The Shop in Dungeon Overlord allows you to purchase benefits for your dungeon with Dungeon Marks. The former curency was Station Cash from Sony. Most of these benefits are temporary and percentage-based, although three are permanent dungeon enhancements and several provide more immediate benefits. Dungeon Marks can be purchased with the "Get Cash" button next to the "Shop" button, and are sold at a minimum of 1,1 Dungeon Marks for one Facebook Credit. Facebook Credit prices differ but can be estimated at $5 for 50 Credits maximum.
The must-have store purchases are the permanent +3 Goblins and +25 Tiles, which can run you $6 per dungeon if obtained in single packages. Most people will spend more than enough time to justify that investment, and the benefits they provide over time far outpace any other store option. Some of the instant purchases can also be very cost-effective, as Transmuting can give you a huge resource advantage or solve resource bottlenecks, while Complete All Crafting combined with Double Craft Queue Size is an expensive way to eliminate hours or days of crafting time.
A list of the available benefits and a short description of their utility follows:
Mining Boosts[]
- 25% Crystal Mining Boost (1-7 Days) - 2-6 Dungeon Marks
- 25% Iron Mining Boost (1-7 Days) - 2-6 Dungeon Marks
- 25% Gold Mining Boost (1-7 Days) - 2-8 Dungeon Marks
These three are among the worst purchases, as these basic resources can be obtained in so many ways. Everyone will be hurting for these on levels 1-30 unless they have fantastic dungeons - there are just far more effective ways to mitigate this. If the Regional Market in your region is particularly terrible for these resources, there might be some limited utility for these bonuses, but you'd most likely be better off focusing more on Raiding. Proper dungeon selection (every expansion should have at least 2 basic resource nodes along with the specialized nodes you need to have access to) in addition to frequent raiding will help a lot more than this.
- 25% Primordial Mining Boost, all 4 Primordial Elements plus T3 resources (1-7 Days) - 2-6 Dungeon Marks
This can be worth it in borderline situations, because Primordial Earth sells very well in the early-game, and Primordial Ice sells almost as well when the demand for Primordial Earth begins to wane. It requires that you have multiple Primordial Nodes that you can mine, however, because you'll need to combine a large mining operation with Transmuting to both satisfy the 12000 Primordial Earth you'll need for 2 Level-5 mines as well as having enough to sell in large amounts early, or to satisfy the Primordial Earth and Primordial Ice costs for the Ingots you need for the Vault and other rooms while still selling whichever one is in higher demand.
Generally speaking, this boost is next-to-useless for the T3 resources (Deep Ochre, Dense Basalt, Quicksilver, Feldspar, Shallow Mantle, Abyssal Mantle) because the upgrades that need large amounts of them should be planned in advance. Either small amounts of these resources will be needed, at which point you can remote-mine them fairly quickly, or you should have a dungeon or two stocked full of the T3's when the bigger costs come around.
- 25% Gem Mining Boost (1-7 Days) - 2-9 Dungeon Marks
- 25% Rare Metal Mining Boost (1-7 Days) - 3-10 Dungeon Marks
The Gem Boost can be marginally useful for Diamond, and the Rare Metal Boost should only be considered because the base mining rate is so low. Diamond are quite rare and mine very slowly, but some creatures use them for upkeep, and unlike Ruby those upkeep costs can quickly outpace the production from a single node. In emergency situations, running the +25% Mining may keep those creatures fed long enough for you to establish a more stable source of Diamond. Ruby and Moonstone should be mined well in advance of when you'll need them, so that you'll have stockpiles ready when the time comes.
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- 25% Food Growing Boost (1-7 Days) - 2-6 Dungeon Marks
No. Just no. This can technically have a use if you're doing the Food Transmuting trick to blitz your way to Level 10, but that trick is so odd and math-intensive that very few people in your region will attempt it even if they were willing to spend the money. There's no reason to try to get a very slight time advantage over them. If there weren't so many ready sources of Gold, the Food Transmuting trick would work as a source of fast-ish Gold...but you're better off just setting up strong long-term Gold accumulation through sales, steady mining, and/or steady Raiding.
