> Hey! Dungeon reviewer Tom here.
>
> This weekend I traveled to the Isles of Zeling to visit the historic dungeon. The story there is quite interesting. The Isles are a magical researcher’s dream, for many major affinities seem weaker inside of it, while many more minor flavors are bolstered. The Isles themselves used to be home to the ancient city of Zeling, which came into power over a thousand years ago and broke apart just as quickly. The greatest point of fame of Zeling was how the researchers that called it home have boasted to have discovered or created over 50 flavors of mana. 50! The most impressive part is how while many consider the creation of a mana type hard, even less are able to claim the creation of a useful type. Every few years someone manages to rediscover flame mana but due to its ridiculously small use case in comparison to regular fire mana, it never goes anywhere. The most famous mana type discovered by the researchers of Zeling is Dusk mana. More versatile than Shadow and easier than Dark, many many assassins and mages alike, made class changes into Dusk classes. And, to this day, you can find those who swear by its use the world over.
>
> Which brings me to the Historic dungeon. While the exact cause of the researchers disappearing is unknown, all their notes and experiments have been swallowed by a dungeon with a spatial affinity. Creating a truly humongous library for its floors. This dungeon acts as a sort of steward for the history within itself. It’s unknown exactly how it obtains the books within, but every year books written all over the world appear within its halls. Surprisingly there is little regular fighting, however its gorilla-like librarians will savagely rip into anyone who attempts to break or steal any of the books within. Attempts by the purity republic to erase certain information have resulted in whole minor armies being wiped out as a warning.
>
> The two major draws of this dungeon are information and items. Information about anything and everything perfectly preserved without decay. And, items that can be used to obtain classes most would consider lost to time. Most information is freely available within the Isles, however there are certain areas called “restricted sections” stock full of more dangerous information. These are prowled by incredibly strong monsters that attack on sight and can either be snuck into or entered by bargaining with new information. The head librarian issues restricted passes, for any who can come with a book the historic dungeon doesn’t have – a hard feat to manage. The passes last only a few hours before dissolving and can leave those who lose track of time reading at the mercy of the monsters.
>
> Would I recommend travelling all the way here? It depends really on if you need something from this dungeon. Without a need, it's barely worth it – for there is little to no actual loot or adventure to be had. However, with a need this can become the most important dungeon in the world. It’s certainly one of the most influential and actively results in pilgrimages across multiple continents to reach it.
>
> Next week I’ll be reviewing an incredibly similar dungeon located on the coast of Ire. The great parchment dungeon!
Excerpt from the popular serial "Tom's Dungeon Reviews Issue 261"
I think that went rather well.
For the most part everyone seemed to be impressed by my dragon? I also tried to make everyone feel important by including stuff I learned from their tours.
I guess now that I'm not in a crunch to advance and get ready to show everything off, I can relax. Take some time to slow down and find something new to do. I’m actually looking forward to it!
Let’s see...I think I'll figure out how to better attract monsters and get started on my next area…that seems like a good enough set of short-term goals for now.
...Well okay. A good goal would be to attract adventurers but I have no clue how to work towards that...and focusing on it will just depress me. Good obtainable short-term goals are better.
Now! Flipping around between different ideas I really want to make an ice zone. I have a few options... but I just keep coming back to that as the next area. The only thing is I am really worried that it will be too close to the crystal caverns. Like they will look and feel too similar back to back?
Maybe if I focus on making another transitional floor? Not another maze one is enough but something to help break it up.
Let's see.
I think what I'm going to do is have floor 12 be a floor of sensory deprivation to help wipe the memory of the crystal caverns – and then set up floors 13-15 as the ice zone.
...with all the expansion after my advancement, I'm up to 12 floors. I can easily start right away designing some of the layout for the zone before I get all the actual influence splits to do it officially. I’m sure I’ll get more soon. Only a matter of time.
Okay, how big should this be.
Looking around the area after the crystal caverns, Innearth took just less than a square kilometer of tunnels and made a line in the ground on both sides, arbitrarily setting this as the transitional floor.
The goal of this floor was to remove ways that adventurers normally navigated or communicated to see what they would do. Partly as an experiment…but mostly for entertainment.
Step one: the goal is to remove all the possible senses adventurers might have – or at least severely limit them.
