I don’t know if I’d call my first real delve a complete disaster, but I definitely wouldn’t call it a success. In total, I’d lost four small spiders, three Cave Spiders, and two Skeleton Miners. And I can’t say with any confidence that what I have left would have been enough to stop him if the delver pushed it. Despite their intentions, the delver didn’t leave me empty-handed. They left me with a grand total of twelve Essence. Not a lot, but greater than the zero I’d just had. The delver also left the corpses of all the monsters sitting where he killed them. I honestly expected them to disappear and maybe drop some kind of loot. Maybe the monsters themselves were the loot? With no one around to claim them, I absorbed the corpses and discovered that I actually I got some of my Essence back! it was only about half of what it took to summon them, but I was definitely not going to say no to a quick refill.

Exhausted as he was, the delver was still my largest threat. With my windfall of Essence, I immediately summon up three new Cave Spiders. Two of them hide in the mineshaft close to the passage to the core room while the third started replacing the burning spiderwebs. After that, I expanded a short distance down the mineshaft in the direction the delver went and boarded it up. My Essence gain took a hit if I completely blocked it, so the boards really only served as a warning and to block the delver’s line of sight. Beyond the barricade, I added a pit that spanned the width of mine shaft and was hopefully wide enough that the delver would have trouble getting over it. The defenses were admittedly meager. If I had Skeleton Archers, any effective range monster, I would have put them behind the barricade. But I couldn’t spend all of my time and resources defending against one man. While I doubt he’ll be the last person whose less than pleased about my existence because I killed someone they cared about, the rest of them should be coming from the other direction. To defend against them, and to prepare for delvers who aren’t trying to kill me, I need to continue building up my dungeon.

I swept through the dungeon, resetting, replacing, and repairing things while I went over the recent incursion.

Post-mortem time. What worked and what didn’t? The spider webs worked reasonably well, I think. I wasn’t expecting them to be a real obstacle, but I like how they sectioned off the mineshaft into makeshift rooms and make it more difficult for delvers to see too far ahead. I should still add some proper rooms, though, if only to see if I’ll get another Milestone. But I think I’ll keep the web breaking up the mine shaft for now. The fire breaks also did a great job of keeping any fire from just ripping through everything, and the hiding places for the spiders also seemed to do a good job. I’ll need to add some false ones, though, to keep delvers from easily anticipating when there’s gonna be a fight. Though instead of false ones, I could just make more functional ones and the spiders could shift around to keep delvers guessing.

For the traps, I think it’s too early to tell how effective the Sticky Webs traps are. There was only the one brief interaction. The Crushing Supports traps, though. I was thinking more about damaging delver or pinning them in place. Using them to block passages to direct or control delver movement through the dungeon was not something I considered. I’ll really need to experiment with that and keep the idea in mind as I get more traps and environmental things.

I don’t think there was anything that flat out didn’t work. That being said, my monsters were not as effective as I was hoping they’d be. I only have two examples to look at, though, and one of them was a rush job. Also, I need a larger variety of spiders. Only having two types is boring, but the bigger issue is that they’ll be easy to counter once an opponent gets used to fighting them. I definitely need a beefier spider capable of actually taking a few hits and figuratively tying up a delver. I’ll also need a spider capable of dealing damage. A high damage single attack assassin spider would be good, but if it can’t take out its target in a single hit, it’s likely dead and a waste of Essence. A skirmisher would be a better pick. Fast attacks and high maneuverability should allow it to deal consistent damage while having a change to avoid attacks from its opponents. A ranged-attack focused spider to slow down and distract a party would also be useful, and I still want Swarmlings. The Swarmlings I’m certain I can make, but I’m uncertain how to go about making the other three. Those I might have to purchase the schema for when I get the chance.

Another thing I lack is obstacles. I need more of them. The only real ones right now are the monsters, and their effectiveness is still under evaluation. I could have boards or collapsed supports blocking the way, but they’ll end up as little more than an annoyance. The problem is that there is currently only a single path for delvers to follow. I can’t really fix that yet, though. I do have the side passages I’m using as hiding places for the Cave Spiders. If I link some of them together and put up more sturdy barriers, I could present the choice of an easier/safer but longer path or a more difficult/dangerous but shorter path. At least until I’ve expanded enough to add a couple more mine shafts.

