Levels, Stats, Races and Classes: Dungeon Crawler Carl Guide

The crawler interface

Mordecai teaches Carl to focus on objects to read their descriptions and to use the mental interface for equipment and abilities. The system also sends notifications for achievements, level gains and rewards. An achievement does not always come with a prize.

Mordecai explains the ordinary loot rarity tiers and the special benefactor boxes, which can contain items unavailable through normal rewards. Unopened boxes cannot simply be traded. He says their contents are not cursed, although using an item can still be dangerous.

A magical book and a spell scroll serve different purposes. Donut learns Magic Missile permanently from a tome. An ordinary spell scroll lets its holder cast the spell once without learning it.[2]

Starting attributes

The five visible attributes are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence and Charisma. Crawlers initially earn three points per level but cannot normally assign them until the third floor. These stats describe abilities within the dungeon rather than everything about a person. A high Intelligence score, for example, helps with magic without guaranteeing sound judgment.

Donut’s Charisma influences how many NPCs and monsters respond to her. Carl, other crawlers and Mordecai are not affected in the same way. Even creatures susceptible to her charm can remain hostile when they have a strong reason to oppose her.[3]

Enhanced Growth gives Donut a different progression rule

Donut’s Enhanced Growth works differently from ordinary leveling. She automatically receives one Strength, one Intelligence and two Charisma per level, rather than points she can assign herself. It also prevents her from freely changing race unless a suitable item or class later allows it.

On entering the third floor, crawlers choose a race, then a class. They must raise their attributes to the required minimums before distributing any points left over. Their earlier choices and special restrictions affect which options are available.[4]

Race and class choices depend on the crawler’s history

Race and class choices depend on attributes, existing race, club membership and equipment. Carl and Donut’s Desperado membership rules out some religious classes, and Donut’s crown adds restrictions of its own. Popularity with the audience can unlock other choices.

Donut stays an enhanced cat and chooses Former Child Actor. The class lets her take different specialties on later floors, each with its own benefits. Some of those benefits disappear when she changes specialties, while progress earned through practice can remain.[5]

Choosing Primal

Carl chooses Primal and keeps his human appearance. The race lowers each of his base attributes by one but lets him train skills up to level twenty. He also retains access to Earth-based classes. The higher ceiling gives him room to improve; he still has to train.

Carl’s character level measures his overall progression. Each skill has its own trained level, which equipment can raise further while he wears it. The number displayed for a skill can therefore be higher than the level Carl has earned through practice.[6]

Viewers and sponsors influence what rewards become available

Some rewards are chosen by audience vote, with paid voting able to influence the result. Viewers may choose something useful, embarrassing or cruel. The dungeon also tailors rewards to a crawler’s public image, giving them reasons to keep doing what entertains the audience.

Crawlers gain equipment and abilities through several routes, including quests, fan boxes and sponsor gifts. They still have to open a reward and read its description to find out what it does and whether they can use it.[7]

Losing a specialty can remove grants without erasing practice

When Donut changes specialties, she loses the old specialty’s stat bonuses. Her Negotiation had reached level seven, including five levels granted by the specialty. After the change, she keeps the two levels she earned by using the skill.

Mordecai thinks Donut may also keep a spell granted by a specialty if she casts it before changing. He offers this as advice, but it has not yet been demonstrated to work for every such spell.[8]

Threshold rewards

At one hundred Charisma, Donut can choose from three new abilities. She picks Love Vampire, describing it as a way to make an enemy take damage in her place under certain conditions.

Donut later reports that several attempts to use Love Vampire have failed. At this stage, the party has not seen the damage-transfer effect she described actually work.[9]

Permanent specialization sets a direction for future growth

Carl gets ten minutes to choose a permanent specialization before the system assigns one at random. He picks Agent Provocateur for its Intelligence growth, explosives benefits and advanced bomb-making workshop, despite Mordecai recommending another option. Its extra Intelligence applies to future levels, not those Carl has already gained.

Donut chooses Legendary Diva, a bard class that uses performance to cast magic. The change affects how she fights and which skills she develops, just as Carl’s specialization gives him new ways to work on explosives.[10]

Training and equipment bonuses

In an Ultimate Training Room, Carl trains Powerful Strike to level nine before bonuses. His race and equipment appear to add enough levels to reach sixteen, but the display stops at fifteen. Beyond that point, equipment bonuses have diminishing returns.

