Ant Hill Dungeon
| Ant Hill Dungeon | |
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| Vital statistics | |
| Size (obj)Structure footprint in tile units.<br><br><i>Rounded-up from source.<br>Source: 999 x 999</i> | 999 x 999 |
| Discovery Req.This(<i>discoveryreq</i>) is only for items that need to be discovered in addition to items listed in "Object(s) Required"/<i>(<i>objectsreq</i>).</i><small><br><b><i>(Temporary active on all pages, but leave empty if "None".</i></b><small> | (None or Unknown) |
| Required By | (6) A Wild Dream, Ant Chitin, Ant Meat, Ant Wing, Curious Needle, Small Heart Container |
| Go to Objects | |
Ant Hill Dungeons are Dungeons found sometimes when raiding ordinary Ant Hills. They are filled with tough creatures, treasure, and a boss at the end.
You cannot hearth home while inside a Dungeon, even if you get KOed, so if you do, your only choice is to wait until you get up, and then sprint for the exit.
All dungeon enemies cannot Execute, but they can repeatedly KO you and kill you via a Concussion and have no armor.
How to Find
Occasionally when you raid Ant Hills, they may reveal themselves to be more than they first appeared. - Jorb
There is a small chance (around 2%) for an anthill you raid to begin smoking, and after raiding it will emerge from the ground becoming an Ant Hill Dungeon.
If an anthill does not smoke, it is marked as a non-dungeon, and will never smoke, regardless of how many times you begin the raid.
If you stop raiding while the hill is smoking, it won't smoke next time you try to raid it, meaning if you stop mid-raid you ruin the chance of getting a dungeon.
Ant Hill Dungeons are full of Large Ants with varying degrees of strength, Ant-related loot, Forageable Plants and rarely Seeds of Trees or Bushes. The Ant Hill Dungeon is a sight to behold as the player is swept into a wholly unique, albeit small, world.
These are the third Dungeon that has been introduced to the game.
Getting Through the Ant Hill
The Hill is compiled like a maze, with a variety of rooms and halls, which can split into as many as four ways.
There are generally 6 types of rooms within the dungeon, which can be large open rooms or short confined hallways:
Entrance: The entrance to the dungeon can never spawn enemies, so if you enter and there are enemies waiting for you, someone has already been there and lead them to the entrance.
Eliminate: These rooms have all except the door you entered from locked. To unlock them, you need to wipe out all enemies that spawned in the room, at which point none more can spawn, and all doors will be unlocked.
Charge: These rooms have a static, unbreakable stone totem with a glowing orange gauge in the middle and will spawn ants infinitely until the room is completed. The gauge charges as you kill ants, and once it reaches the top, the room will complete, and all doors will unlock, and all ants will stop spawning.
Key Room: These rooms spawn enemies infinitely until the room is completed. The room is not completed like others, though, as instead there is a small chance for an enemy to drop a key once killed, which can be used to unlock one door. Keys only work in the room they're found in, but will work on any door inside said room, being consumed when used. These key rooms will always have a static chance to drop a key when you kill an enemy until all the doors are unlocked. The enemies will only stop spawning when ALL doors are both unlocked and opened.
Treasure Room: These rooms contain more chests than normal, sometimes with chests being the only thing inside them, but they can also spawn some enemies or a Special Stand with a Special Key.
Boss Room: This large room contains the best chests and loot, many enemies, and the dungeon boss. It requires the Special Key to enter, as it is locked with a Locked Special Stand.
Strategies and Tips
Before entering the hill by Right-clicking on it, the player must be aware that the difficulty level inside is random.
The warrior ants inside aren't as strong as those in the Beehive Dungeon or Rat Dungeon (and pitifully weak compared to the inhabitants of the Bat Cave Dungeons and Beaver Lodge Dungeons), thus making them easier to fight. Most wounds you receive from them can be healed with Yarrow.
All the enemies in this dungeon move at or below 33.33 U/s movespeed, which is below your Hearthling's Run speed. Don't be afraid to make a hasty getaway toward the dungeon entrance whenever you need a breather.
Despite that it is still suggested to enter an Ant Hill Dungeon with a Horse that is Leashed. Upon entering the dungeon, you will be able to have your hearthling Right-click on the Horse, and choose from the flower-menu the option ``Giddyup!`` to mount it. There will be times where the player's Horse may become stuck within narrow confines of a dungeon, but this should be easily solved with some careful maneuvering. Make sure you bring it with you when escaping the dungeon's collapse!
Some Combat Moves that will be efficient in such dungeons are Side Swipe and Storm of Swords, though keep in mind that these two require IP (Initiative Points). Moves that do not require IP and are helpful in an Ant Hill Dungeon are Quick Barrage and Full Circle.
The player may encounter rooms within a dungeon that produce an infinite amount of enemies. It would be prudent to avoid staying longer than necessary in such rooms.
You may also find a Special Key on a stand that will only fit with a Special Stand, found in the final rooms - if you lose this key, it will respawn on the stand after 3 RL days.
Chests contain a random assortment of loot including Gems, Curious Needles, Ant Meat, Wild Dreams, foragebles, and Seeds.
