Emily was just wrapping up for the day when she got a ping from Marty. Mildly surprised that he would have found a bug so quickly, she opened up her email.

Emily,

I found my first bug and I’m not sure what format you want these things in so I’m just going with a letter style. I can carve things in the dungeon walls, but the floors for some reason are indestructible. I tried three times and didn’t make a scratch, but still lost mana from the attempt. I realize that there are lower levels in the dungeon that would preclude digging too deep, but there are always at least 15 feet of stairs to descend between floors, and that would leave at least 7 feet of rock. Can we fix this? I have some ideas for traps that require floor modifications. I am also going to be altering the ceiling, and assume that this would also be indestructible at the moment.

Thanks,

Marty

Emily was dumbstruck. How was he able to carve into the walls? They were solid rock! She picked up her phone and dialed in her supervisor. “Mike? Hey, it’s Emily. I’ve got an odd problem I need to look into and I believe I’m going to need you to resolve it. No, it’s from one of the new beta testers. Yes, I’ll come to your office. Can you pull the video logs for tester C-130 for me? I haven’t watched anything yet, he just started today. Let me double check that, yes. His in game name is Angus MacG. Ok, be there in five.”

Heading down to Mike’s office, Emily was still disbelieving the numbers. She had checked Marty’s stats, and it looked like he had unlocked over ten skills and had four kills and zero deaths. All the kills were also a higher level than him. Knocking on Mike’s door, she entered at his call.

“Hey Mike, you got the stuff set up?”

“Yes, have you looked at his stats yet?”

“I glanced through them, but you won’t believe it. He’s got a 4.0 KDR (kill to death ratio) with all kills being a higher level, and over ten skills unlocked. I didn’t check how many possible classes he has unlocked, but I’m betting there are several rare ones.” Plopping down into one of the spare chairs, she turned to the giant LCD screen on the wall as Mike started some of the footage. In it, Marty was just walking through a portal into the dungeon.

“Wait a second, what’s he doing to that wall? I thought that you couldn’t destroy rock like that?”

“Yeah, I was worried about that as well. Turns out it is one of the racial abilities of the kobolds. Costs mana, and only works through their claws. Let’s watch this at three times speed, it isn’t like we will learn much from him cutting out rock.”

A few minutes later both of them had their mouths open in shock. Mike stammered, “Is that, a hammer? Quick, pull up the stats on that!”

“Yeah, the system created a new object for it. Crude Stone Hammer, and its damage is through the roof. No level limits either. Oh, here comes the first victim. A mage name Al’Kazaaam. Level 5, he should be steamrolling this dungeon. How did, OH, that’s gotta hurt.” They had just seen the part where the unfortunate mage took a giant hammer upside the head. Watching the rest of the exploits, they were both awestruck by the final set of hammers Marty had made. “OK, right here is where he says the bug is. Ok, see how he is trying to claw into the ground? Apparently he was wanting to see if he could build traps in the floor of the dungeon but it is listed as an indestructible object. He hasn’t tested it, but has shown interest in also doing something to the ceiling.”

“Yeah, both of those are listed as indestructible objects to prevent people from simply drilling down through dungeon floors and avoiding the floor bosses.”

“Well, Marty did point out in his report that there’s at least seven feet of rock between floors, and he is stuck on the first floor so theoretically there isn’t anything above him. Can we do something about it?”

“Give me a moment, I need a developer.” Picking up his phone, Mike placed a call. “Frank? Mike here. Can you come to my office for a bit? Got a bit of an obscure, not really a bug but call it an issue with a feature? OK, great.”

Hanging up, Mike looked at Emily and continued, “Frank will be here shortly, this’ll be a fun project to spring on him. How long does your tester have in the dungeon?”

“Six more days, he just finished day one.”

“That long? Well, I’m intrigued by what he’s done so far so I’m going to be pushing Frank hard to get some sort of solution to this.”

A quick knock and the door opened before anyone could say anything. “Hey Mike, you got an issue? Oh, hello ma’am. I’m Frank Scarab, head of game development.”

Shaking his offered hand, she answered, “Emily, game manager. Pleasure to meet you Frank.”

“You as well. Ok Mike, what’re we dealing with?”

“Well, we started beta testing the new monster races today and they’ve got a bug report that Emily felt needed to be sent up the chain, and I’m frankly quite glad she did. Seems one of our testers likes to think outside of the box, and wants to lay out some traps in the dungeon. I really want to see what he comes up with, but the issue we are having is the floor.”

Closing his eyes, Frank started nodding along with Mike as he talked. As soon as the floor was mentioned, his eyes flashed open. “Yeah, that’ll be a problem. Dungeon floors are indestructible to prevent tunneling down and avoiding the battles.”

“Yeah, we know about that, is there anything we can do? Seriously Frank, this guy has shown a lot of promise in just one day. Hell, he even created an ambush point by making it look like an unfinished statue near the beginning of the dungeon. I really want to help him out here just to see what we could copy from him and implement in higher level dungeons.”

“Sorry Mike, as much as I want to help we absolutely have to keep the floor indestructible. I can’t budge on this, it’s an edict from On High.”

Mike’s head drooped in defeat, until Emily spoke up. “Wait, we just have to have a way to make sure they can’t tunnel between floors right? Why do we need to have all seven feet of rock be indestructible?”

Both men looked at her like she had grown a second head, but she continued. “Seriously, let’s give Marty three feet to work with, have a foot of indestructible rock, then three more feet for the lower floors to use. He wants to use the ceiling as well; can we make the top say 15 feet of rock alterable on the first floor of the dungeon? They are instanced so there technically isn’t reason for that.”

“Genius” Mike uttered. “Frank? I don’t see any downsides, do you?”

“None. We still have more than enough indestructible floor to stop tunneling, your tester gets to unleash whatever traps he comes up with, and we can even boost this for the higher dungeons. Can you imagine how ticked players will be when they partially collapse the ceiling on themselves when they launch a massive explosion?”

“Wonderful, how soon can you have this done? Marty only has six days left in the dungeon.”

“Well, altering the parameters of the indestructible floor is simply changing the defining limits. I can have a group of guys do that in a few hours.”

“Great Frank, can you get this done tonight? I can’t wait to get this guy some room to play in. Hell, I’ll even throw together a highlight reel for the end of his initial week and bring the beers if you get the popcorn. Sound good?”

“Deal. Emily, I’ll send you a message when we get this changed so that you can pass it on to your tester.”

“Thanks Frank, I appreciate it.” Emily left as quickly as she could, since she just wasn’t that comfortable hanging out with the heads of two departments. Going back to her computer, she sent an email off to Marty.

Marty,

Congrats on your first bug report. It should only take a few hours to fix the issue with the floors. To make things work, you will only be given three feet of floor or ceiling to alter, with the exception of the initial floor. The first floor will have an unlimited area above it that is alterable, but it won’t have anything of value. You have been credited with one medium bug detection. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

Keep up the good work,

Emily

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Marty was relaxing on his couch thinking over his performance for the day when he got Emily’s message and he was extremely excited. While he didn’t have much practice with traps, not many would be expecting a spiked pitfall trap in a level one dungeon. One thing that everyone forgot to do in almost all dungeons except spider dungeons was look up, and he was going to abuse that as much as possible. Holes in the ceiling that he could drop into combat from would be perfect ambushes. In all likelihood he would be able to take out one of the squishier back row targets before anyone could stop him. Hmm, if he could find a way to make small speaking tubes he might even be able to play some mind games on the unsuspecting. With thoughts of traps and mental tortures, he decided to head off to bed. He would need his rest if he was going to have hours of preparations before the dungeon run tomorrow.