The Mad Rat’s Lab

“Today’s the day! The day when I’ll play my first Dungeon Battle!”

After yesterday’s half-failed invasion, I decided to try my luck with Dungeon Battles. They say that the cp and xp rewards are quite good, and that you get decent rewards even if you die.

Although that’s the only thing you gain, because you can’t get resources of any type in Dungeon Battles, not even the special resources from the faction.

I look through the menu until I find the Dungeon Battle option. “What I need right now is a cp boost, so at the same time as I try the Dungeon Battles, I should be able to get enough cp to achieve what I want.” And what do I want right now? Enough cp to create the first Hybrid, and some more to improve the dungeon!

Dungeon Battle

In the dungeon battle, you fight with another player to see who destroys the other dungeon core first. Dying during a dungeon battle is counted as losing, even if the other player hasn’t destroyed the dungeon core.

In dungeon battles you can only bring a limited amount of units, traps, etc. that is determined by the rules of the match, decided by the players before starting the match. It is called ‘Cp budget’.

There are three ways to play dungeon battles: Quick Match, Planned Match, and Challenge.

There’s a more detailed explanation. In the Quick Match, you choose the rules before the game matches you with another player. Basically, you pre-select everything needed for the Dungeon Battle and can’t modify anything later, because the match starts immediately. It’s the fastest battle type.

In the Planned Match, you choose the rules before the matchmaking. After the matchmaking, you have some time to select everything needed for the Dungeon Battle. This means you can optimize your strategy depending on the enemy you have.

And the Challenge is a match between you and another player. So no random matchmaking. It has the same rules as the Planned Match, but you are the one that sets who you are going to fight.

After reading through the detailed explanation, I decide I’m going to do the Quick Match. A part of the decision is that I don’t want to waste time, but the biggest reason is this: I don’t have enough unit variety to adapt to the enemy, so it wouldn’t make any sense to choose the Planned Match mode. It would only put me at a disadvantage.

“Quick Match it is. Now I suppose I’ll need to select the rules, and after that, the units I’m using.”

As I say so, another screen appears in front of me, asking for what rules I’m going to use. “The lowest ‘cp budget’ is 500 cp, and the next one is 1.000 cp. I don’t think I have enough units and traps to fill the 1.000 cp, so I’m going with the lowest budget.”

Then the screen changes and it starts asking for everything I’m going to use. The first is the Champion. I only have one, so it got selected automatically. The budget has been reduced by 230 cp. Which is the cost of creating the Champion plus the cost to level up. Next to the Champion it now says ‘Mad Rat’.

Next is the traps. “I’m going to use the three that I have.” I say as I select the three of them. “240 cp budget remaining now.”

For the units, I select the only Death Butterfly, which costs 12 cp, leaving me with a 228 cp budget. “Now only the stitched remain. Since the Leaders of each squad are upgraded, they cost 30 cp, and the rest cost 20 cp. A total of 90 cp per squad.” I select two squads, leaving 48 cp. I spend the remaining cp adding an extra Braindead Mob to each squad, leaving only 8 cp unspent.

The last step is selecting what dungeon parts I’m going to use. It can’t be too big due to the rules, so I only select the big Cave, and put the dungeon core at the end of the cave. Of course, all the stitched and the butterfly are inside the cave. I don’t set any stitched to come with me.

“It’s starting!” I say after this message pops up. Then, my view turns white for a moment and the scenery changes to a forest. This forest has normal sized trees. “Was expecting the forest since I’m against the elves, hahaha!” And yes, 'Disguised Koala' is my player’s nickname.

“Oh, I forgot about it! I’m weak now!” In Dungeon Battles, there’s no Champion’s buff. “Well, weak compared to when I have the Champion’s buff. Right now I have the normal stats.”

There’s an option to watch the other player’s progress through a screen if I want. I make it appear and see that it has already started moving towards the end of the cave. “I can’t be left behind!”