With that as a search term, Innearth found dozens of unique materials and a few useful guides. The guides were relatively cheap for his current mana capacity, while he wasn't yet sure if any of the unique materials were worth it.
The only real solution was to spend time combing through everything. So, not wanting to spend all of his effort on a boring task he set a part of himself to slowly peruse the offered materials in the background. The rest of his focus went to absorbing a few guides and trying to see if there was any new information.
Okay, I’m going to break my goal up into parts. The typical senses that adventurers might have can roughly be split into sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, and mana. Taste…doesn’t really matter for this so I’ll just ignore it and look at the rest. Also not sure what to do about smell so I'll ignore that as well.
First off. Sight is easy to get into and think about but hard to get right. Extreme light can work, but the higher levelled adventurers are more resistant to blinding – especially if the light is continuous instead of a quick flash and they have time to get used to it. Anyone who can get through the magma halls and crystal caverns should be able to ignore my light capabilities.
Lots of darkness works better than extreme light and well…with my void affinity making uniform darkness materials, it's basically the same – if not easier than making strong light.
...I could theoretically flash really quickly between something really bright and really dark so they can't get used to it...but that's prone to be more damaging than I want and it might backfire by showing them where to go in between the flashes.
Now another point in favour of using darkness – that was based purely upon conjecture pieced together from various comments and theories – was about intent. Light mana had a lot of spells around illuminating areas and providing sight, while Darkness mana had a lot of spells based upon hiding and removing sight. While extreme light was obviously an option, it was a lot harder to get light to blind than it was to get darkness to remove light.
There were also a few important things he learned about darkness mana in the various guides. The most important caveat was that while it was true the occasional Core had gained a darkness affinity directly, the majority of darkness materials were made with the Light/Void combination. Darkness mana worked better with black materials and even better with matte black materials – but that last ideal was harder to work with.
Basically, there were quite a few better physical materials than quartz Innearth could use. Each of which made a similar but stronger darkness emitting materials when combined.
Hematite was a cheap crystalline iron oxide (Fe2O3) that worked perfectly for a base. Innearth could buy a small amount of it from the mundane portion of the material section of the market and then mass produce it with the system “Design panel”. If he focused on making it as rough as possible it would combine slightly better as well.
Other similar options were: Rutile (TiO2), Pyrolusite (MnO2), Magnetite (Fe3O4) and Cassiterite (SnO2).
They each were slightly better or worse but for the most part Hematite was the cheapest or performed the best.
The biggest contender for an alternative was Rutile. The main reason Innearth looked towards it first, was that while Innearth had plenty of both Titanium and Iron. Iron was more useful with Earth mana and performed mostly better with most of the materials Innearth liked making. If he could spend a huge amount of titanium instead it would be great.
The problem with it as a material was confounding. When stripped from the ground the material was black and worked wonderfully but when synthesized using the system panel the material nearly always came out clear – like quartz.
I want to cover all the tunnels in at least a square kilometre. The difference between quartz and hematite for darkness mana is huge... but any of the other combinations are so so, or more difficult for little gain. Easy decision.
That partly takes care of sight, so I want to move on for a bit. Mental mana can be used to make people ignore any of the senses but it’s the easiest to fight off. I can embed plates in the ground and set them up so people ignore or forget their senses while they are on them… but I’m pretty sure most high-levelled adventurers can just ignore that especially if I push too hard.
There seems to be another option – make materials with Void and Mental mana. The main problem with these materials is most of them simply rendered people dumb and unthinking – the worst even turned those who touch it into husks of themselves that lose all reaction and retreat from the world.
…that sounds dangerous and vaguely evil... Well, experimentation for experimentation's sake let's see what happens when I do this.
The material dungeon cores liked calling “Vacuosium” was made with electrum. Gold and silver both worked well with Mental mana’s “better when more expensive” quirk. They also both worked reasonably well with Void’s “Better when scarce” requirement. The material and whatever weird husk-making mana type was involved was a bit too strong, however. And, unlike mental mana, it could not be diverted from this “husk-making” material based on thoughts while making it.
Feeling a bit like he was toeing some imaginary line, Innearth created a small dagger of vacuosium. Keeping in theme he added a single pitch-black line of darkness mana in hematite running down the center, that wrapped the whole weapon in a haze of darkness.
