Coffee For His Majesty the Worm

12 Sep, 2026

I am a little nerd about coffee, I watch James Hoffman, I like learning about all the different ways of doing coffee. So let's talk about coffee.

1. Making Coffee

In the dungeon, there's a lot of different ways of making coffee. The simplest and most accessible cup one can get in the dungeon is Boiling, but there are broadly three main ways to make coffee. Your method decides how your brew takes effect.

Boiled

This is taking the coffee, grinding it up, and putting it in a pot. You might filter it afterwards, and it isn't amazing, but it's coffee. Usually made in a kettle over a campfire, this coffee is simple to set up and make. A basic coffee set is common gear, taking 1 slot.

You get the effect of boiled coffee for 2 watches.

Filtered

A filtered coffee set is a steeped kettle, a pourover kit, and ground beans. In this configuration, coffee grounds are poured into a (typically soaked) filter and then soaked through to make a cup of coffee. This is probably what most of you think of with the Drip Coffee maker in our real world. It is luxury gear, taking 1 slot.

You get the effect of filtered coffee for 4 watches.

Pressure

This can only be found in the coffee bars of the city, but there might be places in the dungeon one could make something like this. Take finely ground beans, put them into a device that can create a huge amount of pressure to push water through the beans. It heats the coffee but reduces the time it spends touching the water, creating a strong and even cup of coffee. The Espresso for example.

You get the effect of filtered coffee for 6 watches from the time you start your crawl.

Innovation and Oddness

Know of a weird coffee brewing method? That's a dungeon feature. Someone's figured out something for extraction, a way of making a cup of coffee or tea, something one can use to make a cup. Take what you love and put it into your dungeons, even if it's weird.

You get the effect of filtered coffee for an amount of watches. It might be you have different drinking rules.

2. What's in a cup?

Your coffee cup is more than the way you make it. You have two main things that make up a cup of coffee: Beans and Additive. A cup can only benefit from the effects of one of each, and a new cup replaces the old effects (if any).

Beans

• Energy (Swords): When you drink this brew, write down the type and that it's charged. Until the effects wear off, spend the charge to draw another card during the challenge phase.
• Calmness (Pentacles): When you drink this brew, write down the type and that it's charged. Until the effects wear off, spend the charge to remove the stressed condition automatically.
• Flavour (Cups): When you drink this brew, write down the type and that it's charged. Until the effects wear off, you can spend the charge to bid lore without a relevant motif to understand the alchemical properties of a creature's remains
• Focus (Wands): When you drink this brew, write down the type and that it's charged. Until the effects wear off, you can spend the charge to focus on a spell in lieu of a point of resolve.

Additives

By default, the additives you can find topside is not magical. They have normal uses.

• Sugar: Sugar makes a drink sweeter, which can add a different flavour to the bitter drinks of coffee.
• Milk: Milk cuts the bitterness, and can change the texture and taste of coffee. Anything topside that can be made to express milk, including almonds and oats, has the same effect.

3. Strange Beans and Stranger Additives

Underworld Beans

• Sleepless Thinker: Made in the library heretical in the spaces between bookshelves as planters, the librarians use the ashes of burnt books as fertilizer. Highly valued amongst the academics of the city. When you drink this brew, write down the type and that it's charged. Until the effects wear off, you can spend the charge to bid lore about anything that more than one person has ever known.
• Xania Beans: The beans have fucking faces. Xania coffee allows you to tap into the collective unconsciousness of Xania. When you drink this brew, write down the type and that it's charged. Until the effects wear off, you can spend the charge to close your eyes and see through the eyes of others creatures within your room and connected rooms. (This cannot account for meat-grinder results).
• The Ur-Bean: From ruin, the first city from which the word is named. The Ur-Bean is the first strain of a coffee bean, where it was boiled in a communal pot and ladled out into bowls to be sipped in contemplation. Those who drink of the Ur-Bean can always tell the direction and distance to the stairs (cardinal direction and rough distance) for the duration of this drink.
• Bloody Marvin: The Medvekian bean of the vampire counts, watered with blood and fertilized with bones. Those who consume the Bloody Marvin can speak to bugs, vermin and birds.
• The Coffee Automatic: Grown secretly by the king of cups in the Castle Automatic, this bean varietal is effected heavily by the systematic world in which it grows. When you drink this brew, write down the type and that it's charged. Until the effects wear off, you can spend the charge and a watch to Scry on the Meatgrinder. Look at the top two cards of the meatgrinder, then either put them on the top or bottom of the library in any order.
• Ghost Web Coffee: The tomb of the golden ghosts have the proper temperatures for the brain spiders to grow coffee inside of the dancing puppets of their decaying servants. This symbiotic relationship makes a unique bean, healing one wound as spiderwebs knit the offending wound closed in shimmering gold thread.

Underworld Additives

• Ungoat Unmilk: The Not-Milk of the Ungoat is thick and sweet. When imbibed with coffee, you can smell magical reagents and magical items for the duration of the brew.
• Imp Bile: Imp bile can be used akin to honey, but makes the drink even more bitter. When consumed in a brew it oddly neutralizes out and prevents a condition from activating once per brew.
• Cockatrice Egg: Introducing eggshells into the brew allows the coffee to clarify better, and a cockatrice egg allows you to spend a resolve when moving to disengage from all targets and fly 1 zone for the duration of the brew.
• Jinn Essence: Smokeless Fire adds a low smoky taste to the brew, and it confers a motif for the duration of the brew - depending on the Djin. It looks like "Knowledge of the Djinn of (Subject)".
• Lich Sugar: As a wands action in a challenge you may spend a charge of your brew (or end the effect of your brew) and complain about something that's eating your character. Compare the card you play (and wands bonus on your turn) to each creature who can hear you. Any who have less than you suffer the Stun effect.