Changelog/2020/July 7

After months of work, we are finally ready to unveil Hypixel SkyBlock's biggest and most awaited update so far: Dungeons!

In this news post, we will explain Dungeons through the following sections: Grab your best gear and get ready to explore!
 * What are Dungeons?​
 * How do you play the Catacombs?​
 * The Dungeon Hub​
 * The Party Finder​
 * Dungeons and Secrets​
 * Dungeon Loot, Essence, and Boss Rewards​
 * Dungeoneering and Classes​

NOTE: To avoid servers crashing and burning, we are currently only allowing MVP+ and MVP++ into Dungeons. We are monitoring the situation and will be allowing more players in as we go. Additionally, we are limiting the amount of Dungeon servers we have running and have a max player limit to help control performance issues.

We do not recommend buying a rank just for Dungeons as it will not guarantee you a spot at this time.

What are Dungeons?
SkyBlock Dungeons are randomly generated instances, that can vary in size, include different rooms, monsters, and rewards.

Our goal is to go back to the roots of Hypixel, bring back the feeling of adventure maps, and give players a reason to group up once more, in order to defeat trials and powerful bosses, but in a way that makes sense in a SkyBlock setting.

Each Dungeon will feature multiple floors of increasing difficulties that should challenge players at any stage of the game.

The first SkyBlock Dungeons is The Catacombs - a dark and creepy place that goes deep into the core of the Hub island, where evil forces have been hiding for centuries. The Catacombs are composed of many enclosed, small rooms, with intricate architecture full of danger and secrets.

How do you play the Catacombs?
Dungeons are available to all ranks and do not cost any coins to play.

There are 2 ways to reach the dungeon:

You can go directly to the entrance of The Catacombs, which is in the Hub between the Coal Mine and the Graveyard.

There is a new location inside the Mountain with a portal that leads to the Dungeon Hub.

In any case, you should find an NPC called Mort, click on him to select a floor or use the Party Finder.

To start a Dungeon run, you need to have a party. Lower floors require a minimum of 2 players and you can start with up to 5 players. There are currently 3 Floors available on top of the Entrance floor. Eventually, there will be 10 Floors total inside the Catacombs.

The Dungeon Hub
This new SkyBlock location will be the home of every Dungeon, you can access it from the portal inside the Mountain, from Mort, or directly from your Travel menu inside the SkyBlock menu.

The entrance of the Catacombs features 3 NPCs.

Ophelia sells dungeon items and special potions that useful for dungeons. Once you beat Dungeon Floors, she may include new items and potions.

Malik is the new Blacksmith, you can use him to upgrade items, use new reforge stones, repair or salvage dungeon items.

Mort lets you choose which Catacombs Floor you want to start, see your stats, and use the Party Finder.

Down in the Dungeon Hub, you will find a new NPC, Guildford. He has many races to challenge you and will reward you Wither Essence if you beat his scores.

The Party Finder
Inside Mort's menu, you can use the Party Finder if you need to find or create a quick party. When creating a party, you can select the Dungeon (Catacombs being the only one available at the moment) and the Floor. A Dungeon Party can hold up to 5 members. Once you have a good party, the leader can select a floor to play with Mort.

We will also be opening an LFG (Looking For Group) channel on the Hypixel Discord.

Dungeons and Secrets
To complete a dungeon, your party has to open every door until they find the last door, beat The Watcher, and finally beat the Boss. While that sounds simple, there are many other features to be found within the dungeon that are necessary to understand to help you reach the end.

Doors and Keys
For every door, there is a Key to find. To do so, you need to defeat monsters with a star next to their name. Once all the starred monsters of a room are defeated, special loot will drop on the floor. Keys are automatically shared with the group - anyone can use them once someone picks them up and they can open locked doors by simply punching them.

Blessings
Dungeons will get progressively harder, the deeper you get inside a dungeon, the stronger monsters get. If you are struggling to defeat the last Bosses, it probably means you didn't find enough Blessings.

Blessings are buffs that apply to your entire party until the end of the run.

