The Mad Rat’s Lab

I’m currently in the middle of something important. After the fight with A Lil’ Demoness, I randomly put the new units in the current dungeon. But I said I would create a special zone for the rabbits, and this is what I’m going to do right now.

And since I’m already changing the dungeon layout, I’ve decided to actualize the whole dungeon instead of just adding the rabbit zone.

I’m sure you already know, but the current dungeon layout is very linear. It has a tunnel right after the dungeon entrance, then a huge cave, the tunnels, the first lab, the Freezer, and, in the end, the second lab.

As an extra, there’s the resting room that only has one entrance and doesn’t connect to any other place.

What I want to do is create extra connections between zones, a plan I’m going to continue in the future. Right now, I’m only going to move the resting area to the tunnels, and add two more rooms with the same mushroom types. Of course, instead of a single entrance, they’ll now have two or more.

The other big change is the rabbit’s room. It’s going to connect to the tunnels in one single place, and also to the first laboratory room. To break the linearity of the dungeon, this room is going to be an optional side room, but also has benefits for the invaders that clear it.

The rabbit room will allow the players to skip most of the tunnel area if the invading players cross it. A door that can only be unlocked from the rabbit room will directly lead to the first laboratory.

“Now for the actual dungeon update!” I exclaim while opening the dungeon edition menu.

The first thing I do is the changes I just mentioned.

“Move the eternal resting areas to the tunnels, and then add two more resting areas… Then, connect them to the tunnels in several places… Huhuhu! I can already feel the despair of the invaders when they get lost, and accidentally step inside one of the resting rooms! Have a good sleep! Only that it’s going to be for all eternity! Hahahaha!”

As with the original Eternal resting area, I don’t put anything inside that could damage the players. There are no traps, no poison mushrooms, and I don’t allow the dungeon mobs to come in. If they dare come inside and fall asleep, they are going to keep sleeping until they surrender.

“And next is the rabbits' zone. For now, I’ll just create the room and decorate it later, when I also improve the rest of the dungeon.”

After finishing these changes, I continue with the dungeon appearance. Of course, the first is the dungeon entrance.

“Until now, the enemies that invaded the dungeon always started underground already, but I want them to get the feeling that they are entering an extremely dangerous place… And if they appear directly inside the dungeon, it’s impossible to achieve this effect. So I’ve got to change the entrance.”

 

I start by removing the dungeon portal from its current place and creating the cave entrance. Then, I put the dungeon portal some distance away from the cave entrance.

I then start to decorate the entrance, and when I finish… “Yeah! I like this feeling! It actually looks like you are going inside the lair of some very dangerous creature! Fufufu!”

You enter the dungeon and find yourself in a very dense forest. Light barely reaches the ground, the foliage obscuring most of the area. Steep mountains surround you in every direction, creating a single path.

As you move forward, you see that the vegetation starts taking a weird reddish hue. You have the impression that the reddish hue is because they are continuously soaked in blood. And as if to confirm your theory, you can see a few cracked bones scattered through the path.

Spooked because of the ominous silence, you finally reach the end of the path. And what you see makes your hair stand on end. There, you can see a big dark cave. It looks like a huge gaping mouth waiting to devour you whole. The bloodstains and bone fragments that litter the floor warn you that you definitely shouldn’t come inside.

Faint laments can be heard, coming from the cave. You aren’t sure if it's the wind or the sound of some creature, but you are sure of one thing: nothing good will come if you enter that place.

“Hahahaha! With just this change, the feeling you get when entering the dungeon is completely different from the one you got before! Amazing!” I shout, impressed at the result.

“Then, let’s continue with the rest of the dungeon! Let’s try to keep this feeling through the whole dungeon! The objective is to make the invaders feel dread, put them on edge, and also display the craziness of the Mad Rat! Hahaha!”

Without wasting time, I continue modifying the dungeon. From the entrance, that’s already finished, I continue to move forward while changing things.

 

*Fiuuu!* “This took a lot more time than I expected! But the end result is amazing, so it’s worth the time spent!”

I try to convince myself that I didn’t waste more than six hours by updating the dungeon right now.

“Hey! Who says it’s a waste of time!? This was clearly an important thing to do!”

Well, anyway. Following the entrance zone, I have updated the whole dungeon. I have changed very few things regarding the actual dungeon, but have improved a lot regarding how it looks.

“So how does it look now? Starting from the cave entrance, it now looks like this.”

Immediately after crossing the cave’s entrance, you can see small quantities of glowing mushrooms illuminating the cave. In cases like this, you would usually get the feeling that this is some magical scenery, mystic and peaceful.

This would be what you would be feeling… if not for the weird colors and shapes of the glowing mushrooms. Deformed, smashed, with sickening colors. What’s worse of all, some mushrooms look like they are screaming, with protuberances that resemble faces in eternal silent wails.

