DungeonSettlers.wiki

How Regions Unlock (Progression)

Steam

Dungeon Settlers opens its regions in a fixed chain. In play, clearing a region is the only thing that opens the next one. The save stores each region's lock state, and the game loads it as saved.

At a glance

Unlock ruleClearing a region opens the regions linked to it (OpenAdjacentRegion). The save keeps each region's lock state, and the load restores it as saved
Region chainVeil of Silence -> Festering Burrow -> Abandoned Mine and the Infinite Abyss. Forgotten Abyss and Dead Swamp open each other. No clear opens Tower of Apocalypse
Clear conditionKill the region's clear boss (GAMESYSTEM_Dungeon_UnitForClearRegion: slot 0 (The Veil of Silence) = Giant Stone Golem; slot 1 (Festering Burrow) = Chain Knight Sentinel; later slots NULL) on the last floor, then press Return on the expedition result screen
Floors per region5 (GAMESYSTEM_Dungeon_MaxFloor)
Floor -> phaseGAMESYSTEM_Dungeon_PhaseUnit = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]: floor n runs phase PhaseUnit[n], so floor 5 runs phase 5, the boss phase (index 0 is the safe floor)
Boss room requirementDUNGEONROOM_VeilSilence_Boss_GiantStoneGolem needs phase [5] - floor 5 of Veil of Silence is that phase, so the boss floor generates in stock play
Dead tableGAMESYSTEM_Dungeon_Floor_Phase_Division* exists in the data but no build since B.0.3.40 reads it (binary string-literal check, 2026-09-04); it decides nothing
Auto-clear (demo builds only)B.0.3.x demo and playtest builds marked Veil of Silence cleared from floor 5's result screen (DemoClearConditionResolver); compiled out in DS_B.0.4.11, the check never fires
Main-quest finaleRed Monster Rat (Main Quest 8) ends the story; it does NOT clear the region or unlock anything

The region chain

Veil of Silence is open from the start. When a region is cleared, the game opens the regions linked to it (OpenAdjacentRegion). The links are fixed in code (SetAdjacency).

The links are:

  • Clearing Veil of Silence opens Festering Burrow.
  • Clearing Festering Burrow opens Abandoned Mine and the Infinite Abyss.
  • Clearing Abandoned Mine opens nothing.
  • Clearing Forgotten Abyss opens Dead Swamp, and clearing Dead Swamp opens Forgotten Abyss.

No clear opens Tower of Apocalypse, and no clear of the first three regions opens Forgotten Abyss or Dead Swamp.

Only the first 2 regions have real content; the rest are placeholders (see the Gated Content page).

Clearing a region

Each region names a clear boss in the constant GAMESYSTEM_Dungeon_UnitForClearRegion. In the current data 2 slots are filled:

2 of the 8 slots are filled; every later slot is NULL.

RuleThe dev comment on the constant is explicit. A NULL slot means the region has no boss and never unlocks the next one.

The chain, traced in the DS_B.0.4.11 binary (2026-09-04):

  • Every campaign region has 5 floors (GAMESYSTEM_Dungeon_MaxFloor). Floor n runs dungeon phase PhaseUnit[n] from GAMESYSTEM_Dungeon_PhaseUnit = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5] (index 0 is the safe floor), so floor 5 runs phase 5.
  • Phase 5 is the boss phase: its room pool is Entry -> Boss -> Portal, and the boss room (DUNGEONROOM_VeilSilence_Boss_GiantStoneGolem, AvailablePhases = [5]) generates there. Festering Burrow's floor 5 generates DUNGEONROOM_FesteringBurrow_Boss_ChainKnightSentinel the same way.
  • Killing the clear boss on that floor flags the region's boss as defeated (TryMarkCurrentRegionBossDefeated). The expedition result screen then offers Return; pressing it commits the transition and marks the region cleared (SetClearRegion -> SetDungeonClear -> SetRegionClear) and opens the neighbour (OpenAdjacentRegion).
  • On the boss floor the exit portal is already the next region's portal (BUILDING_DungeonFloorPortal2 on Veil of Silence, BUILDING_DungeonFloorPortal3 on Festering Burrow).

Corrections to earlier readings

"The Golem cannot spawn." Earlier versions said Veil of Silence's own phase table, GAMESYSTEM_Dungeon_Floor_Phase_Division_Veil_Silence, caps the region below the boss phase, so the boss room could never generate.

That table exists in the data, and no build since B.0.3.40 reads it. A search of the game binary's string literals finds zero references in B.0.3.40, B.0.3.44 and DS_B.0.4.11. The floor's phase comes from GAMESYSTEM_Dungeon_PhaseUnit, as above. The boss floor was reachable all along.

"A second lock keeps Festering Burrow closed." Earlier versions also described hardcoded Festering Burrow exceptions in the binary. Those instructions existed in B.0.3.14 and are gone from B.0.3.40 onward:

  • IsRegionBlocked returns false for every region
  • SanitizeRequestedRegion returns its input unchanged
  • Neither OpenAdjacentRegion nor GetAvailableRegion tests the region number

Demo-build auto-clear

In the demo and playtest builds (B.0.3.x) the game also auto-completed Veil of Silence. A demo-only resolver marked the region cleared from floor 5's result screen, boss kill or not.

DS_B.0.4.11 removed that behaviour. The resolver is compiled to a constant false, and the result screen reads the real boss-defeated flag.

Main quest vs region clear

Finishing the main story is a separate axis from clearing regions. The Crawling Doom main chain (Main Quest 0 to Main Quest 8) ends with killing the Red Monster Rat, an elite monster, not the region's clear boss.

Completing it finishes the scenario's story but does not clear Veil of Silence and does not unlock Festering Burrow. See Quests.

RuleOnly the region's clear boss flips the IsCleared flag that drives the unlock chain.

Save editing

NoteThe game loads each region's saved IsLocked value as it is. A region saved with IsLocked false is open. Setting the previous region's IsCleared alone opens nothing, because the load does not re-open linked regions.

Some earlier builds re-derived the unlock from IsCleared on every load. On those builds IsLocked edits did nothing. See Save Files.