- 25% Research Boost (1-7 Days) - 3-10 Dungeon Marks
This can definately be worth it if you're trying to power Research. Five Bookcase cost 150 Crystite, 60 Goblin Twine, and 2000 Leather. Converted into basic resources, that's 19,500 Crystal, 7,500 Iron, 6,500 Leather, and 14h 20m total crafting time. If you're looking to get a lot of Research done in a short amount of time, this is your best option, but Bookcase are a far better investment. It is worth considering this if you choose to level Dark Elves early, as this Boost can help make up for the Bookcase you're not able to get while training.
- 25% Leather Raiding Boost (1-7 Days) - 2-8 Dungeon Marks
The most worthless purchase in the game. Leather is beyond plentiful if you raid Tier-1 (Pitiful) Settlements, and often has the lowest prices in the Regional Market. Once you start Raiding regularly, you may find yourself crafting large excess amounts of Goblin Twine and Reinforced Leather just to avoid maxing out your Leather storage and exceeding your Safe Storage capacity in Leather alone.
- 25% Gold, Crystal, Iron, Food and Research Boost (7 Days) - 22 Dungeon Marks
Twelve Dungeon Marks cheaper then all 7-day boosts bought single. Might be a great help in the first hours of gameplay to advance faster to the second dungoen.
Transmuting[]
- Transmute Basic Resources (Instant) - 5 Dungeon Marks
A steal for what is arguably the best ramping mechanism in the game. Proper abuse of Basic Transmute can get your second dungeon hours ahead of the competition with a Vault 3 to boot. You cannot transmute Gold into any of the other 3 basic resources, but you can transmute them into Gold. Transmuting Food or Iron into Crystal is always an option for the desperate, since it's easy to have an excess of Food and Iron mines at roughly twice the base rate of Crystal.
- Transmute Primordial Elements (Instant) - 6 Dungeon Marks
Once again, a steal for the best moneymaking mechanism past Level 10. If you're willing to spend the money, every Primordial Node is now whatever element you want the most. It's best to build a huge Elements Confine with several +% storage items in order to maximize the utility of this. You can also make use of the rock-bottom price that Primordial Water will normally be selling at. Buying Primordial Water, transmuting it into Primordial Earth or Primordial Ice, and then selling those elements can net you huge profits per unit. It's also useful for switching Primordial Earth to Primordial Ice or vica versa if you're switching back and forth between producing Dense Iron Ingot and Cold Iron Ingot.
Dungeon Efficiency[]
- Double Safe Storage (1-7 Days) - 2-7 Dungeon Marks
This would be immensely useful if it were 1 Day for 1 Dungeon Mark, because sometimes you'll have an incoming raid and just know that there's no way you can drop your resource counts into Safe Storage range. Doubling that storage can temporarily render you unraidable, but it's unlikely that you will face continued raids over a period of more than a couple days from any player unless they manage to loot something. If you can burn enough Resources to fall into Safe Storage with 4 more crafts.
- +3 Extra Goblins for this dungeon (Permanent) - 40 Dungeon Marks
- +25 Tiles for this dungeon (Permanent) - 30 Dungeon Marks
The first purchase should be made within minutes of starting the game and upon taking every expansion dungeon. Any player that makes this purchase will gain a constantly-increasing Resources advantage over those that don't; this is the only "upgrade" of any kind that will continue to accrue advantage even if the opponent eventually gets it later, as the early Resources advantage will have given the early-purchasing player a Furniture and Room advantage that has compounded the significant gains made from the Goblins alone.
The Tiles purchase does not need to be made immediately unless you're Transmuting, but early on it can make a huge difference when you need to mine large amounts of Iron and Crystal in order to get Level 3 Rooms off of a single dungeon (+25% mining rate). You will start to feel the limited tile pressure very quickly, however, and you will find yourself tile-capped multiple times even with this upgrade. If you don't buy this upgrade, it requires significant sacrifice to trap-maze in your main at all before the +50 Tile upgrade.
