deepdelve

A persistent, button-driven old-school text RPG for Red-DiscordBot.

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The Game

Beneath Lastlight Outpost lies the Deep: an endless dungeon of monsters, treasure, traps, forgotten shrines, consequential mysteries, and sealed boss chambers. Every member creates a persistent character and explores one room at a time through Discord embeds and buttons.

The 5.0 central loop is:

Hub → choose a goal → spend declared energy → make a remembered choice → grow the world

Progress is saved after every action. An interrupted battle can be resumed with [p]deepdelve or its persistent Resume button.

Install

[p]repo add taakoscogs https://github.com/TaakoOfficial/TaakosCogs
[p]cog install taakoscogs deepdelve
[p]load deepdelve

Start a character:

[p]deepdelve create

All player commands are hybrid commands and can also be used through Discord slash commands, such as /deepdelve adventure.

Classes

Class	Style	Signature Skill
Vanguard	High health and defense	Shield Bash deals heavy damage and weakens enemies
Shadow	High attack, luck, and critical chance	Twin Fang performs two critical-capable strikes
Arcanist	High mana and spell damage	Arcane Lance ignores most enemy armor

Prefix users can create a named character directly:

[p]deepdelve create shadow Nyx

Without arguments, character creation uses an interactive class selector and the member's current display name. New delvers then write a three-part origin by choosing a background, moral alignment, and one of three class-specific origin weapons.

Highlights

• Persistent per-server characters and saved combat encounters.
• A persistent origin sequence with nine starter weapons and build-defining early choices.
• Living Morality from −100 Umbral to +100 Radiant, shaped by actions rather than a menu choice.
• Mercy, Honesty, Ambition, and Ruthlessness convictions with a permanent Book of Deeds.
• Visible moral transformations, reactive NPC dialogue, morality-gated events, and combat powers.
• Menu-driven exploration, combat, quests, Atlas routes, inventory identification, professions, companions, commissions, story chapters, and town services.
• Five authored regions with distinct atmosphere, narration, lore, and materials.
• A six-act Living Chronicle with 36 scenes, 18 permanent decisions, four endings, three eight-quest faction arcs, and a consequence-aware Quest Journal.
• Resolve, 18 selectable Tenets, a rotating Oath Board, moral journeys, World Echoes, faction services, remembered NPC relationships, mail, and named Nemeses.
• An unlockable Atlas with ten named branching dungeons, checkpoints, hazards, authored mechanics, minibosses, bosses, secrets, and declared energy costs.
• Twelve permanent seasonal chapters, weekly profession commissions, recipe research, collection books, and a five-room personal Sanctum.
• Five interactive regional puzzle chambers with saved attempts, hints, failure consequences, streak rewards, and build-aware reward modifiers.
• Five collectible companions with levels, bond, combat statistics, exploration passives, and authored personalities.
• Four persistent professions with 25 levels, five ranks, daily gathering, preserved mastery when switching, and distinct crafting or exploration advantages.
• Server-wide Lastlight development with a shared treasury and four buildings, each providing four levels of permanent benefits.
• Five deterministic server-specific world events that rotate daily and alter enemy strength, rewards, puzzle frequency, and atmosphere.
• Consequence-bearing decisions influenced by class, attributes, items, and currency.
• Scalable enemies with named bosses on every fifth floor.
• Elite enemies with armor, frenzy, venom, life drain, or ancient power.
• Telegraphed enemy intentions, Defend, cooldowns, four abilities per class, and tactical conditions.
• Five attributes, class talent trees, nine subclasses, backgrounds, alignments, titles, scars, and blessings.
• 45 authored regional equipment bases with prefixes, suffixes, subclass sets, curses, and identification.
• 51 named relic identities, protected favorites, loot comparison, drop pity, and collection tracking.
• Permanent legendary and set records, set-drop pity, duplicate fragments, and missing-piece forging.
• Thirty-nine tactical consumables, thirty Living World recipes, five rumor-unlocked forge patterns, a 60-slot vault, and three loadouts.
• Five deterministic floor conditions, named minibosses, hidden rooms, impossible camps, and personal hunts.
• Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary equipment.
• Legendary effects, set bonuses, inspection comparisons, +10 upgrades, shards, enchanting, and rerolling.
• Lastlight contracts, reputation, crafting materials, and a depth-scaled forge.
• Twenty hidden lore fragments and a personal expedition journal.
• Four recurring NPCs with relationship levels, evolving dialogue, and multi-stage personal quests.
• Four-member parties with cooperative roles and stat bonuses.
• Equipment auctions and persistent player guilds with perks, rankings, and shared vaults.
• Consensual arena wagers with escrow, records, and seasonal points.
• Server-wide raid bosses with contribution rankings and distributed rewards.
• Deterministic daily dungeons, five-wave rifts, seasonal ladders, and server-first records.
• Hardcore permanent death, Ascension, prestige, and permanent endgame rewards.
• Daily exploration turns that reset at midnight UTC.
• Experience, levels, gold, death penalties, and unlimited dungeon scaling.
• Achievements with gold rewards and personal creature bestiaries.
• Depth, level, kill, gold, and boss leaderboards.
• Configurable adventure channel and daily turn allowance.
• Versioned, automatic save migration, persistent world-boss controls, per-player synchronization, and administrator difficulty scaling.
• No external services or Python dependencies.

