“So you are asking for tips and ideas on how to create a zone for Dungeon Battles? Do I understand it right!? Because if it’s what you want, I’m ready to instruct you on the ways of the world as a proper adult, but in exchange you must respect as your instructor and superior!”
Today after classes, when I ask Ricard for how to improve the dungeon so that it is ready for todays’ rematch with A Lil’ Demoness, this is what he says.
“I already told you I’ll never call you instructor, master, or anything of the like! Not after the epic fail with the troll!”
He puts his hand on his chest and makes a pained face. “Haaaah…! How can you be so cruel! Everyone can make a mistake or two in their whole life, right!?”
*Sigh!* “As if it was the only mistake you ever made… Well, if you don’t want to, I can always ask sobody else… like my older sister…” I say while turning away from him.
“No no no! Wait! I’ll teach you! I must redeem myself and show you my capabilities! Please, I beg you! Allow to teach you!”
Fufufu! A grin appears on my face, but he can’t see because I’m looking away. I knew he would react like this if I were to go to another person for help about the ga.
“I don’t know… I think I prefer sobody who isn’t so haughty and doesn’t ask for to treat him or her like a master…” I say while slowly walking away from him. This is what I say, but if I actually asked my older sister for help, she would demand even worse treatnt.
I start to count ntally while walking away. ‘One, two, three…’ Before reaching five, Ricard makes a jump and grabs so I can’t get away.
“Please! Allow to teach you! I’ll teach you as a friend! You won’t need to call anything! I promise I won’t bug you with respect and honorifics!”
An even bigger grin appears on my face. “Haaaaah, ok… I’ll let you to help in improving my dungeon… But only because you asked so nicely!”
Hahaha! Seee? This is how you manipulate soone! So easy! Too easy!
*Khum, Khum!* Ricard raises his glasses with his index finger while faking a cough. Oh!? Isn’t this the famous ani glasses effect? Where the glasses shine so much you can’t actually see the eyes!?
Oh, no! It’s actually his eyes that are shining so much! Ooooh, boy. Fuck! I’m so∼ going to regret this…! I forgot I should never ask Ricard for tips about a ga he likes!
“So, start by telling , with as much detail as you can, how did your previous dungeon battle go and what do you currently have in your dungeon. And we’ll start making progress from there.”
I explain to him everything that happened yesterday during the dungeon battle. And I also tell him all the units and traps that I have in the dungeon. He can’t stop himself from interrupting and asking for more and more details, or interrupting by giving his ‘very experienced opinion’ (as he himself calls it) on everything. And I an literally EVERYTHING!
I’m lucky that on Thursdays we only have one class very early in the morning, because I can spend the whole morning with him. Otherwise… my rematch would have had to be postponed to another day.
“Oh? You’re still here? I thought you were leaving soon after class?”
In the middle of Ricard’s eternal speech (he really fits the undead faction, doesn’t he?) I hear a woman’s voice from behind. I turn around and I see it’s Laura, our classmate.
“Yes, I was planning on it, but…” I say while signaling at Ricard, next to . He’s still talking non-stop about the ga. I take this chance to ask for help.
‘Please, save !’ I say with signs and hand movents.
Laura answers. ‘Save you? From what?’ She asks, with hand signs too.
‘From Ricard!! He’s going on and on with his explanations, and I can’t cut him because it was who actually asked for help!’
‘Haaah, ok… But you’ll owe one, ok?’
‘Sure! Anything if this ans this torture is going to end!’
Yes! Finally! My savior! I’ll build an altar to you (in my mind, no way I’m actually building one) so that your actions are never forgotten!
“Hey, Ricard! I’m trying to say sothing, stop talking for a mont!” Ricard finally stops talking, and Laura takes this chance to ask again. “What are you two still doing here? I thought you were going to leave soon after class? Also… Andreu, I have sothing to tell you that I forgot about before, about DMA…”
Laura is making a weird expression as she looks at , but before she can continue, Ricard interrupts her.
“Huh… Oh! Laura! Sorry I didn’t notice you! I was having a very exciting conversation with Andreu and lost sight of everything else!”
Don’t lie! You were talking alone and I was only listening! Well, feigning to listen. What ‘exciting conversation’!? Maybe an exciting monologue, but definitely not a conversation!
“Andreu asked for so tips on how to build a better dungeon and here I am! Teaching him the ways of the ga!”
She doesn’t seem too interested in the topic, since she doesn't have Dungeon Masters Arena yet. But as the savior she is, she doesn’t leave and instead asks. “Ooh, and what help do you need?”
“I need help with how to prepare for a Challenge Dungeon Battle I have today.” I answer.
For a mont, I see her face twitch. Is she getting interested? Maybe she is curious about what help do I need, for later use in her future dungeon battles?
