That was ... actually quite informative. For one thing I need to figure out how to get the rats to change up their attacks. They were getting very repetitive towards the end. I also learned that there is apparently much more of a gap between level 1 and level 2 than I would have though. Since the level 2 rats were actually able to dodge at least the first attack. I also felt that I gained about ten times the mana I spent on things when they killed or harvested them. I wouldn't normally think of picking up a coin as 'harvesting' it. I'm certainly not going to argue with the ten mana I get for each one they pick up though. After all that is the equivalent of one world energy.

I didn't get anything when the healer, Lily apparently, leveled up. It makes sense though because I already benefit from her being able to go deeper next time and kill or harvest even more. I am glad they were able to leave with full bellies and a large amount of water. I do hope they are able to come back.

For now, it takes me several minutes to go through and replace everything. Fortunately, one of a dungeon's innate skills is to eat anything that doesn't belong. So, I didn't really need to do anything to purify the water. After that I convert the mana I now have into 170 world energy. This time though before building some more I open the rules section of the world energy catalog. It turns out there are a lot of rules dungeons can have. It seems as though there are rules for literally everything. The one I'm interested in is the rule to automatically reset the floor to the way it was, assuming there is enough mana, after all delvers have left. Though with me getting ten times the mana I paid for everything why would there ever be a case where I don't have enough mana.

This one rule costs 50 world energy, but I think it's well worth it to not have to manually reset every time. That leaves me with 120 world energy which I spend on 12 more rooms. I do plan to add a second floor at some point, but I want to make sure my first floor is set up exactly how I want it first. Only then will I be able to move on to the second floor.

As for where to put the rooms. One of them goes on the north side of the room with the two level 4 and two level 5 rats. With another room going to the east of that one. I use one mana to create a hallway to connect this room to the room that already exists nearby. Only now do I see the option to not allow rooms to automatically connect to other nearby rooms. After taking a moment to think I decide to turn the option on. I did actually want to create a maze after all. I don't add more connects the rooms I already placed because that would ruin the difficulty progression. For a moment I toy with the idea of searching for a rule that would randomize the location of the hallways while maintaining the difficulty curve. Only for a moment though. This is the first floor so I shouldn't do anything too crazy. I do make a mental note to save that idea for later though.

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As for the ten remaining rooms I use three of them to place a row of rooms starting at the unused wall in the room with the three level 4's rats and one level 5 rat. Then I put four rooms in a row to the south of the room with the four level 4 rats. I also decide to allow them to automatically connect where they can. I now have three rooms left but I decide to wait until I can afford a few more rooms before continuing.

For now, I spend a little time rearranging a few of the storage crates. I also add a bunch of storage crates to the rooms I just added. Then I add in the rats according to the previously established pattern. I also spend a bit of mana to add a few candles here and there. I even go back through previous rooms and make sure there is no more than five coins in each room. I don't want to completely destabilize the economy after all. Eventually I'd like to get a rule that randomizes the number of coins in each room. Doing it manually it will never be truly random.

Now all I can do is slowly wait for my mana to build up again. Hopefully that party survives and tells other people about me so that I can start getting a steady stream of delvers. Until then It's back to the slow and steady climb up the world energy ladder. The fact that it takes a little over two full days to gather enough mana to exchange for just 3 world energy doesn't help. Although I guess I should be thankful that I'm able to passively gather mana like this at all.

It takes me another 49 days to gather enough mana to exchange for 70 world energy. This in turn allows me to finally get seven other rooms and add onto my first floor. This in turn lets me place five rooms in a row starting on the north end of the room with the three level 4 rats and one level 3 rat. After that I add in the storage crates. I then take a few minutes to add in the rats and coins according to the pattern I set earlier. That still leaves me with two more rooms to work with.

This time I place them at the west and south side of the entryway respectively. I also take a few extra minutes to make sure they are identical to the first room I ever placed, at least from the perspective of someone standing in the entryway. The main reason being that I want people to understand that the room layout isn't as straight forward as other dungeons might be. Not that I have any idea how other dungeon operate. I'm just assuming that most dungeons rush to get deeper as soon as possible since I technically only needed 10 small rooms and a boss chamber to unlock the chance to buy a second floor.

Just as I'm starting to wonder how many years it's going to take for me to actually finish the first floor to the point where I'm satisfied with it, my controls get greyed out again. This time I immediately understand what that means.