Dungeons & Dynasties Beginner Guide

Starting your first campaign in Dungeons & Dynasties can be a little overwhelming, especially when you need to manage a guild, recruit delvers, assign staff, build facilities, and keep your finances under control.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through the important decisions you should make when creating your guild and starting your first year. We’ll cover the best patron choices, Guildmaster bonuses, hometown selection, recruitment, team composition, buildings, and staff management.

If you’re new to the game, I recommend focusing on building a stable guild rather than trying to become powerful immediately. Your first priority should be avoiding bankruptcy, keeping your delvers healthy, and creating a team that can consistently complete dungeon runs.

Dungeons & Dynasties Beginner Guide – Choices, Guild Creation

When creating your guild, you’ll be able to choose from Divisions 1 through 6.

For a first playthrough, Division 6 is worth considering if you want a more challenging starting experience.

Division 6 offers:

Stronger delvers.
Higher wages.
Full purse.
Anywhere.
No charter.

Keep in mind that stronger delvers come with higher wages, so you’ll need to manage your finances carefully.

Ledgers and Starting Your New Realm

After choosing your division, you’ll move forward with creating your new realm and setting up your guild.

This is where you’ll begin making decisions about your patron, guild preferences, and the overall direction of your campaign.

Patron Options – Which Should You Choose?

Your patron determines the expectations placed on your guild and influences how difficult your campaign will be.

If you’re new to Dungeons & Dynasties, choosing a patient patron is a good starting point because they have lower expectations and require less from your guild.

Understanding Patron Preferences

There are several preferences to consider:

Renown: Focuses on successfully completing objectives and building your reputation.
Coin: Prioritizes earning money through dungeon runs and other activities.
Stature: Requires success and focuses on building your guild’s standing.
War: Offers a high-risk, high-reward playstyle. It’s more unpredictable but can be fun if you enjoy challenging campaigns.
Solvency: Focuses on keeping your guild financially stable and avoiding bankruptcy.

Best Patron Choice for Beginners

My recommendation is to choose:

Patience: Patient.
Preference: Solvency.

This combination gives you more breathing room while learning the game’s systems.

You can also consider the Hard difficulty with Solvency. It pays slightly more each week while maintaining similar expectations, although it offers less room for mistakes.

If these options aren’t available, Whoever Will Have You and No Challenge are two alternatives worth considering.

Patron Choice – Best Patron Powers

Each patron comes with one of five special powers that can influence your guild’s progression.

The available powers include:

Scry the entire dungeon.
60% faster recovery speed.
25% growth in dungeons.
15% additional gold from delves.
Reduced recruitment fees.

All five bonuses can be useful, but for a first playthrough, I’d focus on two options.

Gold from Delves

Additional gold from dungeon runs is useful because your guild has plenty of expenses, including wages, recruitment, buildings, and upgrades.

A 15% gold bonus can help you maintain a healthier economy and invest in your guild’s future.

Recovery Speed

Faster recovery allows injured delvers to return to action sooner.

This is particularly useful when you’re running multiple dungeon expeditions and don’t have enough characters to replace injured team members.

Both options are strong, so choose based on whether you want better income or faster recovery.

Guildmaster – Best Starting Choices

There are 10 Guildmasters available, each offering different bonuses and advantages.

Choosing the right one can make your first year considerably easier.

Old Campaigner

Old Campaigner helps your delvers return faster after dungeon expeditions.

This is especially useful if your patron doesn’t already provide a recovery bonus.

However, stacking multiple recovery bonuses might be excessive if your Scrying skill is already above 50.

Hedge Herbalist

Hedge Herbalist might look like a less exciting choice, but it can be extremely useful when your delvers suffer serious injuries.

Its well-stocked Still Room helps injured characters recover twice as fast, making it easier to get important team members back into action.

Old Wayfarer

Old Wayfarer improves questing speed, allowing your guild to complete more quests over time.

This is a great choice if you want to focus on completing quests quickly and maintaining a steady progression.

Merchant Prince

Merchant Prince focuses on improving the money your guild earns from delving.

Since your characters and buildings can become expensive, additional income is always useful.

Veteran Delver

Veteran Delver is a reliable option that improves the likelihood of succeeding at dungeon checks.

Dungeon runs can still be dangerous, but making more successful rolls improves your chances of surviving difficult encounters.

War Captain

War Captain is useful if you’ve selected a War-focused patron.

It helps you commit to an aggressive playstyle, but I wouldn’t recommend this combination for your first campaign because War can be unpredictable.

