Stella's✰Dungeon is a real-time minigame that made it's first appearance Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 , and it's respective remake Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2: SISTERS GENERATION . It features the eponymous Stella, as it's protagonist and playable character.
Gameplay
Being a real-time dungeon dungeon crawler minigame, gameplay is largely based off of luck and waiting. The outcome and results of every dungeon floor search is influenced by what types of equipment Stella has equipped. Dungeons featured in the minigame are almost always the same ones found and unlocked during the story mode, with each Dungeon having a pre-determined number of floors. In addition, all floors and dungeons are ordered in terms of difficulty from ascending to descending.
Unlock/Access
Before attempting to play Stella's✰Dungeon, it must be initially unlocked through a plan in Chapter 1. Once unlocked, the player may re-access the dungeon from any of the city's main menus and the Colosseum. The player will no longer need to re-craft the Unlock Stella's✰Dungeon plan afterwards to unlock the minigame when entering a new cycle of the game once the plan has been crafted.
Items
Items featured in Stella's✰Dungeon are made up 5 branches of items, which consist of:
- Weapon: Self-explanatory. General purpose items used for attacking enemies.
- Armor: Used for providing defense against enemy attacks and other stat boosts/or reductions.
- Stones: Passive equippable items that provide various beneficial stat boosts.
- Accessory: Similar to stones, accessories when equipped, benefit the player in different ways such helping to avoid traps, reduce random enemy encounters, increase loot drop rate, or provide random pre-specified stat enhancements during battle encounters.
- Key Items: Are a special class of unremovable items composing of 7 stars:
- Mizar
- Megrez
- Phecda
- Dubhe
- Alioth
- Merak
- ---
Only one of each of the above listed items can be equipped at a time.
All items with the exception of accessories are leveled. Which is indicated with a yellow number attached the icon of the item. Higher level equipment boast higher stats than lower leveled items.
Search Function
As the player progresses through the floors of the dungeon from ascending to descending, difficulty increases accordingly. Equipment will always be found at the end of each search. While searching, players will run into various hazards such as traps, thieves or enemy encounters. As with the increase of difficulty, players will need better equipment to give Stella to help her survive the much more difficult floors. Better, higher quality loot and items can be found as the player progresses through harder dungeons. The time interval for completion of each floor increases the higher the player goes. Progress of the floor is displayed as Stella walks towards a sign labeled as "GOAL", which signifies the floor's finish.
Battle Mechanics/Hazards
When searching a floor of a dungeon, certain factors influenced by items currently equipped come together to create an outcome; whether Stella survives, or not.
Battles in Stella's✰Dungeon are composed of random encounters, and the required boss at the end of every dungeon. Victory or defeat are influenced by whether or not Stella has proper equipment required for searching a certain floor. Regardless of what equipment equipped, random encounters and a boss battle are inevitable.
- Enemies are randomly encountered while searching a floor. Depending on the floor and dungeon searched, the enemy fought may be more difficult, or much easier.
- Traps are indicated in the progress log as purple treasure chests. They have a chance of containing a random item, and a 100% chance of inflicting damage or other debuffs on Stella(Assuming the player does not have a Warning Bell equipped).
- Thieves are usually indicated in the progress log as "Scouts". These scouts have a random chance of either giving Stella a random item, or stealing a random item found during the search session.