The system's automatic tooltip was suitably ominous.
Mind Stealing Dagger. [Tier 4 Weapon] Description: Close in design and identical in effect to the caligo cavatus line of ritual instruments from the cava cult. Through being stabbed with this wicked instrument the personality and intellect of a creature can be forcefully removed. The resulting hollowed-out body has some uses in creating perfect flesh golems but is essentially dead and gone and many consider it a fate worse than death. This specific Instrument was created by the dungeon core "Pit stop". Stabbing damage 1 fixed. Mental Damage 100-200. Mental draining 10 Mental / second. Durability 90/90
Welp. Editing out that last bit of the flavour text.
Quickly erasing the indication that he was involved in making such a sketchy device Innearth randomized it into potentially much safer sounding loot and added it to his item pool.
Let’s see. That’s not my goal for this floor, I don’t want anything permanent.
Searching through materials he found quite a few unique materials that did what he wanted, and most were priced relatively low in comparison. One Core was selling a block of some “numbing stone” that they claimed could touch someone without them even noticing it.
That was great and all, but it was a single lumpy stone not something he could distribute well through an entire floor.
He bought it anyways to make monsters for this floor. After all, Why not!
Another core was selling a similar material that stored most of a creature’s senses feelings and emotions, then released them the next time anything living touched them. Similarly bought as a monster material although that one seemed more situational than the others.
A few more materials caught his eye but all of them were either suspiciously vague or priced much higher than Innearth was willing to spend so he moved on.
Sound is a big one. I want to make sure adventurers can’t communicate well or navigate by their hearing if they have some sort of sound-based sight.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
This study of materials went off worse than his previous. Adventurers had been known to use sound-based spells occasionally but while dungeons understood in a vague sense that they existed, for the most part, sound was a foreign concept to them.
Dungeon cores could vaguely “see” sound waves in their influence or between streaming screens and could tell adventurers were talking or notice the sound something made when it moved or in Abe’s case exploded. They could not however discern the larger differences in sound – it all “sounded” similar. This resulted in them having a hard time learning how to understand the various languages that species spoke, even with a perfect memory and the ability to transfer information between each other.
…It also mostly locked them out of properly using or understanding sound mana.
So what. Sound is vibrations in the air, right? So you can make it somehow by offshooting from Kinetic mana?
…I think I’ll check the market for this option as well. It's looking harder and harder to create the floor I wanted to make I might have to change my expectations.
Looking around for sound-based unique materials currently being sold gave a similar hit-or-miss sort of result. There was a material that altered how stuff sounded to be much deeper and two separate ones that both made sounds that reverberated or sound like they were echoing. One material dampened all the sound in a sizable area and was quite a bit pricier than similar options. “Buy this and make the perfect assassin! A monster that can take down stragglers without alerting any of their teammates to their screams. 60 t1 cores or equivalent!”
…the goal isn’t actually to make an impossible death trap of a floor. It's hard to describe to myself exactly what I want but I know what it is.
Hmm.
Would trying to revise exactly what I want from this floor help me make it?
I want to make something that is relatively straightforward and easy but then remove all typical senses and see how adventurers get through it. Like a straight empty hallway they just have to walk down, but can’t feel the walls or see how far it is.
I don’t want to make a maze; the floor should be pretty linear just hard to navigate. It would be interesting seeing what type of skills or magic an adventurer uses to get through it. Could also be fun watching them panic as they aren’t used to it!
Hmmmmm.
Searching a bit deeper into the sound-related materials Innearth finds a “parroting” shell-like material being offered up.
There was a heavy warning not to break the material apart because it slowly ruined the quality but in essence what the material did was store various sounds with pulses of mana and then perfectly play them back with pulses of mana from different directions. It was tricky to use but Innearth wasn’t planning on using it himself.
40,000 mana later and Innearth was the proud owner of the mimicry shell. Pulling his crystal bat template out he started to work. Creating a grid of circuitry that touched the shell in dozens of places before surrounding it in the rest of the regular bat design.
The monster can figure out how to work this. It’s going to be its body part after all.
Giving life to the crystal parrot, Innearth watched it fly through the halls. Copying a faint sound of a monster smashing into the wall and repeating it a dozen times happily.
