Day 1 Phase 1 Third hour

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The newly opened window is horizontal like a table and makes an almost three-dimensional effect with the symbols and pictures placed on it.

In a grid of eleven by eleven spaces four rooms are already placed, but six more are floating on the side. Three of the floating rooms are blinking red, the others are a stable light green.

To the other side are two smaller windows, the first with a list of entries and a “Mana (1)” line on top while the other one has only bullet lines.

Parsi flies around the display and looks at everything, frowning most of the time. After a while she tells me “There are several things different than they should be, although the interface itself is not changed. But this reads ‘floor 0’ instead of ‘floor 1’, there are three rooms already placed that should not be there, then entrance is to the side and does not hold the dungeon barrier, that is instead on the heart room. I do not understand these differences.”

“I think I know why in most cases. The Higher Power considers this an experiment, which means it does contain several changes. I know floor 0 is above ground in a structure like a building or a tower fundament, which is why the entrance is to the side. And the dungeon barrier is probably here because this is where the dungeon will go underground. But what are the three added rooms? Let’s look at their description.”

I look at the bottom room and suddenly there is a text floating about it

[Observe Result]

[Deep Stairwell 20]

[Stairwell that connect floor 0 to a deeper floor. Will terminate on floor 20]

“OK, looks like those are intended to become direct connections to deeper floors, opening and ending on floors 20, 40 and 60. But that also means that for the next twenty floors, each floor will need one of the long corridors to fill the space at bottom left – not ideal. We currently have one of these, how often do we get them, Parsi?”

“Since we have one of them, the chance is one in twenty. Each dungeon has a list of twenty room structures from which we randomly get three each construction phase. But the total list is somewhere around thirty different pieces and we will only know what is on our list when we get the rooms.

But we don’t need to fill everything, the requirement is (fifty plus floor number) in percent. So we need only to fill sixty-one squares here to open the next floor down.

However we get a bonus whenever we manage to fill a floor completely even later.”

“And that is why you said that floor sixty is a sugar dream, because by that depth we would need to fill each floor to 100%?”

“Exactly. If we go down as quickly as possible and leave the remaining space on the top floors open, then we can use that to dump unwanted pieces that do not fit on the lower floors. But even such a dumping ground will get full the deeper we go. And sooner or later we will fail and be stalled.”

“Ok, let’s talk about the other end first. We have three big rooms, and I would like one to be directly at the entrance to be used for the shop or reception. If we use the biggest room there, it would directly connect the entrance to the heart room. Or we could use one of the smaller ones, but that would require another small corridor between the two rooms. Which would be better in your opinion?”

“Claudia, the big 4x4 room would be a very bad idea there. If we want to pretend someone else sends parties in, we need to have a corridor with multiple doors between. And I would really prefer to use the big ones for boss rooms if possible. Although we will get a number of them over time since we have at least three different big rooms. That means three out of twenty rooms we get should be usable as boss rooms on average.”

“Right. If we use the branching corridor there and both smaller rooms, we will have a small hole of two squares. Does a room for that exist?”

“Yes, the two-square-corridor is the smallest piece possible. There is a good chance that we have it, but I can’t guarantee that. But this is better than using the big room, and it places the three rooms we have to place now. The other three rooms are in our reserve, they could be placed or we can keep them for tomorrow when the system assigns three more rooms to place.”

“OK, let’s set that first” I reach for the window and try to drag the 3x3 room into the edge, but it snaps back “Parsi, why can’t I place that room as we decided?”

“Everything has to be connected in a way to the core room – heart room for us. So you’ll need to place the branching corridor first, and then you also get a free door on a connecting wall of your choice. Additional doors could later be placed for 1 Mana, but please do not do this for now.”

“OK, this works. And it cleared some of the requirements. Let’s see what is left to do. 56/61 squares to fill, and have to connect all deep stairwells to other rooms but not each other.

The gap between the stairwells and the core room means that we either have to use a long corridor (which we have) or a second branching corridor (which we don’t have), or are there any other possible rooms or corridors that will fit?”

“Theoretically yes, but I can’t tell you if or when we will get them. And since we have to connect everything from the existing rooms out, we will have to fill that gap quickly. I agree that we should place the long corridor there. The branching corridor would be the worse solution anyway due to the way it will add its branch even if we are lucky to get one tomorrow.”

“OK, done, the next step would be placing the doors those stairwells give. Why are those colored orange instead of grey?”

“Orange means they are conditional and can’t be opened until the condition has been fulfilled. It would be nice if we have some sort of riddle doors – no, the condition says they can only be opened once the other end of the stairwell is connected, and this condition can’t be changed.

The only thing left now are the placements. Please use the one Mana we have to purchase five Mana Collector Runes and place them somewhere in the first room, it doesn’t matter where. We will have to spend Mana for collectors for some time because we currently get only one Mana each phase otherwise. But together with that one collector from your firsts this will give us seven mana in the next phase, which will help in setting up.”

“OK. Are there any other ways to gain Mana? It seems that placements are expensive, the white tiger for example has costs listed as Mana: 4/40 – why two cost numbers anyway?”

“The first mana cost is always the temporary one – the mana collector runes for example will vanish when collecting one mana each. And the tiger would be lost once killed. The second cost is for an automated respawner that spawns a tiger once each phase if the tiger gets killed.

As for mana income – we get one mana for each floor for each phase. Above that all mana have to come from either mana placements or the adventurers, and we can have only one placement on each square. Monster or trap or treasure or rune or obstacle, never two of them.

As far as the adventurers go, we get mana based on rank if an adventurer is killed in the dungeon – one mana for rank G, two mana for rank F, four mana for rank E – doubling every rank. If the adventurer is not killed but leaves alive, then we get one mana flat, no matter the rank.

That is where the party size comes into play. We can set that number, and change it later for a certain mana cost. A smaller party size is more likely to be killed, but it limits the income when they survive, and the guild is usually wary of dungeons with small party sizes.

A large party size means they can easily survive and even reach the core room, but the mana gain on them leaving is higher.

The System limits are three to ten for party size, but most commonly used are the numbers four to six.”

“I would then prefer a size of six if we can handle it without the adventurers reaching the heart room. I assume that in any room or corridor segment all monsters and traps placed work together, but not over to the other rooms?”

“Yes, almost – but no need to worry about our defense too much for now, you got really lucky with your firsts.

Getting a rank E anything is a one in a hundred chance – usually only one of the new dungeons each year has that. And rank E monster is the best for defense – a treasure rank E would have been very bad in comparison.

There are two 50% chances for rank F, and the rest is then rank G. The nicer obstacle is a waste of the rank F of course, but the white tiger is very nice even if we will need a lot of Mana to place them.” Parsi answers my comment.

“Why would a high rank treasure be bad?” I ask

“A treasure basically has three effects. Inside the dungeon it gives a bonus to the defending monsters and traps in the same room, although secondarily it also gives a reward to the adventurers if they overcome the defenders. However the third effect is a lure or bait outside managed by the system as soon as the dungeon is opened.

Our copper coins target intelligent people, but a rank G lure is weak. Meat would target monsters, plants and berries would target animals. And the System gives out indications of that treasure to any target that comes in range. A rank E treasure would have drawn in the targets for many miles around. That is only good after we have equally strong defenders."

“So is there anything else to do for the dungeon? We have no Mana and the two remaining rooms can wait until the next construction phase with their placement. Anything else?”

“Not really – you can check what your class or race gives you if you hadn't had a system in your previous world, but mostly we now need to wait until the construction phase ends in five hours or so. Then we can leave to see where the dungeon is and what other valuables are around to collect. Anything before that would be more guessing than planning.”