. This causes you to take increasingly large damage, and obliterates your damage dealer's offensive capability, as each fight progresses. Strategies for dealing with this are still evolving.

The first strategy is to use Tödlicher Löffel (Mage) or a neutral Chameleon (as an Assassin) as your damage dealer. These neutral pets can be tuned for Water damage, but they still count as Fire for the event. It's important to note that the Obsidian Giant must be one-shotted, or else it regenerates its HP. This makes Todlicher less effective as a sole damage dealer; at high difficulty, you may require an Assassin.

The second strategy is to rely on speed damage instead of regular damage. Use a Rogue or Assassin as your primary DPS pet, but gear it for maximum speed instead of maximum attack. Oilburn's Fire element deleveling has no effect on speed damage.

The third strategy is to use a pet that's immune to Oilburn. As of June 2024, there is only one such pet -- Vampire. Even without her token improvement, Vampire is strong enough for some teams. With the token improvement, she is very strong, and may immediately allow 1 or more difficulty level increases.

A fourth strategy is to postpone the issue by fighting Ancient Mimics at a lower difficulty level, rather than raising the difficulty level. This is a stopgap measure at best.

Speed damage seems to be the preferred strategy among endgamers. This involves capping the Speed and Speed Damage bonuses from the Dojo, and in some cases, class-changing Succubus to a Rogue, after giving her as much growth as possible, and using her as the Speed pet in the Strategy Room.

Mountain

The unpreventable trap is the Gravity Bomb, which reduces all pets' speed by 99%. Effectively, every pet will only act once per turn, sometimes twice, unless you have ludicrous speed.

There is also a monster with Heal, and one of the bosses is a summoner.

Hourglass is the MVP here, helping to reduce the gap between enemy and pet speeds.

With freezing bombs to reduce the speed damage you take, and a really good damage dealer (Sylph is usually the pick), you can begin to make progress here. You'll also want to boost pet HP a bit, because the enemies will get all their attacks in before you can act. Even with double Defenders, surviving that onslaught will require a bit of preparation. 15k HP may be enough for your Mages/Rogues at difficulty 0 with bombs and no events. It definitely won't suffice without bombs.

Suggested team: 1-2 Defenders, 2 Rogues, 1-2 Supporters (Hourglass being one of them), 1 Mage.

Sniper was probably intended to be used here, but in practice, Sylph is a better damage dealer, and Sniper is used in the Strategy Room's attack slot (as a Mage).

Forest

The Forest is considered the easiest depth 4 dungeon to start, and is where most players will begin. In addition to being the easiest to survive, there's considerable incentive to succeed here, due to the potentially larger amounts of tier 2 and tier 3 wood that can be obtained. Special wood and magic wood are frequently needed for upgrading the Tavern or Dojo, or for crafting. A depth 4 difficulty 0 team with 2 Rogues can obtain slightly more special wood than a depth 3 difficulty 10 team with 3 Rogues. However, if you're currently farming D3-10 with more than 3 Rogues, you might wish to remain with that setup until you can handle more than just D4-0 without events or bosses.

The depth 4 Forest bosses are significantly harder than the regular Forest monsters. Ironically, while the Depth 4 Forest is the easiest dungeon to start, it's one of the hardest to clear the bosses.

Torches and Antidotes will prevent the regular traps here; you may skip the Antidotes if you need the extra carry slots, as the Poison trap is quite weak. The unpreventable trap is a Stungun which randomly stuns one pet per turn. This stun lasts for 3 actions. If you take only one Supporter, you will need a lot of potions. Without potions, the party could easily be defeated if the sole Supporter is stunned for several turns in a row.

Honey Badger is immune to the Stungun trap. If Honey Badger is evolved as a Supporter, and powerful enough, you may be able to skip bringing healing potions.

The most significant monster in this dungeon is the Cosmic Gnome, which has 99,999 defense and 200 HP (at difficulty 0), and is immune to speed damage and defense deleveling by knives. Due to its insanely high defense, it will take 1 damage from almost any attack, until you are much stronger. See the Cosmic Gnomes subsection for details.

The fact that the Cosmic Gnome is the most significant monster is what makes this the easiest depth 4 dungeon. There are no summoners, no healers, no infinitely increasing poison damage, etc. There are monsters that can deal a lot of damage, but that's true everywhere. You simply need to survive the incoming damage, and deal enough damage of your own to win within the 50 turn limit.

Sample starting all-earth team: Gnome (Defender), Turtle (Defender), Lucky Coin (Assassin), Panda (Supporter), token-improved Rabbit (Mage), any Rogue. This team sacrifices multiple-Rogue wood income for durability, so it may not be a good choice before your Tavern and Dojo are fully upgraded.

Crocodile and Goat are the only natural Earth Rogues (unless Lucky Coin has been improved), but Gray kid 2 is also a decent Rogue choice here, especially if you're still leveling it. Token-improved Coin, with class changed to Rogue, seems to be the most common choice among lategame players.

At higher difficulties, Rabbit is usually retired in favor of stronger damage-dealers. Honey Badger, if evolved as an Assassin, may be used as a damage-dealer here. Tödlicher Löffel is another common choice, because he can be tuned for Wind damage but still counts as Earth for the event.