I think I’m relying too heavily on either a specific material that does what I want. The goal is to make it so it's hard for adventurers to communicate or navigate with sound, right?
All I have to do is make a bunch of noises.
Picking a spot in the wall Innearth made a huge metal wheel with an offset flat plate attached to it.
Twisting the wheel around caused its backside to hit the ground in a suitably crashing boom.
Flipping between different metals and at some point, replacing a section of the ground with a small pit covered in the same. Innearth tested what worked best.
A dozen tests later and Innearth decided that aluminum made the best (loudest) sound.
The flat strip on the ground was thin and covering an empty pit, while the wheel itself now had several flat crashing plates on it. Making the wheel a trap by adding dozens of twisting kinetic plates and giving it life, Innearth pulled back. Taking a moment to watch the construct work, Innearth watched it spin first in one direction then the other. Creating inconstant crashes and filling the hallway with an awful cymbal-like crashing din.
And now I have to disguise where this is coming from…
Hmmm
A bit more research and Innearth was able to figure out how to transfer sound mechanically through small tunnels.
Each tunnel had “trap” flaps that moved back and forth letting crashes through or muffling them letting Innearth spread his annoying sounds throughout long stretches of hallway.
Let’s see. Confusion, confusion…
Mental mana plates were added but focused on as “simple and subtle” of an effect as he could imagine. They were simply focused on making people who touched them forget about contacting each other as well as giving off a sense of…well “I can do this myself!”.
Innearth was good at making that material he didn’t have to imagine much to create it after all.
Now I need to work a bit more on sight and the final sense I can think of is mana. It’s easy enough to block a mana sense with null stone…but I really really do not have a lot of that.
…that reminds me I should follow up with Doc.
----------------------------------------
Innearth: Hey. Here for some null stone I mentioned in my tour. What do you want to trade for it?
----------------------------------------
ZeMadDoctor: Depends on what quality you want. I can roughly separate it into strong. Medium. And light effects. Strong is…well I need it myself. So you’ll have to offer quite a bit. Only a few of the strongest demons I’ve had have made any. And it's always been a small amount. There’s actually some materials I’m classing even higher than that as “extreme”. I can’t give you that even if you wanted it…system won’t send it. It won’t even pass through portals without breaking them.
ZeMadDoctor: What I’m classifying as “medium” is a bit easier. I can give up sizable portions for mana unique materials or more importantly circuit data you’ve collected.
ZeMadDoctor: Light effect is even easier. That appears around nearly all my portals and I have tons of it. Honestly, if you need small amounts what are a few kg of null stone between friends. You’ve done more than enough for me before.
ZeMadDoctor: It's kind of annoying however and if you want thousands of units of it I’d have to rip up huge sections of my dungeon…If that’s the case you’ll have to make a suitable trade you know?
ZeMadDoctor: Anyways tell me what you want. I’m kind of busy but can manage most requests.
----------------------------------------
Innearth: …well, How much of that “strong” version are you willing to part with for all my snake circuits and a promise not to spread them around on the market or use them for anything other than your own research?
----------------------------------------
ZeMadDoctor: How many snake circuits do you have? Those are the ones you use the most right?
----------------------------------------
Innearth: over 500 at least. It's been over a year of collecting them and I’ve been tweaking things constantly.
----------------------------------------
ZeMadDoctor: …I want.
ZeMadDoctor: …uhh okay. I have roughly 5kg of what I’d consider “Strong” I really do need it for my own experiments but well…Eventually I can probably get a bit more. Would you part with those circuits for 4kg of null stone?
----------------------------------------
Innearth: eesh. That seems so little. But okay. Yes, that’s enough. First trade coming right up.
----------------------------------------
Setting up the trade of information for materials Innearth hit send and then returned to his second point.
----------------------------------------
Innearth: So. Second trade is everything else I guess for as much of the “lesser” null stone as you can get me. I want to cover a square kilometer in it. A hundred or so spider combinations and couple dozen for hedgehogs and bats and stuff. What do you say?
----------------------------------------
ZeMadDoctor: Well that’s easy. I can get you a bit over a million kg of the weakest null stone. I just have to rip up huge sections of my dungeon…Do you want to tack on regular stone I can replace stuff with? It's not super important because I can get my own with enough time but well…It would make things easier for me if I can swap stuff instead of rip stuff up and then dig and replace from inventory.