Silver Tongue

Silver Tongue focuses on reducing the long-term expenses associated with your delvers.

This becomes more useful later when your roster grows and weekly wages become a major financial burden.

Master Mason

Master Mason helps with building-related expenses.

Buildings become increasingly expensive over time, so this can be useful for long-term guild management.

However, it isn’t a major priority during your first year.

Old Swordmaster

Old Swordmaster focuses on training and improving your delvers.

This is more useful during your second or third year because you’ll have more opportunities to train characters and develop their abilities.

During your first year, training slots and available resources are limited.

Court Envoy

Court Envoy helps make your relationship with your patron easier to manage.

Since we’re already choosing a relatively easy patron for this beginner setup, this Guildmaster isn’t a priority.

However, it can make your patron easier to work with, so it’s still worth considering.

Recommended Guildmaster Combinations

Depending on your patron choice, consider these combinations:

If you choose a recovery-focused patron:

Old Wayfarer for faster questing.
Merchant Prince for additional delving income.
War Captain if you want a more aggressive War-focused strategy.

If you choose a gold-focused patron:

Old Campaigner for faster recovery and better expedition tempo.
Hedge Herbalist for recovering seriously injured delvers.

For long-term progression, Old Campaigner can be particularly useful because you can eventually build a Still Room for 600 gold and avoid relying entirely on the Guildmaster’s recovery bonus.

Hometown – Which One Should You Choose?

When selecting your hometown, consider choosing Its Council.

This option allows you to benefit from other guilds that can help with different activities and provide additional support.

For a beginner, having other guilds contribute to your progression can make managing your own organization easier.

The Terms – Best First-Year Choices

During guild creation, you’ll be asked to select different terms that influence your campaign.

Here are the recommended choices for your first year.

The Stakes

Recommended choice: None.

You don’t need to commit to additional stakes when you’re still learning how to manage your guild.

The Guild

Recommended choice: The First Aspirants.

This gives you two additional characters at the bottom of your roster without requiring you to pay their normal recruitment costs.

Getting extra characters early is useful because it gives you more flexibility when building your teams.

The Pace of the Year

Recommended choice: None.

You can also select A Quiet First Year if you want a less compressed calendar and more time to manage your guild.

The Stories

For this section, choose:

The One Great Hope.
The Monster Comes of Age.
Children of War.

These stories provide useful building blocks for your guild’s future and make your initial recruitment draft easier.

Children of War is particularly interesting because it offers long-term potential for characters who can develop over the next six years.

The Draft – Building Your First Team

Your initial team composition is extremely important because you’ll need a balanced roster capable of handling different dungeon encounters.

For your starting draft, aim for:

Role	Characters Required
Tanks	2
DPS	4
Healers	2
Flex	1
Total	9

If you selected The One Great Hope, make sure you check your first recruitment slot and select that character.

Then move through the remaining nine choice slots and recruit your Dungeonborn.

After securing your priority characters, fill the remaining seven slots with characters who complement your existing roster.

Avoid Recruiting Too Many Duplicate DPS Classes

Try not to recruit more than two characters of the same DPS class.

This is important because different class combinations can activate Party Synergies, giving your team additional bonuses during dungeon runs.

A balanced roster gives you more flexibility when creating different parties.

Day 1 – What Should You Do First?

Your first day is important because several small decisions can affect your guild’s long-term financial stability.

Before spending money or sending characters into dungeons, take some time to review your roster and settings.

Check Your Roster

Your characters are divided into two groups:

Vanguard.
Second Watch.

Try to avoid placing duplicate classes in the same party whenever possible.

Party Synergies provide additional bonuses during dungeon runs, and even small bonuses can make a noticeable difference early in the game.

At the beginning, these bonuses can be worth a significant amount compared to your normal dungeon earnings.

Manage Your Gold

At the top-middle section of the screen, you’ll find your Loose Gold and Strongbox Gold.

Try to keep as much money as possible inside your Strongbox.

The Strongbox generates passive interest, allowing your guild to earn additional money without requiring extra dungeon runs.

Avoid spending all your available money immediately because you’ll need funds for recruitment, buildings, and wages.

Change Your Gameplay Settings

Open the gameplay settings and change the Wages option on a Delve Card to Party.

This makes it easier to understand how much your party costs and how much money they need to earn each week to keep your guild financially stable.

Rest Your Characters

Open Training and select Rest Everyone.

Your goal should be to send characters into dungeons when their Condition, Stress, and Fatigue are all at zero.

