The Mad Rat’s Lab

 

“Ugh… I’m sleepy! I could barely sleep today…”

After yesterday’s dungeon invasion into my sister’s Abyss dungeon, I had nightmares. The worst of them was about an eye that stared at me, slowly getting closer. And when I could almost touch it, it transformed into a huge gaping mouth that devoured me whole.

“How many times did I wake up shouting and with my heart almost bursting…?”

Well, let’s leave the nightmares aside for a moment… When I think about what I’m going to do now, my mood quickly improves. I’m still sleepy, but who cares.

What I’m going to do today is upgrade my Champion. The Mad Rat is going to receive an improvement after so long thinking about it!

“Yes, at last! I’m finally going to upgrade my champion! Hahaha!”

Now the question that comes to mind is: what unit I’m going to use to improve it? I spent some time with Ricard talking about what unit to pick. Well, it was actually A LOT of time, because he can’t stop speaking once he starts to talk about a game.

Anyway, the unit I’m going to use is called Shadow, a demon from the Wicked Legion. But it isn’t a very common unit, and I didn’t know of a dungeon where I could find it… Except for high-level dungeons, which I can’t dive into yet (without dying).

So the only option I had left was to ask Laura to create one Shadow and put it into her dungeon so that I could invade and capture it.

Just in case you forgot, Laura is A Lil’ Demoness and plays with the demon faction, the Wicked Legion.

She quickly agreed under one condition: I had to forgive her for lying to me and making me mad with the dungeon challenges. She dared to use it to force me into forgiving her! How dare she! I got so angry at her proposal!

Nah, that’s a lie. When Laura knew I wanted to find and capture a Shadow, she herself offered to create it for me as an apology for driving me crazy before.

 

“I can feel it! This power! The shadows flow through my veins and give me power!” I shout. It seems like my childish side is awakening. “Well, not yet, because I still have to upgrade my Champion. So the power of the shadows has to wait for a while more…”

You might be asking yourself what’s so good about this demon? It’s the fact that it has one of the best MP recovering passives from the whole game. It’s called Mana Core.

As you can see, the skill Mana Core is exactly the same as the Regeneration skill, except that it regenerates MP instead of HP. You could say it’s the counterpart to the melee skill Regeneration, so it’s basically for mages.

A common thing between lots of demon units is that they share this Mana Core skill. Of course, they aren’t the only faction that has it, but they are the faction with the most units that have the skill.

In short, the demons are suited for casting spells. You could say that if the Savage Horde is the most brutal and aggressive faction in melee, the Wicked Legion is the most devastating with spells and trickery. Even their basic unit, the Imp, is suited for casting spells, unlike most basic units.

And the Shadow unit, in particular, has three things that are incredibly useful for me. Three reasons why I chose it from a large number of demon units.

The first one is being humanoid, of course. Otherwise, I couldn’t use it because my champion is a Hybrid and it’s limited to humanoid units. And also champions can only use humanoid models for health reasons.

However, it’s the less relevant reason because almost all demons have humanoid shapes. They are the corrupted versions of humans and angels, after all.

The second is a lot more important, and it’s that the Shadow’s stats heavily favor spellcasting, even compared with the other demon units. It is quite weak at melee combat but it has incredibly high MP and SPI stats. A weird thing is that it also has high physical resistance because of being, huh, a shadow.

As you can see, the Shadow’s basic stats really shine in regards to spellcasting. Now, if you look for melee attacks… with eighth strength, they are almost as weak as the Stitched.

And the third and even more important reason is that Shadows are the cheapest demon unit that has the Mana Core skill. At only 160 cp cost, they don’t cost as much as you could expect for a unit with a skill as good as this one.

And this is the most important because it means that my champion is going to get a nice skill but its cp value isn’t going to rise a lot. So I’ll still be able to use it in Dungeon Battles. After this upgrade, the Mad Rat’s total cost is going to be 380 cp, plus the 80 cp from the levels.

“Now, let’s start the upgrade! Fusiooooon Start!”

I press the upgrade button and a small animation appears in front of me, displayed by the game. It’s a hologram of my champion and the Shadow overlapping on top of one another, and finally merging into the new champion’s aspect. The same happens in real life with my avatar and the Shadow’s body.

