Chalice Dungeon Generation System - How It Works Bloodborne Wiki » The Tomb Prospectors Discoveries » Chalice Dungeon Generation System - How It Works

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Basic Information

This is an update on Tomb Prospectors' Isz glitch testing that was performed a few months ago, where it was found out how the game chooses dungeons from their pre-set pools, and how this creates an issue in the Isz Root Chalice (you can read the whole research here). This is another test Tomb Prospectors done to find out how chalice dungeons generation behaves in relation to unique coffin items you can loot in them. For those who are not familiar with the details, here's a short summary of how are dungeons laid out: while the dungeons were presented as procedurally generated, there’s in fact no procedural generation and almost no randomization going on. Chalice dungeons are pre-made maps stored in the game files, with their architecture, enemies, bosses and loot already predetermined. Zullie the Witch discovered that every depth 4 and depth 5 chalice has 200 unique layouts, and every depth 1, 2 and 3 chalice has 100 unique layouts, 2300 unique layouts total. When you create a dungeon on your altar, the game just selects one of these pre-made maps. in Isz and Sinister Isz this doesn’t work properly when it comes to randomized map selection. Some player characters might experience a bug when they are only able to pull 32 maps out of the entire 200 pool. Tomb Prospectors call this the Isz Glitch. Tomb Prospectors received several questions if this glitch happens in other chalice types too, and while it was suspected it is not the case based on their experience during exploring and dungeon mapping, it was definitely something they wanted to test as well to confirm their theory on how this should work correctly. As has been found out during this testing, when you create a dungeon on your altar, the way the game selects which dungeon it gives you might be random or semi-random depending on if you’ve already looted certain unique coffin items in that dungeon. The dungeons are internally divided into groups of 15 - 30 dungeons depending on chalice type and depth, and each of these groups are tied to a specific unique item in that chalice. When you pick up one of these items, the group the item is tied to will be locked away and not be included in your next dungeon creation. Why it works this way is most likely because the game tries to naturally “lead” you to all unique items in each chalice - by temporarily locking away a group of dungeons where you already looted a particular unique item and only giving you dungeon groups with unique items you don’t have in your possession yet.

What exactly are these unique items differs from chalice to chalice. The most distinct ones are weapon variations (uncanny/lost weapons), runes, blood rocks and certain gems, but in earlier root dungeons this can also be stacks of Fire Paper, Bone Marrow Ash, high tier Coldblood and other. These unique items can only be looted once. Tomb Prospectors tested this in depth 1 Pthumeru, which only has 100 layouts and 5 unique items, so it was easy to see how the groups disappear the more unique items were looted. However, unlike in Isz where the dungeon generation eventually gets stuck in a loop, the system for dungeon generation resets in depth 1 Pthumeru once you loot all unique items. These items include: ► Uncanny Saw Cleaver ► Bloodtinge circle gem ► 10x Bone Marrow Ash ► 6x Fire Paper ► Frenzied Coldblood (7) You can see the process of Tomb Prospectors testing here. It’s clearly visible how with each looted unique item one group of dungeons is locked away and the pool of dungeons you are able to create is getting smaller. Once you have all unique items from depth 1 Pthumeru, the system resets and you are again able to generate all dungeons from that chalice. This means the game only selects the dungeon at random in two cases: you haven’t looted any unique item in that chalice yet you have looted all unique items in that chalice Looting all unique items (regardless of if you need them or not) is desirable if you want to explore as many dungeons as possible. Looting only one item already restricts the amount of dungeons you are able to create on your own, and Tomb Prospectors strongly believe there’s no such thing similar to the Isz Glitch in other chalice types.