"Heeeello everyoooone! It's your favorite crazy rat's comeback! How are you? Ready for more action!?" I say while raising my arms.
Nothing happens, and nobody shouts in response.
"I can't hear you!! I'll ask again! Ready for more action!?"
Still no response.
"Better." I nod, satisfied with the audience's clamor.
Why am I doing this? Because a week has passed since the last time we talked, and I was worried you were starting to miss me and my monologues.
I've done a lot of things this last week, but they are of little interest by themselves, so a resume is going to be enough. Otherwise it would have been booooooring!
So, let's start from the end because it's the most logical way to explain things. I've managed to reach level 3!
*Furious clapping sounds*
"Thank you! Thank you, everyone! I am glad to see you so enthusiastic!" I say while continuing the furious clapping.
This is the window that popped yesterday in front of me after reaching the new level.
Reached player level 3!
- Multiplayer unlocked
- Champion upgrade research unlocked
- Received 2 x Stasis chamber
- Received 1.000 cp
"It seems like the game makes sure you don't get too far behind the other players by giving you some free Stasis chambers each level up. Which makes sense, because it's difficult enough to obtain the bodies, and then find after the dungeon invasion that you can't bring them back because you don't have enough storage for them…"
Now let's go back in time (no, not literally) and start with a flashback! Because everyone loves flashbacks!
"No, I don't!" I complain.
You don't? Well, me neither… but I'll still make a flashback here…
After the talk with Ricard about playing together, this past week I've been focussed in upgrading the dungeon and playing as much as possible. Homework? Who cares about that thing?
Now I'm going to explain the changes in no particular order!
I'm going to start with the dungeon layout and new dungeon zones. At least for now, I've kept the parts that I already created more or less the same. The only thing that I added was a mix of glowing mushrooms and giant mushrooms into the big cave area, as well as some into the tunnels.
Oh, and I also unlocked a new type of hazardous mushrooms, the 'Sleeping mushrooms'. Guess where I put them? Yep, you are right! I put them near the already placed poison mushrooms.
Well, to be exact I put two types of them in two different places. I put a kind that only activates once but the sleep is 100% guaranteed in a very small area around itself in the tunnels. This sleep isn't dispelled by taking damage and only lasts for 2 seconds, but with them, when the enemies fall asleep, they are going to do so inside the cloud of poison. "Hahaha, isn't it good? I call it 'bad sleep'."
And then I put another type that creates a similar effect to the cloud of poison but with sleep inside the 'resting room'. These mushrooms only have a 10% chance to inflict sleep each second and the sleep can be dispelled by taking damage. But if the enemies dare to stop inside the 'resting room', they might fall into an infinite cycle of falling asleep. And since there are no dangers inside the room, they would never wake up. I've baptized it with the name 'the eternal resting room'.
Don't worry about their mental health... Even if the Champion is asleep, the player is still awake, only that it can't move the Champion, and can still surrender and abandon the dungeon. Only that they will be considered as killed, and lose a lot of the reward, increasing my own reward.
*Slurp!* I start drooling thinking about it. "I can already taste the huge amount of cp and xp this area is going to give me."
And more importantly, since sleep is one of the status effects that allows for capturing the units, I can make it into an easy way to get free bodies. Not from the Champions themselves, which cannot be captured, but from the support mobs.
Regarding the new zones, I extended a tunnel from the current Laboratory. Then I created a series of small rooms connected between themselves with several corridors. Both the rooms and corridors are irregular, with parts that look like natural caves and tunnels, and parts that are clearly man-made. The rock, dirt and stone blend with the paved and metal plated surfaces in a random and disturbing way.
Then I added to this zone a Field effect. What are field effects? They are special rules that affect a Room, and every unit inside the field suffers from its effects regardless of ally or enemy. The field effect is called 'Freezing Cold'.
Freezing Cold (Field effect)
Reduces movement speed of all units by 10%.
