Top 10 Dungeon Core Books

Yggdrasil, the World Tree, has sent a bunch of seeds out to different planes and universes to find a new world to settle. It had no choice because the Goods screwed up Ragnarok.

One of the trees agrees to protect a treasure for a stranger in exchange for being through magic. It builds an internal world with traps to guard it. 

The tree starts acting like a dungeon.

Milton Frederick was a professional gamer. He was the strategy coordinator for one of the top guilds in the online game Crowned Lieges of Destiny.

But then he was abducted by aliens.

They transferred his consciousness into a Station Core. They were going to use him, and many others, as a defense against other alien threats.

But Milton was lost in transit to his designated destination.

Confused and damaged, Milton finds himself trapped on a strange and primitive world filled with dangerous creatures.

Ryan is a dungeon core. The only thing he remembers about his earlier life is that he died because of some problems with a powerful organization.

Ryan is not just any ordinary dungeon, he is a dark dungeon.

Fared and often evil, darkness dungeons are closely watched by the Adventurer Guild. Ryan has to prove that not all darkness dungeons are evil even if they have skeletons and zombies in their dungeons.

Sandra was a merchant, but all she wanted to be a crafter. Unfortunately for her hands were deformed and she could not manipulate any basic energy, so she could not follow her dreams. But she did the next best thing, as she traveled around as a merchant see consumed every theoretical knowledge she could about crafting.

Then she was killed.

But then she was reborn, as a dungeon. After some initial confusion, she discovers that she now has the capability to craft, and that's all she wants to do.

But other stuff keeps getting in her way. Everything from invading animals and neighboring humanoids.

The Crafter's Dungeon is a very good Dungeon Core series. It has both strong Dungeon Core mechanics and Crafting elements.

What makes it slightly different is that Sandra does not want to consume dungeon crawlers to grow stronger. She just wants to be left alone to her crafting.

This is a world where dungeons are at the top of the food chain, and there are millions of them. Dungeon and humans are meant to have a symbiotic relationship. Dungeons get mana from humans in their territory and humans get scenes from dungeons.

In the north far away from any mana source, two dungeons live together in a taboo relationship. Because they are from rival factions. They live there with their child, who looks exactly like a human. A human born from two dungeon cores.

But then his parents are found and destroyed.

Fleeing for his life, the human-looking core flee south and starts living with the humans. 

The Dungeon World books are interesting Dungeon Core books with an original twist. A dungeon core born in a human body and having to learn to live as a human. Hunted by his own and hiding his nature from the humans.

Dungeon World has strong LitRPG elements and less dungeon core mechanics than usual.

Dungeon World is a good and interesting read.

Roark von Graf is a hedge mage, lesser noble, and a freedom fighter. When a desperate plan to unseat the Tyrant King fails, Roark finds himself in a strange and dire situation.

Roark escapes in a strange portal that sends him into an ultra-immersive fantasy video game called Hearthworld.

He can't log out, his magic is acting strangely, and he is no longer human.

Roark is now a low-level troll.

He has to guard the first level of a dungeon from players wanting to go dungeon crawling.

But if that was not enough. Roark stole something precious from the Tyrant King, something valuable enough that he uses his magic to send underlings into the game to hunt down Roark.

Can Roark become powerful enough to survive and get back to his world?

Rogue Dungeon is a mix of LitRPG and Dungeon Core. And its a collaboration between two good authors.

After Ryker was treated extremely poorly by a certain adventuring guild all he dreamed of was revenge.

They had driven him from his home and physically hunted him to the gates of the city.

And the only reason why they did it was that he was not as strong as everyone expected, Ryker included.

The first step of his revenge was to steal a dungeon core, ripe out its soul, and grow a dungeon that he controlled.

Warning and minor spoiler: Dungeon Deposed contains graphic violence, undefined relationships/partial harem, unconventional opinions/beliefs and forced political marriage (and consummation). Read at your own risk.

Cal is a Dungeon Heart, a soul forced into a magical stone against his will.

After several years of only instinctive living, he was able to regain his sentience. This allowed him to form new memories again, and to slowly start growing a dungeon around himself.

With help from a small friend, Cal learned to create monsters and traps and how to use treasures to grow his dungeon. His main goal is to lure in brave adventures to eat so he can grow in both power and size.

Dungeon Born is one of the best books I have read in a while. This book is written in a light and funny way. For me it was new and fresh, it was the first Dungeon Core type books I read.