Welcome to the second installment of Dungeon Crawl. It’s time to break out your PvE parties and beat down some monsters! The dungeon is best played with a raiding player controlling the instance party and a dungeon player controlling the Monsters, but it can also be played solo.

Map Setup

You’ll need three Totems, two graveyard terrain pieces, lots of terrain (or whatever you want to use) to build the walls, eight Monsters, and eight flag terrain pieces for the Monster spawn points. Wall spaces can’t be entered or flown over.

Water Distillers

There are three special Distillers in the dungeon that boost the power of the Boss. Each Distiller in the dungeon gives the Boss +1. Distillers act just like totems in that they don’t block LoS, don’t move, and can’t be damaged by AOE effects. Distillers have 3.

Setup: Raiders

There are two Spawn Points to choose from as you enter the dungeon. Note that as soon as your first character spawns at either of the two spawn points, you’ll immediately gain the attention of two Monsters, so you might want your tank (someone who can take a few hits) to enter first.

Setup: Monsters

Grab eight Monsters. If you want to go with a particular dungeon theme, you can choose to use only Sea Creatures or only Elementals, but a wide variety of different Monsters is usually more interesting. One of those Monsters gets to be the Boss of the dungeon.

Place 1 totem (these are the Distillers) on each of the 3 totem spaces on the map (the red-tinged counters).

The Boss monster starts the game occupying the Kalithresh spawn point in the central chamber. The other seven monsters should be placed on the seven Monster spawn points, either placed as the dungeon player sees fit or at random. For random, choose an unoccupied Monster spawn point and roll (ignoring 8-10) to determine which Monster starts there. You’ll just be using the Monster character cards, so leave their Action Bar cards in your binder. Before the game starts, all eight Monsters should be on the board. Take note of which Monster is at which spawn point, as it will be relevant later. Now add up the honor of the Monsters.

Setup: Party

A dungeon party consists of three characters. The honor total of the Monsters (don’t count the Boss) sets the party honor limit based on the following:

You can also work backwards. If your friend brings a 17 honor party to raid the dungeon you set up, you can build your Monster team using up to 40 honor, plus any other mini to represent the boss.

Dealing with Monsters

One addition to the original Aggro rules for this dungeon: the Monsters are very protective of the Distillers. When a character destroys a Distiller, that character gains the Aggro token. Reprinted below are the rules of Aggro, Monster Moves, and Monster Health for those who aren’t familiar. If you know them, you can skip down to Warlord Kalithresh and see the boss you’ll face.

Aggro

Getting close to Monsters gets them all riled up. In the online game, this is referred to as “aggroing a mob.” A character who “has aggro” is the party member the monsters are going to be gunning for, so it’s nice if that character can survive an attack or two.

Monsters have an aggro range of 4 spaces. Line of sight (LoS) is also always checked between Monster and intruder. A character could be 2 spaces away from a Monster but not be in LoS of the Monster, because a wall separates them. The first character to enter into a Monster’s aggro range gets the Aggro token (use a coin, bottle cap, or whatever to mark that character as the one “with aggro”). If two characters somehow both end up in a Monster’s aggro range simultaneously, the one nearest to the Monster gains the Aggro token. If they’re tied, the party decides who gets it. However, in all cases, if any character already has the Aggro token, another character cannot gain it this way. A character loses the Aggro token when it dies or when it is not in the aggro range of any Monsters, even for a split-second.

You may have noticed that some Action Bar cards have the word “Aggro” in their middle referent bar. I’ll wait for you to check your Warrior cards now . . .

Ok, so if you play an Aggro card while in the aggro range of any Monster, the character that played the card gains the Aggro token. Taunt and Protector also work very well against dungeon Monsters, so that is a consideration if you think you’ll have trouble keeping aggro where you want it.

Monster Moves

Monsters act at the start of ticks 3, 6, and 9. Once a Monster has had its personal space violated, it will continue to pursue the party, even if the party members leave aggro range or duck out of LoS. All Monsters act before any players act on those ticks. Don’t bother to keep track of their clocks, as you won’t be paying for their attacks. Some will benefit under this method, and some will suffer.

Monsters will always move as best they can towards the character with aggro, or at least into attack range of that character. Monsters with ranged attacks won’t move closer than necessary to the character with aggro. When a Monster is done moving its 2 spaces, it will attack the character with aggro if able. If not able, it will attack the nearest legal target. Failing that, it will attempt to use a secondary action. Example: Helwen’s Seduction ability, which ignores the Action Bar card exhaust cost in this scenario, since she has no Action Bar cards.

A dungeon player may make decisions as he or she sees fit when there are options. However, the Monsters still must go after the character with the Aggro token with all abandon.

Monster Health

Keep track of a Monster’s health just like in a normal battle. When a Monster dies, set the mini on the master clock tracker at the current tick. When that tick rolls around next round, the Monster respawns at its original spawn point at the very start of the tick. Example: A Rethilgore Monster dies on tick 3. It is removed from the board and placed on the 3 in the game-tick tracker. At the start of tick 3 next round, it will respawn at the same spawn point where it started the game, or adjacent to it if that space is occupied. Then, since all Monsters act at the start of 3, 6, and 9, it gets to act (if it’s in the aggro range of a party member).

Warlord Kalithresh

The Big Boss of the dungeon is Warlord Kalithresh. You can use a Slitherblade Tidehunter to represent him, as they look rather similar. He resides in The Steamvaults dungeon in the Coilfang Reservoir complex in Zangarmarsh. In his chamber are large water distillers that increase his power. If you don’t destroy the Distillers in short order, you’re doomed. Same goes for this minis dungeon, although I did take some liberties beyond what he does online for a more robust minis experience.

Kalithresh uses a personal clock but can’t be ticked up. When he attacks, he will use his Lightning Barrage if it can hit more than one character. Otherwise, he will use his Head Crack attack. If playing solo, randomly choose a Monster when Kal crits with Lightning Barrage. Note that characters not in LoS of the Boss won’t be hit by Lightning Barrage.

Object of the Game

Kill Warlord Kalithresh! You are free to engage Kalithresh anytime you want. Just get within 4 spaces of him (and LoS) and he’ll be all over you . . . and it will be all over for you. However, you’ll fare much better if you take down his Distillers first. Distillers have 3, so they can be taken down fairly quickly. Unlike with the treasure chests from the Dungeon Crawl, you do not have to be out of aggro range of Monsters to smash a Distiller.

Important: Once you have aggro’d Kalithresh, the Monsters in the dungeon stop respawning. The Monsters that have already respawned remain in play and can be aggro’d as usual.

Once Kalithresh is defeated, you win! If the players are all defeated, the dungeon player wins. And, no, the raiders don’t get to respawn like the Monsters do.

Optional Rules

• If you are the dungeon player and want to really show the raider a hard time, go ahead and assign 2 Action Bar cards to each of your Monsters. Except for Kalithresh, that is—he doesn’t need any.

• As I mentioned before, this dungeon is well-suited to solo play. Use the random method of Monster distribution at the start of the game. Since none of the Monsters use Action Bar cards, and the Aggro token tells you where to move the Monsters, it’s not tough to run yourself through a dungeon. Solo play is a great way to test a dungeon or a party in private before you challenge a friend.

• For the party, get some extra value out of your Rogues and cat form Druids with dungeon stealth rules. While a character is stealthing, it only aggros mobs at range 2. This means that if a stealthed character starts its turn without a Monster adjacent to it and moves 1 or fewer spaces for the turn, it’s not in a Monster’s aggro range unless it’s within 2 spaces of the Monster (and in LoS as usual).