Carl can still progress through further Primal training; he simply cannot rely on equipment to supply the same increase at higher levels. The room also lets him practice crafting. He keeps what he learns, but must leave completed practice items behind.[11]

Limits on stat bonuses

After reaching the required base Strength, Carl chooses Swole. It doubles Strength gained from future level-up points. It does not double his existing Strength or equipment bonuses. When he later assigns nine points to Strength, he receives eighteen.

It remains unclear whether Swole also doubles Strength gained from the Ring of Divine Suffering. The confirmed example involves assigning ordinary level-up points.[12]

Skill potions and class caps

Donut trains Laundry Day to level nine, then uses Pawna’s Cries to reach twelve. During the masquerade battle, Pawna’s Tears would add another five levels, but Legendary Diva caps the spell at fifteen.

Although the party had discussed using the potion on Magic Missile, Donut ultimately uses it on Laundry Day.[13]

Skipping a floor does not erase Donut’s class selection

Skipping the seventh floor does not skip all of Donut’s class changes. On reaching the eighth, she reports that Viper Queen kept her bard skills and added Venom Spitter. She then chooses Master Telephone Psychic for the new floor.

Cosmic Buff potions permanently add ten points to a randomly chosen attribute. Donut’s potion raises Dexterity, while Carl’s raises Constitution. The recipient cannot count on receiving a particular stat.[14]

Charm effects and protection

A skill potion raises Love Vampire from level three to six. Its practical effect is now described as temporarily charming up to five enemies and draining their Charisma, rather than the damage transfer Donut originally described.

Wisp Armor normally protects its caster from mind control, but it does not stop Oshun’s overwhelming Charisma from influencing Carl. Anton is affected too. Donut helps Carl break free, showing that the armor cannot be relied on against every form of mental influence.[15]

Base attributes and removable enhancements serve different rules

Carl replaces Donut as party leader after reaching a base-stat threshold. He concludes that the Constitution supplied by Donut’s cloak counts as a removable bonus rather than base Constitution. The distinction matters even when the bonus is large.

Li Na reaches the ceiling of three hundred in every base attribute. Equipment and skill bonuses can still raise her displayed stats above those values. The limit applies to base attributes, not character level.[16]

Sharing spells

Carl’s kerchief grants level-fifteen Tripper, but he has not learned the spell himself. To help Katia make a tattoo, he takes the kerchief off, learns Tripper and trains it to seven. He then donates six of those learned levels. They will recover over four days, while the spell granted by the kerchief remains unaffected.

Katia uses Toraline ink mixed with Carl’s blood to give Imani a level-one spell tattoo. Imani must cast its spell to make the gift permanent. Carl’s temporary loss of learned levels supplies the power for this transfer.[17]

An effective spell level can exceed the displayed one

Donut gains Brain Trust after raising her Intelligence. Magic Missile still displays level fifteen, but the ability makes it work as a level-sixteen spell. Its effective strength has increased without changing the level shown in the interface.[18]

Donated spellbook pages

Crawlers taking exit deals can permanently give up skills to create edible pages. Milk gathers these donations for Carl’s Book of Boom and Donut’s Banquet Fit for a Princess, as well as the existing shared book. Former crawlers cannot contribute through this method.

Eating a page gives its reader a temporary ability. The donor loses the skill permanently, but the person consuming the page can only use it for a limited time.[19]

Matched equipment can raise a spell’s official level

Donut equips the Crupper of the Benevolent Champion to match her cloak. Among its benefits, it lets her raise one spell previously improved by the cloak from fifteen to sixteen. She chooses Puddle Jumper. Its displayed level now rises, while Brain Trust can provide a separate effective increase.[20]

Later class offers

Donut considers Comeback Kid, which would strengthen abilities from her previous classes but bring back their disadvantages, including Glass Cannon’s Constitution penalty. She instead chooses Elite Gurkha Warrior, a Perpetual Tank subclass focused on melee fighting, pets and mercenaries. Its parade equipment later provides separate benefits to Donut, her mercenaries and their mounts.

Donut’s reported character level is inconsistent between the books. Book Seven gives her level as 135, while Book Eight describes her going from 84 to 85. No reset or other explanation is given for the difference.[21]