You can eventually run delvers safely at approximately 100 Condition, 10 Stress, and 10 Fatigue, but pushing them too hard during your first year can create a dangerous situation if a dungeon run goes badly.

Avoid sending exhausted or highly stressed characters into difficult encounters.

Party Synergies – Important Class Combinations

Open the Compendium and visit the Synergies section.

This is one of the most important things to understand when building your parties.

Different classes can activate special bonuses when placed together, which is another reason to avoid unnecessary duplicate classes.

For a four-person party, focus on these early combinations:

Class Combination	Synergy
Guardian + Cleric	Party Synergy
Paladin + Cleric	Party Synergy
Warden + Arcanist	Party Synergy
Druid + Ranger	Party Synergy

Remember that you should still aim for one Tank, two DPS, and one Healer in each four-person party.

You won’t necessarily be able to activate all four combinations in a single party, so build your Vanguard and Second Watch teams around different synergies.

Delver Market – Buying, Selling, and Recruiting

The Delver Market gives you several ways to manage your roster.

Selling Delvers

The Selling section allows you to sell characters from your roster.

You generally won’t need to use this immediately unless you need to free up a roster slot.

Buying Delvers

The Buying section lets you purchase available characters.

This is useful when you find someone who can fill an important gap in your roster or significantly improve an existing team.

However, recruitment can be expensive, so don’t spend too much money unless the character offers a meaningful improvement.

Wanderers

Wanderers are additional recruitment options available through the market.

You can only make an offer to a Wanderer if you have an available bed in your guild.

If you’ve already recruited all nine initial characters, you might need to free up space before hiring someone else.

Hometown – Managing Your Flex Character

Remember the flex character you selected during your initial draft.

You can send this character to your hometown and assign them to the garrison if you need to free up a bed for a Wanderer.

This can temporarily leave you with more characters than your normal roster capacity, but it may be worth doing if you find an especially talented recruit.

Your main priority should be upgrading the Guild Hall and selecting Expand the Halls to increase your available beds.

Training – Train or Hone?

Training is another important part of developing your roster.

There are two options you should understand:

Train

Use Train on Greenhorns and Rising characters to improve their maximum potential.

This is more useful for long-term development because you’re investing in characters who still have room to grow.

Hone

Use Hone to improve your delvers’ current performance.

During your first year, Hone can be more valuable because you’ll have limited bed space, training slots, and mentors.

You need your existing characters to perform well immediately, so improving their current abilities can be more useful than focusing entirely on long-term development.

Guild Hall – Best Buildings to Prioritize

Your Guild Hall is where you’ll manage important facilities, assign duties, and improve your guild.

Shared Duty

Use Shared Duty to assign your two best Vanguard characters to work together on a duty.

This helps build friendship points between them, which can be useful for developing your roster.

Expand the Hall

Priority: Very High

Expanding your Guild Hall gives you more beds and allows you to recruit additional delvers.

This should be one of your earliest building priorities because roster capacity can quickly become a problem.

Infirmary

The Infirmary helps keep your characters in better condition between activities.

It’s useful if your delvers are regularly accumulating stress and fatigue.

Training Ground

The Training Ground allows you to develop your characters, but its usefulness is limited by the number of available training slots and how many spare delvers you have.

It’s valuable for long-term progression, but not necessarily your first priority.

Tavern Wing

The Tavern Wing increases the number of recruits available in the tavern.

More recruits mean more opportunities to find strong characters.

If you’re using Old Wayfarer, upgrading the Tavern Wing to Level 3 and focusing on quest speed can further improve that playstyle.

Armoury

The Armoury provides additional storage and equipment management benefits.

It’s particularly useful once you start collecting more gear.

Consider building it when you have more than eight Blue-quality or better items and need additional storage space.

Stonehouse

The Stonehouse provides better recruitment options based on how many of your characters have died.

It’s more of a long-term building, so I’d skip it during the first year.

Beacon

The Beacon becomes useful when you’re following a War-focused strategy.

Upgrading it to Level 3 and focusing on Coin can make a combination of War patron and War Captain Guildmaster particularly powerful.

However, if you’re following a beginner-friendly campaign, you can skip this building.

Counting House

You start with a Level 1 Counting House.

Upgrading it is important for long-term financial growth because it improves your ability to generate passive interest.

Since money management is one of the biggest challenges early on, don’t ignore this building.

Still Room

The Still Room reduces recovery time for major injuries by 50% when you have the required supplies available.

