I’ve already completed the Champion’s creation and I should be able to, finally, start creating the dungeon. There is a flash of light and I close my eyes. When I open them, I find myself in an underground… cave? Building? It looks like a mix of both. There are a few electric lights that illuminate part of the area, but most of what I can see is covered in darkness. It consists of a single large room with some laboratory equipment.

Dungeon Creation

You are now in your dungeon. It isn’t empty because the most basic elements have already been created for free. Create, change and edit everything you want and build the dungeon to your liking. Don’t forget to add the dungeon creatures that will defend it from invaders! Spend the rest of the 1000 cp you had to create the dungeon now. Any remaining amount will be lost once you confirm the dungeon creation. After you confirm the dungeon layout, your dungeon will be open to the public and other players will be able to invade it.

“I can finally demonstrate my dungeon design skills!” I look at the time after saying this. There is a permanent in-game clock at the top left of my vision. “But not right now, because I have to go eat lunch. I am almost late.”

I pause the dungeon creation for now and go to eat lunch. Today we have bolognese pasta and potato omelet. Of course, the omelet has onion. A potato omelet without onion is an authentic abomination. A monstrosity! The Stitched can’t even compare, it is a thousand, no, no, a MILLION times worse than the abomination of flesh called Stitched.

After eating lunch, I stay with my family for about half an hour and then return to my bedroom to continue playing Dungeon Masters Arena. Once the game finishes loading, a message pops in front of me.

Welcome back! Do you wish to continue with the dungeon creation? Yes No

Of course, I select yes. And I find myself in the same spot as before. I’m inside the dungeon again.

“I want to test my Champion a little before building the dungeon. I’m itching to have some action!” I do some stretches, then some simple exercises and finish with a short running session. I don’t feel any discomfort with the Champion’s avatar.

“I’m not used to having a snout in my face. With some movements, my hands or arms end up colliding with it. It’s also really weird seeing the snout protrude from my face. I hope I’ll get used to it over time.”

“Let’s test the Rat Transformation now! I need to know how it works. And also how to move in the mouse form.” I say while activating the skill. The skill isn’t instantaneous. It takes about two seconds until the transformation finishes, during which I see my eye level lower and feel like everything is getting bigger.

“This is uncomfortable. It’s bearable, but I feel like something is wrong. And I can’t really point out what it is that is wrong.” I stay still, trying to get used to the sensation. “I’ll start moving.” I say. Mostly to convince myself, because I still don’t feel comfortable with the new form.

After taking a few steps in my new form, I stop. “Ueeeh… I don’t feel good. I, want, to, puke…” I can’t stand this anymore. It’s like something is trying to mess with my brain.

Luckily for me, I only need to think about returning to my humanoid form for the transformation to end. Otherwise, I don’t know what could have happened.

I stay there, laying on the ground, for who knows how long. I’m sure I look like a corpse right now. A very grotesque one. I slowly recover from the nausea. “I don’t want, to repeat, this again. At least, not any time, soon.” It takes a few more minutes for me to completely recover.

“Wow. The game’s warning was spot on. Taking a werebeast and transforming into an animal is a bad idea. I am going to seal Rat Transformation. Yes! The skill is sealed from now on!”

I stand up and start pacing up and down. “But… doesn’t this mean that I wasted 120 cp on a useless unit with a useless skill?! Hey system! I want a refund! A Champion remake! Some kind of compensation!!” Obviously, nobody answers my angry cries. “Now that I already liked this Champion and faction, do I really need to start again from the start? I wanted to create the dungeon already!!”

“Let’s calm down, let’s calm down!” I say after shouting everything that came to my mind. “Let’s think about it carefully.”

Why do I play this game? “Obviously to have fun.”

Do I regret my decisions? “No, I only regret that the skill is useless.”

Will this skill affect how much fun I have? “I suppose it doesn’t. I can simply not use it and focus on other things.”

Then…? “Then… I should continue as if the skill didn’t exist?”

Yes, good answer! “Thank you, me!” You’re welcome, me!

After a short internal monologue, I finally start with the dungeon creation. First, I open the dungeon menu. And there I look for the building list. They are the most important in any dungeon because they are needed for the dungeon’s development and to create new units.

Buildings Operating table 0/1 Reanimation machine 0/1 Stasis capsule 0/10 Corpse warehouse 30/30

Their names are pretty much self-explanatory, but I still read their detailed descriptions. To start, the numbers at the right. The first one is how many are being used right now, and the second is the total amount that the dungeon has. And for the Stasis capsule and the Corpse warehouse, it’s the current amount and total storage capacity.

The Operating table is for creating humanoid units. For now, only Hybrids can be created. It looks like a normal operating table, only that it is fully metallic, formed by a single metal plate, has rusted parts and some impossible-to-remove blood stains. Believe me, I tried to remove them.