Special Rooms
Straying away from the main path is usually a good idea. On the edges of the dungeon, you may find special rooms with mini-bosses, puzzles, or full of traps. Completing those rooms will reward your team larger blessings. If you take too long to complete those rooms, the quality of those blessings may go down.

Ghosts
Instead of dying, players turn into Ghosts inside the dungeons. While they are ghosts, they access new class abilities.

In early floors, players automatically revive after a few seconds but starting floor 3, Ghosts can only be revived with reviving stones, the healer class, Fairies, or during The Watcher fight.

Score System
At the end of your run, your team will be awarded a score, based on a few factors:

Skill: It measures how clean your run was, if you defeated everything without a sweat, you'll get 100!

Speed: To reach 100, you need to defeat the boss within a certain time. This one is the easiest to get.

Exploration: 60 points are awarded by simply exploring every room, the last 40 points are earned by finding all the secrets.

Bonus: A few points are awarded by accomplishing some useful actions that are not required to beat the dungeon. PNG-1.png

Magical Map and Player compass
Inside the Dungeon, your SkyBlock menu is replaced with the Magical Map, where you can see your location and one of your teammates.

On top of that, if you look at the top of your screen, you should see the first 3 letters of the names of your teammates appear, in their respective direction. This system does not show their precise direction, it shows you the way to get to them. It may show you the direction of a door that you have to go to first. It also shows you the direction of the next door you have to open.

There are many other details, if you are interested in learning them, click on the spoiler below.

Spoiler: Dungeon details
► Dungeon Loot, Essence and Boss Rewards Most Catacombs monsters drop gear pieces. You will quickly notice that they drop items at a much higher rate than other SkyBlock monsters, however, Dungeon Loot behaves differently than other SkyBlock items.

Better quality items
While all Dungeon Loot have base stats (HP, Defense, etc.), those can be higher from an item to another. Rarely you will find versions of the item that are maxed out, when the item is maxed out, the rarity is bumped to a higher level. On top of that, if you find the same loot piece in Floor 2 or Floor 3, the Floor 3 one will have higher base stats, therefore higher max stats.

Durability
Dungeon loot has durability. They take a very long time to break, but they will eventually reach zero. Once they do, you will have to repair them. Most of the time, the repair price is pretty cheap.

Salvaging
Your other option is to salvage your Dungeon Gear to collect Undead Essence. When Malik salvages an item, it deletes it.

Essence
While playing Dungeons, you will collect many different kinds of essence. Those can be used to either turn specific gear into Dungeon Gear or improve Dungeon Gear.

Dungeon Items have buffed stats based on the Skill Level of the Dungeon you are playing.

Star Upgrades
Once an item is a Dungeon Item, it can be upgraded 5 times using the same kind of Essence. Each star gives the weapon an extra 10% stats while inside the Catacombs.

Gear Score
Gear Score is a new stat that you can see on all Dungeon Items. It roughly estimates the power level of an item making it easier to see which item is best.

Catacombs Level Requirements
Almost every Dungeon item, or item that can be turned into a Dungeon Item, have Catacombs level requirements. This means that you won't be able to use the item inside the Catacombs if you don't have the right level. You can, however, use the item inside the Catacombs if the item has not been turned into a Dungeon Item yet.

Boss Rewards
At the end of the Dungeon Run, chests are appear.

By default, 3 chests are spawned. Wooden, Gold, and Diamond chests.

If your party got at least an A Score: a 4th chest spawns - Emerald

If your party got at least an S Score: a 5th chest spawns - Obsidian

If your party got an S+ Score, all the chests are slightly better.

Each player can open the chest they want. While Dungeons are free, chests are not. Only the Wooden chest is free, all other chests require coins to open. If the chest contains a very rare item, it can be more expensive. Chests take coins directly from your bank, in case you forgot to withdraw. On top of that, players get rewarded Catacombs EXP and Class EXP based on their score and the floor they are in.

