When generating the dungeon levels, do you shufffle the dungeon deck in advance of generating levels?

When you first start the dungeon you shuffle your deck for the first dungeon level card you draw, for each new dungeon level card you draw after (levels 2, 3, and in the case of Legendary dungeons four and in the case of the Overlord Avatar keep, 5) you don't shuffle your deck till you go thru it completely. If the Overlord ever goes through his deck fully twice while inside the dungeon (except for the Avatar Keep), The when the last card is drawn the second time the hero players are immediately kicked from the dungeon and it is closed to them forever.

You do not re-shuffle for every level card you draw, just when you start the dungeon (after adding any additonal Treachery cards if any).

I think he was referring to the Dungeon Levels deck, not the Overlord's deck of cards.

The answer is.... wait for it.... unclear!

The rules concerning dungeons (starting on Page 17) say to "draw a card" for the first level when the heroes enter a dungeon. It says nothing of shuffling, so I would assume you do not shuffle the deck first.

The curious part is that it doesn't say anything about shuffling this deck in the initial set up instructions, either (unless I missed something - it is pretty late right now.) I would personally infer that it should be shuffled once at the start of the game, although a canny and particularly retentive rules lawyer could try to use this omission as an argument to help him stack the dungeon deck in some horrifyingly unfair ways.

Of course, we play with a somewhat popular house rule that we remove a dungeon level from the game after it's been played, so in our case it wouldn't really matter when or how often you shuffled - you won't see the same dungeon twice unless you manage to run out of cards (probably impossible now that we have the SoB cards mixed in there.)

Steve-O said:

Ah yes, in the case of Dungeon level cards this is a little different. I too remove any card played till all the dungeon cards have been played (same with encounter maps and encounter cards). On the other hand, since the game is stored at the OL's house (mine), for the sake of my players and so they know I'm not stacking the deck, I reshuffle any deck at the start of the game, including the OL draw deck cards that havn't been drawn. This prevents accusations of cheating, not that my players would care, but I prefer to be careful. After that I don't reshuffle anything unless I have to readd cards to certain decks (in which case the card specifies "shuffle this card back into the deck".

On the other hand, even if you didn't do one rumor dungeon level, you wouldn't likely see a reshuffle of the Dungeon cards in one game, at least not untill maybe the OL Avatar keep. This lessens considerably if the hero players do rumors often as they can.

RtL pg. 6: Dungeons: ... Their levels are drawn randomly from the Dungeon Level deck, and joined to each other by portals.

So any suitable way of randomizing the Dungeon level deck is appropriate, although this section is more like an explanation of the quest types rather than strict rules.

Pg. 17 says "Draw a level card", it doesn´t say "draw the top card", although many people will take that as implied.

How about this? Shuffle the deck at the beggining of each sesion. Then, whenever a dungeon level is to be draw, offer the heroes to cut and use the card they left on the top. Youc can also say something as "choose your destiny" or whatever. If they don't like the drawn level, accuse the one who cut of bringing bad luck to the group and let them argue while you set up the level.