“Aaaaaah! Shit! It hurts! I feel like my whole body’s burning! Aaaaaagh!”

By the way, this is a game and of course, I’m not hurting in any way. But I’m faking it for the video I’m going to upload in a while about my ‘transformation’. So of course I must shout and fake my pain!

“Aaaaaagh! Kill me already! Aaaaaagh!”

As the merging progresses, I keep shouting. I try to make it as realistic as possible so that the watchers can feel the pain too. I’ll consider it a success if the watchers can’t keep their eyes on the screen during the transformation.

“Aaaagh! Ooooh, finally… the pain’s going away! Aaaagh!”

After a final cry, I drop to the floor, as if exhausted. Then I slowly rise from the floor and start to examine myself.

The first thing I ‘notice’ is that my hands are different. They now look like claws. Black claws. Shadowy smoke and tendrils can be seen coming out of my new hands.

I feign surprise at the sight of my new hands. Should I say arms? Whatever…

“Oooooh! They look amazing! I’m sure I can now penetrate my enemies with a single strike! Hahaha!”

I say the best lie I can imagine. Of course, with the Shadow’s abysmal Strength stat, the last thing you can expect is for them to actually kill enemies with the claws. It has almost the same Strength as the weak basic units…

Then, I open a game menu so that it displays my own Champion in front of me. The general characteristics are the same, but two things have changed.

The first I already mentioned. The claws from the Shadow now work as my hands. They merge into the original arms as if they got corrupted. I wanted a different feeling compared to the rest of my body parts, where every part is ‘stitched’ to the others. And I believe I managed to achieve it.

And the shadows emanating from them make me look like a real badass. “Hey, look how cool I am! Hahaha!”

And the second different trait is the eyes. They now glow red, another trait from the Shadow unit. And the pupil is also slightly elongated. Not as much as a cat’s but it’s noticeable at a single glance.

Maybe, if I focus my eyesight, can I release lasers from my eyes? And burn my enemies with them? It certainly looks like it… they are glowing red, after all. But reality is hard, guys, because I can’t. And believe me when I said I tried.

“Well… maybe there’s a skill for it? I must search the skill list, just in case it actually has one of those skills.”

I’m really proud of this upgrade. The Mad Rat, my Champion, looks incredibly good after this merge. And what’s even better: my stats have increased! I’m finally the strongest in the dungeon again!

“Fufufu, fuck you Lab Assistants! You thought you could rule this dungeon because you were the strongest? You aren’t anymore! Hahaha!”

 

Finally, my champion can compete with advanced champions. And by advanced I mean champions that cost more than 300 cp… The ones with lower costs are called starter champions. Or noob champions. Or weak. Or even useless. Or… well, you get the gist of it, right?

“Now I look like a corrupted demonic monstrous skinny rat-headed humanoid. In short: I look cool. Fufufufu! Hahahaha!”

 

Finally finished with the champion upgrade, I proceed with the other changes I wanted to make today. Which is a thing I’ve been postponing for too long. WAY too long.

Now I’m going to create the first actual ranged units of this dungeon. Yeeees, the first unit that is actually good at ranged combat, you heard it right!

“What do I have right now? About ten different units and not a single one can properly fight at distance… The one that has better range is the Lab Assistant and it’s a fucking spellcasting tank! And only has one ranged spell…”

Now that I think about it in detail, it’s extremely lame. I have the faction with the most versatility and have been playing it the same as if I was using the Savage Horde, completely focussed on melee and almost ignoring all other options.

“Shame! Shame on me!”

But I’m going to solve it now. And the best part is that I got the key element, the bodies I needed for this new unit, at the same time as the Shadow’s body.

You know it by now, too, right? Of course, I’m talking about the Imps. Those small and annoying creatures that kept pestering me during my duels with Laura. Those little shits that kept popping from everywhere when I was least expecting them.

And I’m going to mix them with another pesky, small and annoying unit of which I already got some bodies when I was playing with Ricard. Yeah, I’m talking about the Goblins.

So I’m going to use two small and annoying units to create the ultimate mega-annoying creature that I can think of. And it’s going to be small too because the size doesn’t change at all.