Player Commands

The persistent game hub is the primary interface; ordinary play does not require remembering subcommands. Commands remain available as shortcuts and for accessibility.

Command	Description
[p]deepdelve	Open the persistent Living World game hub
[p]deepdelve create [class] [name]	Create a character
[p]deepdelve adventure	Explore a room or resume battle
[p]deepdelve profile [member]	View a character sheet
[p]deepdelve living <section> [action] [target] [extra]	Play quests, saga, Atlas, Tenets, oaths, relationships, seasons, commissions, and Sanctum systems
[p]deepdelve inventory	Equip and sell collected gear
[p]deepdelve town	Heal, restore mana, and buy potions
[p]deepdelve achievements [member]	View achievement progress
[p]deepdelve bestiary	View discovered enemies
[p]deepdelve lore	Read recovered lore fragments
[p]deepdelve journal	Read recent expedition history
[p]deepdelve materials	View crafting resources
[p]deepdelve contract	Visit the Lastlight contract board
[p]deepdelve craft	Forge a weapon, armor, or charm
[p]deepdelve regions	View discovered dungeon regions
[p]deepdelve chronicle	Open the solo campaign and living-world hub
[p]deepdelve leaderboard [category]	View server rankings
[p]deepdelve retire	Permanently delete your character

[p]delve is a shorter alias for the main command.

Advanced Command Groups

Group	Systems
[p]deepdelve progression	Attributes, talents, backgrounds, alignment, subclass, title, and respec
[p]deepdelve item	Armory, stash, loadouts, favorites, supplies, patterns, collections, and relic systems
[p]deepdelve npc	Lastlight characters, relationships, and story quests
[p]deepdelve party	Party creation, joining, leaving, status, and cooperative roles
[p]deepdelve auction	Browse, list, buy, and cancel fixed-price equipment listings
[p]deepdelve guild	Player guilds, contributions, perks, rankings, and shared vaults
[p]deepdelve arena	Challenges, escrowed wagers, acceptance, declining, and cancellation
[p]deepdelve endgame	Rifts, daily dungeons, Hardcore, Ascension, seasons, and world bosses
[p]deepdelve chronicle	Campaign, tutorial, rumors, bestiary, recap, companions, professions, events, and town growth

Use [p]help deepdelve <group> to see every subcommand and argument.

The Living Chronicle

The main solo story spans five chapters from the Forgotten Warrens through the Margin of the World. Each chapter contains three authored scenes and ends in one of three permanent decisions. Those choices are recorded on the campaign panel and grant small build bonuses, so two characters can finish with meaningfully different histories and statistics.

[p]deepdelve chronicle
[p]deepdelve chronicle tutorial
[p]deepdelve chronicle campaign
[p]deepdelve chronicle puzzle

Campaign scenes use a Continue Story button. Major decisions use dedicated buttons and cannot be undone without retiring the character.

Living Morality and Convictions

Alignment records what a delver believed when their origin was written. Living Morality records what their actions demonstrate afterward. Campaign decisions and consequential dungeon encounters shift a score from −100 Umbral to +100 Radiant, while Mercy, Honesty, Ambition, and Ruthlessness track the motives beneath those choices.

Repeated easy deeds rapidly lose influence and stop granting Morality after three occurrences. Unique campaign choices are recorded once and cannot be farmed. As a delver changes, their character-sheet color, aura description, NPC dialogue, shrines, wanderer encounters, available titles, and certain dungeon solutions change with them.

Established characters unlock a Conviction power. Using it creates Conviction Fatigue; two later victories recharge it, while bosses, camps, the inn, and Ascension clear the fatigue immediately:

• Radiant: Lantern Grace heals, cleanses, and protects.
• Uncommitted: Measured Gambit rewrites an enemy intention and restores resources.
• Umbral: Dread Claim wounds through armor and steals health.

Use [p]deepdelve chronicle morality for the complete moral sheet and [p]deepdelve chronicle deeds for the permanent recent record.

Companions and Professions

Companions unlock at milestone depths. One can be active at a time; victories build XP and bond, improving its statistics and passive effects. The roster includes a trap-finding tunnel hound, a mana-restoring spore wisp, a salvaging memory automaton, an elite-hunting court familiar, and an Unwritten shade that can return spent time.

