The Mad Rat’s Lab

Having finished the ‘Mad Rat’s Show’, I’m now going to tell you all the secrets you need to know about the ‘surprises’.

What are you saying!? Of course not! I never wanted to reveal everything to the future dungeon invaders! What fun would the dungeon have otherwise?

I’ve gone to a few places in the DMA forums where players talk bullshit about my dungeon… and as much as I still don’t understand their enthusiasm and almost fanatic obsession for my dungeon, I DO enjoy the despair and craziness my dungeon is creating. Hahaha!

All those posts complaining about being killed by Creepy are the best! Especially those that complain about the Death Butterfly!

Though I find it weird that nobody has complained about the Monster Train yet… Could it be that nobody has met it yet? Are they really that lucky…? I don’t think so because most players complain about being unlucky… Then why are there no messages about the Monster Train at all!?

I know it was designed in a way that relies on luck to actually find the invading players because of its random movement… But it doesn’t make sense at all that nobody has found it yet!

And another thing I still don’t understand is the ‘Evil Mastermind’ nickname they’ve given me, saying that all the times they died because of random things were because I planned them from the start, in an absurdly convoluted and evil plan.

“What the hell are they saying!? That’s utter bullshit! I only put random things inside the dungeon and it’s YOU who are unlucky: one error leads to the other until finally, you get yourself killed! I haven’t planned anything of that at all!”

At least it isn’t all bad because those discussions help make my dungeon famous and more and more players enter it every day. There are also random players who beat the dungeon out of sheer luck and when the others see it, they turn even crazier and start to dive into my dungeon to show they are better and can beat it too…

Anyway, returning to the surprises.

“Let’s start explaining the third surprise! Hahaha!”

You might be thinking ‘WTF!? The third!? Weren’t there only two!?’ right now. And you are right… Except I purposely didn’t show the third to the viewers because it’s only relevant to me.

If your brain is fast enough, you might already expect what this third surprise is about. I already showed everything that I had planned to improve the dungeon except for one single thing…. Yeah, I’m talking about the Kidnapper upgrade.

“Without further delay, let’s show you all the new and upgraded Kidnapper! I called the template: Stone Eye Kidnapper!”

The biggest drawback I found with the original Kidnapper was that it was completely incapable to capture units on its own. I (or another teammate) had to incapacitate the enemies so that the Kidnapper could capture them. And it works decently well, but I had to remember to cast Chain Lightning every time I wanted to capture a unit… let’s just say that my brain isn’t the best at remembering things sometimes.

Another non-ideal thing is that because I have to cast Chain Lightning, I have to spend a lot more MP than I should.

And the Stone Eye Kidnapper solves all those problems at the same time! It’s capable of capturing units on its own because of its innate skills!

And what’s best, it can also passively turn enemies to stone and remove them from combat! Though the chance is very low, so I won’t rely on it at all... But it’s very handy for capturing critters because they are usually everywhere, so just by being alive the Stone Eye Kidnapper can turn critters to stone and capture them without spending a single EP or MP point! Hahaha!

Another great thing is that it isn’t very expensive at only 80 cp plus the 20 from Basic Chimera, so I can easily bring with me other support mobs during invasions.

I kept it at level two to leave the cost as low as possible: other than the innate skills inherited from the Spider and the Cockatrice used to create it, the new Kidnapper only really needed defensive skills.

Its AI even comes with the Follow and No-combat options by default! As all AI with 3+ INT does. I only had to change it so that it uses the Web Throw skill when I tell it to do so, and never starts or participates in combat, the same as with the original Kidnapper.

It’s so better than the Stitched! Hahaha! I only need to tell the Stone Eye Kidnapper to capture one unit and it will wait until its HP is low enough to effectively use Web Throw and then capture it!

What I find funny about the Stone Eye Kidnapper is how it looks. Imagine a spider with a rooster’s crest, wings, and a very long reptile tail. Oh, and its two front legs are replaced by chicken legs. You might think that it can fly because it has wings, but… Cockatrices can’t fly, only glide. So the same goes for the new Kidnapper.

Of course, I reconverted the original Braindead Kidnapper to a Braindead Leader and created three more Braindead Mobs for it to lead.

“Soldier, you’ve served me properly for these past weeks, so you deserve a promotion!”

The last thing I did was delete the original Kidnapper template. I’m not going to need it anymore.

“Now that the third and extra surprise has been explained, let’s move to the other two. The second one is quite similar to the Stone Eye Kidnapper. You could even say they are distant cousins… I’m talking about the one that looks like a mushroom with spider legs and eyes: the Silent Kidnapper.”