My roaming came to an abrupt halt as I thought of something fascinating.

What if I take the multiple paths idea and combined it with using traps and barriers to control delver movement? I could create a shifting maze of spider webs, wooden barriers, collapsed supports, and even cave-ins. The cave-in would act as hard barriers to prevent delver movement, while the others being more of a soft barrier. There would be a barrier-free path to the end, but it would be the longest and have the fewest rewards. If the delvers pushed past the barriers, they would encounter greater danger and greater rewards. Might even be able to make it feel like the spiders and skeletons are moving things around. Hmmm… That is definitely an idea. But I should keep it simple for the first few floors for my own sanity, if nothing else. Still, it’s something to think about. I don’t think I’ll use it for this floor, but I should remember it for a later one.

What else do I need? I need a boss monster and a boss room. That might need to wait until I’ve claimed the mine, though, so I don’t need to move the boss room and the core room multiple times. And I still need to figure out how to make a boss and decided what I want the boss to be. For now, I think I’ll focus on rebuilding my defenses. After that, I want to focus almost exclusively on expansion. Space equals security for dungeons, and I need more space.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

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Over the next day or so, I summoned up two new Skeleton Miners and four more small spiders. I dumped the rest of my Essence into expanding towards the mine’s entrance. It was by the end of my day, using my Essence gain as a clock, that I finally made it to the entrance. I think it’s taken me a week to get here. I took a moment to let myself be happy about meeting my first major goal. Unfortunately, I couldn’t enjoy the view while doing so. My vision only went a couple hundred feet before turning hazy. What I could see, though, was honestly not that interesting. A rocky slope dotted with some bushes and small trees lead up to the mine entrance. I think I saw remnants of old building but those were towards the edge of what I could see and were pretty hazy. To be honest, I was hoping for more of a vista than that. At least there was a greater variety of colors.

The first thing I did after gazing off into the not-so-distant horizon, was add a door to the mine entrance. I had to leave the door unlocked, though. Locking it, of course, caused a dip in my Essence gain because it was blocking access to my core. Maybe if it was a puzzle door, it would be different. Anyway, after adding the door, I started expanding the area just inside the entrance. My plan was to turn it into a large common area where work crews gathered before heading deeper, where they staged tools and materials for easier transport to where they were needed, and where ore and stone waited to be carted out of the mine. Right now it was more of an aesthetic thing, but I wasn’t against putting some monsters in it. Maybe some Swarmlings hiding in stacks of old support timbers? I could add a few inert skeletons as well. Some just lying on the ground with others wrapped up in spiderwebs.

Note to self: give those web-based containers another go.

I didn’t only focus on building out the front of the mine, however. Some of my Essence went toward advancing down the mine shaft in the direction the delver went, adding more defenses as I advanced. I was concerned about the delver, but there wasn’t much I could do about him right now. I could chase after him, but my rate of advancement was barely beating out a snail’s pace. There was no way I’d be able to keep up with him. If there was an exit further down, he’d be long gone by the time I reached him. If it’s a dead end, then he’ll either still be there when I get to him, or he’ll have to return through me. I also spent a small amount of Essence digging out a new core room. I wasn’t moving far. The new core room was gonna be above the current one and about the same size. My plan is to have the two connected by an old ladder with some rotten rungs. The climb will be around twenty to thirty feet. I wasn’t expecting anyone to fall off the ladder and die. It was only to slow them down and make them vulnerable. Not-Pete is gonna be stationed at the top of the ladder, dropping rocks on anyone climbing.

Back to building out the mine. For the passage leading down to the main mine shaft from the staging area, my plan was to make it steep enough to need a set of steps on either side of the mineshaft. There won’t be any handrails, of course. In the center, there will be a long, smooth-ish slope with rails running down it and a couple of large winches at the top. The miners would have used these to send things safely down into the mine or to bring things back up. The rope they used would have long since rotted away, which is fine.

