The Mad Rat’s Lab

I already finished working on the stitched, but I still have to look at my own skills. The game says Champions start with three skill points. And I must allocate the first three skill points to one skill of each type: active, triggered and passive.

“I’m still not sure about what triggered skills exactly are.” I look at their list and read a few of them to understand them.

“To resume: triggered skills are skills that are generally very powerful, but need a condition to be fulfilled before they are activated. So they aren’t active skills because you can’t use them when you want, and aren’t passive skills because they aren’t working most of the time. And, all triggered skills without exception, do nothing unless the condition is fulfilled.”

There are some triggered very powerful attacks too. The one I like the most from the ones I’ve read is the ‘Death Burst’. It basically makes creatures explode after being reduced to 0 HP, dealing large amounts of damage in a big area to every unit. There are even multiple Death Burst skills, with different explosion effects and damage types.

“The doubt is now settled. What skills am I going to pick?” I remember that I need a way to obtain bodies of other races. “How should I do it? What are the conditions to capture other faction’s units?” I look at the dungeon menu to find the answer. There is a help button.

“So, I need a skill to stun, put units to sleep, or something similar.” I search for skills that can produce one of those effects. “Most of them are active skills. Heh, what a surprise! I re~ally didn’t expect it.” I say with sarcasm. “But what surprises me are the triggered skills that can cause stun, sleep, etc. Maybe they are more powerful because they need a condition to be fulfilled. And this one is calling to me. I hear you, don’t worry!”

“This skill is almost custom-tailored for capturing units. The only downside is that I won’t be able to kill anything even if I try. Since I will only have one active skill, and it must deal electric damage for the stun to activate.”

“But this is the best skill I can think of, so I'm going to pick it! Now I need a way to inflict lightning damage or the triggered skill is useless.” I quickly search the active skills and find two that I have enough MP to cast.

In DMA, most players consider the elemental damage types as an extra role play feature. It’s because almost no units have innate resistances or weakness to damage types, and because any unit can use any skill. Giving units fire resistance is useless because the enemy can simply use ice skills and ignore it.

But, in fact, elemental damage types are very important when planning combos and synergies. An example is this Shared Voltage skill. But there is another more common example: giving melee units resistance to the same type of damage that the area damage dealers are going to use. Reducing the damage your units take while the enemy takes the full brunt of the attack. Elemental damage and resistance aren’t in the game to add counters to certain creature types but to add more customization for the players.

“I think I prefer Chain Lightning. Sure, I will only be able to cast it once before having to wait for the MP to recover. But I don’t need the single target damage from the Lightning Bolt. I won’t be able to kill them anyway… And I swear that it has nothing to do with how epic it would be to electrocute ten enemies with a single spell casting! Not at all related.” I say while looking away.

“Then it’s settled. Only the passive skill remains.” I browse through the passive skills. I’m looking for something related to spellcasting and I find a very good one.

“This skill fits perfectly with my Champion’s style! And it’s funny that there’s another skill that does exactly the same but with EP instead of MP. It’s called ‘Lunatic’.” It’s a shame I’m not going to be using too much EP since I’m a spellcaster. Because, RP-wise, having the two would be amazing.

“I have enough HP that Maniac shouldn't be too much of a problem. Also, it synergizes very well with Mana Attuned’s MP reduction.” I look at how my skills look right now.

“I have one active, one triggered and two passive skills right now.” ‘Rat Transformation’, you say? What’s that? Is it tasty? I don’t know what you are talking about... “Since I have one non-innate skill of each type, when I level up I can start upgrading skills or freely choose a new one from any type.”

“Finally finished with all the mobs and Champion stuff! Now for the actual dungeon stuff!” I open the dungeon building list.

As expected, I can create more of the buildings I already have. But the other five are new. “I don’t need more buildings of the same kind. Let’s look at the others.”

The Mine is needed to passively generate ‘metal’, one of this game’s resources. “I’m sure there will come a time when I will need metal, so I should build one Mine as soon as possible. The same goes for the Farm, but with the ‘food’ resource.”

