Chapter 24: Ch 21 – Preparing the second assault

“So you are asking me 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 me 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 somebody 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 me 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 game. 

“I don’t know… I think I prefer somebody who isn’t so haughty and doesn’t ask for me 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 treatment.

I start to count mentally while walking away. ‘One, two, three…’ Before reaching five, Ricard makes a jump and grabs me so I can’t get away.

“Please! Allow me to teach you! I’ll teach you as a friend! You won’t need to call me 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 me in improving my dungeon… But only because you asked so nicely!”

Hahaha! Seee? This is how you manipulate someone! So easy! Too easy!

*Khum, Khum!* Ricard raises his glasses with his index finger while faking a cough. Oh!? Isn’t this the famous anime 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 game he likes!

“So, start by telling me, 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 mean literally EVERYTHING!

I’m lucky that on Fridays we only have one class very early in the morning, because I’m able to 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 me. He’s still talking non-stop about the game. I take this chance to ask for help.

‘Please, save me!’ I say with signs and hand movements.

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 me who actually asked for help!’

‘Haaah, ok… But you’ll owe me one, ok?’

‘Sure! Anything if this means 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 something, stop talking for a moment!” 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?”

“And we were going to leave, but then Andreu asked me for some tips on how to build a better dungeon and here I am! Teaching him the ways of the game!”

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?”

You are reading story The Mad Rat’s Lab at novel35.com

“I need help with how to prepare for a Challenge Dungeon Battle I have today.” I answer.

For a moment, 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 me 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.

“Yesterday I received a challenge from a player called A Lil’ Demoness, and she baited me into a match where the rules were clearly designed to cripple me… and I lost. Then I asked for a rematch, this time with fair rules. And here we are, discussing how I can improve the dungeon battle so I can crush her this time!”

Then we proceed to plan and design a dungeon room for this dungeon battle, which is going to be extremely difficult and easy to get lost in, with lots of traps and unexpected surprises.

And with Laura’s help, it actually takes less than an hour. Which is an extremely short amount of time compared to how much time I spent with only Ricard…

Oh! And during all that time with Ricard, he actually didn’t help me with dungeon planning. At some 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 at that point.

 

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“Hey, here I come again!” I say once I enter the game. I’m talking to myself, because I’m alone. “It’s time to implement 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)

‘Hahaha! 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 time so that they already know the dungeon layout 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 me, 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 elements 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 elements 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 some damage, and if you space them out, not even AoE are very effective.’

Basically, what he means 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 me 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 extremely 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 time. The more time 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 same 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 some extra damage while alive, and even more damage if they get killed! Since they are so small and can fly, they’re extremely difficult to avoid in the narrow tunnel.

 

The second room is a medium-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 Siameses that specialize in ranged combat. Bodies which I don’t currently have.

So we came up with a solution to this… and it’s a very nice idea! I’m sure I’m going to apply the same 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.

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