The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

Originally self-published in 2021, The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook is the third book in Matt Dinniman’s best-selling Dungeon Crawler Carl series, following Dungeon Crawler Carl (2020) and Carl’s Doomsday Scenario (2021). It is also a prime example of the Literary Role-Playing Game (LitRPG) genre. The novel continues the story of Carl and his talking cat, Princess Donut, two of the last Earth survivors forced to compete in a deadly, galaxy-wide reality TV show. This entry in the series is set on the dungeon’s fourth floor, a massive and deliberately confusing subway system called the Iron Tangle. Carl and Donut must navigate treacherous train lines and outsmart monsters, other crawlers, and the manipulative game developers to find a path to the next level. The story explores themes including The Dehumanizing Nature of Corporate Entertainment, Subversion and Anarchy as Tools for Survival, and The Fragility of Identity and Fabricated Memory.

This guide refers to the 2024 Ace edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide contain depictions of graphic violence, cursing, substance use, addiction, death, sexual content, and emotional abuse.

Plot Summary

The first novel in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series establishes the premise that a galactic governing body, the Syndicate, has collapsed every structure on Earth, killing nearly all its inhabitants, in order to mine the planet for precious materials. Those who survive are invited to participate in a dungeon crawl that will result in one victor. The series follows protagonist Carl who, with his girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, undertakes the dungeon crawl and successfully passes three levels. The previous book in the series ends with Carl, Princess Donut, Katia, and their pet velociraptor Mongo entering the fourth floor of the dungeon.

Carl, Donut, Katia, and Mongo arrive on the fourth floor, dubbed “The Iron Tangle,” inside a moving subway car. Their manager, Mordecai, contacts them via chat from a train station, advising them to find a safe room. The party moves through the train and kills two level 17 Jikininki ghouls. When the train stops at a platform swarming with monsters, they find themselves trapped. Carl uses his Protective Shell spell, which remains fixed in space; as the train moves forward, the spell acts like a bulldozer, clearing the rear cars of the Drek horde.

The group disembarks at Transfer station 83, a safe zone. Carl’s Escape Plan skill reveals a map showing the locations of stairwells to the next level that they cannot yet reach. They enter the safe room, where they reunite with their manager Mordecai. Thanks to a special box from the game’s AI, they receive coupons for personal space upgrades and combine their coupons to create a large, conjoined home base for their team. Carl receives a necklace that grants him a dexterity bonus and a new melee skill, Talon Strike. Donut gets a new tiara and learns the spell Hole, while Katia acquires an arm bracer that transforms into a shield.

Inside their new base, they discover an upgraded bed that reduces their required sleep to two hours. The daily announcement reveals that there are now bounties on the top 10 crawlers (game participants), paid out to the crawler that kills them. Carl then discovers a message in his inbox from his friend Brandon, who died on the previous floor, asking him to find his brother, Chris. Overcome with grief, Carl spends an hour leveling up his Bare Knuckles skill in their new training room.

Carl crafts metal fortifications to protect them from the hordes that will try to get on their train when it stops at the stations. He trades books with the station shopkeeper Limp Richard, noting a valuable Battery Fabricator in the shop. The party boards a train and encounters Vernon, a dwarf conductor. Vernon explains that the trains only travel in one direction and passenger cars reset at the end of the line. The party’s difficulty will be getting to the specific train stations that have stairways to the next level, all of which are below their current station. The party finds a reward room in the porter car, and Carl gets invisibility potions, but Donut gets a trap filled with fire ants. The resulting explosion kills Vernon and forces the party to flee the burning train at Banshee Station.

Stranded, they explore the station’s tunnels and find a hidden room with two inactive automatons, which they destroy for scrap metal. They board another train and continue. At the Desperado Club, a members only club at station 131, they reunite with Elle and Imani, crawlers who they met on the previous floor. During their visit, a crawler attempts to assassinate a drunken Donut for the bounty placed on crawlers on the leaderboard. She kills him in self-defense, earning her first skull (placed by a crawler’s name when they kill another crawler) and becoming deeply distressed by the act.

Carl uses the scrap metal to craft a backpack system for Katia. Because she is a “Tank,” she can assume the mass of other objects, adding it to her overall mass. The new backpack turns her into a powerful tank capable of shifting into massive combat forms. Katia’s former party, Brynhild’s Daughters, led by shieldmaiden Hekla, appear in their base, requesting help to rescue 1,000 crawlers trapped at station 101.

Carl creates a plan for Katia to use her new mass to become a living plow, or cowcatcher, on the front of a train, and she plows through the mobs. During the perilous journey, Donut uses her sponsor-gifted sunglasses to see Hekla intentionally shooting Katia with invisible, health-draining bolts. Enraged, Donut attacks Hekla. In the chaos, Katia accidentally kills Hekla with her Rush ability, claiming a massive bounty and rocketing from level 24 to 37. The party locks themselves in the engine car, rescues the trapped crawlers, and escapes, with Katia managing to loot Hekla’s powerful repeating crossbow.

The party continues exploring, and Carl receives a neural enhancer from his sponsor, the Valtay Corporation, that allows him to analyze subspace portals. He hijacks the Nightmare Express train, discovers the Abyss, where old train cars and mobs are discarded, and figures out a system for reaching the train stations that have stairwells to the next level. Using the chat feature that allows the crawlers to communicate, he sends a mass message explaining the solution to other crawlers.

Later, Carl meets Frank Q, a figure from a previous novel, who gives him the Ring of Divine Suffering. He explains that its curse, which prevents healing until a marked target is killed, is why his wife Maggie murdered their daughter. Mordecai warns Carl that the ring will make him a target. Katia and Mordecai deduce the floor’s final secret: It has a mirrored, upside-down layout, and the final threat will emerge from the space between the layers, which Katia calls the “noodle.”

The final battle begins as the floors of the stairwell stations open, and monsters pour in from below. However, the party’s pre-set trap, a portal cart aimed into the noodle, successfully diverts the monsters into the Abyss. The mass deaths overload the generators that create the ghouls, causing them to explode. Carl devises a plan to destroy the rest by summoning the war god Grull.

He lures two bosses into a fight, summoning Grull and then teleporting the god into Train Yard E to kill the city boss mimic that lives there. Carl is accidentally pulled through with him, initiating a Death Challenge. With his friends’ help, Carl survives, and they banish Grull to the Abyss. They then send a train into the Abyss to explode, destroying the remaining generators. With the floor cleared, the party descends the stairs.

In the transition area, they learn that on the fifth floor, they will face the Air Quadrant and Dirigible Gnomes. Loita, Hekla’s former PR agent, replaces their agent, Zev, and sends them to a post-level interview. On Odette’s post-floor talk show, they are censored when discussing Hekla’s death.