As you advance, the screams you were hearing before entering the cave increase in volume. Do they come from the screaming mushrooms? But when you approach the mushrooms, you can’t hear anything…

The path slowly descends, as if you were going to the underworld. As more mushrooms cover the tunnel, you can finally properly see your surroundings. Giant claw marks appear here and there, and what’s worse: the dragging marks of something big. If you had to guess, this must be the result of dragging a huge and highly dangerous creature inside the tunnel against its will. Alive. Who, or what, is capable of doing something like this?

“Until this point, there’ll be no traps or dungeon mobs, this is only to settle the mood.”

Finally, the tunnel opens into a gigantic cave. A strange purple light illuminates everything that isn’t already illuminated by the glowing mushrooms. Now, you can also hear the sound of water. At the end of the cave, you can see an underground lake.

“You can use something called ambient lights in the game. I left it as default until now, but I now changed the lights to this mysterious purple color. Of course, it only affects those places where there is no other light. The places illuminated by the glowing mushrooms have the color of the mushrooms.”

Huge mushrooms are growing in several places. They hinder visibility and provide a perfect location for ambushes.

And the screams you could hear until now, reverberate through the cave. You can see a few figures moving in the distance. From the way they move, maybe it would be better to call it shambling than walking. Are they the ones that release the screams?

“Of course, I changed the way the Demonic Swarmers behave, and make them release constant screams when they aren’t in battle, and then different screams to alert the others when starting combat.”

The cave isn’t easy to traverse with so many obstacles. Cliffs, ramps, rocks, giant mushrooms… you feel as if everything is obstructing your path. As if trying to say ‘you aren’t welcome here’.

“Oh, and this area is now a perfect area for the Goblimps to torment the invaders. Between the rocks, stalagmites and stalactites, cliffs, and the giant mushrooms’ trunks and the platforms they create with their equally giant caps… the cave is now an amazing place for ambushes! Fufufu!”

Advancing through the cave, you see a few tunnels. The closest to the underground lake is damp and has lots of mushrooms. The others are drier but, somehow, also scarier. And there’s even one from which you can see sunlight.

“This last tunnel is the one that connects to the rabbits' area. You could say that the tunnels are split into three kinds; and those that are closer to the underground lake and river are humid, partially inundated, and also contain the underground river.”

“Then, there are the drier tunnels. In those, there are little mushrooms but are full of traps. And I plan to fill them with Goblimps in the future. Basically, these are going to be the most dangerous tunnels, but also the safer ones if you don’t have a way to avoid the damage from the mushrooms.”

“And finally the rest of the tunnels, the ones closest to the rabbit zone. These tunnels have spots from where the sunlight enters. A lot of them also have no exit, as if an avalanche destroyed them. Only one of the tunnels actually connects to the rabbit room. They are designed in a way to make players waste time and consider going to one of the other two zones instead. And then die! Hahaha!”

Of course, they aren’t completely empty. They also contain a few traps and mushrooms, and since they are connected to the other tunnels, invaders can be attacked by Demonic Swarmers and Goblimps at any time. Or eaten by the Tunnel Mimic, which can literally appear anywhere inside the tunnels.

 

After a lot of time spent traveling through collapsed tunnels, you finally see a bright light at the end of the tunnel. Literally, I mean.

You are blinded for a moment. When your vision returns, you can see lush vegetation growing on piles of rock rubble. Little rabbits are munching on the grass. This is a very beautiful scenery, which belies everything you’ve seen until now. How can a place like this exist in a cave full of horrors? Are you dreaming now?

“You know, true chaos needs order inside of it. Otherwise, it’s just a jumbled mix of things. To display true craziness, you also need to show how ‘normal’ things look. And this also makes the invaders lower their guard, which in turn gets them killed. Especially if they lower the guard in this room.”

At the end of this little paradise, you find a weird biohazard laboratory door, as well as a lever. As you pull the lever, the door opens and a laboratory appears in front of you.

“So yes, this is how the players can skip the tunnels and enter the first laboratory directly. I plan on adding some more dungeon gimmicks in the future and this room will be one of them, but for now, it breaks the dungeon’s linearity and that’s enough.”

I left the two laboratory rooms almost the same as they were, I only added a few decorations like an open corpse on top of an operating table, or organs and parts of creatures inside special containers. To add to the creepiness of the dungeon, mostly.

 

“Finally, the last dungeon area: the Freezer. This place is now extremely gross.”

Crossing the door of the laboratory, you find yourself shivering. A white mist envelops you and your speed decreases as you feel the cold envelop you.

The perfectly excavated walls and floor from the laboratory start to blend into natural rocks, and the weird mix of natural and artificial makes you uneasy.

The ground gets darker as you advance. Something sticky makes it hard to advance. If you take a closer look, you find it’s actually the color of dried blood. How much blood would you need to cover the whole floor?

As you reach the end of the corridor, you feel like you want to puke. Corpses and body parts are strewn everywhere. Horrific monstrosities with parts of several other creatures roam through the gross and dangerous corridors and rooms.

The cold affects your surroundings too. The walls and floor now have a whitish color, partially covered by frost. Even some corpses, maybe the older ones, are fully encased in ice.

