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LeetCode 174, Hard. Topics: Array, Dynamic Programming, Matrix. View on LeetCode. Generate this problem as a practice environment: tested reference solution, 18 parametrized pytest cases, and a playground notebook:

Problem

<p>The demons had captured the princess and imprisoned her in <strong>the bottom-right corner</strong> of a <code>dungeon</code>. The <code>dungeon</code> consists of <code>m x n</code> rooms laid out in a 2D grid. Our valiant knight was initially positioned in <strong>the top-left room</strong> and must fight his way through <code>dungeon</code> to rescue the princess.</p> <p>The knight has an initial health point represented by a positive integer. If at any point his health point drops to <code>0</code> or below, he dies immediately.</p> <p>Some of the rooms are guarded by demons (represented by negative integers), so the knight loses health upon entering these rooms; other rooms are either empty (represented as 0) or contain magic orbs that increase the knight’s health (represented by positive integers).</p> <p>To reach the princess as quickly as possible, the knight decides to move only <strong>rightward</strong> or <strong>downward</strong> in each step.</p> <p>Return <em>the knight’s minimum initial health so that he can rescue the princess</em>.</p> <p><strong>Note</strong> that any room can contain threats or power-ups, even the first room the knight enters and the bottom-right room where the princess is imprisoned.</p>

Examples

Example 1

Constraints

  • m == dungeon.length
  • n == dungeon[i].length
  • 1 <= m, n <= 200
  • -1000 <= dungeon[i][j] <= 1000

Solution

Reference implementation from solution.py on GitHub, full suite in test_solution.py:

Complexity

Tags

Last modified on September 7, 2026