Schmankerl Depths 🗡️

Schmankerl Depths logo

⚠️ Beta Version

Schmankerl Depths is a dungeon-crawling cooking survival experience for Hytale, built around one simple loop: explore -> fight -> harvest -> cook -> adapt -> descend.

Created for the Hytale New Worlds Contest, Schmankerl Depths focuses on a strong first descent, readable survival systems, and a Depthwright dungeon fantasy where every monster is part of the food chain.

Quick Start

If you want to reach the entrance quickly as a server admin or tester:

Make sure your account has op or the schmankerldepths.admin permission.
Use /sdadmin teleport surface.
Enter the well to access the dungeon entrance area.
Talk to the Depths Host at the entrance.
Take the starter ingredients.
Cook Carrot + Stick into a Roast Vegetable at the campfire.
Hold the Roast Vegetable in your hand and show it to the host to open the gate.

The surface entrance is dynamically spawned. If you need to verify its exact location, use the server logs or the persisted spawn data rather than relying on hardcoded public coordinates.

ℹ️ Note for testers: Older versions may occasionally crash due to a known client-side bug. This issue has already been reported and is less likely to occur in newer versions. If a crash happens, please retry once, as the issue usually does not happen again on the second attempt within the same session.

Campfire tutorial and first onboarding steps

What Is Schmankerl Depths?

Schmankerl Depths begins at the Aldenmoor ruins, where a buried entrance leads into a protected dungeon instance. Inside, you prepare in a staging hub, learn the first cooking steps, and descend into a hostile ecosystem where hunger, hazards, and monster drops all matter.

Why It Stands Out

Monster ecology first - monsters are not just enemies; they are part of the dungeon's food chain, ingredient flow, and room identity.
Cooking is progression - meals are used to restore hunger, handle hazards, and prepare for deeper layers.
One lesson per floor - each layer is designed to teach a different survival lesson instead of becoming one long blur of combat.
Dynamic dungeon generation - floors are assembled from prefab pools at runtime, combining fixed progression spaces with randomized room layouts instead of relying on one static handcrafted route.
Replayable but readable - the structure stays understandable while the dungeon still leaves room for variation and discovery.

Current Build

The current build already includes:

The Aldenmoor surface entrance and instance transition
The in-instance staging hub with the Depths Host
Starter cooking and gate onboarding through Roast Vegetable
Unique monsters like Sporecap Grazer, Puffball Drifter, Mossback Lurker, Sporecap Sprout
Dungeon-specific hunger pressure, buff, and hazard systems
Floor-aware HUD elements for location, hazards, hunger, buffs, and bosses
Boss encounter: Mycel Regent with two phases and unique drops

Experience Overview

Entrance Flow

The intended first-time path is:

Aldenmoor Ruins Entrance -> Well Fall -> Schmankerl Depths Entrance -> First descent

The staging hub is a safe onboarding room, not just a menu stop. It teaches the loop in-world: talk to the host, take supplies, cook a first meal, then commit to the dungeon.

Aldenmoor surface entrance and well approach

Core Systems

Hunger pressure makes food matter inside the dungeon.
Hazard tags help define what each area is trying to teach.
Meal buffs reward preparation and adaptation instead of raw stat inflation.
Floor-based progression keeps the descent readable.

Dungeon HUD with floor, hazard, hunger, and buff information

Dynamic Dungeon Generator

One of the key technical pillars of Schmankerl Depths is its runtime dungeon assembly.

Instead of shipping only one fixed route, the dungeon generator combines:

fixed structural rooms such as entry, boss gate, boss chamber, and rest spaces
a randomized exploration grid built from floor-specific room prefabs
validated door-marker alignment between connected rooms
a guaranteed valid path from the floor entrance to the boss gate

That gives the project a style of replayable dungeon construction that goes beyond a purely static vanilla-style handcrafted layout while still keeping the floor logic understandable for players.

Generated dungeon combat room layout

Broader Technical Direction

The current implementation already contains a procedural floor generator and prefab queue system that build dungeon floors from grid logic, prefab pools, and snap markers. That system is a major part of the project's identity and one of the clearest places where Schmankerl Depths extends beyond standard static content assembly.

Screenshots

Depths Host onboarding conversation

Boss room or final chamber reveal

Sporecap Grazer encounter and mushroom creature lineup

Ember grove room with glowing flora variation

This plugin is under active development. 🛠️