I don’t know… but if she stays she can give more ideas. And more importantly, with her help we might be able to stop Ricard from starting yet another one of his knowledge drilling sessions.
“Oh, is that so? And why would you ask for help in a dungeon battle? Shouldn’t you make the plans by yourself?”
It's evident that she’s interested in the topic. But… why? She doesn’t have DMA yet, doesn't she? Anyway, I start to explain the situation.
“Yesterday I received a challenge from a player called A Lil’ Demoness, and she baited into a match where the rules were clearly designed to cripple … and I lost. Then I asked for a rematch, this ti with fair rules. And here we are, discussing how I can improve the dungeon battle so I can crush her this ti!”
“So you want to play dirty, huh? And I was willing to tell you beforehand…” I hear Laura muttering sothing. But she does it in a very low voice and I can’t understand what she is saying.
“What did you say?”
She answers my question by looking away and with an awkward laugh at the end. “Oh, no! It was nothing! Hahaha!”
Hmmm… Suspicious.
Leaving her awkward behavior aside, we then proceed to plan and design the dungeon rooms for this dungeon battle.
With Laura’s help, it actually takes less than an hour. Which is an extrely short amount of ti compared to how much ti I spent with only Ricard…
A huge complaint here! During all that ti when I was alone with Ricard, he actually didn’t help with the dungeon planning. At so point, he started to ramble on and on about why the undead faction is the best.
I didn’t even listen to half of it, because my brain shut down halfway.
“Hey, here I co again!” I say once I enter the ga. I’m talking to myself, because I’m alone. “It’s ti to implent the changes for the dungeon battle rematch!”
Curious about the changes I’m going to do? You’ll see as I go.
First, I’m going to tell you what Ricard and Laura said after I told them I’m using a part of the normal dungeon for the dungeon battles…
‘What are you doing? Do you really don’t know even this!? How can it be? It’s one of the most basic things in DMA: to create a separate zone for the dungeon battles! Dungeon Invasions and Dungeon Battles work very differently from one another, and what can be good for one can be useless in the other!’ (Ricard)
‘Even I, a non-player, would have created a specific zone for dungeon battles! Did you really expect to win when the other players can dive into your dungeon at any ti so that they already know the dungeon layout and mobs before the battle? Isn’t it being too naive?’ (Laura)
So yes, I’m going to start by creating a special zone, not connected to the normal dungeon path, designed specifically for dungeon battles.
Oh, and there’s another very important thing that Ricard told , for when you want to win in dungeon battles:
‘The most important thing in dungeon battles is that the enemy can’t avoid what is coming. You need to focus on those elents that, even if the enemy knows where they are, he can do nothing to prevent them. So don’t use easily avoidable traps, avoid random elents that you don’t know if they will work, and avoid using mobs that are easy to kill without retaliation. That’s why so many players use ranged mobs in dungeon battles: you can’t defeat them without taking so damage, and if you space them out, not even AoE are very effective.’
Basically, what he ans is that I need to focus on things that have around a 100% chance to damage the enemy, even if it’s only a single strike…
Which leaves with very little options, because the stitched are too slow, and even if they have ranged attacks, they can be easily kited to death; the Death Butterflies are random, they might never get close to the player; and the falling and exploding corpse traps can be avoided, they rely on the enemy passing under or getting close…
“After discussing, we decided that the best would be to create a total of three rooms or zones for the dungeon battle, each one connected to the next. The first one is going to be a tunnel.”
So I start creating the tunnel. It’s not a simple straight tunnel, no... It is extrely narrow, it twists around in random ways, and it even has parts where it’s partially collapsed and with only a small hole to pass through. Basically, it’s designed to stall the enemy for ti. The more ti the enemy spends in the tunnel, the better.
And the best is that it’s designed in a way that’s easy to put traps into it. Thanks to its narrowness and all the blind spots that the twists and turns create, even if the traps could be avoided, it’s almost impossible to do here. The sa for the mushrooms.
What’s even better, the tunnel is going to have the four Fiery Flies! So that they distract the invader from the traps (and hopefully make them fall into more traps), deal so extra damage while alive, and even more damage if they get killed! Since they are so small and can fly, they’re extrely difficult to avoid in the narrow tunnel.
The second room is a dium-sized room with a closed door that leads to the third room. It looks empty, but it isn’t.
One thing we found is that I don’t have a way to get decent ranged units for this match. Or any other good unit, really… I would need to get a lot more bodies for either the creation of Hybrids or Siases that specialize in ranged combat. Bodies which I don’t currently have.
So we ca up with a solution to this… and it’s a very nice idea! I’m sure I’m going to apply the sa concept in the normal dungeon in the future.