Also increases ice damage by 20% and reduces fire damage by 20%. If a unit stays still for more than 10 seconds, they take 1% of their maximum HP as ice damage per second, until they move again.
And then I put both Corpse warehouses in the area and called this room 'The Freezer'. Yes, freezer as in 'the place where corpses are kept in good conditions'. I also put some lab equipment in the area and, most importantly, the machine to create the Stitched: the Reanimation machine.
And the last change that I made to the dungeon layout is the creation of another laboratory zone, connected to The Freezer room. If you look at the map, it's actually right next to the original laboratory room, but they aren't connected.
But this isn't enough. I wanted to mess with the player's minds, so I added a little trick. On the side where both laboratories are closer, I created a door in both laboratories, as if there was a passage connecting the two laboratories. But there isn't any passage, only the two doors facing each other.
The doors look like those high-security doors from biological laboratories, and they even have a small keyboard to input a password. Of course, they don't work and it's completely impossible for a player to go from one laboratory to the other except through The Freezer.
The last thing I did was move most of the laboratory stuff and the dungeon core to the new laboratory zone. Then I renamed the old laboratory room as 'Laboratory Annex 1' and named the new laboratory room as 'Central Laboratory'.
Now moving onto the next topic: traps! I researched a total of two new traps. One weird thing that the Flesh Monstrosities have is that they can 'decorate' the dungeons with corpses. And the first trap I unlocked is this one.
Exploding corpse (Trap)Cost:
30 cp, 1 corpse
When an enemy gets within 2 meters of this trap, the corpse explodes and it deals 20 damage to every unit within 10 meters. This damage cannot be reduced. Only triggered once for each dungeon invasion.
What I did was put several corpse decorations mixed with the Exploding corpse traps, so that it's almost impossible to know which ones are traps that are going to explode and which ones are simply decorations.
I put a total of five Exploding corpse traps mixed with more than 30 normal corpses in the Freezer room. There are no corpses in any other room in the dungeon, only in this room. And I also moved all the stitched groups into the Freezer. Now the room is full of dead bodies, with body parts and limbs spread everywhere. And we can't forget the abominations of flesh made from several humanoid races that are called 'stitched'. A truly gross and horrifying spectacle.
What's even worse, the field effect makes all units move slower. This also affects the Stitched, but since they are already so slow, a 10% less speed is almost nothing, while it can be a significant drawback for the enemies.
"So again, everyone wins except for the enemies!."
For the second trap to work, I actually needed to create a Horrific generator to supply the traps with electricity. I put the generator in one of the Corpse warehouses and I'm going to make sure that it's permanently filled with 30 corpses to maximize the amount of electricity provided. This is the second trap that I created.
Lightning Rod (Trap)
Cost: 100 cp, 50 metal. Activation cost: 5 electricity
Strikes a random enemy within 10 meters with electricity every 2 seconds, dealing 10 damage. This damage cannot be reduced.
The trap can be destroyed by hitting it 10 times, or dealing more than 100 damage with a single strike.
This is a very funny and simple trap. If the enemy gets close, it is going to be continuously blasted by electricity until the trap is destroyed. The activation cost indicates how much electricity is used by this trap when activated. This means that with a single Horrific generator I can have at most six of these traps. But for now I've only built two of them and put one on each of the laboratories.
Of course, the Lightning rod is more effective in large numbers close together. But I don't want to create a dungeon that focuses on killing everybody. What I want is an unpredictable dungeon full of unexpected turns and stupid gimmicks, so that the invading players' plans are foiled before they can even make them.
"Hahaha! Suffer the madness contained in this genius mind!" I imagine myself saying to the poor players that dared to enter my dungeon.
Oh, and regarding new technologies, I researched the Collectionist tech to be able to bring 10 bodies with me during invasions. And also built a few more Stasis capsules and Small stasis capsules to compensate, making it a total of 20 normal sized and 10 smaller ones.