Dungeon Guild

by Jonathan Brooks

  As she approached the middle of the room, a portion of the ceiling seemed to drop. It was only the quick reflexes from the Rogue that prevented her from being flattened like a pancake – although she did take a little damage from the impact which popped her from Stealth. Domn3r wasn’t surprised to see that the ceiling hid a giant mushroom. He was surprised when he watched the Shroomba of Doomba (Level 36) spread a pair of wings from behind its back and lift into the air. The massive 30-foot-tall and 20-foot-wide mushroom rose in the air until it was right in the middle of the room. Once it was there, it turned its attention to the now-unstealthed Rogue standing in open-mouthed awe below it. It quickly swooped overhead and folded its wings, dropping straight down and landed with a resounding THUMP as it engulfed Max.

  Backing out into the hallway, the group looked at each other with shocked expressions. Mac got over his shock and turned to Devin, “How the hell do we kill that thing? I mean, it fucking FLIES!”

  “I’m not sure – that’s for you to find out and for me to watch the show. Here, let me get Max up for you – I’m pretty sure you don’t want Ambrose going in there right now,” Devin put action to his words as he walked in the room and cast his Resurrection spell on Max. After she resurrected near Devin, she quickly ran back into the hallway with the rest of her group. “Uh…that was unexpected…and painful,” Max told them in all seriousness.

  “I agree, that was unexpected – sorry about that Max. Anyone have any ideas?” Domn3r asked.

  “We won’t really know what to expect other than by going in there and trying our hand at it. Let’s just treat it as a normal boss and try to adapt on the fly,” Ambrose put forth her opinion. They all agreed and they all entered the room as a group, determined to see what they could do against this monstrous fungus.

  Their first attempt didn’t go so well. Domn3r attempted to taunt the SoD (Shroomba of Doomba) and succeeded a little too well – it instantly headed in his direction and similarly “thumped” him like Max. Even with his hefty damage mitigation, it was an instant one-shot death. After that, one-by-one the others were “thumped” to death – all except for Max. She was quick enough that she could avoid the SoD when it dropped because of her massive amount of Agility. Bolt3n was able to avoid one drop but miscalculated on the next and was instantly killed.

  Regrouping back in the hallway after Devin Resurrected the other four, they determined that Max was the best chance to avoid further casualties. They needed to concentrate on taking away the SoD’s ability to fly, which meant somehow damaging the wings it possessed. Mac had an idea he wanted to try, so with their new plan in mind they all headed back into the room.

  Max used her one barely-effective ranged attack and threw a knife at the SoD hovering in the center of the room. After getting its attention, she started running around the room in a circle to avoid the mushrooms’ “thump” attack. As soon as its back was turned toward Mac, he cast a spell that seemed counterintuitive for the fire-based monster but was actually quite effective on its feathered wings. A huge fireball, four feet in diameter, launched from his hands and impacted the spot on the SoD’s back where the wings connected to its body. Within seconds, the wings caught fire and the massive mushroom plummeted toward the ground.

  This didn’t mean that it was defenseless, however. With its wings clipped, it was very similar to a normal Shroomba and legs sprouted from underneath the monstrosity to propel it toward Mac. Domn3r stood in the way, finally able to tank it properly. He taunted it and braced himself as it got closer to him. He angled his shield toward its right hand which he saw heading in his direction and tried to deflect it away from him. That was not precisely what the SoD had in mind, unfortunately.

  Instead of hitting him, the giant hand picked Domn3r up and tossed him inside its massive tooth-filled maw. After chewing on him for a couple of seconds, it spit him back out onto the ground in front of it. Domn3r took a bit of damage but it didn’t one-shot him this time. He got back up and felt healing wash over him as Ambrose sent a couple of spells his way, bringing him back up to full. He saw another hand coming for him and this time he ducked down underneath it as it passed over his head. He attacked the front of the SoD and saw its health reduce by a small amount, but he wasn’t worried. He wasn’t designed to do dish out a ton of damage – his job was take it.

  All this time the rest of the party had been busy laying into the massive mushroom from all sides with spells, arrows, and quick stabs from Max. Its health dropped quickly and when it hit the 50% mark it started quivering all over its body. Domn3r backed up as he saw it almost collapse upon itself and called out, “Everyone watch out, it’s doing som…” He couldn’t get it all out before there was a *whoomp* and a large number of baseball-sized spores erupted from the body of the SoD and shot out in all directions, damaging anyone in their way. Domn3r was able to block the ones heading his way with his shield but the others weren’t so lucky.

  Fortunately, no one died but Mac got one to his face and another hit him in the chest, doing a great deal of damage. Bolt3n took one to his nether regions, which made him slump over in pain. Max was clipped in an arm and a leg but didn’t suffer too greatly. Ambrose got hit right smack in the middle of her forehead which knocked her on her ass. All in all, they got lucky from this attack and once Ambrose was up she was able to quickly heal everyone back up to full using an expensive group heal called Resurgence.