Blacksmith, Alchemist, Cartographer, and Relic Hunter professions each level to 25 through relevant activity. Members receive three manual gathering actions per UTC day, while exploration and combat also grant profession experience. Switching paths costs currency but preserves mastery in every learned profession.

Lastlight and World Events

Every member can contribute currency to Lastlight's shared treasury. Administrators spend it on the Deepforge, Lantern Infirmary, Forbidden Archive, or Lastlight Watch. Their benefits feed directly into crafting, services, potions, campaign and puzzle rewards, and daily turns.

Each server receives a deterministic daily world event. Black Rain, the Lantern Festival, Shifting Stairs, the Hollow March, and the Quiet Deep change the risk and reward profile of ordinary expeditions without requiring scheduled maintenance.

Tactical Combat

Enemies reveal their next intention before every action. Intentions include measured strikes, crushing blows, multi-hit flurries, defensive stances, curses, and healing. Players can attack, defend, use a potion, flee, choose an unlocked ability, or deploy one of fifteen regional tactical consumables from persistent combat selectors.

Every class unlocks abilities at levels 1, 4, 7, and 12. Leveling grants attribute points and regular talent points. At level 10, each base class chooses one of three permanent subclasses:

• Vanguard: Guardian, Berserker, or Warlord
• Shadow: Assassin, Duelist, or Trickster
• Arcanist: Elementalist, Necromancer, or Chronomancer

Advanced Equipment

Equipment can carry a prefix, suffix, set identity, enchantment, binding, curse, or legendary power. Rare relics may initially be unidentified. Inventory controls support equipping, selling, dismantling, upgrading, enchanting, and rerolling. Item commands provide detailed inspection, identification, curse cleansing, set bonuses, and the permanent relic codex.

The expanded armory supports protected favorites, rarity-based auto-dismantling, a 60-slot Lastlight vault, three named equipment loadouts, collection summaries, and five guaranteed-effect patterns learned by resolving regional rumors. Origin weapons are bound keepsakes with a +3 ceiling and cannot be sold or dismantled.

Inventory actions disable themselves when they do not apply to the selected item. Inspection shows exact next-upgrade attributes and power, effect, and set changes. Valuable disposal requires confirmation, while enchanting offers either a random sigil or a chosen sigil at double cost. The Armory menu provides sorting, filtering, favorite protection, salvage thresholds, and protected bulk dismantling; favorites, loadout gear, bound items, sets, legendaries, enchantments, and special relics are never included in a bulk salvage.

Native relic powers and enchantment powers coexist, so enchanting never erases an origin, pattern, suffix, boss, or legendary identity. Pattern forging always produces its advertised power. Discovering two slots of a set and converting a weaker duplicate into a fragment unlocks deterministic missing-piece forging with [p]deepdelve item completeset <set>.

Multiplayer and Endgame

Parties hold up to four delvers. Cooperative roles—Guardian, Striker, Support, and Scout—add distinct bonuses. Player guilds level through contributions and world-boss activity, unlocking economy, Luck, daily-turn, and raid-damage perks.

Arena wagers are consensual and escrowed: currency is withdrawn when a challenge is created, paid only after acceptance, and refundable through decline or cancellation. The auction house transfers real equipment and uses the selected DeepDelve economy.

Challenge rifts contain five escalating waves. Daily dungeons are deterministically seeded from the UTC date so every server receives the same modifier; their effective floor is bracketed near each delver's deepest progression. World bosses are shared server encounters with individual attack cooldowns and contribution-based rewards.

Ascension becomes available after floor 20 and four bosses. It resets combat progression for permanent prestige and blessings while preserving lore, codex, achievements, currency, reputation, titles, and social membership. Hardcore mode is optional and must be selected before the first kill; a Hardcore combat death permanently seals that character. Prestige combat bonuses cap after ten ranks while later Ascensions continue to count toward the character's chronicle.

Server Settings

Administrators and members with Manage Server can configure the game:

[p]deepdelve set
[p]deepdelve set enabled true
[p]deepdelve set channel #adventures
[p]deepdelve set channel
[p]deepdelve set turns 40
[p]deepdelve set difficulty 1.00
[p]deepdelve set economy bank
[p]deepdelve set resetuser @member

The channel restriction applies to both commands and interactive exploration buttons. New servers default to 40 daily turns, configurable from 5 to 100. Difficulty may be set from 0.75× to 2.00× and scales enemy health, attack, defense, and rewards.

Red Economy Integration

DeepDelve supports two per-server economy modes:

[p]deepdelve set economy internal
[p]deepdelve set economy bank

• internal is the default and keeps dungeon gold isolated inside DeepDelve.
• bank uses Red's configured bank balance and currency name for the entire game.