Then the Reanimation machine. It says it is exclusive to create the Stitched. It looks like an operating table with lots of cables and electric coils. The part where the corpse rests can rotate up to a certain point, to put it in a standing or lying position. It has a lot more rust, but no blood stains, because corpses don’t bleed. It also has a capsule to cover the whole thing, with only a small glass window at the face level. Oh, and I lied! It doesn’t look like an operating table. Not at all. Except for the part where the humanoid can fit inside, of course.

The Stasis capsules are amazing. There are a total of ten, each giving capacity to store a single body. They remind me of those sci-fi movies, where they keep living organisms for long periods of time, or those used to create clones. They consist of a huge cylindrical glass filled with a bubbly and mysterious liquid and a bunch of cables everywhere. In front of the cylinder, there is a small operating panel. This panel is fake and doesn’t work, but I can change the color of the liquid and how much the capsule glows through the dungeon menu. The Stasis capsules are used for storing living humanoid sized or smaller bodies inside. And they are, of course, empty. I am the one responsible to ‘legally obtain’ the bodies of the ‘volunteer subjects’.

And the Corpse warehouse… It’s just a room filled with corpses. Literally. But it is supposed to ‘have magic to prevent the corpses from deteriorating’. I am reading this from the game’s description… because this is a game and, of course, the corpses won’t deteriorate anyway.

“I currently have 780 cp to spend. This is the amount I have left after paying for the Champion. Right now, I don’t have any living humanoid bodies, so I can only create Stitched. Up to 30 of them, since I have 30 corpses. But this will cost 600 cp. Each Stitched costs 20 cp, after all.”

“Hmm… I will make twenty of them. Then, If I have extra cp after finishing the dungeon, I might create more. This will cost me 400 cp leaving a total of 380 cp for the dungeon.”

I open the Reanimation machine’s menu. Here, I can see a few options. The first one is asking me for a template. What is a template?

Templates

To speed up dungeon management, you can create unit templates. When a unit is assigned to a template, the unit will automatically receive the same setup as the template. If you change a template, all units assigned to it will change too. Keep in mind you need to pay the cost of the change for every unit. When creating units. You can select a template and they will be automatically assigned to the template after creation. You can also create subtemplates. They will inherit the setup of the template but can have some differences. This is very useful for having identical units with different levels, skills, or equipment.

“Nice! So I only need to make the changes once and they will be applied to the other units!”

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I start creating a new template for the Stitched unit. The first thing that asks is how I want them to look. “I want them to have random parts of different humanoid races, at least four different humanoid races for each one.” I say while setting the parameters.

“I will keep everything else as default for now and see what happens.” The game asks for the template name. “I’m… Oh!? Wait a moment! They have two more stats than before?” I quickly read the new stats description. The new Stitched stats look like this.

Stitched HP 60 STA 5 SOU 3 EP 50 MP 30 STR 5 CON 7 AGI 2 SPI 4 WIL 4 DEX 1 SPD 3 INT 1 COM 0

Mental stats These stats are special and exclusive to non-Champion units. They indicate how complex the behavior of the unit can be. INT (Intelligence) How intelligent the unit is. The basic AI tends to be more complex the higher this stat is. Furthermore, for each point, the player can add or remove an extra connection in the AI of the unit. COM (Communicate / Command) How good the unit is at communicating and commanding other units. For each point, it can give commands or communicate with an extra type of unit. At least one point is needed for the unit to be able to communicate or command the others.

“Aah… I see… So, my Sitched are going to be weak, stupid, AND not being able to communicate at all. I already have the perfect name for the template.” I write ‘Braindead’ in the template’s name.

Now that I have the template created, I start with the Stitched production. Every Stitched takes one minute to be created. During this time, I need to stay within one meter of the machine or the progress will stop. And I can only operate one machine at a time, regardless of how close they are.

“I suppose this is where units with high Dexterity come. You can use them to stand in your place. But this machine needs 30 Dexterity and the Stitched… aren’t very dextrous. Let’s leave it at that, or I’ll start crying.”

Players themselves are exempt from this rule, they can always use the dungeon buildings and machines regardless of their stats.

After one minute, the first stitched pops from the Reanimation Machine. “Hello, you ugly faced!” I say. But the stitched ignores me and starts moving randomly through the room. It bumps into everything and makes quite a lot of noise. Luckily, this is a game and objects are static, so it doesn’t break anything.

While waiting for more stitched to appear, I take a look at the Stitched AI. “This is… how to call it… simple? Yes, let’s leave it at simple.”

The Stitched AI has basically two states: Idle (or out-of-combat) and Combat. The combat is fine. Move towards the enemy and attack. Simple but effective. The problem comes with the Idle state. Now that more time has passed, I can clearly see the problem with the five stitched already created.

The stitched are moving randomly like the first one, and the bumping noise is starting to get annoying. The problem is that they are clearly and utterly ignoring each other. Half of the bumping noise is from them bumping into themselves! They are making something that resembles a dance, where they bump from the front in a ‘contest of strength’ kind of thing, until one decides to move into another direction and the jam is undone.