“I basically turned the Freezer into a horror film. With the mix of cadavers, body parts, exploding cadavers, blood, and the worst of them all, the Stitched; the Freezer turned into a nightmare for those who can’t withstand the gore.”

 

“So? How do you see the changes? You don’t like them? Well, I like them, so who cares about your opinion? Certainly not me! Hahaha!”

Until you confirm the changes, the dungeon remains the same as before. Current and new invaders will enter the previous dungeon until you save it.

Then, the game checks that there’s a valid path between the entrance and the dungeon core. If you don’t have a valid path, the game denies the new dungeon and you must make the appropriate changes.

As I confirm the changes to the dungeon and the game saves them, I look again at the clock.

“Maybe I DID spend too much time on this dungeon rework, I missed dinner time… I’ll try to be faster next time! I promise!”

 

---

 

After dinner, I enter the game again. I got scolded for missing dinner. Well, I was busy with VERY important stuff, so…

Anyway, there are still a few more things that I want to do in the dungeon.

“Ok, now that the dungeon looks decent, it’s time to improve the mobs.”

Here, I’m not talking about increasing the mobs’ levels. No. I’m talking about the fact that this giant labyrinth of tunnels, caverns, and laboratories is defended by only a few mobs.

“If I sum all of them, it’s only 49. It’s close to half the number of farmers I found in the very first dungeon I dived into.”

The six stitched I bring with me into dungeon invasions aren’t included. The same with the Braindead Assassins because they aren't added to the dungeon yet.

Ok… You can’t compare the power of the Lab Assistant to the farmers. Maybe a single Lab Assistant could win against fifty farmers? It’s the best unit for the example because it’s my strongest unit but it also applies to the rest. 

“But even if they are strong, less than fifty units for a dungeon this size… It kind of feels empty.”

And I do want some zones to feel empty so that the enemy lowers the guard. But not the WHOLE dungeon!

“The proper way would be to add both some more mobs and then fill the dungeon with critters, but… This fucking annoying faction can’t do this!”

The only critter I have is the Creepy. At least for now. And for it, I need to capture bodies of critters from other factions.

Literally, the only unit this faction can create without needing the bodies of other faction’s units is the Stitched. The damn Stitched! And you still need corpses to create them!

“Aaaaagh! At times like this, I really think about swapping to another faction! But then I remember I like to roleplay as a mad scientist, and the unit customization, and quickly calm myself down… But… Fuck! Shit!”

It looks like I have no other way than to forget about creating more critters for now and focus on normal mobs. The Creepy are going to be a thing for the future.

“If I don’t want to rise the difficulty too much, I shouldn’t add too many of the strong units. So this basically leaves the options to three units: Goblimps, Demonic Swarmers, and of course the Stitched. Hmmm… what to do?”

In fact, the answer is really easy. I can’t create more than one Demonic Swarmer and two Goblimps because I only have so many bodies. The rest must be Stitched. There’s no other way.

I immediately start the creation of the three Siameses. After they are created, there will be nine Demonic Swarmers and six Goblimps.

“Well, it could be worse…”

It could have been only Stitched, so it’s something.

“Now for the Stitched. First of all, I’m going to add the ten Braindead Assassins with their respective Hidden Enemy traps to the Freezer zone. With an extra Braindead squad (three Mobs + one Leader) it’s now full of stitched. It’s impossible for the enemies to cross the Freezer without encountering at least some stitched.”

And to make things more fun (for me, not for the invaders) I also add fifteen more Exploding corpse traps to the Freezer.

After the new looks and these extra mobs and traps, now the Freezer is a true horror zone in two very different aspects: for how it looks, and for how dangerous it is. 

Now that the Freezer is completed, I need to add more units to the cave and tunnels. I decide that four more Stitched squads that can freely roam between the cave and the tunnels are going to be enough.

“With four extra squads, there’s going to be a lot more activity in the dungeon, but they are Stitched, so the difficulty won’t rise too much, which I don’t want, so it’s fine…”

Also, this effectively doubles the amount of stitched the dungeon has. From twenty to forty. Oh, and the ten assassins too, so it’s actually fifty, more than double!

“So… who’s going to be the first to enter the brand new dungeon? Hahahaha!”

 

What Andreu did that day turned out to be the factor that catapulted him to the top rankings. Not immediately, mind you. But the first impression players got from the dungeon’s entrance made them want to recommend the dungeon to their friends.

Slowly but surely, the dungeon’s renown kept rising. And at the same time, the number of people who got obsessed with it. Unknown to Andreu, his dungeon made the invaders think ‘I’ll manage to beat it next time’, which made them dive again, and again.

The cause? The randomness and unpredictability made it actually possible for anybody to beat the dungeon (well, anybody strong enough to beat a Lab Assistant), so the videos of weaker players beating ‘The Mad Rat’s Lab’ made higher-leveled players want to demonstrate they could beat the dungeon too. Some of them did, but most still failed and entered the ‘I’ll manage to beat it next time’ infinite cycle.