Gumballs and Dungeons – Dungeoneering Advice Guide, and more Tips!

There’s plenty to pay attention to in Gumballs & Dungeons, but the real meat lies in dungeon crawling itself (as it should be). The game’s dungeon crawling is some of the best you can get on mobile, so it’s kind of a given it’s a complicated affair.

In a dungeon you have to not only manage your HP and MP as you whack your way through enemies, but also spec into titles that will benefit your current party set up while being useful in the dungeon you’re running. And let’s not even get into items and spell effects. Geez.

A lot of what you learn about dungeoneering in Gumballs & Dungeons comes from experience — testing out titles, soul-link combinations, learning to work with a dungeon’s gimmick, learning which buffs you can have out at the same time as others, and even more stuff to take into consideration. It can really seem like too much if you’re paying attention, and if you’re not paying attention you’re probably not going to get all that far in Endless Mode runs.

So first and foremost we’re going to talk about party composition, but before we get to that I highly recommend you read my Gumballs & Dungeons systems advice guide if you’re new. Go read that and come back if you’re still green to the game. Heck, you will probably want to know how Adventure titles work too.

That all said, let’s get started.

To soul-link or not to soul-link? That is the question!

Obviously you should soul-link your gumballs, but the but a bunch of question marks often lies in which gumball you should have as the primary of your party and which two you should bring with you.

When you soul-link a gumball you gain access to its exclusive skill, and most gumballs have exclusive skills that are well-worth bringing into a dungeon. Sometimes they are good enough you don’t want to use another faction.

For example, my current party are always Ranger’s Song and always include Nobunaga whose exclusive skill gives him a permanent 1 point in Attack for each 20 HP increase and brings the Tenka item with him, which heals 6 HP per floor if the primary is Nobunaga (3 for other gumballs).

Between my Nobunaga, Musashi, and Crusader gumballs I’m pretty content using Ranger’s Song all the time for now.

You have to try to think of gumball combinations where their exclusive skills will benefit one another or mesh well with your personal playstyle — not to mention use the title types you want/need. You can have all three title types in a dungeon, but the secondaries (the ones of your two soul-linked gumballs) will cost double EP.

Take the following into consideration when soul-linking gumballs before a dungeon:

Exclusive skills as well as their exclusive skill level 

You can get up to skill level 4 pretty early in the game. Always get the gumballs you intend to use to skill level 4 before taking them into a dungeon. If you are able to feed it up to skill level 5, do it!

You don’t have to feed a gumball past the foods it needs for its exclusive skill to make it useful in a dungeon. Just give it its skill foods and use it.

Title types and order

Do you want to focus on Venture, Melee, or Magic titles first? You better make sure you have a gumball using the title you want to focus on as your primary.

Secondary titles require double EP to level, meaning you’re not going to be leveling them as quickly as your primary. Some gumballs can increase your EP accumulation (Minstrel) or decrease consumption (Lionheart King) but you’re still never going to be leveling your secondary titles first.

You want to choose your primary gumball based off:

• Star level – The higher the star level, the higher its base stats
• Stats – The higher the stats the better, obviously
• Exclusive skill – Some gumballs, such as Nobunaga above, have items that have double benefit on the gumball that grants the items
• Title type – This is the most important factor, with exclusive skill in second

A gumball’s base stats should not be the primary thing you look at when choosing a party leader. Instead focus on title type first, then whether the exclusive skill has extra benefits on its gumball, and then star level and stats.

Nothing is worse than getting into a dungeon where you want to use Magic or Melee titles and finding your leader uses Venture titles, so pay attention.

Dungeon gimmicks

Every dungeon has a gimmick, some you’ll surely like more than others. Whether you like it or not you have to learn to use each dungeon’s gimmick to your advantage, as many provide benefits as you push through and use their exclusive items.

Here are the first few dungeons and their gimmicks, along with some notes to bear in mind:

Adventurer’s Forest

This dungeon has a monkey in tree house you can feed specific items to buff up. The monkey is pretty useful and doesn’t take damage, though you will often not get enough fruit to raise its minimum damage but so much.

This dungeon is pretty straight forward. The hidden gumball here is the Sorcerer. You can obtain it by finding the Sorcerer’s Robe item in a cave. Wear it when you find the Sorcerer at floor 50+ and pay him 300,000 coins to have him join you.

Village of Heroes

This one’s more complicated than the Adventurer’s Forest. Most floors will have a bandit tent you have to enter and clear out to keep bandits from spawning every 5 turns.

This dungeon gives you two indispensable pieces of equipment: Zorro’s Mask and the Third Arm. They get stronger as you kill bandits and clear out camps. It’s generally better not to bring an artifact headpiece or accessory when running this dungeon.