In bank mode, monster and boss rewards, treasure, item sales, contracts, achievements, crafting costs, town purchases, narrative choices, and death penalties all directly affect the member's Red bank account. Gold leaderboards also read live bank balances.

Balance changes are applied as transaction deltas. If another economy cog changes a member's balance while an adventure is active, DeepDelve adds or subtracts only its own transaction rather than replacing the outside change. Rewards respect Red's configured maximum bank balance.

Switching to bank mode does not deposit existing internal dungeon gold. It becomes inactive while the game uses the member's existing bank balance. Switching back uses the character's most recently cached balance as internal gold.

Gameplay Notes

• Exploring a new room costs one turn; combat actions do not.
• A floor contains five rooms. Every fifth floor ends with a boss.
• Fleeing becomes easier with Luck, but bosses are harder to escape.
• A normal defeated character loses 15% of their currency, may gain a cosmetic scar, retreats one floor, and is restored at Lastlight. Challenge failures instead restore the interrupted expedition. Hardcore deaths are permanent.
• Equipment packs hold 25 items. Loot found while full is converted into gold.
• Town prices scale with character level and dungeon depth.
• Region-specific materials drop from enemies and bosses. The forge consumes three units of the current region's material.
• Narrative encounters remain saved until the member makes a decision.
• Contracts progress through enemy victories and award reputation alongside currency and experience.
• Newly posted player controls remain usable across cog reloads and bot restarts. Controls are bound to their original delver; reopen older pre-4.0.1 screens with [p]deepdelve adventure.

Permissions

The bot needs:

• Send Messages
• Embed Links
• Use External Emojis (only if required by the server's emoji configuration)

No privileged Discord intents are required.

Data and Privacy

DeepDelve stores Discord user IDs and persistent game state per server. Stored data includes character details, attributes, inventory, equipment, currency cache, dungeon progress, active encounters and choices, conditions, crafting materials, contracts, reputation, NPC stories, lore, journal entries, titles, scars, blessings, achievements, social membership, arena records, endgame progress, seasonal progress, campaign decisions, puzzle history, companions, professions, gathering activity, town contributions, world-event discoveries, and discovered enemies. Server configuration also stores party, auction, player-guild and shared-vault, arena, world-boss, server-first, shared town, and contributor records. When bank mode is enabled, DeepDelve reads and changes the member's Red bank balance for game transactions.

The cog implements Red's user-data export and deletion hooks. Players can also delete their current server character directly with [p]deepdelve retire. No game data is sent to an external service.

Project Structure

DeepDelve is divided into focused modules:

• content.py contains original regions, enemies, bosses, events, and base loot.
• advanced_content.py contains abilities, talents, subclasses, sets, legendaries, NPCs, and seasons.
• expansion_content.py contains campaign chapters, puzzles, companions, professions, town buildings, world events, and the expanded enemy and boss roster.
• art.py resolves the optimized creature and boss portraits in assets/bestiary/.
• systems/campaign.py handles permanent story progression and choice bonuses.
• systems/puzzles.py handles puzzle selection, saved attempts, hints, and rewards.
• systems/companions.py handles collection, bond, leveling, and passive statistics.
• systems/professions.py handles profession ranks, experience, and gathering.
• systems/world.py handles deterministic events and shared town upgrades.
• systems/migrations.py performs idempotent profile and guild save upgrades.
• living_content.py contains validated 5.0 campaign, faction, dungeon, event, equipment, recipe, contract, and permanent-season definitions.
• systems/quests.py, legacy.py, and relationships.py handle the journal, Resolve/Tenets/factions, consequences, NPC memory, mail, and World Echoes.
• systems/atlas.py, nemesis.py, and living_campaign.py handle named expeditions, personal rivals, the six-act saga, and permanent endings.
• systems/commissions.py, sanctum.py, season_archive.py, and economy.py handle profession goals, capped sinks, archived chapters, reward budgets, and projections.
• systems/content_registry.py validates content counts, keys, references, and rewards.
• systems/combat.py handles enemy intentions.
• systems/progression.py calculates builds, titles, subclasses, talents, scars, and blessings.
• systems/items.py handles advanced procedural itemization and equipment operations.
• systems/story.py evaluates NPC relationships and story quests.
• systems/social.py supports parties, player guilds, arena ratings, and record IDs.
• systems/endgame.py produces seasons and deterministic daily challenges.
• deepdelve.py owns Red commands, persistence orchestration, and Discord interactions.

Dashboard

DeepDelve registers a read-only Red-Web-Dashboard page showing server settings and available commands. Individual player profiles are intentionally excluded.