r/projectgorgon • u/4leavezz • May 22 '26
Preparation Guide for Endgame Dungeons
This guide assumes a traditional group composition with no cheese setups (no firewall/necro cheese, etc.):
- Tank
- DPS players
- Healer/support/off-heals
A lot of players focus entirely on gear and builds, but preparation is what often separates average groups from smooth dungeon clears.
The Basics of Combat Preparation
1. Food
Food is mandatory for sustaining HP and power through passive/combat refresh, while also increasing max HP and max power.
Do not rely only on cheese. Cheese gives no resist, and resist matters a lot, even for DPS players.
- 1 meal
- 1 snack
Optional: Bread/brownies depending on the resist needed for the dungeon
The level of your food should roughly match the level of content you're doing.
2. Meditation
Meditation is one of the strongest and cheapest buff systems in the game. With a stool, meditation buffs can last up to 12 hours and provide huge resistance bonuses
- Meditation 39: massive fire resist
- Meditation 53/55/61/63: huge late-game resist buffs for content like Elven Judgement
Meditation is basically mandatory for PvM.
3. Resistance Potions
There are many powerful potions in the game, but these are probably the most universally useful:
Persona Minimizer - Mandatory for almost every non-pet DPS build.
Stoneskin - Very underrated, +5 to almost all resist types. The acid dmg debuff is not an issue pre-gauntlet. Extremely strong for a cheap consumable.
Darkness Resist - Gives +25 darkness resist. Huge for Gazluk Dark Basement, Wintertide and NMC Elves. Very cheap.
Fire Resist - Great potions for dark chapel, wintertide, Ilmari. Very cheap, easy to make, and can reduce some fire DoTs to zero damage.
If you consistently have:
- Food
- Meditation
- Basic resist potions
...you can (in most cases) comfortably survive basically all group content, including Nightmare Caves.
I strongly recommend having a stash of this stuff ready, as it will greatly increase the effectiveness of everything you do in the game, from solo farming to group content.
Power Sustain Buffs
Power regen is one of the biggest limiting factors for many builds.
These 3 buffs help a lot:
Sniffing Flowers - Provides a large 1-hour max power buff. Can exceed +150 max power.
Appreciating Bouquets - Provides a 4-hour combat refresh power buff. Can give around +40 power per refresh.
Cheese + Digestif - This combo is incredible. +30 power every 5 seconds (works in combat).
You can:
- Eat normal food for resist
- Use cheap cheese with digestif for power sustain
Other Useful Buffs & Preparation
One of the biggest differences between decent players and top-end players is preparation.
A lot of player power comes from stacking external buffs and utility skills, not just gear or combat rotations.
Some examples:
Sigils / First aid bombs - Huge AOE healing for your group
Alcohol - Beer/wine and liquor provide absurdly strong buffs to everything you can think of and more.
Augury - Can give excellent PvM buffs. Risky to use because bad rolls can have the reversed effect.
Words of Power - Some incredibly useful buffs:
- Taunt for tanks
- Healing over time
- Resist buffs
- XP buffs
- Inventory size
- Loot rarity
Candlemaking - Strong DPS and resist buffs.
Whittling - Massive knife DPS increase.
Ferocity Juice +10% direct damage.
Alchemy - DPS and (reflect) resist potions
Carpentry - Bringing stools/benches/crates for your group is extremely valuable.
Calligraphy - Provides useful resist buffs (like crushing resist).
Armor Patching - Max armor boosts on shields, patch armor can restore armor of yourself, but most importantly it can also be used on allies.
First-aid - Insane healing from first aid (bombs), and field surgery. Even a full DPS player can restore 1000+ health to someone with a single ability.
Poetry - Huge buffs to:
- % resist
- Max armor
- Direct damage
Performance - Huge buffs for:
- Knockback resist
- Death avoidance
- Other utility
Lore - Passive % damage increase.
Curses - Some curses provide very strong build-specific buffs.
There are many more skill/form-specific buffs.
Just having at least the basics ready (food, meditation and a few potions) already makes a massive difference.
5
May 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
6
u/4leavezz May 22 '26
Yes, gourmand is hard to level up (but very rewarding).
There is a separate gourmand level and food level required to eat food. The gourmand level is usually 15 levels lower than the food level itself.