But maybe they used chains? Iron chains should still be around. And if delvers decided to use the system for themselves, well, there’s no telling just how strong those old, corroded chains are likely to be. Maybe they get lucky and everything works fine. Or maybe they enter the mine faster than they planned. I like that idea.

At the base of the slope, there would be another large room, though smaller than the first one. It was another staging area. It would be the last stop before entering the main mineshaft proper. The first genuine encounters would happen here and would introduce delvers to the idea that monsters wouldn’t just be waiting for them out in the open. For now, there will only be spiders waiting to ambush the delvers that get too close to them. Once the skeletons are more commonly known about, I’ll have a few of them here as well. Eventually the chamber could have another couple of mineshafts leading off of it, but for now the plan was for just the one. The main mineshaft would stay how it is for now. I didn’t want to make too many changes until I knew how deep it goes and what the deeper sections looked like.

If this second chamber is going to be introducing things, then I should also but some trap in there. I could put some Sticky Webs across parts of the passage down and a Collapsing Support trap at the entrance to some small side chamber. I could also do a covered pit trap that might have acted as a sump. That could actually be a good way to introduce pit traps into the mine. I could that or maybe the miners followed an ore vein down and they l just covered the resulting hole with wood. If a delver steps on the wrong board, down they go. That’ll be a good way to add some additional obstacles to the mineshaft, I think.

While expanding the dungeons and building up my defenses was my primary focuses, I did have a side project. That side project was deciding on and creating loot. Loot is definitely not a priority since I had no delvers to reward, but I would eventually. And I wanted to be prepared for when I did. This side project also let me step back from focusing on the big picture and take a much needed mental break, since I no longer have sleep to do that.

“Dungeons for Dummies” mentions using loot as a combination lure and reward for delvers, but makes no mention about how to go about dropping it. The monsters hadn’t just disappeared to reveal items for a delver to pick up, so that was out. There might be the requirement that a delver has to touch the monster corpse, maybe with the intention of looting it or with some specific gathering skill, but I don’t think that’s the case. It’s also possible that the corpses themselves are the loot, and delvers harvest parts from them or collect whatever items the monster have on them. If that’s the case, and I think it is, I need chests and other containers scattered about to offer loot since spiders couldn’t really carry anything and Skeleton Miners only have their pick and their helmet.

I suppose I could give the skeleton more, but what other equipment would that be? The only things that’d make sense would be clothing and maybe a small pouch for personal belongings. I don’t think the clothing wouldn’t be much for loot since it’d have to be pretty worn to fit the long abandoned mine aesthetic. I could try the pouch. Inside, I could have a few coins and maybe a Least Health Potion or two? What else? I could offer some miscellaneous items like tools and equipment, bars of metal, or iron ore. There are also the Least Mana potions. I could drop some crystals, I suppose, but I don’t know how valuable they are, and I don’t have any proper gems yet. There’s also items of artistic value, but kind of artistic things would you find in a mine? That might be what the crystals are for. Same with the smoking pipe. I think the potions and coins are it for now. I can scatter other things around as decoration and see if people start taking them.

If I want to drop coins, I’ll need to make them myself. Neither the shepard nor the spearmen dropped any, and I’m not wasting a schema on coins. For valuable metals, I only have silver. Bronze is a normal metal to make coins of in stories and I’ve seen iron coins in stories as well. I also have lead, brass, and steel to use, but I don’t know how valuable those metals are. Or in the case of lead, if lead poisoning or heavy metal poisoning is a thing. I suppose I don’t know how valuable iron and bronze are either. They could just melt the coins down for the base metal, I guess. If that’s the case, I can use whatever metals I want to. Silver is definitely being used. For the other two, let’s use brass and steel, just to be different. In terms of value, I’ll have brass as the lowest, then steel, then silver. For the designs, instead of an image or anything, why not use different shapes? The more sides, the more valuable. Brass will be a triangle, steel a square, and silver a pentagon. Actually, let’s do a simple design. On one side will be the floor number in roman numerals, on the other the theme. So coins for the first floor will have a pick on one side and the numeral for one on the other.

With the design coins done, I went back to working on the dungeon. There was a lot to do and I have no idea how long I have until the next delve or incursion.