Items & Equipment

Items & Equipment

Every loot box gives you something. Until now, most of it was a name in a log and nothing else — you read it once, and then it was gone. That is finished. What the dungeon hands you, you keep, and you can wear it.

Where it lives

Your HUD has an Equipment panel, beside your Potions. Everything you own is catalogued there, sorted the way the dungeon sorts things:

• Weapons
• Armour — what you wear on your body and your feet
• Headwear — hats, helms, crowns, tiaras
• Trinkets — rings, amulets, and whatever you wear at your neck
• Potions — healing stays with your satchel, where it can be drunk
• Worthless Garbage — the dungeon keeps it anyway, and files it honestly

The six slots

You may wear one item in each slot: a weapon, something on your head, something at your neck, something on your body, something on your hands, and something on your feet. That is the whole limit, and it is deliberate — one choice per slot is what makes it a choice.

Equip before you engage. A fight resolves the moment you choose it, all at once, and there is no changing gear in the middle of one. Whatever you were wearing when you clicked is what you fought in.

Power, and where it comes from

Every item carries a power number, and two crawlers holding the same item do not necessarily hold the same power. An item’s power is three things added together:

• What it is. A Rusted Dagger begins lower than a Dragon Scale Armor, and always will.
• The floor it was found on. A silver item from Floor 12 beats a gold item from Floor 2. Deeper is genuinely better, which is the only reason descending has to mean anything.
• How long you have carried it. An equipped item gains a point of power for every floor you descend while wearing it.

That last one is why descent pays twice. The kit you have carried since the Tutorial is not the kit a stranger is holding, even when the names match.

What equipment does in a fight

Four things, and nothing invisible:

• Weapons and gloves make you hit harder.
• Armour and amulets make you take less. This is why a good kit makes a potion go further.
• Headwear finds the seam — critical hits land more often.
• Boots grow into a long fight. The longer it runs, the harder you hit.

Gear matters most when you are low level. A level-0 crawler wearing a decent kit can take a Grull; without one, they should slip away. Closing that gap is the point of the whole system.

Knocked loose

A mob that lands a genuinely heavy blow can smash an equipped item out of your hands. That slot goes dark for the remainder of that fight and you finish it without whatever was in it. The heavier the mob, the more often it happens — a Goblin will rarely manage it, and the things on the third tier do it constantly.

It comes back when the fight ends. Nothing is destroyed, nothing is taken, nothing wears out. It is a bad minute, and then it is over.

The Forge

Three items from the same slot, of the same weight, become one item of the next weight up. Three bronze hats become a silver hat. The name ranks up with it, because every weight of every slot carries its own names — which means your hat has somewhere to go.

The forge always takes the three you found closest to the surface, so your deepest gear is never chosen for you. It asks twice before it does anything, and it is atomic: all three, or none at all. Platinum is the ceiling.

Gifts

You may give an item to a member of your own party. Not to anyone else — a gift is between crawlers who have already decided to stand together.

An item given to a crawler who has not been as deep as it was found arrives ranked down to their floor. A Floor 14 item handed to a crawler on Floor 2 arrives as a Floor 2 item. That is permanent: pass it along again and it does not regain the depth. Nothing is destroyed. It simply arrives honest.

You may give five items a day. Both crawlers get a line in their log and in their feed, so neither has to take the other’s word for what changed hands, or for how much power arrived.

What no fight can do

The dungeon has said this before and it has not changed: no fight can kill you, and no fight can take anything from you. Not your XP, not a level, not a floor, not an item. A fight can cost you the win. That is the entire price, and it is still deliberate.

Your equipment is yours. The forge takes it only when you ask, twice. A gift moves only when you send it. Those are your decisions. A mob has never had one.