So I edit the Braindead template. The AI edition works in a drag and drop style. Each action the AI does is a ‘node’ (or box), and they are connected by simple decisions. I only need to drag the action or whatever I want the AI to do and reconnect the boxes. Of course, there are more complex things going on, hidden behind these simple boxes, that I can’t modify. With the ONLY Intelligence point of the Stitched, I can only add or remove one of such boxes. In the Idle state, I add the ‘follow x unit’ action, set x as the closest allied unit, and reconnect the AI boxes so that they work properly. Then, I wait to see the results of my changes.

There are ten stitched created right now. And they are… “*Sigh!* This is getting ridiculous…”

The stitched are all clumped together in a huge mass of flesh and limbs. They are, still, trying to get closer to each other. And they continue to bump between themselves while pushing towards the center of the chaotic mass, trying to ‘get closer to the other allied units’.

“This is clearly not working. I can make them follow me instead… But this will only make the same scene repeated, this time with me at the center… And I don’t want to even imagine that. If I keep moving all the time, then the horde will be following, which will look cool and somewhat awesome, but when I’m not there all stitched will return to the normal behavior of bumping into everything. And I need them to move by themselves because they are supposed to defend the dungeon without me intervening.

“And I can’t make them move in groups because I need them to have at least a one in the Command stat. Only Champions or units with the Command stat and the command action enabled in the AI can be put into the ‘follow x unit’. I looked at it before. Or can I…?”

I remember that each unit is supposed to have skills, and some of them can raise the unit’s stats. “Let's take a look! Fast, this blob of flesh is reducing my sanity!”

Skills

Each unit starts with one skill slot and gains another skill slot per level. The only exceptions are Champions and Bosses, which start with three. There are three types of skills: active, passive, and triggered. Active skills can be used when the unit wants, passive skills are always activated, and triggered skills can be very powerful but need a condition to be activated. A unit must first allocate the skill points so that it has at least one skill of each type. Then, it can use the rest of the skill points to obtain new skills or to upgrade the current skills. The skill’s upgrades are specific to each skill.

“I will look at what triggered skills are later. First comes the skill to fix the stitched. I assume it is going to be a passive skill.”

I select the Braindead template, go to the passive skills and search for stat skills. “This is it! I’ve found you!”

Commander (Passive skill) Increases the unit’s Command stat by 1.

I immediately select the skill and was going to apply the changes to the template. “Wait! I don’t need this skill on every stitched, only in a few!”

I add two subtemplates to the Braindead template. I call them ‘Braindead Mob’ and ‘Braindead Leader’. Then I add the Commander skill to the leader subtemplate.

“To the AI again!” I modify the AI of the two subtemplates. First the leaders. I enable the command option in the AI and set it to a maximum of three units. With five leaders, and three mobs each, the total is 20 units. Which is the number of stitched I am creating. I also reset the Idle state, add the ‘stay away from x’ action and reconnect the nodes. Finally, I set the x to ‘other Braindead Leader’, the distance to 10 meters, and save the changes. This way, they won’t get too close to each other and start bumping between groups.

And to finish, I move to the mobs AI. I reset the Idle state too, and add the ‘follow x commander’ action. The x is, of course, ‘Braindead Leader’. This way, the game automatically assigns up to three of the Braindead Mobs to each Braindead Leader.

“Oh! I almost forgot one thing! To add a skill to the Braindead Mobs!” I open the skill menu again. After looking around, I find a very interesting skill. It seems this skill is exclusive to some factions that are especially disgusting.

Too Gross to Look At (Passive skill) Other units that can see this unit have a 20% penalty to hitting targets. This skill doesn’t stack and doesn’t work on allied units.

“With this skill the stitched will be quite the danger. At least, I hope so… *Sigh* Who am I trying to fool? I don’t have any expectations for them. Not anymore.”

With the new changes to the AI, the stitched start moving in five groups of four. Enough time has passed and all of the stitched are created. They are no longer a single mass of flesh and limbs. They still bump into everything though, and sometimes, between the stitched of the same group. “Yep, definitely better!”

“Arise! Awake from your slumber, my monstrous legions! Let’s conquer this world!” I shout, raising my arms while on top of the operating table. “I always wanted to say something like this.”

Meanwhile, in the background of this epic image, the stitched continue shambling through the room. Completely ignoring me, while continuing to bump into things, and between themselves.

[https://i.imgur.com/ZGSK4Pl.png]

“You must start every Dungeon Battle by picking the Champion you are going to use. Look at the enemy faction, then pick the Champion that can better abuse their weakness.

Then, plan the units you are going to use to defend your dungeon in the opposite way. Expect the enemy to choose the worst kind of Champion for you, then design a strategy to stop that.

Finally, complement the squad you are going to use to accompany your Champion by expecting the enemy to do the same. Pick the units that can help your Champion to overcome the strategy that the enemy has planned to stop your Champion.

Dungeon Battles aren’t won with strength but with strategy.”

- Excerpt from ‘A journey to the top’, a guide to help players reach the top ranking in DMA.