The dungeon’s floor is the one feature with which every adventurer will interact.
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Double doors almost always guard areas of great importance. Often throne rooms, subterranean chapels, crypts housing the remains of important personages and similarly important locations lie beyond. Thus, such dungeon features are often well-built, sturdy and ornately decorated.
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Dungeon doors come in many different shapes and sizes. Doors are one of the most basic dungeon features and as such can offer clever explorers vital clues to what might lie beyond.
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While often crafted to represent beautiful people, ferocious beasts, heroes or deities, fountains also serve a vital function by providing fresh drinking water. Fountains in a dungeon or cavern setting may be artistic creations of the current or past occupants, altars to deities (fair or foul) or something else entirely.
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Pools add an element of mystery to a dungeon. In their often murky depths, they can hide both treasure, monsters or other secrets. Dungeon pools can be magical or mundane. Some are naturally occurring with swiftly flowing water, while others feature elaborate fountains, traps or other features. It is a brave adventurer who willing steps into unknown waters.
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Wealthy or powerful individuals may have elaborately decorated sarcophagi dripping with gemstones, precious metals and other decorations. These treasure-filled tombs are certain to be guarded with fiendish traps or deadly guardians to keep out would-be grave robbers.
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Statues come in many shapes and sizes and are a staple of most dungeons.
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Stairs come in many shapes and sizes, including steep, gradual, precipitous and spiral. Stairs in dungeons don’t even have to be made of stone—some can be of wood, bone or other magical or fantastical substances.
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Portcullises are imposing obstacles for adventurers. Their grid-like construction offers a glimpse of what lies beyond while providing defenders a powerful position from which to strike at interlopers.
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Concealed and hidden doors are a requirement for any suitably interesting dungeon, building or ruin. A secret door is generally a deliberate part of the dungeon crafted when the place is constructed. Concealed doors are somewhat more mundane, and can easily be added later.
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Secret doors are prolific in literature and even more ubiquitous in fantasy gaming. Rare is the dungeon crawl that doesn’t feature a handful of cunningly hidden secret doors. The challenge is in making each door a unique experience worth a few moments of wonder instead of just another excuse for a search check.
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Chests, or more accurately their contents, are most adventurers’ favourite dungeon feature. Chests represent their hard-earned reward after days in the dark, exploring new terrain and overcoming challenging foes. Therein new and shiny discoveries await, equipping the heroes for even greater challenges.
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Wells are important places in dungeons—a well might be the only readily accessible source of drinking water in the entire place. Given most dungeon denizens require water those controlling a well can become wealthy and powerful charging others for the water they draw. Thus, a well can also be a source of much conflict between the dungeon’s denizens as they all seek to gain control of such an important resource.
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Altars dedicated to dark, forbidden powers are a staple of many fantasy dungeons. Here, evil high priests officiate over bloody, blasphemous services or cultists gather to worship their terrible patron. Such locales are thus often an excellent place to find and slay said evil-doers or to recover their hidden treasures. A few such locales have even established a tenuous link with the deity itself, and strange, odd effects occur in their immediate vicinity.
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Pits are a lurking danger that have spelt the doom of countless adventurers. Pits can be used to kill, injure or trap intruders, block progress or prevent escape. An explorer trapped in a pit with no way of getting out is at the mercy of the first creature or character to discover their predicament.
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Drow, terrors of the Ebon Realm, normally stay away from the sunlit surface lands yet sometimes they wander too close. Setting up outposts near the surface they sneak forth to capture slaves to carry back to their subterranean home.
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Cunning ambush predators, ropers lie in wait pretending to be stalagmites so their prey blunder too close to escape.
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Buried deep in the snow and ice a white dragon’s frigid lair is a terrifying locale.
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Dwelling in the seemingly eternal glaciers of the far north and south and in snowy mountain ranges, frost giants work the ice itself into magnificent castles and fortifications to better suit their frozen hearts.
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Immensely strong burrowing predators, bulettes—or land sharks as they are sometimes called—live only to feed. They fear nothing and treat everything moving as food. Bulettes range over a wide area and are always on the move.
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