Cosmic Gnomes

You can use your experience with Earth Tower, except Cosmic Gnomes are immune to speed damage and all forms of "true" damage.

There are four known ways to deal with the Cosmic Gnomes:

• Repeated hits: Bring one or more Mages, and whittle the Gnomes down with repeated hits for 1 damage. Pets with extra hits (Sylph) help. This fails when you get a large number of Cosmic Gnomes in one room, but may be statistically acceptable as a starting strategy.
• Special gimmick damage: Basilisk's poison cloud deals 6 damage per round to every Cosmic Gnome. Elephant's and Undine's abilities also work, with damage based on Cosmic Gnome max HP.
• Ignore defense: Equip a non-Mage with the Wonder Axe, which ignores Defense 10% of the time. Ideally the Honey Badger, who won't be stunned.
• Raw power: Have a high enough raw Attack stat that you can damage the Cosmic Gnomes with regular attacks. Your Attack stat must be higher than one half of the Cosmic Gnome's Defense stat to deal more than 1 point of damage (ideally a lot higher).

Cosmic Gnome stats:

Difficulty	Defense	HP
0	99999	200
1	109999	220
2	119999	240
3	129999	260
4	139999	280
5	149999	300
6	159998	320
7	169998	340
8	179998	360
9	189998	380
10	199998	400

If you're using raw Attack power, the damage dealt will be roughly (A - D/2) / 501 before elemental damage and class multipliers are factored in, where A is your pet's Attack stat, and D is the Cosmic Gnome's Defense stat.

Basilisk evolution

Evolving the Ancient Basilisk requires defeating the depth 4 Forest boss room with special restrictions (see the pet's page for spoilers). This is an extremely difficult battle, made more so by the fact that you can't simulate it, as the special bosses don't show up in simulations. You'll probably be ready for this fight after you've unlocked the Holy and Demonic runes, and are consistently clearing a D4-2 dungeon (probably Water Temple).

For this fight, use difficulty 0, and bring a team of mixed element pets, and Freezing Bombs (no keys). You definitely don't want events increasing the difficulty. Take note of the special party member requirements, and the inventory slot requirements. You may want to bring healing Elixirs as well, just in case.

One of the biggest challenges you'll face (besides survival) is debuffing the bosses in time to avoid losing to the round limit. Basilisk won't attack with knives, so you lose out on debuffing from him, as well as any Mages you're bringing. You'll need everyone else to be slicing away. A minimum of three pets with knives (defender, blacksmith, supporter) can do the job, if you happen to be bringing two mages plus Basilisk. Bringing an assassin with a fourth set of knives may also work.

Pure damage is also required, so if one of your mages/assassins is neutral, gear it for wind damage (the bosses are all earth aligned). Using the Rune Patch on a blacksmith is highly recommended as well.

Ancient Mimics

Depth 4 dungeons have optional monsters known as Ancient Mimics. These may be encountered if your party brings the "Not Nothing" item with them, with a 10% chance per depth 4 room. Each dungeon has a different type of Ancient Mimic, with a different element designed to hurt you as much as possible. The Scrapyard has neutral ones, the Volcano has water ones, and so on.

Ancient Mimics have extremely high HP, very high attack, and modest defense. They also have a damaging aura, which inflicts a large amount of damage on every pet, every turn.

They can be deleveled with knives, and eventually killed by inflicting lots of damage. The key is to survive long enough for this to happen.

You'll typically need to reduce your dungeon difficulty level by 2 or 3 points when facing Ancient Mimics. E.g. if you were doing Scrapyard D4-4 without Ancient Mimics, you'll probably need to reduce your difficulty to D4-2 with them. Use the simulator to see where you can survive.

For the Scrapyard, Cat has a token improvement which negates the Ancient Mimic's damaging aura, which makes survival much easier. In addition, Taco (if tuned for Fire damage) gives your damage dealer a buff that deals damage scaling to the Ancient Mimic's current health. This makes the Scrapyard the easiest dungeon to begin fighting Ancient Mimics. Since every enemy who matters in this fight is neutral, there isn't even a specific set of equipment changes to recommend. Whatever you're doing to survive the Railgun and the neutral bosses should allow you to survive the Ancient Mimics here also.

For the Water Temple, Undine's special attack kills the Ancient Earth Mimics extremely well (they don't count as bosses, so they take 10% of their max HP per round, assuming Undine has at least 1500 Water element).

Similarly, Hwangeum Pig's "15% max hp damage to an enemy every 3 turns" ability makes it suitable against Ancient Mimics in the Forest.

For the other dungeons, the combination of the damaging aura and the extremely hard-hitting elemental attacks can be a problem. For your non-damage-dealers, boosting your elemental resistance versus the Ancient Mimic's element is advised. A tier 4 accessory of the appropriate element, together with a neutral gem and/or a mythril armor, provide a great boost to your survival chances.

Using Chameleon or Tödlicher Löffel with element tuned to beat the Ancient Mimic may work in some setups.