It’s especially useful if your guild doesn’t already have a strong recovery bonus.

Academy

The Academy allows you to recruit Aspirants normally.

You should aim to build it during Deepwinter, which is the final season of the year.

Building it at this time allows you to receive Aspirants in Year 2 without paying weekly expenses for a facility you cannot fully use during most of Year 1.

Recommended Building Order for Your First Year

If you selected a recovery-focused patron or Guildmaster, consider the following building priorities.

Essential Buildings

Still Room: Helps reduce recovery time from major injuries.
Tavern Wing: Provides more recruitment opportunities.
Expand the Hall: Gives you more beds for additional characters.
Counting House: Improves passive income generation.

Additional Buildings

Armoury: Build when you have more than eight Blue-quality or better items and need additional storage.
Training Ground: Useful when you have spare characters and resources for training.
Infirmary: Helpful when your delvers accumulate too much stress and fatigue.

Buildings to Skip Initially

Stonehouse: Not a major priority during your first year.
Beacon: Skip unless you’re committing to a War-focused campaign.

When to Build the Academy

Save the Academy for the final month of the year.

Building it during Deepwinter helps you prepare for Year 2 and avoids unnecessary weekly expenses earlier in the campaign.

Staff – Which Employees Should You Hire?

Staff members provide important bonuses that help your guild operate more efficiently.

However, you don’t need to hire everyone immediately. During your first year, focus on the employees who offer the most useful benefits.

Envoy

The Envoy helps with buying and selling delvers.

This is useful if you regularly manage your roster through the market, but it’s not essential during your first 60 days.

Physician

The Physician can save one delver per year when their skill reaches 50 or higher.

This is extremely valuable because losing an experienced character can be expensive and difficult to recover from.

Try to recruit a Physician with at least 50 skill.

Master at Arms

The Master at Arms supports your training activities.

However, you’ll have limited training space, money, and time during your first year.

It’s safer to skip this position until your guild has more resources.

Quartermaster

The Quartermaster helps manage long-term expenses related to your characters.

This becomes more important as your guild grows, but your biggest financial concerns during the first year are usually elsewhere.

Loremaster

The Loremaster helps you understand how difficult a dungeon expedition will be.

Try to recruit someone with at least 50 skill.

This is particularly important because knowing the difficulty of a delve before sending your characters can help you avoid dangerous encounters.

Mentor

The Mentor helps train new Aspirants and rescued children.

However, this position only becomes available after you build the Academy.

You can skip this role initially and start looking for a Mentor around Deepwinter when your Academy is ready.

Best Staff Setup for Your First Year

For a beginner-friendly campaign, I’d prioritize:

Staff Member	Recommended Skill	Priority
Physician	50+	High
Loremaster	50+	High
Envoy	Any suitable skill	Optional
Quartermaster	—	Low
Master at Arms	—	Low
Mentor	—	Later

Your main goal is to hire a strong Physician and Loremaster.

An Envoy is also worth considering if you plan to sell characters from your roster.

Avoid spending too much money on additional staff when your guild is still struggling with its first-year expenses.

Once you build the Academy, start looking for a suitable Mentor to help develop your new Aspirants and any children you rescue.

Final Tips for Your First Year

Before finishing your first year, keep these important points in mind:

Choose a Patient patron with Solvency if you want a more manageable campaign.
Consider Gold from Delves or Recovery Speed as your patron power.
Prioritize Old Campaigner, Hedge Herbalist, or Merchant Prince depending on your strategy.
Recruit a balanced team with two Tanks, four DPS, two Healers, and one Flex character.
Avoid unnecessary duplicate classes in the same party to benefit from Party Synergies.
Keep as much money as possible in your Strongbox to generate passive interest.
Rest your characters before sending them into dungeons.
Prioritize Expand the Hall to increase your recruitment capacity.
Hire a Physician and Loremaster with 50+ skill.
Build your Academy during the final month of the year.

Your first year in Dungeons & Dynasties is all about building a stable foundation for your guild. Don’t rush into expensive upgrades or recruit more characters than you can afford to maintain.

Focus on choosing a manageable patron, creating balanced parties, taking advantage of class synergies, and keeping your delvers healthy. Once your finances are stable and your Guild Hall has enough space, you can start investing more heavily in training, buildings, and recruitment.

The most important thing is to avoid bankruptcy while preparing your guild for Year 2. Build carefully, manage your characters wisely, and you’ll have a much easier time progressing through the campaign.