Draft:Introduction to Basic Gameplay

This page need to be split. Each game should have its own intro page.

This page will be your Introduction to Basic Gameplay for Mystery Dungeon titles. Whether you choose to play any of the officially translated titles or any of the Japanese-only releases in the series or even unofficial translations, this page is designed to help you understand the basics of how things work. This page is dedicated to universal gameplay mechanics. For information on the other games in the franchise, see the links below.

Adventures

An adventure is your trip into a dungeon, a dojo, a puzzle or other such location. An adventure is over when you clear the dungeon either by making it to the final floor, meeting a character, making it to a set destination or using an item to escape. Alternatively, an adventure is over if you lose all of your HP and faint or die and rescues aren't available or you've used up all of your available rescues.

Dungeons

A dungeon is a composition of floors. A floor is an area composed of rooms, often-rectangular open spaces, and hallways, passageways with a height of one, or sometimes two tiles which connect rooms to one another, all bordered by either water, lava, void or walls, which a player with no modifications to mobility can usually not go through. The majority of dungeon floors also contain the Stairs (with the exception of certain final floors in certain dungeons, which may have a different way of leaving the dungeon such as the Warp Zone in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon titles), a tile which allows the player to advance to the numerically next floor. If a player on floor 6 steps on the stairs and chooses to proceed, the player would be moved to floor 7, generally a harder floor with stronger monsters.

Stairs

The stairs is almost always a one-way connection to the following floor, with the player being unable to go back from $[n]{\text{F}}$ to $[n-1]{\text{F}}$ using the stairs. In some rare exceptions, such as Table Mountain in Shiren 1 DS, Sacrifice Pass in Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer GB - Monster of Moonlight Village and Dragon Veins, and dungeon in the Torneko's Great Adventure series which allows the player to backtrack.

There are generally two types of stairs, upward stairs and downward stairs, depending on the direction of the dungeon (whether the dungeon is upward or downward). In the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon titles, this direction of the stairs is indicated by the floor number in the main screen being marked as $[n]{\text{F}}$ or ${\text{B}}[n]{\text{F}}$, where $[n]{\text{F}}$ signifies that the dungeon is an upward dungeon and contains upward stairs, while ${\text{B}}[n]{\text{F}}$ signifies that the dungeon is downward and contains downward stairs. There isn't much difference between upward dungeon progression and downward dungeon progression except for the floor change done by the Pitfall Trap, as Stairs always increment $[n]$ by 1. As the direction of the Pitfall Trap is strictly "down," falling on the Pitfall Trap in a downward dungeon would generally increase the dungeon floor number by 1 while falling on the Pitfall Trap in an upward dungeon would generally decrease the dungeon floor number by 1. However, certain specific floors have irregular Pitfall Trap mechanics, such as the "Crawl Up" in certain floors of Table Mountain in Shiren 1 DS (in which case the Pitfall Trap does not change the direction of motion) or on rescue floors where the pitfall trap will fail to work on the primary character. .

Terrain

You cannot proceed over water, air, lava or void without special abilities. Try walking diagonally or using items to get around this.

Hit points (HP)

Hit points, or HP for short, represent how much damage a character, monster or Pokémon can take before they're defeated.

Healing

In most if not all games, the HP of player characters recover naturally as turns pass. Some items can also restore HP.

Movement

Turns

Gameplay in the Mystery Dungeon series moves in increments, therefore time is irrelevant. Players have infinite time to decide what to do in their turn, and once they move, enemies will move, and so on.

Movement Speed

The number of actions a character can take each turn. In most games, a slowed character can take only one action every other turn. Also known as Travel Speed.

Fullness, Belly, Hunger

Often going by multiple different names, the players fullness will decrease as turns pass, causing them to have to consume food or risk starving to death. While starving, the player will lose valuable HP with every step they take until they recover their fullness or die. If an item used to revive the player isn't in their inventory, then their adventure will be at an end.

Currency

Note: Currency models and sprites vary between games. Click on a game specific currebcy page for a full gallery.

Series	Currency		Sprite/Model
	English	Japanese
Dragon Quest Mystery Dungeon	Gold	金貨
Shiren the Wanderer	Gitan	ギタン
Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon	Gil	ギル
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon	Poké	ポケ
Etrian Odyssey Mystery Dungeon	Ental
Individuals
The Nightmare of Druaga	Gold	金貨
Mobile Suit Gundam: Mystery Dungeon
TwinBee Dungeon
Mystery Chronicle: One Way Heroics
Seikimatsu Days: Our Era's End