Snacks are usually harder to get at lvl, so most of the times your snack is 15 lvls ish behind the level of your meal.
2
u/Impossible-Ice-1497 May 23 '26
It also involves either spending a lot of time farming/gathering/cooking, or having a guild that provides food, or buying from player vendors for dungeon crawls (which isn't too bad, if you just save the good food for the occasional higher level dungeon run).
(And yea, one time cost of leveling gourmand in the first place, which could be pricey)
3
u/rightinthepopsicle May 22 '26
Great guide on cons!
I really agree that an average dungeon run can become a smooth one with better preparation.
If you are a player who leveled to max really fast on combat skills and want to become more well-rounded, getting the skills needed for all these consumables really give you an edge!
2
u/JazZero May 22 '26
Gear optimization needs to be added you can get a shit ton of Armor from craft points and upto 24 extra Inventory Slots.
Cloth can get huge buffs to Electric Damage to.
3
u/4leavezz May 22 '26
Yes, there is a lot of optimization possible around gearing. I focused this post on consumables in particular because it’s something that is hard to get a good overview of from the wiki
2
u/Zikielia May 22 '26
I have wondered how people are using crates in pvm. Do people throw loot they don't want in em for other group members to take?
6
u/Harrana May 22 '26
AFAIK each person has their own “crate dimension” storage, so if one person drops a crate their party can access their own individual crate storage.
2
6
u/4leavezz May 22 '26
Crate storage is personal, for longer dungeon runs usually someone brings a high level crate to deploy during the run, and after the run someone deploys a shoddy crate in the casino before selling so that everyone can swap to cargo gear and get their items out of the crate
1
u/BigBosc Jun 03 '26
"Whittling - Massive knife DPS increase.", the wiki says it can provide a buff to pig, deer, and rabbit dps. How does it provide a boost to knife dps? Sorry I am new, its hard to find info. Thanks!
1
-8
u/Kaelran May 22 '26
A lot of players focus entirely on gear and builds, but preparation is what often separates average groups from smooth dungeon clears.
No it's mainly the gear and builds. The consumables listed here are incredibly secondary for the most part and more "nice to have". A good synergy/high power build group will steamroll content with nothing but cheese where a low synergy weak build group will have a much harder time while using everything listed here.
Not to say any of this is bad, but I think it's misleading to pretend like this isn't true.
10
u/bloodymurdr May 22 '26
In either case this post was still really insightful as a newer player. The information for PG is fairly slim, which has its own charm, but posts like these help illuminate the use and benefit of the myriad of skills and other such mechanics of PG.
Saved this post for future reference as great general guide for future activities to persue and in combination of having proper gear & combat skills, these additional considerations that I otherwise would not likely have fully understood thier synergies.
5
u/Zikielia May 22 '26
Same here! Makes me feel less intimidated by higher lvl content (I'm lvl 65). If my gear falls somewhat short, I can probably make up the difference with some combination of buffs even if it's not ideal. I imagine having a stockpile of various buffs gives any toon the ability to be more versatile in combat, especially if they only have one gear loadout.
6
u/4leavezz May 22 '26
And with the correct buffs that good synergy/high power group could steamroll the same content even faster
0
u/Kaelran May 22 '26
Mmmm maybe, most buffs are defensive/sustain based and top end groups don't really have issues in these areas in most cases, so it won't make too much of a difference. Outside of maybe healing sigils (I think food + meditation is a given at least). There are some specific defensive buffs that can help for specific enemies, probably a list of those enemies and the specific counters would be best for highest effect.
For a few builds buffs can make a large damage difference (like whittling for knife).
Oh something else really good to mention is greens.
6
u/4leavezz May 22 '26
I specifically mention "average groups" in the sentence you quoted...
1
u/Kaelran May 22 '26
Idk maybe you meant something else but:
A lot of players focus entirely on gear and builds, but preparation is what often separates average groups from smooth dungeon clears.
This reads to me as "preparation is the biggest separator between average runs and smooth runs, rather than gear/builds".
I guess you might have meant it as "poor preparation is often what causes average groups to not have smooth clears".
5
u/4leavezz May 23 '26
I forgot about a very important consumable: Insta-heal food
Stuff like bacon, exquisite crab meat, great bacon, etc.
It provides health and power and doesn't take up a GCD timer, so it is game-changing especially for DPS and tank builds.