Zorro is the hidden gumball in this dungeon. Wear your Zorro Mask and get it to max level, and hopefully Zorro will spawn as the boss on the 60th floor.

Lost Temple

My least favorite early game dungeon. In the Lost Temple you’ll run into elemental monsters that drop element-specific crystals, which you can use at altars on each floor to cast spells, increase stats, or get items.

The diary you get early on will be your guide to using the altars properly. Do keep in mind the first two crystals you use at an altar will do damage to a random enemy — but an elemental can’t be damaged by a crystal of the same element.

Here are a few notable altar effects you may want to aim for:

• Blue blue blue – HP +15
• Red red red – Attack +1
• Green green green – Power +1
• Yellow yellow yellow – MP +15
• Red red yellow – Cast Armageddon
• Blue blue red – Cast Recovering
• Blue red red – Cast Recovering
• Red yellow yellow – Cast Armageddon
• Green red blue – Cast Timestill
• Blue green red – Summon earth elemental
• Green blue yellow – Summon fire elemental
• Red blue yellow – Summon air elemental
• Yellow red green – Summon water elemental

Predator is the hidden gumball in this dungeon. If you find the Alien Helmet, Predator may spawn after the 50th floor. Wear the helmet and talk to him, then pay him 500,000 coins to have him join you.

Borderland

First things first: Once you are able to brew the Withering Potion, bring it into this dungeon. It makes you do 20% more damage to undead enemies.

Second: The gear you craft in here is worth it, making this another dungeon where you should be careful with which artifact equipment you bring. You get an accessory, boots, and a chestpiece in this dungeon you absolutely want to use all the way through unless you somehow get a full 6-star set.

It’s possible to fail upgrades on the special equipment in the Borderland, and those failures can ruin a run. Craft Bone Staves when you can/want as their extra damage can be a help on standard floors.

The Dark Dragon is this dungeon’s hidden gumball. You must use the Death Knight gumball as leader and upgrade three pieces of equipment to its max level. Summon a minion using the Bone Staff and let it die, then collect its bone. At floor 80+ you should find an altar at which you can give up your Contract of the Dead and the Bone to get the Dark Dragon.

Ancient Arena

If you wanted a coliseum battle, you got it. Kind of.

The Ancient Arena brings back bandits but doesn’t have the camps you saw in an earlier dungeon. Instead you have to occasionally fight one on one coliseum battles with other gumballs for prizes, and get special coins to buy unique items to this dungeon.

When you clear a floor make sure you engrave your name into the pillar to obtain your coins. Once in a while you’ll come across special vendors who will let you buy stat-boosting or damage items for coins. Choose your purchases carefully.

You can get the hidden Spartan gumball from the Ancient Arena. You must wear the Spartan helm you find and take on (and win) every coliseum challenge you come across until the 95th floor to have him join you.

General dungeon crawling advice

Okay, so you’re in an Endless Mode dungeon and it’s time to buckle down for a long run. What advice can I give you? Let’s get to it.

Venture titles as a secondary

I’m not fond of Venture titles. You might be, who knows. Maybe you really like the extra EP you get from Explorer.

The second rank Venture titles are Explorer (+10~20 EP per floor) and Explorationist (+6~12HP per floor) and you may be tempted to rush one of them early for either the extra EP or healing early on.

My big piece of advice for you on this is, Explorer is only worth it if you’re running an Endless and you need to get it within the first 3 floors to make it worth it. If you’re using Venture as a secondary, the base cost for the first title will be 200 EP and the base for the second 300. It will take 50 floors to fully make that EP up. And let’s not get into how long it will take if you pump more levels into it.

The gist is Explorer is way better on paper than in reality, unless you are capable of going above floor 50 in a dungeon’s Endless.

Magic is STRONG

If you’ve mostly been running Venture or Melee-type gumballs as your primaries and you’re having trouble, you may want to give Magic title gumballs a try.

Power scales much better than Attack in terms of pure damage (and healing), making it exceedingly strong when compared to parties with no Magic-type gumballs. The only problem is getting scrolls to cast, and that’s easy enough with some gumballs.

Speaking of magic: Be aware of the types you can cast

The very first tier of Magic title opens up high ranks of all types of magic, but if you don’t have a Magic-type gumball in your party you have to rely on what magic your titles will allow you to have.. which means you have limits.

There are no high-rank magic titles in Venture, but Melee does have some options at their tier 3 titles. These are:

• Magic Warrior – Allows for earth, fire, and dark spells
• Sword Dancer – Allows for fire, air, and dark spells
• Silver Knight – Allows for earth, water, and light spells
• Knight of Faith – Allows for water, air, and light spells

Each level into one of these raises your available spell rank in their respective types. The first level opens up rank 3 spells, the second rank 4, and the third rank 5.