----------------------------------------
Innearth: That…that should work.
----------------------------------------
Finalizing the area Innearth wanted to turn into his sensory confusion floor, Innearth selected a few cm into most of his walls and set it up to swap with Doc’s materials all at once.
The process was not as simple as that.
Doc ended up breaking up Innearth’s initial selection into several dozen smaller replacements that were mostly straight, each which…well kind of worked.
They were almost confusing the system because it didn’t seem to consider ever having to deal with the volume they were transporting back and forth. There weren’t any hard limits or anything, but the precision was shot with higher and higher scales to the point where the system just wanted to dump everything into a pile instead of place it in the walls.
Doc's materials did not nicely plop into place where Innearth’s tunnels were previously. They were a mixture of dozens of materials that appeared like patchwork – with white tiles and random stone being cobbled together like the output of a trash compactor.
That…that does not look very nice at all :/ There are lumpy uneven bits everywhere…but then again this is fine. I’ll continue working on this while I make my second boss for the line between the beginner and intermediate areas.
The “Strong” null stone was actually 4 tiles from a prison. Innearth could vaguely remember them as from the containment area that Doc showed them. The one holding something they couldn’t comprehend.
Each tile was relatively thin and nearly perfectly a single kg. They were all a dull boring grey colour and actually pushed out into the world around them. Somehow their existence caused the air to feel thin and empty without Air mana and the ground below them to have Earth mana pushed away slightly as they rejected anything magical.
…the effect was slightly stronger than the stone Innearth was currently using on his blast doors.
It was also stronger than his oven.
…should I use this for defence and use some of the stuff on the door for my boss instead? I mean…I don’t think I need nearly this much for the boss of the beginner area ahh.
It was expensive but I thought Doc was just being stingy. Now I get why he didn’t want to part with it.
Thinking for a bit Innearth decided to remake his mana oven instead. He was flipping between the practicality of having blast doors and the potential experiments. Experiments won.
Picking a slightly larger area by his new core room, Innearth laid one plate on the bottom and put the 3 others in a sort of triangular exploded prism. Technically a hexagonal shape but with 3 empty sides.
The mana repulsion effect extended out and overlapped a bit at each of the corners. Leaving for the most part an area of contained mana that didn’t touch the sides of its container.
Using a very thin amount of his stronger material in thin stipes at the open side Innearth then cannibalized thick protective areas of the lower quality materials to surround everything completely.
This is really annoying to work with. I can’t put it into my inventory and then spit it out in a shaped state because the mana will be stripped from it. I have to sort of glue it all together with small amounts of other materials and hope they don’t fill up and ruin the rest of it. Innearth spoke to himself as he worked.
Finally making a new “mana injection straw” and lid, Innearth moved the current silver flesh experiment to the new oven. A few months had been good for its transmutation and now it looked like a…well a beating metal crystal heart instead of a metal heart. The goal was to remove its metal influences completely, but this was a good start.
Getting one of the crystal dwarves to pick it up and carry it all the way down to his new location was a simple enough task. The dwarf looked strangely comical wandering through the traps on its way down. Innearth laughed at the way it stepped through a battle between 3 normal snakes with synergizing skills and a spider bat pair that were fighting to the death.
“Excuse me pardon me” – lol. They didn’t even stop. It’s the little things that make everything worth it.
Reaching the new oven Innearth asks the dwarf to carefully place it in. Reaching out with slow, calm and deliberate motions, the beating metallic crystal heart is lowered into the new box. Covering it with the lid unprompted the dwarf patted the top of it twice making sure it was secure.
They seemed happy to be given a personal task and stretched their arms out after stepping back. The higher mana level down here was good for the dwarf even though it was a Tier 2 core variant (unlike the main Tier 4 artificer that was in charge of all of them).
…I’m starting to think about how Amy lets her monsters play around and wondering if I should be nicer to the dwarves. I could build a path down to a much lower mana concentration for them to take breaks in?
Once he put his mind to it setting up an elevator for the dwarves was incredibly easy to do. They all weighed a similar amount and Innearth had already made moving stepping stools in the trap rooms in the crystal caverns.
