Every run of HTML Dungeon Crawl drops you into a freshly generated maze with a new name, new enemy placement, and a fog of war hiding all of it. That randomness is the point, but it also means the habits that keep you alive have to be about systems, not memorized layouts. This guide covers exactly how combat resolves when you bump into an enemy, why hoarding potions across a level is a mistake the game itself is designed to punish, and how ranged skeletons actually decide when to shoot you.
Combat Isn't Turns โ It's a Trade Until Someone Dies
Walking into an adjacent enemy in HTML Dungeon Crawl doesn't start a multi-turn fight you can walk away from partway through โ it resolves the entire exchange instantly. You hit first, dealing your current attack stat in damage. If the enemy survives, it immediately hits back, and this trade repeats until one of you drops. There's no way to retreat mid-swing once you've stepped into an enemy's tile, so the only real decision point is before you step in at all: know your current HP and attack stat, and roughly how many hits a given enemy type can take, before you commit to the tile.
Melee skeletons have 4 HP and deal 1 damage per hit; ranged skeletons have 3 HP and also deal 1 damage per hit in melee. Your starting attack is 3, which means a fresh melee skeleton usually takes two hits to put down โ meaning it gets one hit back on you in the exchange โ while a ranged skeleton often drops in a single hit if your attack stat has grown at all. Chest rewards that raise your attack stat are worth more than they look, since every point directly reduces how many free hits enemies get against you in melee trades.
Ranged Skeletons Shoot Down Straight Lines Only
Ranged enemies in HTML Dungeon Crawl don't need to be adjacent to hurt you โ they'll fire from a distance if you're within their range and they have a clear line of sight. That line of sight is strictly horizontal or vertical: if you and a ranged skeleton share the same row or column with no wall tile between you, it can hit you from several tiles away, even before you've noticed it's there through the fog. Their effective range grows slightly the deeper you go, so a skeleton that could only threaten you from three tiles away on an early level may reach further on a later one. The practical habit this creates is simple: when moving down a long, straight corridor, treat a skeleton anywhere along that same line as a live threat immediately, not just once you're close enough to trade melee blows.
Diagonal movement doesn't expose you to this at all โ the line-of-sight check only looks along a shared row or shared column, so cutting a corner rather than walking a straight corridor removes a ranged skeleton's shot entirely, even if it's technically within striking distance as the crow flies.
Potions Do Not Carry Over Between Levels โ Use Them or Lose Them
This is the single most important thing to know before you take the stairs in HTML Dungeon Crawl: your potion inventory resets to zero the moment you descend to a new level. Six fresh potions spawn on every floor and you can carry up to three at once, but any you're holding when you find the stairs simply do not follow you down. A potion heals 8 HP, capped at your current maximum, and there is no penalty for drinking one at full health beyond wasting the charge โ so if you're standing at the stairs holding two or three unused potions, drink down to full before you take them. Descending while holding potions is a pure loss, not a saved resource.
This also changes how you should treat potions you find late in a level. A potion picked up two tiles from the stairs is worth grabbing and drinking immediately if you're below full HP, not worth saving for "later," because for that level, there is no later.
Chests: What the Three Outcomes Are Worth
Three chests spawn on every level, and opening one resolves into exactly one of three outcomes: just under half the time it's a coin reward that scales up slightly with how deep you are, just over a quarter of the time it's a permanent +1 to your attack stat, and the remaining chunk of the time it's a potion, added to your inventory if you have room for it. Of the three, the attack increase is the one worth prioritizing your path toward when you can see multiple chests through the fog, since it's the only permanent, run-long benefit โ coins and potions are useful in the moment, but a stacked attack stat makes every single fight for the rest of that level, and technically forever if potions could carry over, faster and safer.
Sequencing a Level: Chests, Enemies, or the Stairs First?
With three chests, a scattered handful of enemies, and six potions all sharing the same floor, the order you tackle them in matters more than it seems. Clearing enemies near a chest before opening it is usually worth the detour, since an attack-stat reward from that chest applies retroactively to nothing โ it only helps fights you haven't had yet, so front-loading a chest run before diving into a cluster of skeletons gets more value out of a lucky +1 ATK roll than finding the same chest after the level is already mostly cleared. Potions, by contrast, are best picked up opportunistically along whatever path you're already walking toward a chest or the stairs, rather than detoured for specifically, since their value is capped at three held and they reset to zero on descent regardless of when in the level you grabbed them.
Your Max HP Grows Slowly โ Plan Around What You Have Now
You start with 12 HP, and your maximum HP increases by 1 for every two levels you descend, not every level. That means for long stretches of a run, your HP ceiling simply isn't moving, even as enemy counts and ranged skeleton range both creep upward with depth. Don't assume a deeper level means a proportionally tougher you to match it โ the enemy count grows roughly every other level too, but your survivability grows more slowly than the threat does, which is exactly why potion discipline and prioritizing attack-boosting chests matter more the deeper you go, not less.
Reading the Room Through the Fog
Fog of war in HTML Dungeon Crawl reveals a circular radius around your current position and stays revealed once cleared, which the minimap in the corner reflects in miniature โ enemies, potions, and the stairs all show up there once you've uncovered their tile, even if they're currently off-screen on the main view. Check the minimap before committing to a direction in an unfamiliar branch of the maze; it often shows you whether a corridor leads toward the stairs or into a dead end stacked with enemies before you've actually walked far enough to see it directly. Since ranged skeletons can hit you the moment a straight line opens up between you, the minimap is also the earliest warning you'll get that one is sitting somewhere along a corridor you're about to enter.
A Practical Run Plan
Put this together into a routine: on entering a new level, glance at the minimap to get a rough sense of layout before moving, prioritize chests over wandering toward the stairs immediately, and treat every potion pickup as something to bank toward your cap of three rather than something to rush back for later. In corridors, watch for a straight line of sight to any skeleton before you're adjacent to it, and cut diagonally through open rooms when you can to deny ranged shots for free. Most importantly, the moment you can see the stairs and you're holding any potions at all, drink down to full HP before descending โ in HTML Dungeon Crawl, an unused potion at the stairs is strictly wasted, and a full-health start to the next level is the cheapest safety net the game gives you.
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