Make sure you bear these in mind if you’re not running a Magic title gumball so you know your gameplan and can buy appropriate spells from vendors as you push through.

A note on minions

There are a few items that allow you to summon minions to help you in a dungeon. Some can only be used on one floor while others will follow you as long as they stay alive.

Look for “valid in maze” on a minion-summoning item to know whether it will follow you to the next floor or not. If not, it will probably only be for the floor you are currently on.

When to heal

HP is a valuable commodity in a dungeon and it only gets more valuable the higher the floor. Enemies hit harder and take more damage, and you’re going to suffer.

It can be hard to determine when to heal, but the best times are when you have cleared out a floor and can cast Electrostatic Field to boost your Power for 4 turns and cast Cure or another healing spell on yourself for the duration.

Always make sure you’re at or near full health before a boss fight — a turn spent healing in a boss fight is another turn you’re going to suffer.

Spell effects

As mentioned, magic is very strong but you have to know how and when to use it. For instance, you have to pay attention to whether your enemies are “lifeless” (undead or elemental) or not before casting something like Energy Drain, which has no effect on lifeless enemies.

In addition, most buffs do not stack with one another. I’ve seen some — but I haven’t paid much attention to say what does and does not work. That said, do be aware most combinations don’t work. Don’t do like I did and tried to do a run relying on Energy Drain and Blade of Ruin at the same time, because that does not work and it totally ruined my run.

Just to note, Portal of Earth is great if you want to get even more powerful before a boss. Use it at higher levels of a dungeon to loop back and rack up more gear, EP, and items. Also Holy Rebirth cannot be overwritten even if you give yourself other light magic buffs.

How many enemies at a time? Depends on your build and the dungeon

Some dungeons don’t have enemies that get significantly stronger when others are present and some do, it really depends. But you should know so you can alter your strategy accordingly and bring the right combination of soul-linked gumballs.

There are gumballs that excel in one-on-one situations (like the Gladiator) and others that are at their best just blowing everything up at once. Not to mention how the last rank title will affect how you play, from granting some ace AoE damage on attack, bolstering your defense, or just making you hit really hard.

There’s a lot to bear in mind when deciding to reveal a single or multiple enemies at a time, but you do need to think about it to make your dungeon runs easier and optimize your time in them.

Getting equipment sets in a dungeon

You’re probably not ever going to get a full set of equipment in a normal dungeon run, and it takes a while to get one together in an Endless run. But you definitely want to try.

There are DP-giving quests tied to getting full sets of equipment, but the real benefit comes from their set bonuses. If you have one or two pieces of a set and want the rest but don’t want to forego the bonuses on the equipment you have right now, just keep the set piece(s) in your inventory until you find more and absolutely make sure you check out each equipment vendor you come by to increase your chances of finding what you need.

Last but not least: Dragon Ball wishes

Get seven Dragon Balls and you get a wish — and no, none of those wishes are to go Super Saiyan. But they do a bunch of other cool stuff.

• I want more companions – Will give the Slave gumball the first time, and will give Slave fragments and 4 Artisans if you make this wish again later
• I want to be rich – Will give you 300,000 to 500,000 coins, but you have to defeat a bunch of bandits first
• I want magical fruits – Will give between 10 to 20 Fruit of the World Trees but you have to fight a cactus that reflects physical damage and is immune to magic
• I want to become stronger – Throws you into a boss fight, which does indeed make you stronger if you end up beating it
• I want supreme rights – Will grant you some stats and a chunk of out-of-dungeon resources
• I want Giant Dragon’s Power – Will give you the Dragon title
• I want gems – Will give you over 40 gems, but makes you tap three mines 999 times each to get them
• I want your collections – Will give you a bunch of items, most of which are useless but some are all right
• I want equipment – Will grant you a full equipment set with some great stats
• I want real wealth – Will grant gems and coins, but you have to know the password (Spoilers: it’s 123456)
• I want eternal life – Will give some rare feed for your gumballs
• I want a great deal of ore – Will give a great deal of ore, but you have to manually tap the veins to get it
• I want unlimited gems – Will give 15 gems and a small stat boost
• I want to learn Dragon Magic – Grants powerful magic that run

Once you’ve made all these wishes another one will open up the next time you summon the Divine Dragon: Please join me!

Once you’ve made the “Please join me!” wish, you will be able to wish for Divine Dragon fragments when you collect all even Dragon Balls as well.

There is so much more to be said about the mechanics of Gumballs & Dungeons I couldn’t remotely come close to touching on all of it. Between all the dungeon, title, and exclusive skill differences there are so many ways the play the game it gets overwhelming.

The advice laid out here is meant to help you on your way to becoming a better dungeoneer and to teach you to use what you’ve got more effectively — hopefully what’s been said here will help so you can push even higher in dungeons and feel more powerful. Knowledge is power, you know!