Chapter 455

Just like Steve had told him, forever ago it seemed, there were two options available to James for his Siege events. The timed event was an outlast style of event. The town simply had to survive a preset duration and doing so would earn all participants rewards. The more durability left to the town, as well as the total percentage of survivors, would give more rewards and experience as well.

The other type of siege was a wave style. James could choose between one wave, all the way up to five, for the players to have to survive against. As long as the town was still standing at the end of a wave, the next wave would start, until the total number of waves was completed. This method also offered short breaks between each wave, during which players could access different tools and interfaces to prepare themselves and repair the town. As before, they got rewards based on how many waves they withstood, as well as rewards based on the overall percentage of damage dealt to the town, and other mathy things.

What James found most interesting, regarding the siege events, was each seemed to grant players the abilities to prepare the town for the upcoming siege. From what he was able to gather regarding the events, thanks to a handy bit of information granted to him when he accessed the tab, there would be a ten-minute warning prior to a siege event happening. Furthermore, there was a limit on the number of sieges that could happen during a day. That limit was six, making them events that players would be extremely keen to take part in, but would also force players to choose how their time was being spent. If they missed a siege, after all, they had few chances for another. Even worse, just because you participated in a siege, if the players didn’t withstand the waves, or survive the siege long enough, no rewards would be allotted.

The other interesting bit James found regarding the siege, was the fact there wasn’t a player cap. If he was reading everything right, the upcoming siege warning would be a server wide announcement, and then it was up to players to teleport, if they were able, to the fifth floor, to choose to accept or not. If they joined the siege, they would be temporarily loaded into a siege instance, along with all those who were joining. From there, they would be given a short amount of time to try and organize themselves, as well as prepare the town. The number of mobs, in a siege, was directly proportional to the number of players taking part. James was only given the option to set his numbers based on a 100-player participation for the siege, with the system itself increasing those numbers appropriately as the groups scaled up or down. Interestingly, it seemed to round up, player count wise, based on the brackets. Meaning if you had one too many players, you could accidently find your siege event a lot spicier than intended. Since he had yet to test the system, James went with the easy option. He assigned a 2-1 mob versus adventures ratio per wave.

That part only came into play, James found as he kept experimenting with the interface, for the wave option. For a timed siege, the system itself would continue to generate different mob combinations and numbers, based purely on RNG. Even more interesting, for the timed siege event, if he selected a 30-minute siege, there was a chance at 15 minutes for a ‘special mob’ to arrive, that James figured would act like a mini boss. If he selected an hour long siege, there was a guaranteed special mob at 30 minutes, with the additional chances of ‘unique’ mobs at fifteen minutes and forty five minutes. Additionally, Sergeant Jenkins, the fifth floor actual boss, had a chance to appear at any given time during any siege lasting longer than 30 minutes.

For the wave siege, a ‘special boss’ would arrive at the end of the third wave, if he did a three wave siege. The only time Sergeant Jenkins could come into play for a wave siege event, was if he selected the maximum of five. Then, on the last wave, Sergeant Jenkins could, and likely would, make an appearance. The waves also increased in the mobs available for each wave. The first wave, would be made up of just the lowest cost monster on his fifth floor, meaning his Painguins. From there, each additional wave would gain access to the next mob selection, as well as the number of mobs assigned per wave. At five waves, that meant the first wave would be Imperial Painguins, the second would have the ability to add Cyrus’, the third Pall Sheep, fourth Solar Bears, and fifth could see everything from Painguins, to Darth-Whals, and of course, Sergeant Jenkins. Depending on RNG, these waves could be simple, or greatly escalate. James was already imagining a fifth wave that consisted solely of Darth-whal’s, and the chaos 200 of those massive, cybernetic narwhals charging at the city, would cause.

Daydreaming aside, it took James a little longer to choose between which type of siege he wanted to go with. The timed siege events were the simplest to implement. There was no doubt in that. Furthermore, arguably, they were the tamer of the options. While RNG could still play a part in the timed siege, there were less, uh, opportunities for RNG to really stick it to the players. Still, James wouldn’t really be the random dungeon, if he didn’t go full random. Not only that, with Steve flitting around already amongst the players, James figured the developer would be more than happy to start explaining things to players, within reason, when events kicked off. Plus, if ever there was a great teambuilding opportunity…it would be the siege.

Already aware of the fact that this was probably the poorest life choice he’d made regarding DCO in a while, James selected a five-wave siege as the initial siege event. Then, to be on the safe side, James set the first siege to not be able to take place, until six more in game hours had passed. He figured that way, he and Rue would have a chance to get their in-game avatars to the fifth floor, via either hard core adventuring, or hiring sherpa’s to carry them there. After all, if he and Rue were to take part in the siege event, they would need to have proper access to the fifth floor.

Grinning to himself, and already itching to get back into the dungeon for all of its crazy shenanigans, James finalized his selection, and sent Steve a quick update on what was going on. Then, without further waiting, he shot a quick message to Rue, who appeared a few seconds later, her loot task apparently, completed. She joined him in their favorite hot springs, as they planned out their trip back down to the world of players, and their next dungeon diving excursion.