The complete dungeon secret-routing guide (F1 through M7)

Secret routing is the single biggest skill ceiling in Catacombs. Once a competent party has the route order memorised for the 60-or-so common rooms, F7 runs settle into the 4-minute zone. Without it, you spend half the run wandering for the last secret in Trap Room 4.

This guide is a complete walk-through of how routing actually works — both the cognitive model a player needs and the algorithm Auto Secret Routes uses internally to compute the line on your HUD.

Secret types and their costs

Not every secret takes the same time to clear. The mod weights them so the route line prefers slow secrets when the geometry allows.

• Wither Essence cracks — slowest. Requires breaking a specific block with a pickaxe. Often hidden behind cobwebs.
• Levers — second slowest because the lever's reach is awkward; you often have to position carefully.
• Item Frames — medium; requires a melee hit on a specific frame, which means swap to fist or stop being in stealth.
• Redstone Keys — medium; needs to be carried to a door, costing path time.
• Chests — fastest. Right-click and you're done.

The route order rule

Place slow secrets early in the route. Why: if your party finishes the room before you cleanup a Wither Essence, you've cost the whole party time. If they finish before you finish a Chest, you ran the chest in parallel with the boss room walk.

Within a slow-then-fast ordering, the path is a basic shortest-Hamiltonian over the secret positions accounting for door connectivity. With ≤7 secrets per room this is solved exactly in microseconds.

Door teleports change the geometry

Dungeon doors aren't geometric edges — entering a door teleports you to the next room's matching door. A naive Euclidean shortest path ignores this; a real route line treats doors as "free edges" and routes through them when it's faster.

The classic example is the L-shaped room with a redstone key. The key's destination door is in the long arm. Naively, you'd walk to the key, then back to the door — but the door at the bend is closer via the teleport network. This is the kind of pathing where routing visibly differs from "just look for chests".

F1 through F6 — pattern memorisation

The first six floors share a room pool. Routing on F1 is the same as on F6 for any given room — the difference is mob density and trap intensity. If you're learning, run F4 on solo (manageable mob count) until you can identify the room from the entrance and call the secret order out loud.

F7 — the real game

F7 introduces three things the lower floors don't: stricter time pressure (a 4-minute target for S+), boss-room mechanics that punish positioning, and trap rooms with extra secrets. F7 routing is also the one floor where it's worth memorising the boss-fight sequence in parallel with the routes:

• Maxor — laser orientation; the safe spot rotates clockwise per phase
• Storm — symbol clearing in a fixed pattern
• Goldor — four terminals, two devices, two simon-says. Hot-keys: I/O/P/L for Numbers; rest are click-based
• Necron — skull dodge with predictive landing
• Wither King (M7 only) — phase HP markers; survive at 50% / 25% windows

Master Mode changes

M1–M7 don't change the routing problem — same rooms, same secrets. They do change the trap timings. Trap rooms on M4+ require landmark-based traversal because the floor blocks rotate faster than the visual grace period. That's a player skill issue, not a routing issue, but it's worth noting because trap rooms with secrets become genuinely time-costly on Master.

Common routing mistakes

1. Chasing the nearest chest. If a Wither Essence is in the same room, do the essence first.
2. Ignoring door teleports. Pixel-distance is not actual-distance.
3. Solo-routing in a party. If your party has a faster player, prioritise the room edges so they can sweep secrets behind you.
4. Not learning the entrance signature. The first frame of every room tells you what room it is. If you wait until you're inside, you've lost a second.

How to actually learn routes

Run M3 solo. It's the right combination of low mob threat and high secret density. Spend 5 hours over a week and you'll have the room pool memorised. Then run F7 with a regular party who will tolerate you calling out routes in real time. Audio call-outs accelerate memorisation more than chat call-outs.

Where ASR fits

If you don't want to memorise the rooms, ASR draws them for you. The route line is rendered live using the same algorithm described above. Toggle in /asr settings → Dungeons; for new players I'd suggest the "Show secret order, hide path line" preset — you keep the discovery loop intact while learning.

Related: /dungeons/ (feature reference), guide section.