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Dungeon Settlers is a dungeon-crawling colony sim!
It is ridiculously fun—but it also has a ridiculous number of unusual mechanics, so there are plenty of moments where you may find yourself wondering what on earth the game expects you to do.
This time, let’s tackle two particularly pressing questions:
“How do I level up?”
“Where is the EXP bar in the first place?”
Let’s get into it.
The Answer in Three Lines
- To level up, you need to fill your EXP bar and then offer Mana Stones at the Goddess Statue.
- The Goddess Statue must first be unlocked by progressing through research at your settlement.
- There are two important building controls worth learning early.
With that out of the way, let’s go through everything step by step.
How Leveling Works in Dungeon Settlers
Step 1. Defeat Enemies to Earn EXP
In Dungeon Settlers, defeating enemies earns your characters EXP.
The bar shown at the very top of the character’s Stats tab is the EXP bar.
Before you can level up, you first need to fill this bar completely.
Step 2. Offer Mana Stones at the Goddess Statue
However, filling the EXP bar alone is not enough to level up.
To actually level a character, you need to right-click the Goddess Statue and offer Mana Stones.
Mana Stones are dropped by defeated enemies.
Right-clicking the Goddess Statue opens a screen like the one above.
In Dungeon Settlers, the amount of Mana Stones you offer affects the bonus applied to your stat growth.
The option on the left requires fewer Mana Stones but provides lower stat growth, while the options farther to the right require more Mana Stones and provide better growth.
Choose whichever option you prefer, then press Pray.
Step 3. Reroll Your Level-Up Results
You will then be shown your stat gains and a selection of five Inscriptions, which provide effects such as stat bonuses or access to new skill trees.
Choose one of the Inscriptions, then press Accept to complete the level-up.
The growth system is essentially RNG-based. If you do not like the results, you can press Retry and spend additional Mana Stones to reroll them.
If you find yourself thinking:
“I want to keep this Inscription.”
or
“The stat rolls are great, but I want a different Inscription.”
you can click the lock icon highlighted in red to lock that particular result before rerolling the others.
Depending on your difficulty settings, it is also possible to reload a save and reroll the level-up results that way.
How Do You Build the Goddess Statue?
Now, some of you have probably reached this point with another question:
“Okay, but how do I build the Goddess Statue?”
“There’s no Goddess Statue in my construction list!”
That is because the Goddess Statue is initially locked.
Press the eye icon in the construction UI and you can confirm that it is currently locked.
To unlock it, you need to progress through research as described below, then build the Goddess Statue itself.
Let’s go through the process.
Step 1. Create an Indoor Room with Walls and a Door
To conduct research, you first need to place a Research Station indoors.
In other words, nothing can really begin until you have created an area that the game recognizes as an indoor room.
To make an indoor space like the one shown above, you need to:
- completely surround the area with walls, leaving no gaps
- install a door at one point in the wall
You can build wooden walls and doors from the section shown below.
Left-click an empty part of the screen to open the construction menu, then:
- Click the house icon.
- Select the wooden wall or door, then click where you want to place it on the map.
I recommend making the room fairly spacious so you have some extra room to work with later.
Step 2. Build a Research Station
Next, you need a Research Station.
Once again, left-click an empty area to open the construction menu, then select the Research Station from the Workstations category on the far left.
It requires Logs to build.
There is one extremely important thing to keep in mind here:
Your characters cannot conduct research unless they have enough space to stand in front of the Research Station and work.
If the route to the station is blocked, or if the translucent area shown while placing it—the space where a character needs to stand while working—is stuck inside a wall, the character will not be able to use it.
Move the Research Station to another location or rotate it with the Q/E keys until there is enough working space.
Step 3. Research “Wood Processing”
Now it’s finally time for some research.
To begin research, click the Research icon in the upper-right corner of the screen to open the Research window.
Once it is open, click Wood Processing, marked with the red circle in the image above, and start researching it.
As long as they are not sleeping, your characters will handle the research automatically, so just give them a little time.
Completing this research unlocks the Goddess Statue.
Step 4. Build a Carpentry Workbench Indoors
You have unlocked the Goddess Statue!
…But there is still one more step before you can actually build it.
You first need to make the Wood Planks required as construction materials.
Just as you did with the Research Station in Step 2, build a Carpentry Workbench indoors.
Again, pay attention to its orientation and make sure your characters have a clear path and enough room to work in front of it.
This also requires Logs to build.
Step 5. Make Two Wood Planks
Click the Carpentry Workbench, find Wood Plank in the production list, and make two of them.
You can specify the amount using the section marked in red at the bottom-right of the screen, then start production.
These Wood Planks are the materials you need for the Goddess Statue.
Note that the statue does not use raw Logs directly.
Step 6. Build the Goddess Statue
Once you have the materials, it is time for the final step.
Open the construction menu, go to Special, select the Wooden Goddess Statue, and build it.
Two Important Building Controls You Should Learn
There are two particularly useful controls when dealing with construction.
Fortunately, both are very simple.
Important Control #1: Demolish
First is the Demolish button, marked by the blue circle in the image above.
After selecting this button, right-click an object to order it to be demolished.
This is useful when:
- You built a wall in a stupid place and trapped one of your characters!!
- You placed a storage container somewhere that blocks the path.
- You simply messed up the construction.
You will also get some of the materials used for construction back.
Important Control #2: Cancel
Next is the Cancel button.
This is especially useful when:
- You accidentally ordered the demolition of something you absolutely did NOT want to destroy!!!
Press the Cancel button, then right-click the object whose order you want to cancel.
And that’s it.
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Summary
- Leveling up in Dungeon Settlers requires more than EXP—you also need to offer Mana Stones at the Goddess Statue.
- To build the Goddess Statue, you need to progress through research and prepare the necessary production facilities.
- Learn how to use the Demolish and Cancel buttons to make settlement construction much smoother.
And that’s how leveling works in Dungeon Settlers!
Until next time, have a great gaming life!
Thanks for reading all the way to the end!!!
