How to play vicious? Bronze challenge?

[pouzzler]

Hello,
I don't remember another puzzle game seducing me that much, except Deadly Rooms of Death, and that's quite the compliment! Thanks a lot, dev team

Anyways, on to the questions :

I remember reading a quest (not sure, but what else could it have been?) popup telling me that doing this or that would unlock a vicious difficulty dungeon. Now I can't find this text anywhere by hovering over the quests still open to me.
But where do I click to actually select a vicious difficulty dungeon?

Or alternatively, did I drink too much and have I actually not unlocked vicious mode?

Here's what I have on my adventure screen :

Halls of Steel : Dancing Blades
Grimm's Grotto : Halfling's Ho
Ick Swamp : Challenge Accepted
Magma Mines : Minecraft
Havendale Bridge : Unlikely Heroes Forest Edition
The Labyrinth : Muu
and Rock Garden : Hard Rock, Unlikely Heroes Desert Edition, Complicated Tasks, pt 4

Hobbler's Hold, Northern Desert, Den of Danger, Western Jungle, Southern Swamp, Venture Cave, Eastern Tundra, Double Doom, Hexx Ruins, The Slime Pit, Creeplight Ruins, Berserker Camp are devoid of quests (I have finished those I had).

The game hasn't proposed me a town upgrade in a very long while, so I suppose no more upgrades are to be had (or maybe when I reach vicious?).

So what am I missing, please?

Secondly, I have unlocked every normal class, plus tinker and transmuter. I have done every normal quest's bronze challenge, yet didn't get the steam achievement 'Hero Literate' - I suppose I must do the special classes bronze challenges - how, they don't have a building to select the challenge from, as far as I am aware?

PS : I am playing the game under Wine/Ubuntu 13, if that might be the cause of my puzzlements, which I very much doubt.

[flap]

Finish Dancing Blades in Halls of Steel to unlock the vicious Steel.

Finishing the complicated tasks quests will let you upgrade the Witch.

You select special classes challenge in the explorers' guild. And by the way, you still have one more special class to unlock. I don't know if monster classes have challenges...

[The Avatar]

Monsters do not have class challenges, and you are laking one of the special classes (as mentioned above). Vicious dungeons are found on the map like normal dungeons once you unlock them. Also, Dancing Blades, Muu..., and challenge accepted unlock vicious dungeons. If you are referring to the vicious token, it is unlocked when you win the game and can be prepped for 20 gold.

[pouzzler]

I reckon it means all these dungeons I finished don't have a vicious mode? In any case, thanks for the answers, and sorry I didn't thank you earlier.

[Blovski]

Nonono, not quite:

To get the Vicious Token (i.e. vicious mode prep) for most dungeons you have to finish the main quest/'win the game'.

Spoiler for progress hint:
You need to get every monster trophy to do this.

There are also four directional Vicious dungeons which you'll unlock by completing the quests on your screen.

[TheSchachter]

I feel that there's some confusion due to the wording of the Halls of Steel dungeon's description. It says "Beating this dungeon with 4 classes will unlock Vicious mode" at the end. (This part of the description is covered by the completion panels as soon as you beat the dungeon once, so it's easy to forget where it is) This might give the wrong idea of what "vicious mode" means or how the Vicious qualifier is applied; if I'm not mistaken that "vicious mode" description was a bit more consistent in the early days of the Beta back when there were other Hard dungeons with a "Vicious mode" (someone correct me if I'm wrong, I wasn't playing back then).

So, the following has been stated above, but to be 100% clear, there are 3 types of Vicious:

-The natively vicious-difficulty dungeons that are unlocked as you complete the quests that appear in each direction of the map. Examples of the quests that unlock these vicious dungeons are Challenge Accepted and Muu.

-The "vicious versions" of hard dungeons, of which there are two. One of which is the Halls of Steel mentioned above. The other is unlocked by completing the main storyline.

-The Vicious Token, which you also unlock when finishing the main storyline. Rather than unlocking new dungeons, this is a Kingdom Preparation which you can select to make any dungeon much more difficult (the monster stats are greatly increased). This is not to be confused with the "vicious versions" mentioned above; those are treated by the game as separate dungeons from their hard counterparts, whereas the Vicious Token is basically a bonus badge you can earn for every dungeon (even the already vicious ones!)

I appologize if this info is a bit redundant, but I felt that a clear breakdown might be useful, especially since the Vicious qualifier is used a lot on these forums (understandably and it can be confusing if you're not there yet. Hope it helps!

[The Avatar]

No, that's a good write-up. Back in the earlier beta there weren't (to my knowledge) vicious versions of the dungeons. They were just vicious. HHoS and the Hard Crypt were added and then their vicious versions were made side quests. The Crypt was removed and vicious crypt was stuffed into VHoS.

[TheSchachter]

Aaah, that makes sense with what I'd read, thanks for the clarification.

[flap]

Hmm. We might need to wikify this. Thanks TheSchachter for that clear write up.