I open the dungeon edition menu and start the modifications.

Remember when I added the optional path through the Not A Rabbit area? Then, I decided I wanted the dungeon to be a little less linear than it was, and that I would add more secondary paths and other stuff in the future.

Well… I’m not going to add extra paths yet because I really want to create a whole new area, and I wouldn’t have enough cp otherwise, but this new area will be the first step toward that goal.

“Hmm… I think this spot is nice… Yeah, let’s put the stairs here.”

I select the initial point and create the stairs before modifying them. I make them go downwards because the new area will be below the current ones.

Where I’m putting them? They’re in a corner inside Minitaur Queen’s big room. For now, it looks like a classical dungeon, with stairs that go down to the next floor after a Boss encounter – though in this case there’s no need to kill the boss at all.

Then I modify the stairs to fit the next room’s theme.

Excavated in the rock, the winding steps are clean and neat at the start, but as you go lower, mold and a brown-green sticky substance soon cover them. At the same time, the moisture covers the walls and a rancid smell hits your nose.

“If these stairs were real, it would be very easy to slip and fall, killing yourself… It would be fun to see, but since this is a game, it can’t happen. What a shame.”

With this, the entrance to the new area is more or less finished. Now I can proceed with the actual area.

Oh, by the way. There’s a reason I reminded you of the extra paths and non-linear dungeon. And it is… because this new area won’t lead to the dungeon core.

Yes, it won’t.

You see… when I was planning what to do in the future, I came up with several ideas to improve the dungeon, and one of them was so good I had to implement it.

Let me tell you something else first. Right now, the place where most invaders die is my boss' room, the Minitaur Queen’s room. If the invaders don’t die due to the damage, they die because they fall into the water canals, and can’t manage to come back.

I even saw one player who fell into the canals and got dragged to the big cavern by the underwater river more than three times in a single dungeon exploration… It must be true that those who are the most stupid are also the most resilient because I can’t understand how did he manage to survive the first four times he got dragged away.

Anyway, let’s forget about the stupid invaders and return to the topic!

So, I came up with this crazy idea: if most players die in this room, what would happen if I made them cross it more than one time? That’s why this new area won’t lead to the dungeon core but will contain a key to open the path to it; which by the way, is inside the boss room.

This means that, from now on, the invaders will have to run away from the Minitaur Queen to reach this place, then defeat the monsters here, find the key, and go back to face the Minitaur Queen once again! Hahaha!

And thanks to this, it’ll also break the dungeon’s linearity!

…It’s a good thing I unlocked the advanced dungeon elements because some of the stuff I want to do wouldn’t work otherwise.

“When the players go downstairs, they’ll see the slime and moisture on the stairs, warning them of what’s to come. Warning of danger is always a good idea. Though it’s better to have two dangers, warn them of the one they see and let them fall to the one they don’t! Hahaha!”

This area will be the ‘failed experiments’ area. Not in the useless monsters category but more like those creatures that do look like failed experiments.

Here, the Mad Rat did his experiments, testing new units in isolated cell units until they were ready for his purposes… but an experiment went very, very wrong and the Mad Rat had to seal the whole area to prevent it from escaping.

At least, that’s how the story is supposed to go.

Ok, ok, I know what you’re thinking right now. Shouldn’t the Stitched, the Fleshlings, and some other units be considered failed experiments too? Well… maybe? But if I do, I’m limiting myself too much, so I won’t.

“Ah, shit! I almost forgot to create the door that seals this area!”

I quickly climb the stairs up and add the sealing door, which can only be opened from outside. The door is one of those high-security doors for biological hazards. And this time I don’t forget to add the warning signals as well as the ‘Don’t Enter!’ message, and the wooden boards blocking the way. They can’t be destroyed, they won’t block the way.

Everybody knows that players tend to do the exact opposite of what’s expected of them, so writing the ‘Don’t Enter!’ message is a surefire way to get them to go inside.

