Today's afternoon I'm going to upgrade the dungeon. But there are a few things I did yesterday, before leaving the game, that you don't know.
The first is about the dungeon invasion rewards. I decided to take with me the body of the butterfly and the chameleon. I had a nice idea for a new monster, so I picked them. The other three bodies I picked were the High Elf's body, of course, and two of the elvish Scouts.
Then I took a look at the Technology screen. In the technology screen, there are three technology trees: Units, Buildings and Decorations. As you can expect from the names, the Unit tree unlocks new unit types, the Buildings tree unlocks new buildings and infrastructure elements, and the Decorations tree unlocks new elements to add into the dungeon. They are called decorations but traps, hazardous terrain and such things are also included in this tree. In each tree, you can only see the details of the tech you can currently research. The only thing you know about the other techs is if there will be another tech unlocked after researching it or not.
Obviously, the first tree I looked at is the Units tree. It had only two options to research: 'Creepy' and 'Siamese'.
Creepy
Research cost: 30 cp, 20 food. Research time: 30 min
A critter unit. This unit needs two critter bodies to be created. It inherits the aspect, innate skills and stats of one of the bodies, plus the innate skills of all of them.
The cp cost and 'cp value' of this unit is the same as the sum of all the units used to create it.
Siamese
Research cost: 300 cp, 100 food, 200 metal. Research time: 2h
This unit needs two humanoid bodies to be created, which are fusioned together into a single body. Each of the two bodies will count as a different unit, and keep the original stats and innate skills. Passive skills are shared by both of the halves. Only one AI will control the Siamese, but each half can act and attack on its own.
When leveling the Siamese, both halves are leveled at the same time for the normal cost. The cp cost and 'cp value' of this unit is the same as the sum of the two units used to create it.
I already knew about the Creepy one, but the Siamese was new for me. In fact, the reason I took the butterfly and chameleon bodies was for creating a Creepy. So I immediately started researching the Creepy while looking at the rest of the tech trees.
The Siamese can be a very powerful unit, but I think it's a waste to use good units to create them. Because the most powerful aspect of the siamese is the double skills per level up and the shared passives. Imagine giving one the Strength increase passive, and the other the Spirit passive… you get two units that are good at both magic and physical attacks, and with extremely low cp cost. You can literally make an army of them that costs almost the same as the stitched but are more than twice as powerful! On the other side, the added stats for the Hybrids make them a very good elite unit. Twice the stats make the units more than twice as powerful, because of the increase on damage and reduced damage taken when the stats are higher than the opponent.
In the Buildings tree, there were a lot more technologies than in the Units tree. But the most important ones right now for the dungeon were the 'Corpse cart' and the 'Collectionist' techs. Oh, and the 'Small operation table'! I almost forgot about this one.
Corpse cart
Research cost: 50 cp, 10 food, 10 metal. Research time: noneIncrease the amount of corpses you can bring from Dungeon Invasions. From the current maximum of 20 to a maximum of 40 corpses. This tech can be repeatedly researched and the cost will increase each time.
Collectionist
Research cost: 50 cp, 10 food, 10 metal. Research time: noneIncrease the amount of bodies you can bring from Dungeon Invasions. From the current maximum of 5 to a maximum of 10 bodies. This tech can be repeatedly researched and the cost will increase each time.
Small operation table
Research cost: 20 cp, 20 metal. Research time: 5 minUnlocks a smaller version of the normal Operation table. In the Small operation table, you can create units that are smaller than humanoids.
I REALLY wanted to get the Collectionist one, but my purpose this time was to get the Small operation table. Without it, I wouldn't be able to create the Creepy. So I researched the small operation table too. Two days of passive income from the Mine and Farm were enough to pay for both the Creepy and Small operation table.
Then I spent 20 cp to build the Small operation table. It is very cheap because it's mostly for the creation of non-combat units like the Creepy. With everything added, 70 cp went away.
I also took a look at the Decorations tree, not expecting to get any tech from there, but found a nice one that only cost me 20 food to research. It was called 'Mushrooms'. This unlocked the possibility to use basic and small mushrooms during the dungeon creation. It also unlocked three new technologies called: 'Glowing mushrooms', 'Giant mushrooms' and 'Poisonous mushrooms'. And I already have plans for the three of those new mushroom types in the future.
The last thing I did yesterday was… the creation of the first Creepy! Since the critters are very cheap in this game, the sum of the cp cost from the butterfly and chameleon was only 2 cp. But I didn't simply create a Creepy... I also upgraded it to level 2 and added a very special skill to it.
"I took the idea from some of the videos I've seen, where players add passive or triggered skills to critters. The funniest one was a sheep with a sleeping aura… when the enemy Champion fell asleep, the surrounding mobs attacked and killed it. Hahaha!"
Critters aren't supposed to be used in combat. They have very low stats, start with no skill points, and the basic AI doesn't include any Combat state. You can still level them, but the stat increase is negligible… But! If you give them skills that don't need the critter to enter combat… You can obtain very nasty combinations!
So what I did was use the butterfly as the base for the Creepy, and then add the chameleon's innate skill. The butterfly's basic AI makes it fly towards a random surface, stay there for some time, and move towards the next surface. It basically tries to imitate what real butterflies do. Then I added the node called 'move towards X' to the AI and reconnect the nodes. I set the X, of course, to the closest enemy. Then I saved the butterfly's template name as 'Death Butterfly'. And these are the two skills that the butterfly has.
Optic Camouflage (Innate passive skill)
Change the surface color to imitate the surroundings, making you very difficult to spot.
Decaying Touch (Triggered skill)After touching an enemy unit for more than 2 seconds, reduce its current HP by 2 each second.
"You can more or less imagine the rest, right? The butterfly flies towards the enemy, lands on top of them, and deals a stupid amout of damage simply by staying still. Everyone wins! Hahaha! Well, except the victim! Hahaha!" I start laughing. I can't stop myself, after imagining the other players trying to find 'why' their HP is getting lower all the time… only to find after death that a camouflaged butterfly killed them!
Oh, and I also filmed a small video of myself acting crazy and faking to create the butterfly, then running away from it. I had to enable friendly fire to be able to do the filming. I'm going to edit it later, and share it for everyone to see. The video's title is going to be 'It's alive! It's alive!'