Below you’ll find links and tips for Solasta Crown of the Magister Dungeon Maker (DM) for creating custom maps and campaigns.

With any of these guides, check the publish date and be sure you’re looking at the latest info.

The two must read guides are:

TA’s official Dungeon Maker - User Manual

Creating Campaigns[solasta-dungeons.fandom.com] by Vincto et al.

DM tools to check and analyze campaigns

(defunct) https://solastatools.com
(source code) https://github.com/vel8b8/solastatools-public

There are many other resources for DMs:

Steam discussion Dungeon Maker & Modding

TA’s Discord #dm-tool-chat[discord.com] and #custom-dungeons-only[discord.com]

TA’s forums Dungeon Maker & Modding[forums.solasta-game.com]

Silverquick ’s guide to downloading and installing custom maps[forums.solasta-game.com]

Vincto ‘s guide on how to play a custom adventure / map

fabula_rasa ‘s crafting guide and reference (recipes, ingredients)

Fextralife's DM guide[solastacrownofthemagister.wiki.fextralife.com]

List of enemies (list of mobs, list of monsters) on Fextralife[solastacrownofthemagister.wiki.fextralife.com]

List of weapons on Fextralife[solastacrownofthemagister.fandom.com]

Visual Mood (Lighting) DM Guide


You can publish to Steam workshop and:
https://solasta.mod.io/
https://www.nexusmods.com/solastacrownofthemagister


Fandom's Creating User Modules by Vincto, Silverquick et al[solasta-dungeons.fandom.com]

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2611152183

Read TA's DM User Manual before starting.


Enemy Spawn

Auto spawn creates mobs when a member of the party is within 15 tiles of the mob placement. Line of Sight (LOS) is not necessary to auto spawn. Once spawned, mobs are part of your save game.

Removing a mob from the map in the DM is insufficient to remove a spawned mob; you’ll have to kill them. This makes it very important to save far from an encounter, so that you can adjust the encounter difficulty during your playthrough.

One alternative is to use an area activator to trigger mob spawn, while turning auto spawn off. You can then enter the area prior to spawn.

Line of Sight

Line of Sight (LOS) doesn’t always work as expected. Some walls are see through or have gaps, some obstacles (like large rocks), do not block LOS. Be sure to test enemy placement with LOS.

Planning Encounters | Enemy Composition

Be careful with large monster placement. Any mob that’s larger than a single tile can get stuck in a wall on spawn, even if it appears adjacent in the DM map tool.

Consider mob AI pathfinding when arranging encounters, items, and blockers. Ensure large mobs have enough space to reach the party unless you’re deliberately creating safe spaces or funnels.

Plan your encounters and encounter group numbers. Ensure you don’t accidentally trigger a second group by giving them the same number.

Lore

Lore placement and player pauses: Often you'll want to get the player to step in a certain place to trigger a lore area activator. Doing this in woodlands or large dungeon rooms is challenging, especially if you have multiple sequential lore to tell part of the story. Placing traps, harvestables, or loot with the open direction pointing at the lore will force the player to slow down at those points, giving you a moment to show the lore.

Map Content and Aesthetics

Silverquick gives great advice on avoiding sparsely decorated maps and creating the right mood with content. (scroll down in that post)

Misc Tips


Interaction triangles indicate where the player needs to be to open a chest, touch an object, etc. You can rotate these (R). You can use the interaction position to force a player to step on a lore area, trap, button, etc.

Activated lore appears to not work (bugged). Creative use of lore areas might get you where you want to be.

Location min character level and max character level describe entry only, not during play, not the exit level. For example, if you have min 1 max 2, you can enter with a level 1 or 2 character but you could level up all the way to level 5 if there was enough xp.

Create distinct saves at different progress marks in each map. Auto spawn and mob placement make it difficult to playtest encounter changes. You’ll need to “rewind” to earlier saves, sometimes on the previous map, in order to check the updated encounter.


How to get entry activators to work (bugged still, September 2021). Place the entry activator and activated lore in any room (not in the walls). Add gadget on the entry activator to attach to the activated lore. Entry activator "entry once" unchecked. Display once on the lore checked.