“It’s going to be double the annoyance in the same package! Like the sales from the supermarket! If they were true because they tend to lie to you…”

“Anyway! Let’s start with the creation of this Imp and Goblin unit! First of all, the unit type: Siamese.”

I’m going to use them to create a Siamese, because of the double level-up and shared passives. Both the Imps and the Goblins have an innate passive skill, after all.

And they are also both the basic units of their respective factions, which means they are weak. So the added stats from the Hybrid won’t make a huge difference… I definitely prefer the shared skills in this case.

This way it’s also a double trouble unit. Making it even more annoying than if it were fused into a single one.

Regarding the AI, I leave it mostly as it comes. The only thing I do is prioritize the Imp’s basic AI over the Goblin’s. Because the Goblins tend to rush into melee combat, which I don’t want; while on the other hand, the Imps like to play hide-and-seek with the enemies, which is perfect for an annoying ranged unit.

“And it’s obviously going to be called Goblimp. What else could it be called?” I say to myself, sure that it’s the best name ever. “Well, let’s add Pest to the end of the name, so it’s clearly identifiable as what it actually is. Goblimp Pest, it is.”

Then I give it a bow, for ranged attacks. This part is funny because they are two units that share a single body. So for the normal attacks, if done with a two-handed weapon, the EP cost is split between the two units. On the other side, the Strength used is from the unit that makes the attack.

“It’s as if they share the EP pool when using the bow. And also when running…”

I also level them to level two. Because I want them to be cheap, but I also want to give them an active skill and another passive to each one. And the cheapest combination where I have both things is level two. Here is how they look after all the modifications.

As you can see, the goblin is a little more specialized in physical combat, while the imp is better for casting spells. So I respectively gave them a physical and magical skills. And the one that’s going to shoot the bow is the goblin.

The Strong and Spiritual skills raise the STR and SPI stats by 5, respectively. And finally, these are the new skills they have. As you could already expect, I gave them one combo by utilizing the Imp’s innate skill, the Opportunist.

Basically, the Opportunist makes the weak units ignore the target’s defense if it’s looking away. And if the enemy gets blinded, Opportunist activates. Tada! A combo!

They can also simply surround you for the Opportunist skill to activate.

“You can’t imagine what a nightmare it is when targeted from multiple sides at the same time. You can’t keep them all in sight range, so they deal a lot more damage than they should. I do know what it feels like because it’s what happened in my dungeon battles with A Lil’ Demoness…”

And the greatest of all is that both innate skills are suited for fighting stronger units.

‘Oh, you got such high defenses, but since you were looking away, you still took significant damage!’

‘And you, who can deal so much damage! But the Goblimp just avoids your attacks, what a shame!’

Don’t you think it’s great for a pest? They are going to be worse than cockroaches.

The last thing is how they look. They are about the size of a child, but this child is half red and half green, and has two heads.

It’s fun that they match so well together. If not for the double head and different skin colors, you could say it’s actually a normal unit. Unlike what happens with the Demonic Swarmers, which look so deformed…

For now, I can only create four of them because it’s the number of goblin bodies I got from the day I played with Ricard. But I plan to create a lot more of them in the future, and I’ll put them in every place where there are no mushrooms except for The Freezer and the laboratories.

“They’re going to be THE PEST of this dungeon. A unit so stupidly annoying that you can’t properly focus on what you are doing. You turn the corner, Goblimp in front of you. You are fighting some creature? Goblimp strikes from your back. You attack them? They run away, waiting for you to forget about them and come back after a while! Hahahaha!”

“And what happens if you actually manage to kill one Goblimp? Don’t worry, there are a lot more waiting for you! Fufufu! I’m sure more than one player is going to get crazily mad because of them… Hahahaha!”

 

Andreu’s ‘Mad Rat’s Fusion’ video had an unexpected consequence. Because of his shouts of agony when the champion was fusing with the new unit, a lot of players that were interested in the Flesh Monstrosities, all of them followers of Andreu’s videos, decided to pick another faction because they were scared of the pain the transformation would bring.

But not only were there players who were dissuaded from playing as the Flesh Monstrosities. Some people with certain tendencies immediately started playing as them… But were displeased when they actually found that the pain was all a lie. Poor them, their dreams got crushed so easily…