With the release of the long awaited skill dungeoneering came some sharp criticism over its classification as a skill. A number of people have argued that it really should be classed as an activity considering the number of skills needed to complete levels of the dungeon, not to mention its similarities to Stealing Creation. However, dungeoneering is not that much different from the preexisting skills.
Some of the skills—such as mining, fishing, and woodcutting—don't mean very much on their own other than being gathering skills. However, they give the base for other skills that depend on them to provide the raw materials to level. Take for example smithing. In order to smith, you need to either smelt ores or smith bars. Ores don't just magically appear from the Grand Exchange, nor do we really get enough as drops from monsters to get from level 1 to 99. The majority of ores have to come from somewhere, i.e. the resources collected from mining.
Consider another skill: fletching. It has a wide range of methods to level up. It requires logs to create arrow shafts, unstrung bows, and crossbow limbs. Woodcutting supplies the logs. Fletching requires pearls, gems, and bars to make bolts and arrow tips. Mining and smithing help supply the materials and skills needed to make them. Crafting is needed to spin the flax to provide for the bow and crossbow strings.
And what about construction? Where do we get the trophies we put up on our walls, the materials we need to build our rooms? What about herblore and slayer? The list goes on and on, but hopefully from these examples we can see how the skills depend on one another to level up. Dungeoneering is no different; it just relies on a larger range of skills needed to complete each floor of a dungeon.
Dungeoneering could turn out being quite the unique skill. While the concept itself is similar to World of Warcraft's instances and and the activity Stealing Creation, there are a good deal of questions remaining. Is this a skill for actual character development, that is to say are we going to be able to use these dungeoneering levels for something outside of quests and outside of Daemonheim? Could dungeoneering be a skill that will introduce new equipment to allow us to explore more mysterious places in the game? Could such equipment combine the current skills together—like the Inferno Adze with its mining and woodcutting capabilities—so that we can explore such areas without being overly burdened, saving precious inventory space? Could this skill take treasure trail hunting onto a whole new level?
Perhaps we're too quick to judge on how dungeoneering works and what it will do in the long run. Give it some thought, give it a chance. The only thing you got to lose with this skill (for the moment) is time (and perhaps your sanity).