“Ok. Now that I finished the entrance, let’s create the new area.”

I descend the stairs another time.

“Hmm… I’m sure this will work. This feeling of stagnation, that this place has been closed for a long time… By now, most players have learned that the stuff they can’t identify in my dungeon means ‘Danger!’. When they see this brownish-greenish slimy substance, they’ll be freaking out. And they should! Hahaha!”

Ah, yes, I should add some lights. I could also make do with the ambient light that I put in most of the dungeon, but I don’t want it here this time. I want… something spookier.

I add wall lights at irregular intervals as I go down the stairs. They only illuminate the closest area, leaving dark spots and shadows everywhere. In fact, most of the lights are covered by moss or the slimy substance; or are cracked and don’t work anymore, further reducing the light in this area.

“Hah! Now it feels like a haunted house, amazing!”

The next thing I do is create a straight passage from the end of the stairs. Then, I add two more, creating a T shape.

“The fun part starts now…” I say, rubbing my hands together. “Let’s turn this area into something the invaders will never forget!”

Stolen novel; please report.

Starting from the central passage, I add a few rooms of various sizes on both sides of it.

Then, I put prison bars on a few of them. There are various sizes and shapes for the bars, indicating they were used to contain different types of units. There’s even a very large room with bars as thick as my whole torso, surely to contain a gigantic monster. Or maybe a powerful one?

In the rest of the rooms, I put biohazard doors. These are containment rooms for monsters that needed special environments to survive, or simply because they could easily escape from a prison cell. In most of these rooms, I put a glass panel on the wall to see what’s inside.

Oh, and the most important part! About half of these rooms have part of the wall or the door itself destroyed by a very strong impact. An impact coming from the exterior.

It isn’t that some monster came out of them, but that something destroyed them from the outside.

“They’ll be trembling after seeing this because this means there’s something very dangerous roaming this area… Though, in fact, there won’t be any strong monster yet, because I don’t have the cp to create it now.”

It’s a shame I don’t have enough cp to spare for a very strong monster, so the boss of this area will have to wait.

I’m not sure if I’ll create an actual Boss or just a strong monster that fits the area similar to what I did with The Tunnel’s Nightmare. But if I choose the former, I’ll have to wait a lot more to create it, until I unlock the second boss slot.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both options. The Bosses have resistance to status effects and double stats, but the number I can have is limited. On the other side, if I create a strong monster, there can be any number of them, but they’ll be vulnerable to stuns and other strong status effects.

I can also create a unit that has higher stats than any boss by using really strong units as the base to create it… but it won’t have the status effect resistance.

“But this is for the future, let’s refocus, Andreu.”

I continue adding more passages and interconnecting them, adding prison cells and containment units as I go. Some paths lead to dead ends, but I make sure there aren’t too many; I don’t want the players nor the monsters inside to get stuck, I want them to find each other and fight.

Another important feature for this area is that those cells and containment units that aren’t broken will contain groups of monsters the invaders can fight if they want to. They’ll only need to press the button to open the door and release the monsters.

Optional fights with bonus rewards, yay!

And because they’ll see what’s inside before they open them, they can choose which ones they want to fight and which ones they don’t.

This also means they can use skills from outside, but luckily most ranged attacks and spells can’t be used through the walls, glass panels, or iron bars. Though skills that only require vision, like Blink, will still work.

Also… who said the invaders are the only ones who can open the doors? I certainly didn’t! Fufufu! Hahaha!

All in all, when I finish adding passages and cells, this whole area is about the same size as the big cavern, excluding the underground lake. If you take a look at it from the top, it resembles a city.

And everything is right below the laboratory areas. Though some parts get very close to the Tunnels area, as some of them go very deep underground… I’ll connect some of those tunnels to this area with special passages: Private passages and Secret passages.

You already know what a secret passage is, so I won’t explain them.

