Dungeon Core Online

Chapter 5

"First, you need to understand the mechanics." Rue pulled up a screen, and turned it towards James. It took him a moment before he realized it was a character sheet, his character sheet.

Glyax Tier 1 Rank 1 Dungeon

Mob Type N/A

0 xp

100,000 xp to next Tier

The sheet was basic, though James balked at the amount of experience required to hit the next tier. How did a dungeon even gain experience?

"Currently Glyax, you are a tier 1 dungeon. You have 0 experience points and have not chosen a mob type yet." She walked toward James until she was standing between him and his character sheet.

"Do you have any questions yet?"

"Umm, 100,000 seems like a lot of experience needed. And how do I even gain experience?" In the novels he read, usually killing adventurers helped the dungeons grow stronger. Was that how it was going to be in the game as well? Were adventurers assigned a set amount of experience to drop for him?

"Ah, good questions." She turned and pointed towards his tier. "Unlike adventurers, dungeons are ranked in Tiers. Tier 1 is the bottom tier, and encompasses the levels of 1 through 9 for adventurers. Your rank correlates your strength in your tier, and every 10,000 xp you gain, will increase you rank. This comes with its own perks and benefits, such as increasing your mobs levels. We can go into more detail on rank and tier increases after you've set up your dungeon and begin gaining experience."

James nodded his floating orb, signaling for Rue to continue. It made sense, they were on a time limit, and he was sure he would have time to get more detailed information from her later. For now, they needed to prepare for the adventurers.

"You gain experience from killing adventurers." Well, James figured that was a given.

"Do they have a set amount of experience? Are they like mobs to me?" Most monsters in games gave a set amount of experience on every kill, depending on the monsters level and difficulty usually. Was it going to be the same in this game?

Rue shook her head, and flashed a devilish grin. "No, instead, when an adventurer dies in your dungeon, you absorb all the excess experience they had."

"I, what?" He had an idea of where she was going with this statement, but he needed it confirmed.

"If an adventurer at say, level two, died. All of the experience he had gained since hitting level 2, on his way to level 3, would be given to you." James chuckled darkly to himself. He had played games like that, where a death could steal all of your hard earned experience towards your next level from you. More than once, he had killed other players in such games, costing hours, possibly days, of hard work. That high risk, high reward type of system was oddly satisfying to James.

"Okay, I can get how that works." Though, James had a feeling that type of system was going to make his life as the dungeon core more difficult. He would have to provide a reason for adventurers to risk their hard earned experience, otherwise people would just farm up easy mobs early on. He had done the very same thing more than once in those games.

"So, with that explained, shall we move on to your mob types?" Rue was already waving her hand, and to James surprise, a slot machine appeared?

"Umm, what?" In all the stories he read, the dungeons either had the opportunity to select from a list, or took control of the first creatures that entered their dungeon. A slot machine though, seemed a bit, gimmicky?

"This machine, will generate three different mob options for you to choose from." Rue motioned towards the lever, smiling sweetly, too sweetly, at him.

"And, what if I don't like any of the options?" James had played enough games to know the answer. But, did the makers of DCO really do it?

"Well, if you don't like the options, you are able to use V Coin to reroll." And there it was, microtransactions. Seriously?

"Doesn't that seem a bit, wrong?" Like, he was already stuck as a dungeon core, but now he couldn't even get free reign of his options, unless he decided to pay? Speaking of which, how did he even generate currency for himself as a dungeon?

"Actually, the developers put it in as an option to try to further randomize the experience. While they understand some dungeon cores may choose to utilize real currency to get the singular choice they were searching for, they figured many more would simply continue to embrace the randomness that this system provided them. Did you really expect the game to simply give you every option instantly? Where would the fun in that be?"

James hated to admit it, but Rue had a point. Half of the fun of some games, was the randomness that Random Number Generators, lovingly referred to as RNGesus, gave to the game. The thrill of the unknown, the excitement at getting an extremely rare item, all of those played to a gamer's senses. As he mentioned before, gamers loved to gamble.

"Alright, so we are going to play the slots, and see what mob types I may get to choose from?" Rue nodded her head, hand on the lever. "Before you start, what are my options?"

"That would ruin the fun." Rue said with a grin, and she pulled the lever. Whimsical music started to play as the slot machine flipped through countless options, faster than James could follow. After a few moments, the music stopped, and the screen on the machine showed three different options.

Random

Fire

Earth

"Tell me Rue, what exactly am I looking at?" He had expected the mob type to give him a creature type to work with, such as goblins, or kobolds, or slimes. But instead, he was staring at two elemental classes, and the word random. What?

"Mob types are generated based on the Mob element a dungeon has, as well as the dungeon's tier. For instance, a Tier 1 Fire dungeon would have mobs such as baby salamanders, fire slimes, and lesser fire spirits."

"So, how does Random work?"

"Random, is the rarest mob type a dungeon can choose, but also the most difficult for the dungeon core itself." James liked rare things, but what did she mean?

"How is it difficult?"

"Well, once you choose your mob type, you are locked into that type. Ever floor would normally generate mobs of that type, dependent on your tier. This allows a dungeon to develop a theme, and have a clear understanding of the mob growth. Random however, is just that. The first time you go to build a mob on a floor, its type will be randomly chosen. So, your first floor could be earth mobs, while your second floor could be wind mobs. "

James had to admit, that type of additional chaos sounded fun to him. As cool as say, having an all fire dungeon seemed, he was sure as a player, he would get bored of fighting the same types of mobs. From a player perspective, a dungeon that was randomly changing types depending on the floors, seemed a lot more appealing.

"So Glyax, have you chosen a mob type, or would you like to use V Coin to reroll?" She motioned towards the slot in the machine, which James was sure a V coin would easily disappear into. James could only guess how much money the developers of DCO were going to make on those microtransactions. Smiling to himself though, he eyed his options. They weren't going to make any money from him today.

"Let's go with Random." The moment he said the words, the slot machine disappeared, and his Character Sheet instantly updated itself, removing the N/A next to mob type, and replacing it with Random. He had to chuckle at how vague his sheet seemed. "What's next Rue?"

The Pixie looked at his character sheet, and let out a sigh. "Normally, we would construct your first floor according to your mob type." She offered James a small smile. "However, since we have no idea what you mob type is going to be, you should probably first create a simple room to summon a mob in, so we can better shape your first floor."

"That makes sense." James was nodding at her explanation. She was definitely being a lot more helpful than some of the dungeon pixies he had read about. "So, how do we go about designing a room?"

Rue waved her hand, and a table appeared before them. Atop the table was what appeared to be a large, empty piece of paper? She grinned as she held a pencil out towards him. "Why, with the Dungeon Creator of course."