Steps = Grove > deargodpleaseno
It boils down to the special items that drop there and how easy it is to navigate the place. PV only offers Decree and takes an abnormal amount of time to clear for its spread out rewards. BoC offers worldeater and I have come to loathe the walk, click, wait at every single door.
Yeah, what are those actually for anyway? To slow down the player? To stop enemies from latching on to you and chasing you down far earlier than they should do?
Either way, they’re annoying as shit, especially when you can’t open one because the cursor insists that you’re trying to click on an enemy right next to it instead. :eek:
Greetings.
I’d go for Steps and Ancient Grove.
Steps : good atmosphere, easy pathfinding, I find Alkamos actually hard when challenging him with a self-made char (he gets super easy when I use chars levelled via guide, what the heck is wrong with my own chars).
Bastion : excellent for farming frags, but the area itself doesn’t click for me. The oppressing feeling is indeed here (which I assume is intended), but it’s always the same and I simply don’t like it (I actually enjoy a bit more the void at the beginning, like the plains of strife and such).
Port Valbury : as many state, the map itself is good, the atmosphere is excellent (best of the 4 actually, the notes are top notch), but the pathfinding is really a chore. What I actually hate in here isn’t the aether ground but the aether tornadoes that just won’t leave you alone. Roguelike dungeons are meant to be hard and fast-paced, but after the fight, I actually like to read the notes and be in the mood, and those everlasting homing things won’t let me. The ground damage at the sewers is also a big minus. Sometimes makes me skip the boss there.
One last thing about pathfinding (but it’s something that makes me cringe in any video game) is that our chars seem to be able to save the world from atrocious monstruosities, but cannot walk past a broken board, somehow…
Ancient Grove : fast-paced, different areas, a nice vendor. Challenging monsters. Pretty solid overall. Would’ve enjoyed a bit more notes on the way 
!
Steps + PV > All
BoC is eye cancer and Grove is kinda boring and lengthy up until Gargabol. SoT gets boring but you can do it ridiculously fast, and PV is interesting more or less all the way through.
Honestly, all of then are unique and cool… port valbury being the best in terms of looks but the worst because of the floor damage and hulks everywhere.
I like Ancient Grove the best. It’s shorter than BoC and PV (which are quite long in my opinion), and I can get Ugdenbloom while I’m there.
SoT: fine but a bit dull, but those purple rings are next to impossible to find so I still run it occasionally.
BoC: too dark and too long
PV: aether ground and those homing damage clouds can go die in a fire, it’s also too long.
AG: combines farming blooms with dungeon running, wins almost by default. MI potential quite high too, unlike the others.
SoT: short and sweet, every one of Alkamos’s purples is worthwhile, good chance of meeting Moose on the way.
Grove: Ugdenblooms for days, nice vendor, actually useful MIs, nice density of bosses. Gargabol’s ring is OK, but his pistol is niche.
BoC: Relatively long, terrible color scheme, annoying doors and winding paths. Decent density of heroes and bosses. Worldbreaker is a top-grade purple and the main reason to run here. Also the best place for Benny, if you’re farming him for some reason.
PoV: L O N G, even more winding and blocked-off paths, even more ground damage, even more annoying enemies. Boss MIs aren’t really useful anymore, Aldritch’s scepter is OK. Green is a nice color.
Bastion
Pros: really good roguelike dungeons for leveling, many heroes, maaaaaaaaaaaaybe Shar’Zul will bear a Worldeater
Cons: 3 billion of those damn obsidian gates
Steps
Pros: nice even for bad/weak builds, maaaaaaaaaaaaybe Alcamos will bear a Soulrend/rings
Cons: maybe a little bit long road to this dungeon
Port
Pros: level-design (i’m serious, I’m really like this), 3 belts of guardians, maaaaaaaaaaaaybe Aldritch will bear a sceptre
Cons: waaaaaay to long road, those damn aether grounds
Grove
Pros: short road, nice amount of MI’s, flowers
Cons: for non-mages and non-inquisitor characters Gargabol’s volcano is PITA, Slatsarr a makes waaaaay to much of fumble
I fucking hate Port Valbury.
Everything else is manageable. I can do SoT with my eyes closed.
Port Valbury for me. It’s a really well designed dungeon.
Back in early access I remember finding SoT to be incredibly boring but when they added the fleshed out Arkovian backgrounds the dungeon didn’t feel so monotonous. I honestly think BoC needs some work in this department.
Ancient Grove is alright but it has some pretty tricky areas.
SoT : the longest way to the door with PV, the dungeon in itself has nothing particular (well, yeah a good lore but once you figured it out…) but it’s the easiest/shortest one as others has said so a good reason to farm it.
BoC : i love it because of the tormented design and the feeling of climbing down the pit. and it’s not that hard or long either. the boss is really cool too.
PV : the dungeon in itself is great, but there’s the way to get there :undecided: it’s quite long, it’s full of aether ground damage that almost everybody hates and might be the poorest design choice in GD. it’s better when you get inside and the fallen city is really well designed imo.
AG : i’ll give my advice when i will have bought AoM and FG 
but generally speaking i love the Rogue Dungeons and make the most of my endgame farming there.
Great thread, I just love how the devs seem to have created a rogue-like for every taste, opinions totally differ. Cute.
If you like PV, you´ll probably feel right at home in Malmouth: a shattered city, lots of urban warfare/house-to-house fighting, minus the annoying aether patches/aether swirlies. The atmosphere is great. Dreadful, but in a fun way. So to speak.
I like step and grove the most but generally i don’t do a lot of dungeon
I run them all to alternate, just grinding alwaysthe same is boring, i actually kinda like Valbury. Yeah, don’t bash me.
In decreasing order of preference:
Grove - fairly fast, get some flowers, fair variety of mobs. Fair bit of open ground.
The second level can give you a fright if both the Shadowstalker and Kuba are tight friends with the stone-thrower golems. Boss has nice fight terrain.
Port Val - was my first Roguelike ever and at level 50 with really low resistances I had to fight tooth and nail to get through this --ultimately died. Yet the tmosphere was great and it just felt so gritty. Later runs were easier but still remains a great memory.
SoT --easiest and fastest for 90% of play styles. short with not much mob variety. I rarely run this anymore as it resembles most of the other undead areas. The SoT dungeon leading up to it has great scenery design, though, if you’ve ever stopped to look around there.
BoC --greyed out with demons and most boring for scenery - same as all the void areas. I personally liked the obsidian gates as that allowed my weak character to use positioning to bomb the crap out of trapped heroes.
SoT and AG for me. Both are easy to navigate and have a decent effort vs payout ratio. I find the other two dungeons have a lot of enemies that take a lot of effort to kill relative to their drops, they are harder to navigate, and the environmental effects, while largely avoidable, are annoying. I don’t like things that can kill me and can’t be killed
Ancient and SoT. Same reason as sigatrev. I might enjoy BoC more if they removed all the crystal walls.
Ancient Grove is far and away my favorite. No damage floors, none of those dumb traps, and it is the perfect length. The map is straightforward enough while still having places to explore and the spread of monsters is very nicely diverse.
Valbury on the other hand can sit on a cactus made of razors. Floor damage is awful, the map feels like it was modeled after a plate of spaghetti, and the aether tornadoes are especially irritating. It’s everything I hate in this game in a single place and I only do it one time on each character for the Outcast quest, usually with friends so we can all blitz through it ASAP.
I dont like any of these, due to narrowness and inability to kite enemies…