The Experimentation set is needed to get access to the technology research. So it is needed to be able to research new unit types, buildings, etc. The other two buildings are more interesting.

“‘Electricity’ is another game resource. The amount you have is the maximum capacity that you can use to power devices. It is used for powering buildings and traps. This is a resource that most factions don’t have, they instead use some other resource in a similar fashion.” I say after looking for what electricity is using the game's help.

“Wow! Just wow! They are so expensive!” The Horrific generator must be very important for the dungeon advancement. But the one that catches my attention is the Mutation vat! I’m sure my eyes are sparkling right now. Also, I’ve already found a way to spend the food and the metal.

“Dear game system, can you hear me? I've been your most devoted follower since half a second ago. Can you give me another extra 3,500 cp, 250 metal, 300 food and 20 corpses? It is only a little help for your most devoted follower! If you do, I promise to follow you until the day I die!”

Nothing happens for a while. *Tsk!* “Nothing wasted for trying!” So, the Farm costs 100 cp, the Mine costs 150 cp and the Research Table costs 50 cp. They sum a total of 300 cp. This will leave me with only 80 cp for the dungeon rooms and decorations. But I took a peek before, and they are quite cheap.

I pay for the three buildings and put them in the dungeon in random places. Doesn’t matter because I’ll now reorganize everything.

“It’s time to get dirty!” I say while rolling up my sleeves… Not that I can, though. But I do try. This is a game and the models can’t be freely altered. And the sleeves aren’t coded to allow this action.

The current dungeon consists of a single room immediately next to the entrance portal. In this room there’s a mix of everything: buildings, decorations, rocks, the stitched, more rocks, myself… A truly chaotic mess.

The room has about 25 meters from beginning to end. I start by making the room larger, until it reaches around 50 meters in length and 30 in width. I make the height irregular, between 3 and 5 meters.

At the end of the room, I create a tunnel entrance. From there, I create a mess of interconnected tunnels. They are no more than 50 meters but feel a lot longer. At the end of two of those tunnels I put the mine and the farm. One in each. I create a last room at the end of the furthest tunnel from the entrance. It is a 20 meter square room. I put all the stuff inside and leave the original room empty.

Then I return to the first room. I add slopes, rock columns, stalactites and stalagmites… everything I can think of to make the room look like a natural cave. I do the same with the tunnels, but with softer terrain and I add some mud here and there. I wanted to create some underground water flowing through them, but don’t have enough cp.

I finish furnishing the last room with laboratory equipment. I distribute everything as chaotically as possible while making it walkable. Also, the walls, ceiling and floor look clearly manmade, a clear contrast with the rest of the dungeon. Last but not least, I put the dungeon core in the middle of this room.

“Only the distribution of the stitched remains.” I’m going to use the ‘Rooms’ feature for it.

So I create three rooms: ‘Cave’, ‘Tunnels’ and ‘Laboratory’. Yes, I know. Very original. I finish the dungeon creation by assigning three groups of stitched to the Cave and the other two to the Tunnels. The Laboratory is going to be empty for now.

*Fiu!* “It’s done! Dungeon finished! And I only needed…” I look at the clock. “Whaaat!? A full day!? I needed a full day to create the dungeon! And it’s already time to go to bed…! I missed dinner time…” I say. The game asks for the dungeon name, and I write it without wasting time. I already thought of the dungeon’s name while creating the rooms. Then I leave the game while saying: “Cold dinner, wait for me!”

About two months later, a soon-to-be famous guide for DMA players appeared in the forums. It had most of the needed info and tips to dive into a certain dungeon. It was called ‘How to Stay Sane in The Mad Rat’s Lab’. Unluckily, it was already too late for the author’s own sanity.

Radosh

Hello everyone! The start of this novel, the dungeon creation, is finished! From now on I will publish less chapters. I'm still not sure how fast I'm going to be able to write them, but expect at least one chapter per week. I hope I can write more.