The plan is to use the Hidden Enemy trap to hide stitched on the ceiling, which are going to drop once the enemy gets close enough. In this way, they’re going to fall right next to the enemy, so the lack of speed isn’t going to be that much of a problem.
Hidden Enemy - dium (Trap)Cost: 10 cp, 10 talIt looks like a normal wall, ceiling, floor or decoration, but hides a humanoid or smaller unit inside. You can set a condition for the unit inside the trap to be released.
Also, the door is going to be closed until all the stitched are killed. It’s a chanism that players can use in the ga so that they can implent puzzles or special zones. I didn’t know at the ti when I was playing with Ricard, but the orc’s arena was one of these zones.
Oh, and the imps hidden behind the portraits was also this trap… “Fucking imps!”
So the second room is basically a ‘kill all enemies in the room’ type of challenge, except that the room is empty and all enemies are hidden, waiting to ambush you when you get close.
“Pretty nice, don’t you think? Hahaha!”
This room forces the enemies to risk getting attacked by multiple enemies from different places at the sa ti, if they trigger the traps fast; or take a lot of ti by slowly walking through the room to avoid awakening more than one at the sa ti.
I’m going to create a total of ten new stitched to take the role of hidden enemies. I’m calling them Braindead Assassin. Because they fall on top of the enemy to kill them.
I modify the AI so that they don’t move from the place they are. In this way they never clump together. Even in a room like this and falling literally on top of the enemy, they are so slow that they could only manage to get one lee hit if the enemy ran away from them, so making them immobile is a better option. This also prevents the enemy from using AoE to kill them effectively.
And to capitalize on the immobile stitched, I level them to level two and use the two skill points on this two skills: Toxic Spit and Blood Power. It’s fun that the already very used Toxic Spit fits this new stitched better than the rest…
“I an, they are assassins, and as assassins they throw toxic spit to the enemies. Though normal assassins would use envenod daggers instead…”
Braindead Assassin (Lv 2)HP66 (60)STA5 (5)SOU3 (3) EP55 (50)MP33 (30)STR5 (5)CON7 (7)AGI2 (2)SPI4 (4)WIL4 (4)DEX1 (1)SPD3INT1COM0SkillsActive: Toxic Spit Passive: Blood PowerBlood Power (Passive skill)When you don’t have enough EP or MP to use a skill, you use your HP instead. This skill can kill you.
With the Blood Power passive, the stitched will keep using the Toxic Spit until they die. Literally. Because they will kill themselves by using it.
In short, this room is designed to deal as much damage to the enemy as possible, while at the sa ti making them waste as much ti as possible.
If the first room is a ‘wasting ti’ kind of room and the second one is a ‘weak mobs’ room, then the third room can’t be anything else than an ‘elite mob’ room… don't you think?
So yes, you guessed it! The third room is going to have a Lab Assistant. But it also needs so extra oomph, so… There are going to be two Lightning Rods. In this way, the enemies must either focus first on the Lightning Rods and take free damage from the Lab Assistant or ignore them and keep taking lightning damage during the combat.
“If it were , I would definitely focus first on the Lightning Rods, because the assistant is tanky enough to make the fight last for long… A bad choice when you are getting struck by lightning all the ti! Hahaha!”
With this I have a perfectly planned dungeon that I hope is going to destroy A Lil’ Demoness and show her I am better than her!
Oh, I almost forgot to talk about the design! The two first rooms look like a mix of natural cave and man-made structures, while the last one looks like a laboratory, as usual.
“Hahahaha! Co and challenge again! You fool! You’re going to cry and despair so much you’re never going to recover! This is what you get for angering the Mad Rat! Hahahaha!”
I say this while raising my hands up in the air in a dramatic pose. For better effect, I cast Chain Lightning… which for a split second looks like lightning is striking and I’m manipulating it. Don’t you think this effect is aweso?
“...I’m not going to explain in detail because you should already know… but the basic attacks that any unit can use, this ans attacks without using any skill, only the weapon, cost 10 EP and deal 0,5 * Strength damage.
This ans that a lee unit must have both high STR and EP, and the other two important stats are CON to reduce enemy physical attacks and HP to not die. That’s why the orcs are considered one of the best lee units, they excel at those four stats.
On the other hand, a spellcaster should focus on MP and SPI in the first place, and then should have high SOU to regenerate the used MP, and also either high EP or high SPD. Why those two? It’s easy to understand. A spellcaster needs either high EP, to keep running for a long ti, or high SPD, to run away faster. That’s for when enemies get close and the spellcaster is going to die in lee. Which will happen for sure during battle. And also, the spellcasters shouldn’t stand still all battle, because that makes them easy targets.
As for the tanks…”
- Random ‘knowledge drilling’ done by Ricard during the morning. If Andreu listened to it or not, nobody knows. Not even Andreu.
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