Dungeon Settlers Depletion and Dungeon Stay Explained

Depletion

Every floor has a depletion gauge. Clearing the same floor repeatedly without a break drains it. The in-game text says only that “when the depletion level is completely depleted, the number of item drops decreases”.

The 10 Advanced Tips video gives more detail: the gauge runs from 0 to 5, a fully depleted floor puts a -50% drop penalty on the whole region, and it takes 15 in-game days to recover. A Steam forum post quotes a similar -50% figure from an unofficial wiki. CanOpener has not published these numbers, so treat them as player-reported.

A player on the forum notes that because every run starts from Floor 1, you pass through the upper floors a lot; running straight to the portal instead of clearing every room helps.

Dungeon Stay

Every day your party spends in the dungeon past midnight, the Dungeon Stay mood penalty moves to its next stage. The community wiki lists -4 mood on day 1. The tips video says that by day 4 it can reach -12 or even -24 on higher difficulties, which pushes settlers into the stress spiral that ends in mental breaks. Dungeon Stay penalties scale with management difficulty, a split CanOpener made after its second test.

Players report resting on a safe floor to relieve it; the only certain reset is going home.

How to farm without paying for it

1. Rotate floors and regions instead of hammering one floor.
2. Keep runs short with a clear goal: clay, a boss, a resource.
3. Skip what you do not need. Run past rooms to the portal on floors you are only crossing.
4. Buy what you can. Once gold is steady, merchants are cheaper than a depleted region (merchants and gold).
5. Leave before day 3. Go home, sleep in private rooms and come back.

See mood and stress for the full mood picture and the regions page for every floor.