Class Milestones
During the Dungeon, you will reach a few milestones based on damage dealt, taken or healing done. If you don't reach the first 3 milestones, you will gain less EXP and many won't even be able to open chests. That system is there to prevent players from going AFK during dungeons.

Dungeoneering and Classes
Dungeoneering is a new icon in your Skill Menu, there you can find all Dungeon Classes and Dungeon Skills. Gaining EXP inside the Catacombs will not only level up your Catacombs Level but also your Dungeon Classes.

Catacombs Levels
Each level will buff your Dungeon Items from 4% to 600% extra stats. If you are ever stuck on a floor, a few more Catacombs levels should be enough to let you beat it.

Dungeon Classes
There are currently 5 Dungeon Classes: Archer, Healer, Berserk, Tank, and Mage.

Each class has 50 levels, each one upgrading the abilities, passives, and ghosts abilities of that class.

When entering the Catacombs, you'll be given a Dungeon Orb.

You can use the Dungeon Orb to use your Class ability (left click) and Ultimate ability (right-click).

An easy way to use those abilities without using the Dungeon Orb is to use the drop key.

Inside the dungeons, the Drop Key does not drop the item you are holding, instead, it'll use your Ultimate Ability.

You can see the cooldown of your Ultimate ability with your experience bar.

If you use the drop-stack ability (control + Q) by default, it'll use your Class ability instead. Those are nice little shortcuts, very useful.

Class Passives
Every Dungeon Class has passive abilities, you can learn about all those inside the sub-menu of each class.

Ghost Abilities
When becoming a Ghost, players lose their class abilities but gain new ones.

Catacombs Floors
Most of the complexity of the Dungeons Update is out of the way. Making new Floors is relatively easy from now on. We will be focusing most of our time in the next few weeks on releasing new Catacombs Floors, as long as bug fixes and a few other dungeon-related features.

Future Dungeons
New Dungeons should take much less time to make, but we have other updates planned first. We do have new interesting ideas for the future Dungeons, mostly layout-wise - not all dungeons will be corridors and rooms. Think forest trails, plains, desert ruins; it could be anything!

Next SkyBlock Updates
The last permanent Island release was The End, and that was a long time ago. We really want to focus on releasing new Islands after the Catacombs and keep updates coming, and we definitely want to go ahead and release the remaining floors soon too. We do have plenty of other updates planned, and one of them already is getting pretty close to release.

Other than that, we would like to release improvements to guesting and co-ops.

Thank you for waiting for dungeons with us - it was a long trip, but we're finally here!

@Nitroholic_ @aPunch & @Relenter - Dungeon Randomiser / The Watcher / Items / Mobs / Puzzle Rooms / Reward system / Magical map / Player compass / Blacksmith / Room mechanics / Traps / Party Finder / Reforge System / Dungeon item scaling / Ultimate Enchantments / Gear Level / Classes and Abilities / Scoring system / Blessings / and much more

@Likaos - AI System + Multiple Bosses

@Minikloon - Dungeon Instancing

@codename_B - Few Items & Abilities

@OrangeMarshall - Implemented visual representation of the Scoring system

@ConnorLinfoot & @Plancke - Performance improvements & creation of Alpha network

@SteampunkStein & @LadyBleu - Art for skins, items, schematics and Scoring system

@Plummel - Dungeon banner art

@Sylent, @Bloozing, HPC and Bugs Team - Testing/QA

Huge thanks to @SethPRG, @Foxtism, @FireKirby, @WOTNova for their help with the Dungeon Lore, and to the Nerds for their help with balancing, feedback and testing!

@SirCatcelot & @ShinkoNet - Dungeon Music

Hypixel Build Team: Catacombs Entrance, Dungeon Hub & 100+ Dungeon Rooms

@sfarnham and I - Game Design

Remember that this list is not exhaustive. Developers on this list are often working on other projects.

Thanks for reading!

We hope you enjoy the first dungeon. Our goal was really to add a new type of gameplay to SkyBlock and give players a reason to play together. Please give us your feedback on dungeons and what type of content you want next!