  Domn3r looked toward the SoD and it looked like it had shrunk a couple of feet after releasing all of those spores. He glanced around and told his team to avoid the remaining spores along the ground in case they still did damage if you touched them. They went back to whittling down the giant mushrooms’ health, Domn3r attempting to dodge or block any attacks that came his way. He was picked up and chewed on again but took less damage than the first time.

  Within a minute, the SoD was down to 25% health and Domn3r watched it closely for signs that it would do something else. He gave a sigh of relief as it gave no signs of launching any other type of attack. Nice! We can do this! His focus upon the attacks of the fungal monstrosity left him open to an attack from behind, unfortunately. Surprised at a rear attack, he looked behind him and saw a smaller, normal Magma Shroomba (Spawn) behind him. It was so unexpected that he wasn’t watching his bigger brother and got hit from the side by a giant hand that sent him flying 15 feet away.

  As he was airborne, he could see the rest of the room filled with Shroombas attacking his other party members. By the time he got to his feet, Ambrose and Mac were already dead and Bolt3n wasn’t far behind. Max was sprinting away from a group of Shroombas and if it wasn’t a life-or-death situation it would have been funny. She looked like she was running from a horde of irate toddlers. Looking at his own health, Domn3r realized the last hit took about 40% of his health away. As he turned his focus back to the bigger threat, he found that his attention had wandered too much. A massive hand grabbed him and the next thing he knew he was being chewed up again, doing enough damage to kill him just before he was spit out.

  When he was brought back to life by Devin, he found out that Max lived another 20 seconds before being surrounded by almost 40 Shroombas. Even being able to dodge their slow attacks, she was still overwhelmed by their sheer numbers. As they all regrouped in the hallway, they looked back into the room to see that the SoD had regenerated after they had all died in the attack. Disheartened, they discussed what had happened and tried to figure out what to do about it. Bolt3n said that he saw the spores that were launched out earlier had spawned the smaller Shroombas. Killing them all before they were able to spawn had to be their objective during their next try.

  They kept all their previous strategies on this next fight and when the SoD exploded they all crouched down presenting as little of a target as possible. They were still hit a couple of times, but the damage was minimal compared to before. After that, Domn3r tanked and Ambrose healed him as the rest of them ran around and attacked the remaining spores scattered along the ground
. They didn’t fight back and were easily killed with one hit, so they were done quickly. The rest of the fight was rather boring as they brought it down to 0% without any other incident.

  A chest dropped down from the ceiling as the massive mushroom died, and Max ran over to it to check it out. She opened it up and yelled out loud, “Holy shit!”

  “What’s in it?” Domn3r asked.

  “There’s 100 gold in here. That’s more than I’ve ever had at one time,” Max unbelievingly responded.

  “Sorry about that, I wanted to have some epic loot in there, but I don’t have access to it at the moment. After this beta-test, I’ll be making some buildings with NPCs that will hopefully remedy that,” Krista interjected.

  “Uh…no, this is awesome. I can buy good stuff with this – much better than what I have now,” Max replied.

  The rest of the party expressed their gratitude and personally thanked their good fortune. Leading the way out of the room, Max entered the hallway that appeared after the SoD had died and started checking for traps. Domn3r had a smile on his face as he heard her mumbling, “yeah, sorry about that…here’s JUST 100 gold for you…next time I’ll have something even better…”

  Chapter 23

  Krista got close to Devin as he was following behind the group of players and whispered in his ear, “Hey, I’ll be back in a little bit. I have to go start on a project so let me know what happens. I hopefully won’t be gone too long.” He nodded in acknowledgement as he continued following behind his guild friends. She then changed her viewpoint to just outside the entrance of Altera Vita. She found that she could travel about 100 feet out from the entrance and could influence non-animate objects within that range.

  After making sure there were no players around (she had tried moving a tree before this but couldn’t while there were players within 200 feet of the entrance), Krista started eliminating trees and rocks so that she basically had a blank canvas of dirt that she could play with. Each object she removed gave her a negligible amount of resources, but she wasn’t really concerned with that. She still had over a million resource points to play with, even subtracting what she needed to fine-tune the lower floor Devin was currently going through.

  Once everything was clear, she brought up her Buildings and NPCs menus to see what kind of trouble she could get into:

  Building and NPCs Toolset

  Buildings

  NPCs

  Blacksmith/Forge

  10,000 rp

  Smythe

  Blacksmith

  5,000 rp

  Alchemy Shack

  15,000 rp

  Chemlas

  Alchemist

  7,500 rp

  Enchanting Hut

  15,000 rp

  Trance

  Enchanter

  7,500 rp

  Herbalist’s Cabin

  5,000 rp

  Rose

  Herbalist

  2,000 rp

  Hunting Retreat

  8,000 rp

  Trax

  Hunter

  8,000 rp

  Tannery

  12,000 rp

  Skinny

  Tanner

  6,000 rp

  General Goods Store

  20,000 rp

  Price

  Merchant

  10,000 rp

  Guard Barracks

  25,000 rp

  Sgt. Rucker

  Guard

  12,500 rp

  Tavern/Inn

  22,000 rp

  Finny

  Innkeeper

  5,500 rp

  Pierre

  Cook

  5,500 rp

  Wood Palisade w/Gate

  50,000 rp

  Dewey

  Gate Guard

  10,000 rp

  Guild House *new

  100,000 rp

  (none)

  Shrine (purchased)

  5,000 rp

  As she looked over the list, she realized what she had here was the beginnings of her very own town. She had more than enough to purchase everything right now, but she was sure that she could upgrade them once they were purchased. Those upgrades would most likely cost a pretty penny once she got to that point. She was just a little confused on why she would want all these buildings – she had originally wanted to build a blacksmith and enchanter in order to improve the weapons that she had access to in the dungeon. What are these other things for? She asked Carl if he had any more knowledge of it and was rewarded with a plethora of information.

