Toon-Up: Dungeon Reset

My first dive into basebuilding webtoons

There are people who think that living in the Minecraft universe would be amazing.  

And, I’m not one of them. Not by a damn sight, but I hear they exist. Seriously, I don’t get the attraction.  Digging all day, interrupted by occasional moments of terror at night.  I mean, been there, done that, got the bad knees.  I left the Marine Corps for a reason.

Being trapped in such a world without the slightest hope of a DD214, is not my idea of a dream come true.  

Even if you do get superpowers if you keep mob grinding.

That is the plot in a nutshell of Dungeon Reset.  It’s a Progression Fantasy but also an intriguing inversion of it, which is what attracted me to it.

It meets the first two defining traits of Progression Fantasy: “... character change is driven by internal forces. You start with someone weak—often laughably weak—who’s up against unbelievably powerful adversaries. His growth comes through the accumulation of power.

That’s the first core trait. The second is a structured environment.” 

That’s the inversion. The structured environment is what drives the accumulation of power. It’s also part of what has now become a recognized sub-genre of PF called Base Building.

It starts off like Omniscient Reader Viewpoint. A random collection of Korean cliches are forced into an RPG-like environment, then a fluffy, lovable, homicidal ka-waii rabbit in formal wear shows up to explain the rules.  Then kills a random dude to prove that he’s serious. They are now stuck in a game where the stakes couldn’t be higher. 

However, rather than starting with a low combat ability, Dawoon starts with none whatsoever. He brings literally nothing to the fight. He’s a crafter and his only function is purifying food. 

Dawoon is caught in a pitfall trap he can’t escape from in a first level dungeon. When the rest of his team clears the level and gets moved on, he gets left behind.  Since he was his team’s quartermaster his inventory has plenty of food and water but for how long?  With nothing else to do, he starts digging his way out.  It turns out there’s an achievement for that. 

Then comes the reset.  The level is made ready for the next group of victims but Dawoon’s digging is saved along with and this is critical, his personal XP. The dungeon resets around him but he personally is not reset.  Every hole he has dug is preserved. The world resets… but not his world

The  ka-waii rabbit is pissed as all hell about this but is powerless to stop Dawoon. As the evil bunny repeatedly explains, Dawoon’s a glitch.  He should not exist. But he does.

Dawoon begins exploring the system like a completionist humping walls in an FPS until he finds every last secret. 

No magic swords. No fireballs. And doesn’t have to learn the latest meta.  He just has to master the power of… dirt.  That is what his strength is based on, dirt.  But in fairness to Dawoon that is quite literally the basis of everything.

He builds fortresses, traps, and gollums.  That is his thing.  Grant when you kill enough monsters with those you still get the XP and that means scaling.  Very shortly, he is at least at Wall Level. 

At this point, Dungeon Reset settles into a loop that’s both strangely relaxing and surprisingly clever. Dawoon gets up, checks his traps, scavenges for materials, builds another defensive structure out of literal dirt, and occasionally pokes the dungeon mechanics with a stick to see what twitches. It's a base-builder with PTSD-level trauma triggers—but funny.

What makes it work is Dawoon himself. He’s not a genius. He’s not brave. He doesn’t have some deep-burning desire for revenge or an anime-worthy backstory. He just doesn’t want to die and he doesn’t want to live in filth, so he figures out how to make the dungeon livable. It’s honestly the most boomer-core protagonist motivation I’ve seen in a while: “Fine, I’ll build my own house, with blackjack and reinforced spike pits.”

Eventually, he gains some unwilling companions. The first is Ariana, a fairy who gets magically bound to him through a combination of system error and instant karma being a bitch. She starts off threatening him with bodily harm every ten minutes and slowly graduates to “grudgingly competent co-conspirator.” Their dynamic is a classic comedy duo.

Other companions come and go, and the longer Dawoon exists in this “glitched” state, the more he breaks the game. Monsters stop acting the way they should. Traps fail to trigger. Environmental hazards develop workarounds. The dungeon, clearly a semi-intelligent system, is constantly trying to patch its own bugs. Meanwhile, Dawoon keeps finding new ways to exploit the next broken mechanic and expand his fortress of jank.

The art isn’t going to win awards, but it’s clean and expressive. Reaction faces are exaggerated just enough to sell the comedy, and the dungeon environments are simple but clear. The visual storytelling leans hard into absurdity, all the different things that this magical Korean Macgyver slaps together with dirt and string.

And that’s where Dungeon Reset truly shines. Unlike a lot of power fantasy stories that rely on escalation and boss fights to stay interesting, this one finds new ways to keep Dawoon’s growth rooted in cleverness. He doesn't just get stronger; he gets more resourceful. His real leveling-up happens when he outsmarts the system, not out-muscles it.

That said, I have a few notes. The stakes stay pretty low after a while. Dawoon is rarely in genuine danger past the early chapters, so the story trades tension for clever hijinks. If you’re here for life-or-death fights and world-shaking plot twists, this isn’t your dungeon. And like a lot of webtoons, the pacing can stretch a gag or minor arc over a few too many episodes. But if you’re the kind of reader who likes to watch someone slowly build a fully-automated goblin farm with lava moats and mood lighting, then you’re home.

Final Verdict: Dungeon Reset is perfect for shut-ins who think duct tape and elbow grease are more powerful than magic. It’s not just Progression Fantasy—it’s a love letter to persistence, improvisation, and exploiting bugs until the gaming gods themselves rage-quit the game.

It won’t be at the top of most top ten webtoon lists but it won’t be anywhere near the bottom of the leaderboard either. It’s an entertaining progression fantasy Base Builder, if you’re already into PF then this is a good one to add to your reading pile. 

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