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Alongside the open world of the Continent of Orbis, DragonSword: Awakening runs a set of instanced activities that carry most of the growth economy. They split into four dungeon families, a hunting tier, raids, and a climbing tower. Every one of them is tuned to be clearable solo. Hound13 confirmed this directly in the August 10, 2026 developer broadcast, and it holds even for the raid tier, where a solo clear awards the same rewards as a cooperative one.
Content Types
Activity | What It Is | Party Size |
|---|---|---|
Normal Dungeon | The standard instanced clear, tied to story and world progression | Solo, or 2 players |
Currency Dungeon | Farming run whose payout is progression currency rather than gear | Solo, or 2 players |
Trait Dungeon | Farming run focused on the trait layer of Hero growth | Solo, or 2 players |
Hunt | Named monster hunts, including a Nightmare difficulty tier | Solo, or 2 players |
Raid | The longest and most mechanically demanding encounters | Solo, or up to 3 players |
Tower of Trials | A single-player climb against escalating opposition | Solo only |
Cooperative entry is opt-in throughout and runs on invite codes rather than a public matchmaker. Patch 1.0.7 added a Quick Entry option and a configurable lobby search range, and 1.0.9 widened the default search range for new players. See Co-Op for the full multiplayer breakdown.
Hunt and Barduk
Hunt sends the player after specific named monsters rather than through a corridor of trash. Barduk is the marquee target and the one with a Nightmare difficulty tier attached. Patch 1.0.9 added a clear achievement for Barduk on Nightmare, with the caveat that anyone who had already cleared it had to do so again for the achievement to unlock. Hound13 has said further difficulty tiers are being considered.
Hunt clear tracking was reworked in the same patch so that a monster's clear status registers the moment it dies rather than at some later checkpoint, and the reward-chest timing was shortened.
The Ursula Raid
Ursula is the raid boss that ships with the launch build. She is a boss encounter only: Hound13 has said there are no plans to make her playable, because she was designed as a boss and is not suited to the role. Community feedback through the first three weeks was consistent that the fight ran too long, and the studio agreed.
Patch 1.0.9 cut the encounter to roughly half its length. The phase structure was reduced to two, one against the humanoid form and one against the dragon form, with the player now moving straight into the dragon fight once the humanoid form falls, and the wind-path traversal sections between phases were removed entirely. Earlier patches fixed shots fired from a specific position travelling in the wrong direction and a raid being startable before every member had readied up.
Additional raid bosses are in development, though Hound13 has said they will not arrive in 2026 and is targeting the second half of 2027. See Post-Launch Roadmap.
Tower of Trials
The Tower of Trials is the single-player endgame climb. Defeating the powerful monsters on each floor yields key materials that can be exchanged for exclusive Karma. It was built, alongside Hunt on Nightmare, as the game's endgame layer, and Hound13 has since acknowledged that both are being consumed faster than expected. Additional endgame content is being prepared to fill the gap, and further Tower floors are planned.
The Reward Rebalance
The instanced economy has been adjusted twice since launch, both times upward.
Patch 1.0.4 on July 30, 2026 stocked the Gold Shop with the lowest-grade Monster Essence, Hide, Bone Fragment, Carapace and Claw so low-tier materials no longer had to be farmed by hand.
Patch 1.0.9 on August 13, 2026 raised clear rewards across every Normal Dungeon, Currency Dungeon, Trait Dungeon, Hunt and Raid. Hound13 described the dungeon side of that change as roughly two to two and a half times the previous payout.
The same patch made Normal, Currency and Trait Dungeon clears grant their rewards immediately rather than after a delay, and increased gathering and mining yields across the crystal, grain and cooking-ingredient tables.
Patch 1.0.7 had already smoothed the failure case: dungeon entry and wipe recovery now start the party at full health with every fallen character revived, so a wipe costs time rather than a full reset.
Known Design Notes
Two design points have been addressed publicly. The first concerns the platforming dungeons: Hound13 said it wanted every Hero to be viable, but a jump-handling change made shortly before launch left smaller-statured characters noticeably harder to clear those sections with, which is why a Hero such as Reina reads as the obvious pick there. The second concerns skipping: phase skipping in cleared raids is not planned, because the phases carry the mechanics, though cutscene skipping on repeat runs is being worked on. Replaying a cleared raid is already supported.
Related
Co-Op for party sizes, invite codes and the multiplayer layer.
World Bosses for the open-world encounters outside this structure.
Active Skills and Signal Skills for the combat tools these encounters test.
Update History for the patch-by-patch record of the reward changes.