  These buildings are ultimately designed to help increase the availability of weapons, armor, and items that can be looted in your dungeons as well as provide an additional source of resource points. Your NPCs are autonomous creations that can provide services to players for a fee that can be instantly converted to resources that the dungeon can use.

  For instance, a player walks into the Enchanting Hut and wants an enchantment that adds +5 to physical damage on their sword. They can either pay 8 silver or provide the raw materials a player enchanter would use to create this enchantment. Either payment would suffice for your enchanter to create the enchantment. This payment would then be absorbed for its equivalent resource points.

  At level one, each building can only provide lower level goods and services. As you upgrade them by infusing them with additional resources, they can create and provide higher-level products.

  The General Goods Store is a place that players can unload any unwanted loot and your NPC will buy it for less than it is worth in resources, thereby making a nice profit of points.

  Additionally, as you build each building, their respective goods that they traffic in will then be absorbable inside your dungeon if they have it on them or in their bag. So, this means that ingredients, skins, potions, scrolls, and other various items will then be usable as loot.

  A warning – when you start adding buildings, each building has a specific amount of “health points” that corresponds to how much damage it can take before being destroyed. The Palisade and Guards are designed to help prevent this from happening but will not be enough against a determined enemy.

  If you have any more questions, please let me know.

  Armed with this information, she started buying and placing the buildings she purchased with her large supply of resource points. First, she placed the Wood Palisade w/Gate along the perimeter of her 100-foot territory in a semi-circle shape and butted the ends up against the mountain. The 20-foot-high walls looked formidable enough to stop most players, but Krista was worried that mages with access to fire spells would tear right through it. After that, she placed the Guard Barracks next to the gate on the west side and placed the Hunter’s Retreat opposite it on the east side. Halfway down the east side of the palisade, Krista placed the Alchemy Shack and again on the opposite side she placed the Herbalist’s Cabin.

  Near the mountain she placed the Blacksmith/Forge and Enchanting Hut on the east side, giving them plenty of room to expand and upgrade. On the west side next to the mountain she placed the Tavern/Inn in the corner and the Guild House right next to it. In the center of the territory she placed the Tannery and the General Goods store – right out front to encourage players to sell their loot. When she was finished placing them all, she quickly purchased all the available NPCs and populated all of the empty buildings.

  Suddenly, the empty abandoned-looking town was filled with life as the NPCs went about performing various activities. She saw the shopkeepers opening their shops, the blacksmith banging on some hot metal on his anvil, her new herbalist leaving her cabin and heading out the gate into the forest, and the new gate guard standing at attention near the gate. Near the Guard Barracks, she spotted Sgt. Rucker standing at attention as if he was awaiting orders.

  She brought her viewpoint near the front of the new guard and addressed him, “Hello Sgt. Rucker. What is it you do here?”

  Krista was happy to see that he could hear and answer her, “I’m here to protect your settlemen
t from anyone you deem to be hostile. Although I could probably use more help.”

  “How do I go about that, Sgt.?”

  “You need to select the barracks behind me and hire me some new recruits that I can whip up into shape in no time. A variety of different guards will help diversify our defensive strategies. And if you can upgrade the Palisade to have a catwalk or even a different material it would help as well. I consider the safety of this place to be my highest priority,” Rucker told her with all formality.

  “Thank you, I’ll look at the wall in just a moment.” It appeared as though he took his job seriously, but Krista wasn’t sure why he needed to guard these buildings in the first place. She realized that they had a certain amount of health points, but she couldn’t understand why anyone would want to attack them in the first place. So, she did what she always did when she had a dungeon-related question – she asked Carl for some more clarification.

  The reason someone would attack your town is for two main reasons. First, is the monetary reward they would get from each building demolished. If it is a trade building like an Enchanter, they would receive an amount of currency equal to the sales over the last day at that location. For other buildings, they would receive a set amount determined by a complex calculation based on various factors – including, but not limited to, the upgrades spent on the building.

  The second, and probably most important reason, is that if another guild attacks and destroys all the defenders and occupies the Guild House uncontested for 30 minutes, they can gain control of the town bonuses. These bonuses include a discount on all items bought and sold in town – while still maintaining a profit of resources for the dungeon – as well as receive the Dungeon Core bonus while inside this dungeon. Currently, as it is unoccupied by any guild, you may choose to either assign a guild to control the town defenses or let a guild occupy it on their own.