It's dangerous to go alone, so don't. Bring hirelings, as many as you can afford.
Think about what you're actually doing when you explore a dungeon: Heading down into unknown territory where everything, the flora, fauna, architecture, and environment itself might easily kill you. At best you'll have incomplete information about what to expect. Vague rumors, outdated intel, and scraps of maps are the best you can hope for. Even if you've explored the place for a while and gained some familiarity with it there's no guarantee you actually know everything about the threats you're facing. Even familiar areas you've already explored can change unexpectedly and create new hazards. It's the Dungeon. You're in danger every second you're inside.
It's possible to go into the dungeon as a small party of just player characters and make it out mostly unscathed, but if you plan to make a habit or career out of delving it's safer and smarter to bring a larger group with you.
Serious delves are expeditions, major projects that take time, planning, and support. You're going into the dungeon and taking risks for a reason. You've got a goal and to achieve that goal you'll need help for the simple reason that the PCs can't do everything.
While PCs are (usually) very competent individuals they can't be experts in every discipline and specialized skill, which means you'll need to bring along professionals. Hire a carpenter to shore up the tunnels you'll be using regularly, build stairs to access (and retreat from) new areas safely, and winches to help move treasure out. Hire a scholar of local history and languages to decipher the carvings you found ("explosive gas ahead, no fire beyond this point", "this is not a place of honor") and translate for you with anyone/thing you meet. Hire a trained healer to actually treat your injuries instead of just slapping a bandage on your spurting wounds and hoping first aid will be enough. Sure you could try to do it all yourself, but it's so much safer to hire someone who knows what they're doing and has the proper tools on hand instead of your own fumbling attempts. You're taking enough risks already, spend a little gold and hire a pro.
And while the PCs are (usually) very tough individuals they're not superhuman. Surviving in the wild away from the support systems of civilization is a lot of work, surviving while on the move in a hostile environment like the dungeon is even more. The PCs don't have enough time or hands to attend to all the jobs themselves, which means you should bring more people along to help out. Hire men at arms to back you up in fights and have more people to stand watches so you actually get a chance to sleep and be well-rested. Hire torchbearers and scouts so you can see what danger you're facing ahead of time and have your hands free to deal with it when it arrives. Hire porters to carry your supplies and loot, make and strike camp, and transport the injured to safety. If you plan to be down a long time bring a cook too. There's safety in numbers and many hands make light work, so hire a support staff and let them support you.
Planning ahead and making preparations is how you avoid dying miserably in a hole. It's also how you get to a point where you can actually explore and interact with the dungeon instead of making quick desperate trips to scrounge for coins and whatever else you can fit in your pockets.
Once you have hirelings to help cover your basic survival, security, and logistics problems you can relax. A little. Enough that you can enjoy the beauty and mysteries of the dungeon. You can stop and take the time to actually look around and (with good lighting thanks to all your torchbearers) find secrets and valuables. You can delve longer (thanks to your men at arms' support and extra supplies with the porters), uncover things no one's seen before, and bring out more loot (porters MVPs). And you can prioritize what you take (with an expert on hand to appraise and ID items) instead of hauling everything back to town without knowing what it's worth, if it's cursed, or if it'll unleash an unspeakable evil.
Every hireling you add to your party takes a little more pressure off your PCs and lets you focus on being adventurers. They're also, to be indelicate, your spare bodies. When your PC dies mid-delve you traditionally take control of one of the hirelings as your next or interim character and in order to do that smoothly you'll need a lot of them around. It's always better to stagger back into town as a band of ragged survivors who can eventually stage a rescue and recovery mission than it is to just disappear, lost forever beneath the earth, and become another cautionary tale for the local kids about why you don't go poking around in dungeons.
It's possible to go into the dungeon as a small party of just player characters and make it out mostly unscathed, but if you plan to make a habit or career out of delving it's safer and smarter to bring a larger group with you.
Serious delves are expeditions, major projects that take time, planning, and support. You're going into the dungeon and taking risks for a reason. You've got a goal and to achieve that goal you'll need help for the simple reason that the PCs can't do everything.
While PCs are (usually) very competent individuals they can't be experts in every discipline and specialized skill, which means you'll need to bring along professionals. Hire a carpenter to shore up the tunnels you'll be using regularly, build stairs to access (and retreat from) new areas safely, and winches to help move treasure out. Hire a scholar of local history and languages to decipher the carvings you found ("explosive gas ahead, no fire beyond this point", "this is not a place of honor") and translate for you with anyone/thing you meet. Hire a trained healer to actually treat your injuries instead of just slapping a bandage on your spurting wounds and hoping first aid will be enough. Sure you could try to do it all yourself, but it's so much safer to hire someone who knows what they're doing and has the proper tools on hand instead of your own fumbling attempts. You're taking enough risks already, spend a little gold and hire a pro.
And while the PCs are (usually) very tough individuals they're not superhuman. Surviving in the wild away from the support systems of civilization is a lot of work, surviving while on the move in a hostile environment like the dungeon is even more. The PCs don't have enough time or hands to attend to all the jobs themselves, which means you should bring more people along to help out. Hire men at arms to back you up in fights and have more people to stand watches so you actually get a chance to sleep and be well-rested. Hire torchbearers and scouts so you can see what danger you're facing ahead of time and have your hands free to deal with it when it arrives. Hire porters to carry your supplies and loot, make and strike camp, and transport the injured to safety. If you plan to be down a long time bring a cook too. There's safety in numbers and many hands make light work, so hire a support staff and let them support you.
Planning ahead and making preparations is how you avoid dying miserably in a hole. It's also how you get to a point where you can actually explore and interact with the dungeon instead of making quick desperate trips to scrounge for coins and whatever else you can fit in your pockets.
Once you have hirelings to help cover your basic survival, security, and logistics problems you can relax. A little. Enough that you can enjoy the beauty and mysteries of the dungeon. You can stop and take the time to actually look around and (with good lighting thanks to all your torchbearers) find secrets and valuables. You can delve longer (thanks to your men at arms' support and extra supplies with the porters), uncover things no one's seen before, and bring out more loot (porters MVPs). And you can prioritize what you take (with an expert on hand to appraise and ID items) instead of hauling everything back to town without knowing what it's worth, if it's cursed, or if it'll unleash an unspeakable evil.
Every hireling you add to your party takes a little more pressure off your PCs and lets you focus on being adventurers. They're also, to be indelicate, your spare bodies. When your PC dies mid-delve you traditionally take control of one of the hirelings as your next or interim character and in order to do that smoothly you'll need a lot of them around. It's always better to stagger back into town as a band of ragged survivors who can eventually stage a rescue and recovery mission than it is to just disappear, lost forever beneath the earth, and become another cautionary tale for the local kids about why you don't go poking around in dungeons.