Hunting Grounds Guide | Dungeon Crawler Carl

What Carl learns before reaching the floor

Mordecai warns Carl that outside hunters will enter Floor Six at level thirty. Unlike the protected participants on Floor Nine, these hunters risk actually dying in the dungeon.

After the Gate rescues, the administrators subsidize hunter entry and announce a market and guild system. Carl realizes that the merchants’ weapons trade has been supplying the ninth-floor armies. Destroying it forces those factions to buy through the sixth-floor market, which he expects will bring more of their hunters into the crawl.[5]

The opening map and the revised hunter rules

The floor opens with a seventeen-day countdown, 85,223 crawlers and 360 hunters, with registration still open. Jungle covers much of the familiar landscape. The hunter rules have also changed: they now enter at level fifty.

Zockau has an unguarded stairwell, one of 2,344 exits on the floor. Others lie hidden or near bosses. Hunters are held in town for a thirty-hour grace period, but traps already surround it and hostile scouts operate outside. Carl cannot safely wait for the release before acting.

Carl attacks the hunters in Zockau before their release. He receives credit for thirty-four hunter kills, though an extra AI notification confuses the count. Donut also earns kills, and more than two hundred NPCs die in the attack.[2]

Point Mongo and the guild that holds it

The Large Ursine Settlement’s laws discriminate against outsiders and ban Mongo from entering. Carl kills its mayor, Elmer, by pushing him down the riverbank, more violently than he intended. Donut takes office and renames the town Point Mongo. Mordecai repeals the old laws, and its mushroom guards join the defenses. Donut later briefly restores the dinosaur ban to deal with a quest.

Imani leads the Safehome Yolanda guild, bringing Carl’s party and other allies together. Shared rooms and coordinated defenses give them a base of support, though the town remains vulnerable. During a poison-bomb attack, the mushroom guards hold their posts while those susceptible to the poison take shelter.[6]

The Kapok River and the bridge plan

Carl estimates that his incomplete map covers roughly four hundred by three hundred kilometers. The Kapok River cuts through the region. He plans to destroy most of its bridges and force traffic through the settlement his party controls, and Signet’s allies begin attacking the other crossings.

At Point Mongo, Mordecai places guards and detection measures around the Liana Bridge, including defenses against hunters and pets approaching through the river. Dwarven improvements reinforce the town. The defenders repel two Dream attackers, helping secure the crossing without fully cutting off enemy movement.[7]

Hunter territories and personal targets

A captured map divides the hunt among factions and names their targets. The Hive and Skull Empire are assigned Carl and Donut. Other marks include Katia, Elle, Eva, Lucia Mar, Miriam, Prepotente and Louis.

The administration blocks the hunters’ outside communications with a new field. Hot springs and lava also make parts of the terrain more dangerous. In a later attack, Carl learns that the Dream’s pursuit of Louis is driven by personal revenge.[8]

Fort Freedom, the High Elves and the All-Tree

Fort Freedom is a former Naiad royal palace and the headquarters of the Naiad Confederacy. Signet’s quest draws the party into its conflict with the High Elves. She blames the elves for her family’s assassination, while Areson later describes Naiad opposition to the alliance, complicating her account.

Signet survives the assault on Fort Freedom and turns toward Queen Imogen’s High Elf stronghold. Nearby All-Trees protect forest inhabitants, including the elves, by reflecting hostile magic within roughly a hundred meters. The hunter Tullor dies from his own reflected lightning. Signet also warns Carl that approaching an All-Tree will alert Diwata.[9]

Alucarda and a dangerous return point

Alucarda blocks mapping, and Lucia Mar’s takeover makes the town especially dangerous. Carl is taken away to a convention before he can secure Donut’s escape. Donut later tells him that Lucia reached her in a safe room; she killed one of Lucia’s dogs and fled toward the guildhall. Lucia’s trap modules can transport someone out of a safe room without counting as an attack, exposing them to harm outside.

Hunters wait at Carl’s return point from the convention. He escapes with invisibility, smoke and Tripper, which sets off nearby traps, while his attackers fight among themselves. Damage to the area eventually restores mapping.[10]

Captured and destroyed settlements

Carl and Donut capture two smaller Ursine settlements, naming them Ferdinand Peak and Nipton. Carl kills their rulers, and Donut takes over as mayor.

Big Tina has destroyed Miriam’s settlement, Prepotente Town Number Four. Bodies remain among its protective Jericho Bush vines. Two sunsets after Tina’s vampire attacks, pieces of her Ursine victims begin moving and assembling into stronger minions. Carl’s party escapes in the chariot, leaving the outbreak behind.[11]

The blood bar and Gehena Bramble

The mandatory Creeping Apocalypse quest requires hunters and crawlers to kill fifty plant monsters before sunset. They fail with two Creepers left in hunter territory. The penalty adds a blood bar that drains in safe rooms. When it empties, occupants are expelled and cannot return until they refill it through new kills.

Gehena Bramble spreads from the surviving Creepers, forming a lethal wall of thorns. Only a small area around each staircase is protected, leaving towns and the paths between them exposed.[12]

Hunter reinforcements and locked weapons

As the final hunter raid approaches, sponsors send better equipment, including biologically locked pulse rifles, ceramic armor and anti-air guns. The hunters gain firepower without increasing their levels.

The rifles’ biological locks prevent crawlers from simply taking and using them. Carl’s group lacks a Cracker Jack scroll that might bypass the restriction.[13]

The Butcher’s Masquerade and the floor-nine transfer

The leading crawlers must attend the Butcher’s Masquerade at Queen Imogen’s castle. Passages used by Ferdinand, Donut’s former mate, let Samantha reach its security area. Hunters and crawlers begin in separate, protected ballrooms. Signet sacrifices herself to attack Imogen and break the divine truce, stripping away that protection. The Nothing takes Signet, while the memories in her tattoos become independent golems.

Sledge, one of Carl’s minions, completes Zerzura and teleports the castle, changelings, memory golems, Kiwi and Tina to Floor Nine. The crawlers, hunters, most pets and elves remain suspended at their previous heights. The AI puts them into a four-team cage fight, then releases them into the exposed basement pit. Imogen dies in the battle. Donut uses Laundry Day to strip Circe of Diwata’s protection, returning the goddess to the Halls of Ascendency. The swarm kills Circe.

The system confirms that the NPC force has reached Floor Nine. Quasar warned that Zerzura could turn its passengers into revenants, leaving Carl uncertain about their condition. Carl and Donut become co-warlords of the Princess Posse and propose removing the other factions’ safety protections. The motion remains unresolved when they leave Floor Six.[14]

The vote on faction safety

On Floor Eight, Carl uses the Princess Posse’s last emergency action to force a decision on the stalled votes. The AI puts them to the audience, which approves removing the faction sponsors’ safety protections. The outsiders preparing for Faction Wars will now risk their lives.[15]