Pathfinder: Kingmaker – Beneath the Stolen Lands Basics

Beneath the Stolen Lands Rules

 
This guide is a work in progress, comment if you’ve anything important to add. 
 
This covers the standalone dlc dungeon only, there are already plenty of great pages on the version of the tenebrous depths that appears in the main campaign. 
 
The hub area 
 
A new run always starts in the same hub area, which offers the following: 
 

• A dragon which will explain the plot, allow you to build and hire additional characters, and sell you potions, scrolls, and miscellaneous magic items. 
• A human who will sell you a random selection of goods. 
• A chest containing your shared loot stash, as in the throne room in the main campaign. 
• A small table containing all meta-progression items (see below) 
• A large table allowing the group to rest

 
Your first port of call is usually to use the dragon to bring your party up to strength. You have enough gold for 3 more party members, but can usually grab a 4th if you sell some of your starting scrolls and potions. 
 
The “rest” table only works once per level of the dungeon. Going back to the dungeon and reloading the hub won’t refresh it – once you use that rest it’s gone until you clear another level of the dungeon. 
 
The small table won’t contain anything on your first run, that’s okay. 
 
The dungeon 
 
The dungeon is procedurally generated and follows most of the rules for the main game. There are only a few differences to note: 
 

• You cannot backtrack up a flight of stairs, the stairs that you entered any given level by will always return you to the hub. Conversely the hub always returns you to the deepest level that you’ve reached. If you leave something and go down a floor it’s gone forever. 
• Some groups of enemies are designated elite. When you defeat such a group there’ll be an explosion and an icon will appear. Clicking on it will give the effects of a full 8 hour rest. 
• There are no non combat encounters, but you will periodically encounter pillars with an associated skill check, passing it grants some xp and some sort of buff for the whole party. 
• Because the levels are randomly generated they may make little sense, secret doors can be placed in bizaare places and the rewards you find may be wildly more or less powerful than you’d expect for what you went through to get at them. 
• At level 10 and every 5 levels thereafter the level will contain a miniboss. Defeating it will add extra items to the human’s shop at the top, but they are possible to miss and may be hidden in secret rooms. 
• Each dungeon contains exactly one story boss. Defeating them expands the shop and if you are carrying that bosses four unique relics they will drop a fifth. The relics can be found anywhere in the dungeon, including on lower floors after you kill them (obliging you to start again to get their fifth relic) 
• A run ends when you die or quit by leaving the hub area in the opposite direction to the dungeon.

 
So long story short: Have a few characters with high perception and run them along the walls becasue secrets could be anywhere. When you defeat a story boss you won’t see another one so if you want to keep progressing it might be time to retire and start a new party. Or you can keep going to try to find their relics. 
 
The “once per floor” rest at the big table upstairs does not accumulate, if you don’t use it before going down a floor you just miss a rest. Similarly you don’t have to take a rest for beating an elite group immediately, but if you go downstairs you can’t come back for it. 
 
A new run 
 
When your run is over you can start a new run. This will take some data from your previous run and use it to create a new game. A few notes on that: 
 

• Each run is seeded, if you start several new runs from the same save they’ll encounter the exact same rooms, treasure etc. 
• Any plot relics you’ve found on the previous run (or the run the previous run was based on or …) will be on the small round table to the right of the dragon, allowing for progression towards the ending. 
• You will receive a choice of boons based on your previous game. They may claim to offer a random item, but because the game is seeded you’ll always get the same one. You can start with a dummy character, check out your boon, then start a new game with a character who’d want that item. 
• The number of items that the shopkeeper sells is based on how many minibosses you’ve defeated, but the exact choices are semi-random. Again this is seeded, you might want to look at his more expensive offerings before building your mercenaries to take advantage of his best offerings. 
• Story bosses and minibosses you’ve defeated before can appear again.

 
So the metaprogresson is along three axis: 
1. Get to a deep dungeon level to give your next group a good boon 
2. Beat minibosses to make the shop more and more useful over consecutive runs 
3. Collect relics. You need all of them to finish the DLC, absolutely nothing in the game tells you this, but this is your main objective if you want to know how it ends! 
 

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