“It’s strange, there’s no enemies attacking me…” I say as I advance through the forest. “Shouldn’t a few have already appeared by now?”

Just as I’m wondering what might be happening, something starts glowing under my feet. I immediately look down and see a shining magic circle.

“Fuck! A trap!?” I jump away as soon as I can. I expected the trap to blow up or something like this, but instead a very loud sound is emitted.

“An alarm trap!! Oooh, shit!” I try to run away, but the damage is already done. If the player modified the AI properly, I’m sure that now every enemy unit is moving close to this spot to kill me. In a wider map it could have gone differently, but in a small map like this…

There are already two elves shooting at me with bows right now. If I continue running and don’t find the dungeon core, their numbers are only going to increase.

I need to make a decision right now. Am I going to fight here and hope I can defeat them all, or run and try to find the dungeon core before I am killed?

“I don’t have any idea where the core might be, so it’s too risky. I'll go with the first option.”

I start fighting with them, exchanging arrows with spells. When possible, I run into melee range and save some MP by attacking with the staff.

The problem is that I didn’t take two things into account. First: that my stats aren’t as high as I am used to. So the enemies deal more damage and I deal less. And the most important: they stay away from one another, so the Chain Lightning can’t work properly. “If only I had thought better about the options!”

Five minutes later, I fall to the ground. I’m dead. I’ve managed to kill more than six elves, not sure how many because of the intense fighting, but I couldn’t overcome them all… The game shows me the screen with the winner and the rewards obtained.

“Aaaah… if it wasn’t for the trap I could have won this match… What bad luck stepping on it!” I complain to myself. I read the rewards and see that they are quite decent for having lost the match.

“If not because I can’t obtain any resources, the Dungeon Battles are way better on the rewards. At least for now, on lower levels. Maybe when you increase the level you can obtain more rewards in the dungeon invasions?”

“I’m not satisfied with the result, and still have a lot of time to play… Let’s start another Dungeon Battle!”

Without wasting time, I immediately start another battle. I keep the units and everything the same as the previous battle.

“This time is against the orcs, huh?” I say after the window announcing the opponent appears. “I don’t think they are going to use a lot of bows… so maybe it’ll be easier?”

When the battle starts I find myself in a wasteland. The only relevant thing within view are some tents with fences surrounding them. From here I can already see the figures of a few goblins.

“Is this a goblin camp…? It looks like it is. There’s no need to repeat the previous mistake and get all enemies attacking me at the same time, so it’s time to start the ‘death from the shadows’ operation.”

I start by slowly moving towards the closest tent. I try to be as difficult to spot as possible, so I’m crawling. I stand up again after reaching the tent. I then pop my head to see the rest of the camp and where the enemies are situated.

And what I see is… a goblin staring in my direction, just in front of me! “Shit! Discovered already!?”

The goblin shouts something and tries to run away. I cast Cold Blast trying to stop it. My luck doesn't betray me this time, and the goblin is encased in ice and immobilized for a short while.

“Lucky! Must be the universe balancing everything after I stepped on that trap.” I say while killing the goblin with the staff.

Two more goblins appear just at that moment, attracted by the first goblin’s shout. I can’t allow any mistakes, so one Chain Lightning later both goblins are stunned with 1 HP. I finish them with basic attacks.

“There are still a lot of goblins remaining. I can see at least fifteen from here. They are weaker than other units, but also cheaper at 15 cp… this is what allowed the other player to use so many of them. This is going to take a while.“

I continue to use hit and run tactics until I mess up and one goblin escapes to warn the rest. But by then I’ve already killed six goblins. I should be able to face the rest of the goblins by now.

When the goblins start attacking all at the same time, I cast a Chain Lightning. It only leaves the first five goblins stunned, but it is enough for now. I close into melee range and kill the stunned goblins.

Next is a very intense melee with the remaining six goblins. Most of them have already taken some damage.