"A thick plate full of rotating kinetic controls and gravity decreasing plates shoved inside a boxy vertical shaft later" and Innearth was finished. Ending the creation by taking control of the platform and popping it up right by the dwarves’ workshop dramatically.
A part of him remembered to start filling the new oven at this point and he split off some of his attention to start pumping mana through the straw before returning to the dwarves.
Surprise! Come take a look!
Stepping over to the rough elevator the crystal dwarf studied it a bit somewhat apprehensively. Putting a foot out onto it and watching as the whole platform visibly dipped caused the dwarf some more pause.
Finally seeming to trust its strength, the dwarf stepped out and sat down in the middle of the platform. Pointedly looking up to indicate it was ready to descend after nothing happened immediately.
The platform dropped suddenly as all the magical rods shifted to point inwards and fell just a bit too fast.
Controlling the angle a bit as it fell, Innearth made sure he had plenty of space to slow down while practicing. He rotated the controls about experimentally a few times, trying to find a good balance but causing it to jerk repeatedly. Finally over halfway down, he got it moving at a controlled pace and figured out how to slow it without sending the whole platform back up again.
Dropping the last few meters and resting it at the bottom of the shaft Innearth proudly showed off his half-finished darkness floor.
Look! For now, you can come down here! I’ll try and route a tunnel in the crystal caverns and the ice caverns when I make it so you can take breaks there as well!
The dwarf was still trying to recover from its fall.
Pulling off its thick gloves the dwarf holds them out and stretches a few times then returns to staring at the elevator.
Sooooo, what do you think? Pretty cool huh?
Stepping back onto the elevator the dwarf kneels and starts drawing a large scratchy looking rune on its plate digging its void finger in deep as it carves its protection.
…clearly the dwarf doesn’t trust my elevator. I wonder why? I think it worked pretty well…I mean okay sure, I had to practice a bit – but I got him down here safely, didn’t I?
Letting the dwarf carve into a trap Innearth had already ran his influence through was weird. He couldn’t "really" feel it but…but he could still feel it somehow. Like something happening to someone else he watched as the dwarf worked.
Crushing a water crystal into fine dust and mixing it with its own crystal blood, the dwarf filled its runework and then stood up and turned.
Looking upwards and pointing to the side of its head the dwarf indicated it wanted to talk to him somehow.
Oh! Sure lil buddy. Let me set up a mental booth.
Making the slime connection with practiced ease Innearth lets the dwarf talk.
“If this is to be permeant it must be hidden from adventurers. Do you have plans for that yet or do I have to figure something out?”
…okay I guess that’s a good question. I’ve been ignoring the adventurer problem thanks for reminding me I don’t have any yet.
“I am sorry. Would seamless doors work? I’m sure the stronger adventurers will be able to see through and notice the passageway, but I can try my best.”
Bouncing ideas off you – would lesser null stone be enough to hide the door and any runework you make?
“That would be sufficient yes. Thank you for providing this option, do I have permission to move my workshop down here? It is much more comfortable, and I can send my creations up the elevator.”
… It's weird having an actual conversation with my unascended monsters. Anyways. Yes! As long as you can continue working, I’m fine with that. Can you make anything that removes senses? Pending that I’ll need help decorating the ice caverns if you ever want a break from the ever-expanding beginner area.
“Okay, and I’ll see if there’s anything I can do. I can’t promise there is, but I can always try.”
Stepping off the plate the dwarf begins wandering around the sensory deprivation floor examining the mostly finished lesser null stone insulation and stepping into the areas Innearth had begun laying plates of compressed strengthened metal and pitch-black hem-dark coating.
Immediately getting to work the dwarf heads back to the elevator. Returning moments later from a significantly smoother ride with materials and starting to take samples of the stuff Innearth was working with.
The “light” null stone was both exactly what Innearth wanted and worse than he had hoped. It made it hard to see through before Innearth started marbling dungeon veins through it and lightly made it harder to move mana directly near it and blocked most magic from passing directly through it but that was it. The layered metal plates were to prevent tunnelling and to seal the null stone in. And finally, the hem-dark blackness emitting material was for the seal.
It's not enough but it’s a good base. I wonder what else I can add and if the dwarf has any ideas. Could also ask the rest of my friends if they have any ideas. Much to do.