The Foes
Below are images of the various types of enemies you will find inside an Ant Hill Dungeon.
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Royal Guard Ant - The strongest kind of Ant in this dungeon. Firepower slightly higher than a badger. - 120 Hp -
Giant Ant Queen - The Dungeon Boss, firepower slightly above a boar. Very slow, can be outrun on Run speed. - 900 Hp
The Boss
Her Majesty has around 900 HP and can deal very fair damage, in the 100's if you allow your openings to get high, by using her access to powerful moves like Blood & Gore and Bear Down, and her Chomp is nothing to scoff at either. Unfortunately for her however, she is pathetically slow (33.33 U/s movespeed) and can be easily outrun by any Hearthling on Run (~50 U/s movespeed). Due to this, and the fact she has no armor, she can easily be killed through one of two methods:
- Easy, quick method: Just kite her in circles. Aggro only her and not her minions, and bring her to an empty room. (The reason you do this is because her minions can respawn in her arena, but nowhere else.) If her minions aggro, bring them too and pick them off one by one until it's just you and her. Alternatively if you have allies, have one person distract the minions while the rest draw her away. Then just run in circles tapping her with attacks and always keep your openings low. Eventually she will go down. That is to say unless you simply stand and deliver on her, which can be comfortably done around 90 UA/MC and 60 AGI. Then she can be killed in mere moments with well timed and well opened cleaves or full circles.
- Easier, slower method: Use this method if you're far underlevelled and made it here through dumb luck and determination or assaulting her hill with sheer numbers. Do just as with method 1, bringing her away from her arena and isolating her from her minions. Then just kite her in circles and sling rocks or shoot arrows at her; there is nothing she can do about it and she won't even bother fleeing from you.
The Escape
Once the boss is defeated, anyone who dealt damage to her gains the Sundering the Hill event that increases the speed of raiding anthills permanently for that character, a new exit out of the dungeon will spawn in her arena, and a Small Heart Container will spawn near that.
WARNING! Upon killing her, the dungeon will begin shaking and you will have EXACTLY 5 MINUTES to pack up and escape! If those 5 minutes elapse, all Hearthlings will be harmlessly booted out of the dungeon and it will destroy itself. Why is that a problem? Because only Hearthlings are booted out. Anything else in the dungeon, any loot, the Queen or her minion's corpses, the Small Heart Container, any objects you built or brought into the dungeon, even tamed animals like your horse will be instantly deleted once all Hearthlings are booted and the hill collapses. Do not test the timer! Grab the heart container, the queen's corpse, and any horses you might have brought, and leave. Any looting or butchering of other parts of the dungeon should be done before killing the queen.
The Spoils
Within the dungeon you can find high quality forageables and tree seeds, which can help to jumpstart your treeplanting and gardening industry.
The ants can be butchered for Ant Meat and Ant Chitin, but only if they were a non-respawning enemy. The enemies that spawn infinitely in key and charge rooms cannot be looted or butchered in any way and their corpses will despawn after a little while.
There is additionally a small chance you can find a lower tier Gemstone.
You can also find high quality ants, which can be used for Ant Paste or studied.
The queen herself will give around 10 Ant Chitin, 30 Ant Meat, 8 entrails, and her signature Ant Crown and Ant Queen's Wings, both of which have high gild chances. The wings in particular can actually be worn in the shoulders slot, much like Hussar's Wings.
Doors
Ordinary unlocked doors will unlock after you defeat all ants in a room.
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A locked door that can be unlocked only with a
dropped key in a room. -
A glowing dropped key. -
Stand that holds a Special Key. -
Special stand that can be unlocked only with a Special Key.
Chests
These are the various ant-themed containers found within an Ant Hill Dungeon that contain loot for the player to collect.
They are visually distinct when they have never been opened before. Once opened they're permanently damaged, so if they are pristine you can be sure nobody has touched them yet.
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Eggs with more major loot, mostly the same but better quality than a cocoon, that can be obtained by Right-clicking on them. -
Looted Eggs Chest. -
A cocoon with minor loot like ants, tree seeds and Curious Needles inside that can be obtained by Right-clicking on them. -
Looted Cocoon Chest.
Notes
- You can bring a Horse that is on a Leash inside a Dungeon. Make sure you bring it with you when escaping the dungeon's collapse!
Game Development
- Smoked Hedgedog (2021-01-24)◎ >"Rooms in Ant Hills where the ants drop keys to unlock doors will cease spawning new ants once all doors have been unlocked."
- Smoked Hedgedog (2021-01-24)◎ >"Rooms in Ant Hills which require a key to open have a fatter padlock on them to better communicate this."
- Smoked Hedgedog (2021-01-24)◎ >"The Ant Hill dungeon keys, opening the door to the Ant Queen by being placed in a receptacle, now have distinct graphics"
- Christmas Antwolf (2018-12-14)◎ >"Added Ant Hill Dungeons. Occasionally when you raid Anthills, they may reveal themselves to be more than they first appeared. Key dropping rooms will continue to spawn enemies indefinitely. The ants are otherwise fairly weak."