This one is a mix of a Spider and a Small Myconid. For those of you who don’t know, myconids are monsters that look exactly like mushrooms. When they stand still, there’s no way to differentiate one from the other except by inspecting or attacking it.

“The Silent Kidnappers are going to hunt invaders for me. They aren’t very strong but they have the perfect skills for capturing units. And I’m going to put them spread through the whole dungeon… this way I can easily get a bunch of free units without having to play the game at all! Hahaha!”

Both the innate skill from the Spider, the Web Throw skill, and the skill from the Small Myconid, the Paralyzing Spores, can inflict status effects that allow capturing the affected unit.

In fact, the Paralyzing Spores is an innate skill common to all myconid units. The skill is also implemented in a way so that it doesn’t work against other myconids… though it still works against other allied units, so you must be careful when using it.

I also modified the AI of the Silent Kidnapper. What I did was change how it behaves during combat. First, it doesn’t actively attack: it feigns to be a normal mushroom by staying completely still between a bunch of other real mushrooms. This was easy because the myconid’s AI does it by default.

Then, it waits for an opportunity to strike with the Paralyzing Spores if the enemies get close. It releases the paralyzing cloud and then waits until one enemy gets paralyzed and then tries to capture it. I’m sure more than one player is going to think that the Silent Kidnappers are just a new type of mushroom I added to the dungeon. A paralyzing mushroom.

“Oh, boy… how wrong will they be! Hahaha!”

And in the case where the Paralyzing Spores strategy doesn’t work, the Silent Kidnapper waits for a chance to cast Web Throw against an enemy that has low HP, and then tries to capture it.

Of course, the Silent Kidnapper only tries to capture isolated targets.

I also made it so that the Silent Kidnapper doesn’t attack or target Champions at all. They can’t be captured, so why should they waste their small chances to capture anything against an enemy that can’t be captured? They are kidnappers, after all!

“What I want from them is to capture the invader’s support units without the players noticing at all. The best is going to be if they say something like ‘where the hell’s (X unit) gone to!?’, or ‘I was sure there were (Y + 1) units before!!’ That’s why it has Silent in its name! Hahaha!”

Oh, I also leveled the template to level two and gave them two utility skills that will help them with their job: Unidentifiable to make them even more difficult to find when they stay still, and Capture Expert to facilitate the capture. As you would expect, the latter is a skill exclusive to the Flesh Monstrosities faction, the only faction that needs to capture other faction’s units.

“I didn’t know this skill existed… maybe it came with the latest game update…? Anyway, here’s the status screen for the Silent Kidnapper.”

Since both Spiders and Small Myconids are basic units, the total cost for the Silent Kidnappers is only 60 cp. They are a very cheap way to obtain free bodies, if you ask me.

“Objectively speaking, I don’t think that the Silent Kidnappers are going to be too annoying to the invading players. If I’m lucky, I expect them to capture at most one unit per dungeon invasion, which is quite a lot for me if you think about it… but losing a single support unit, a weakened one at that, usually doesn’t make any difference to the invaders. I also didn’t put too many of them, only 12 for now: 6 in the big cave and 6 in the tunnels.”

“So yes, they are going to be just a little nuisance for the invaders but for me, they are going to be incredibly useful! Now I just need to create a bunch more Stasis chambers to put all those extra bodies into them, and unlock the Fleshlings to use those extra bodies I don’t really want…”

*Sigh* The to-do list never gets shorter… It only gets longer as time passes, and I never stop crossing things out of it!

Before I move to the last surprise, I want to tell you something I almost forgot…

Taking this whole capturing and creating new monsters, I also took the chance to increase the number of previous units, though not by much. I added a second Tunnel Mimic. Now the chances to find one are doubled because there are two of them!

And I also added two more Death Butterflies for a total of five, and three more Fiery Flies for a total of seven.

“Their numbers were ok before I upgraded the dungeon and expanded the areas, but now they were too spread and their usefulness was reduced. That’s why I increased their amounts by a little.”

After a few days, I had to reduce the number of Silent Kidnappers in the dungeon until the dungeon grew bigger, and I could build more Stasis chambers and unlock the Fleshlings. This was because they were continuously capturing useless units like Farmers, and I couldn’t bring useful units I had captured in Dungeon Invasions because there was no space… I almost cried in frustration when I was lucky to capture another Runesmith but had to leave it because all stasis chambers were full.