Instance dungeons

Before you enter

• Solo or party — Running alone, you buy entry yourself—no group required. With a party, use group invite / group join so everyone who is going is in the same group. The group leader is the only one who can buy entry for the group and (while inside) move the party room-to-room; members follow automatically.
• Meet in the lobby — Everyone who is entering (solo: just you; grouped: the whole party) must stand in the instance’s lobby room (the courtyard the guard watches). The server checks this when you pay the toll and again when you step through.
• Coin and reputation — Each difficulty has an entry cost in copper (and optional rewards on clear). Toll may be charged to the buyer only or each member, depending on how the world was configured.

Talking to the guard

Replace <guard> with the NPC’s name as shown in the room (e.g. ask Warden about the instance).

• ask <guard> about the instance (word instance, or bastion / dungeon in the phrase) — Opens the detailed panel in the web client: difficulties, tolls, reward summary, queue depth, and lanes in use.
• ask <guard> for entry <difficulty> — Solo: you pay. Grouped: leader only. Either way, the toll reserves a lane (timed window to enter) or joins a queue if every lane is busy. Typical difficulty keys are easy, normal, hard, elite, legendary (your shard may define others in Admin).
• ask <guard> for enter — After the guard confirms payment, use this with everyone who is going in the lobby (solo: just you) to pass into the dungeon.
• Solo shortcut — If you are alone, paid, and in waiting_enter, moving from the lobby room to the configured entry room (the normal compass link between them) completes entry the same way as ask <guard> for enter—useful when you do not need the ask line. Veilspire Bastion (default): compass east from the courtyard lobby to the antechamber; there is no separate named dungeon exit for that step on current seed (migration 20260424_veilspire_courtyard_drop_dungeon_exit removes a duplicate room_exits row on older databases).

Inside the run

• Movement — Solo, you move normally. In a group, only the leader’s compass moves count; the party stays together. If a non-leader tries to move alone inside the instance, they get an error.
• No teleport out — Wizard bind / teleport (and similar) are blocked for the duration of the run.
• No return to the lobby — Until the run is cleared (last foe slain), you cannot go back to the courtyard/lobby. Plan supplies and exits before you cross.
• Clear timer — Each difficulty has a time limit to finish after entry (operators set per band in Admin; 0 uses the instance default). If time runs out first, everyone in the party fails: sent to town with death recovery (the same heavy combat debuff as dying). The web guard card shows minutes to finish per difficulty.
• Web — Instance card — In the right sidebar, a panel appears when you have a lobby reservation or are inside a run. The title is the instance display name; difficulty shows under it when set. You get a short phase line (e.g. enter before the gate closes) and a large MM:SS countdown. During the run and the short loot window after the last foe dies, a Creatures section lists each type as killed/total (total is fixed for the run—looting or corpse decay does not shrink it); names use your creature color from Preferences (default red).
• Web — minimap — While the run is active, Expand Map for that dungeon sub-area tints the lobby and entry rooms (dark gray and cyan); your current room stays green when you stand there.
• Scoped rooms — What you say and who you see in the instance are limited to your run so two groups never cross paths in the same dungeon copy.
• Attempts — Worlds may cap how many times each character can clear (or start) a dungeon per time window; the guard’s error text names who is over the limit.