- +3 Extra Goblins and +25 Tiles for this dungeon (Permanent) - 50 Dungeon Marks
Twenty Dungeon marks cheaper then both Boosts bought single says everything.
- +1 Extra Goblin Boost to all dungeons (1-7 Days) - 3-12 Dungeon Marks
The steep cost makes this only cost-effective at 4 or 5 dungeons, and even then it's pretty questionable.
- +1 Population Increase for this dungeon (Permanent) - 20 Dungeon Marks
1 more creature is not going to make that much of a difference. Even warlocks aren't worth that much money, as your research dungeons will gain less than 10% research with the addition of another warlock.
Remote Mining and Travel Boosts[]
- +25% Remote Mining Boost (1-7 Days) - 2-6 Dungeon Marks
If used in conjunction with the other +25% boost that pertains to Nodes with a low base mining rate, this can halve the amount of time it takes your goblins to remote mine rare resources. In situations where you need to remote mine large numbers of rare metals or gems, this can end up making enough of a difference to consider. It's still better to plan ahead, but it's quite possible that another Overlord will beat you to the nearby good dungeons containing the rare resources. It's sometimes/often better to opt for Remote Mining rather than take a subpar dungeon for a single rare resource, so this can have some utility.
- +25% Goblin Carry Capacity Boost (1-7 Days) - 2-8 Dungeon Marks
The Portal Room carry bonuses may still not be working, and this probably won't if they do not. Even if it does, you'll almost never be transporting such huge amounts of resources that this will be worth it. It would require multiple dungeons transporting resources across regions or continents to consider this, as in that case it may take days or an entire week to make it to the destination dungeon.
Crafting and Up-/Downgrading Boosts[]
- Double Crafting Queue Size (1-7 Days) - 2-7 Dungeon Marks
- Double Crafting Queue Size (Permanent) - 25 Dungeon Marks
This is useful if you need to get some critical crafting done but plan to sleep for 8 hours like a normal person. This can also be a better alternative to the Safe Storage option if you're getting raided, as 4 more crafting slots lets you spend an awful lot of resources and the extra crafting slots will come in handy after the Raiding stops. The new permanent Boost goes even further and can take a lot of work from your high end crafting dungeons.
- Complete Crafting (Instant) - 5 Dungeon Marks
- Complete All Crafting (Instant) - 10 Dungeon Marks
- Complete Upgrading (Instant) - 5 Dungeon Marks
- Finish Downgrading (Instant) - 7 Dungeon Marks
The Upgrading purchase can be worth it if you're still frequently visiting the game at the point where rooms can take days to upgrade. Complete Crafting is almost never worth it, but Complete All Crafting can be used in conjunction with Double Crafting Queue Size to instantly craft 8 items per dungeon. This can squeeze a day of crafting - or far far more if you're crafting very high-end items - into under a minute. That shoots efficiency through the roof and can save a lot of aggravation where you may have to wait several days to recieve the furniture you've been planning to get for a week now.
Downgrading is never worth the purchase. Just the fact that you're downgrading a room that's high-level enough to make you think about paying money means that you failed to plan ahead. It also means you're probably wasting a ton of resources by downgrading in the first place. Wait it out, as you've already lost quite a bit just having to make this decision.
Recipes[]
- Fanciful Warlock Bed Recipe (10 uses) - 48 Dungeon Marks
- Vigilant Guard House Recipe (10 uses) - 48 Dungeon Marks
The recipes are used to craft special looking Furniture which however does not differ that much from its normal ingame equivalent which can be crafted without spending Dungeon Marks. In this case the Fanciful Warlock Bed has the same function as a normal Warlock Bed. On the other side the Vigilant Guard House raises also the maximum level for Dark Elves by 10, and is in this case better then the normal Guard House. For players which don't play with a Dark Priestess Tiles for the Temple can be used in another way.