Beginner Guide: Your First Days

Dungeon Settlers is a colony sim wrapped around a dungeon crawler: you build a settlement, recruit and level a squad, and push expeditions deeper into the dungeon. The main story (Crawling Doom, quests Main0-8) doubles as a tutorial spine - it advances automatically as you do the right things, so use it as your to-do list.

Day 1 checklist

• Interact with the support wagon (Main0) - it holds your starting kit.
• Build a Basic Workstation (Main1), then craft Textile x6, a Cloth Armor and Wood Arrows x2 (Main2).
• Recruit up to 4 units (Main3) - see the recruiting advice below before you spend.
• Make a first, short dungeon run (Main4) and come home (Main5). Gather wood, grass and easy kills; don't push deep on day 1.
• Get food stocked and beds down before night - sleeping on the ground gives a far shorter comfort buff than a bed or a proper bedroom.
• Then build a Research Station (Main6) and start research immediately; idle research is wasted time.

Recruiting well

• Inspect candidates before buying - inspection reveals hidden talents. Talent tiers decide stat growth for a unit's whole career, and a fresh candidate only has ~2-5 tiers total across six stats, so one Exceptional or Genius stat is a genuine find.
• Candidates already carrying inscriptions cost extra (+200 to +2,000 gold by rarity) - often a bargain against the 2% Rare / 0.3% Legendary roll odds.
• Elves only appear from clan rank 2; Humans and Lizardmen are available from the start.
• Mind the dietary rules when planning your kitchen: Elves take a mood hit from meat, Lizardmen from vegetables (Food & Mood). A mixed-race roster wants a mixed pantry.

Leveling without stalling

• Leveling is manual: a prayer that consumes mana stones (Leveling & Experience). Pick the offering tier deliberately - bigger offerings buy bigger stat gains per level, but stones are the real bottleneck.
• The level-5 wall is real: Greater and Supreme mana stones have no reliable source in the current build, so progress slows sharply past level 5. Spread levels across the squad rather than rushing one unit.
• At every level-up you pick an inscription from 5 choices - use the Retry button freely and don't settle for a weak Common (Inscriptions).

Dungeon habits

• Rotate floors. Farming one floor to 0 depletion puts a -50% drop-rate debuff on the whole region, and a bottomed-out floor takes 15 in-game days to refill.
• Respect the clock (Time). Night (20:00-06:00) cuts vision; long expeditions stack escalating Dungeon Stay mood penalties day after day. Go in, hit your goal, come home.
• Watch gear durability and pack food and arrows - broken weapons and hungry settlers end runs early.

Preparing for the Red Monster Rat

The main chain's finale (Main7) is killing the Red Monster Rat - an elite rat with about 4,500 total HP and a hard-hitting 144 physical attack, backed by Bloody Scratch and a Rat Swarm call. Bring a full squad of level-2+ units with crafted gear (Bone or Carapace tier is comfortable), a shield-user to guard, and healing items. Killing it ends the story - but note it does not unlock the next region (How Regions Unlock).

An odd quest-order note

The chain's internal order is Main6 -> Main8 -> Main7: after the Research Station step, the "2 units at level 2+" quest (Main8) fires before the Red Monster Rat kill (Main7). That's how it's authored - not a bug in your save (Quests).