“I’m getting close! I should be able to survive until I have the MP to cast another Chain Lightning, and then I'll win!”

Just as I’m excited for being near the end of the battle, and from winning the Dungeon Battle, the message announcing the end of the Dungeon Battle pops up in front of me. The enemy player has destroyed my dungeon core.

“So I lost again! But this time it was waaaay better. I was this close to winning the battle!” I exclaim while putting my index and thumb fingers almost touching.

I look at the current cp. “Almost there! Only a few more cp and I reach the cp needed to create the Hybrid that I want!”

So I decide to start a third and last Dungeon Battle. Again, I keep everything the same as the first battle, so the matchmaking starts immediately after pressing the button to start a new Dungeon Battle.

“I think that I’m going to face a few zombies now.” I say while stroking my rat chin.

“I don’t know what you think, but my rat’s senses are tingling and telling me to expect a lot of zombies. And it doesn’t have anything to do with the name of the opponent’s dungeon: Zombie Apocalypse. Nothing at all! I promise!”

The battle starts and I find myself in a cemetery. “*Tsk!* How cliché. Zombies in a cemetery! Now what, the zombies start rising from the graves, surround me, and start attacking?”

I haven’t finished talking when a hand rises from one of the closest graves. “Told you!” As the zombie’s head appears, it cries in my direction. I can see that a few more hands have appeared from other graves.

Not wanting to waste time like in the previous dungeon, I start attacking the zombie with my staff. It’s incredibly easy, because the zombie is still half buried, so it can’t counterattack nor even try to avoid.

The zombie dies to my staff, with an horrifying *Crunch!*. It is still half buried. “Haha! You couldn't even touch me!” I make fun of it while I move towards the closest zombie. It is still half buried too, so I repeat the same thing I did with the first zombie.

“It’s like playing Whac-A-Mole, except it’s zombies!” I can’t stop myself from laughing.  “Whac-A-Zombie, the new family game!”

I play Whac-A-Zombie for a while, but the difficulty is getting higher. This is because the remaining zombies are close to unbury themselves. “Oww… what a shame!” I pout. “I wanted to keep playing some more time!”

I distance myself from the remaining zombies. I do it so that the zombies clump together and I can hit them all with a single Chain Lightning.

Meanwhile, I take a look at the enemy player’s progress. It is currently trying to run as fast as possible in the direction of my dungeon core. But it isn’t going very well, because their Champion is a Zombie, and zombies are as slow as the stitched.

“Does it have the butterfly attached? Because otherwise it makes no sense for it to start running, does it? Especially when the remaining stitched are following close behind… Let’s see if I can still win this!”

I look away from the screen and prepare to face the zombies. I cast a Chain Lightning, and the front ones get stunned. Exactly at this moment, the screen signaling the end of the Dungeon Battle pops in front of me.

“Ahahahaha! The enemy player got killed! And by the butterfly!” I start laughing. “Too bad he picked a zombie Champion! Too slow to run, and the butterfly had a loooot of time to kill it! Hahaha!”

“Well, that’s it! I’m going to leave the game now. Tomorrow it’s mad scientist day! The day when I’ll finally create my first Hybrid!”

I'm ready to leave the game, but not without first saving the replay of this battle. I’m going to upload a video called ‘Whac-A-Zombie’ after editing it.

Similar to the ‘It’s alive! It’s alive!’ series, the ‘Mad Rat’s Eccentricities’ series also got a lot of popularity in the future. The first video, ‘Whac-A-Zombie’, went viral and was imitated by thousands of players.

The player who owned the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ dungeon didn’t understand why, suddenly, he got so many players entering the dungeon. The dungeon got into the top 10 most popular dungeons after a single day. Most of the players didn’t even care if they died or beated the dungeon because they tried to get the best ‘zombie whacking streak’, everything else didn’t matter. The dungeon owner thought some conspiracy was going on, until he saw a ‘Whac-A-Zombie’ video and understood everything.