But the ones I’m going to put are a little special because they’re conditional ones. This means when the dungeon invasion starts, there’s a chance the passage will appear, and a chance it doesn’t.

You see… the problem with secret passages in a dungeon is that as soon as one player finds them, either by luck or because they’re skilled, they aren’t a secret anymore: the rest of the players will know where they are and how to open them.

But what if those passages are only there with a very low chance?

Will the players waste their time going to each one, trying to activate them, and going to the next one if it doesn’t work? What if the secret passage didn’t appear in this dungeon instance?

I don’t think they will. At least, I wouldn’t waste my time like this.

In short, I put the chance to 5% for each of them, and only one can appear in each dungeon instance.

Thanks to this condition, only the lucky players will find them, allowing them to enter this new area without having to cross the Minitaur Queen’s room first.

If they’re lucky, they’ll find the secret passage in the tunnels. But when they share it with the other players and they don’t find the secret passage… I’m sure there’s going to be some chaos in the forums.

I’ll have to go and get my popcorn bucket once again.

And the private passages are something new that got unlocked when I reached player level 6.

They’re passages that only my own units can cross, they look like normal walls to any other player. But there’s a certain condition for them to work: there can’t be an enemy unit within 50 meters or within sight range of the passage.

With them, my units will be able to move through the two areas, but the enemies won’t.

I’m still not sure if I’ll allow the monsters to do so or not, but they’ll at least reduce the time it takes for me to move through the dungeon when I decide to actively defend it. A thing I like to do when I create a new unit and want to test it against some unlucky players.

“I finished the rooms and layout, so let’s go for the details next.”

Similar to what I did with the stairs, I put wall lights, some of them broken, and cover most of the floors, walls, and even parts of the ceiling with moss. Then, I add that mysterious brown-green slimy substance throughout the whole area.

I also add water droplets on the walls and ceiling, but instead of simple moisture, most of the floor is now covered by a thin film of water. The musty smell is also stronger here, though the game doesn’t allow it to be too strong.

Then I create a few holes in the ground. Deep enough for the players to fall into them or trip, or for a monster to hide there, but not enough for them to be dangerous. And because of the water film and reduced lightning, it’s close to impossible to see them before it’s too late.

“The only thing remaining is the reason I created this area: the key to unlocking the passage that leads to the dungeon core. This won’t take me long.”

As it couldn’t be any other way, the key I create is an authorization card, with the Mad Rat’s logo and a skull under a ‘do not pass’ symbol. You know, the red circle with the diagonal line.

What’s the Mad Rat’s logo? Well, it’s my face with some lightning.

And as you would expect, the skull and ‘do not pass’ symbol represent this sealed area. And yes! This means I’ll add more areas like this in the future, each with its own respective authorization card the players must obtain to reach the dungeon core!

The key will randomly spawn in one of the closed rooms. The players will have to find it and fight whatever monsters are inside to obtain it.

The rest of the rooms are optional. They can open them and fight the monsters to obtain extra rewards, or they can ignore them and move forward.

Of course, there will also be monsters roaming the passages. Not everything will be easy.

“Wow, this took longer than I expected. I might have gone a little bit overboard with the details and spent too much time with this…” I anxiously scratch my head. “Luckily, I’m not late for dinner and mom won’t get angry at me. Let’s save it for now, and I’ll continue later.”

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

“If you want the players to remember your dungeon, it should always have a theme. It’s also possible to have multiple themes, but it’s difficult to find a proper balance between them. Choose wisely.

But having a theme doesn’t mean the whole dungeon should look the same and have similar enemies. Players quickly get tired of that. Instead, create areas that complement the theme but are different from one another.

For example, if your dungeon’s theme is ‘zombies in a graveyard’, don’t just create a gigantic graveyard filled with buried zombies. Add some catacombs with elite undead, create a labyrinth underground filled to the brim with skeletons, or put the graveyard next to a foggy forest with spirits and phantoms.”

- Third point from ‘10 things to do to improve your dungeon’.