Dungeon Day 462 to 500
Like always, The Rocky Caves took time to fully come to an end as Dan spawned in creations and made edits to the many, many system-related things the area needed. This meant going back and revisiting quests, npcs interactions, and ensuring everything was working as intended. One of the most important things that Dan revisited was the spawning of normal beasts in the area. Dan hadn’t done anything drastic and had mainly changed how spawn rates worked in the kobold and gnoll zones.
These changes involve reacting to the conflict occurring in the area and making sure spawns weren’t favored in a certain area over another. There had to be balance where beasts encountered adventurers, gnolls, and kobolds at an acceptable rate to give them an extra challenge without hurting the balance too much. The change wasn’t too hard, mainly because, unlike the rest of the zone where the kobolds and gnolls would run on their own without much interference from Dan. The beasts would still be following the heavily scripted pathing and interactions Dan wanted.
In the end, the final thing Dan ended up working on was items for the event and just ensuring the drop rates and such worked as intended. Out of everything in his dungeon, drops and items were one of the things that information wouldn’t be blocked out by the system. The reasoning for this was that Dan was using item drop rates and the creatures they dropped from as a balancing feature. One such thing came with the kobold casters. They would barely drop anything, and what they did drop wasn’t good. After all, the last thing Dan wanted was for the kobolds, who would likely have targets painted on their packs, to be targeted for yet another reason. So, with such items and system things done, Dan moved on to work on the place adventurers would first see when entering his dungeon.
Moving his sight to the cave that he had first established himself in, Dan knew he would need a little bit of extra space, and luckily, the World Crystal was happy to comply. It wasn’t much, but the extra claiming space Dan got was enough to make the cave much more circular, which was just a nicer way to present it instead of the random corridor or two it had. On that note, he quickly filled out the tunnel he had made to enter the shattered space and properly sealed that area of the cave.
With the cave in the general shape he wanted, the first thing Dan did was place an enchantment. It would cost him a bit of mana, but it had to be done. The enchantment was spatial in nature and meant to increase the size of the cave even more. The lobby of his dungeon would need space to accommodate adventurers, but luckily, it was just a gateway area for them to enter his dungeon, at least at first.
Dan knew that the Adventurers Guild, along with a few other churches, were building a proper dungeon building right outside his cave. That building would be large and be the main place for adventurers to deal with any future dungeon affairs. This would involve possible item selling, information recording, and general administration, like keeping track of who went into the dungeon. That last bit was only a concern to actual authorities since they wanted to make sure they knew whom among them entered the dungeon and left. Along with what they did inside or were able to acquire. Additionally, it was a general place to be used even for regular D rankers who would eventually enter since it was a good way to keep themselves safe and looked into in case they randomly went missing.
Naturally, Dan would provide some assistance in that regard, and he would have his own creations work with the authorities. It wouldn’t be anything too crazy, simply helping confirm whether a member was alive or had died and maybe under what conditions. It was also a good way for Dan to let them know if he had decided to ban someone from his dungeon for doing something outrageous.
For the lobby itself, Dan created a nice archway at the now cleared cave entrance, which he had sealed all the way back when he entered the shattered zone. Entering the lobby proper, adventurers would find a nice smooth cave wall and ceiling with a nice green tiled floor. The tiles were decorated with golden carvings that contrasted nicely.
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In the room itself, there were four booths that each held two teleporters. Each booth was blocked off on the sides by metal-like roots that connected to the cave walls. So, that only left the front as the way in. In front and between the two teleporters was a lectern that would be manned by one of Dan’s npcs.
The jobs of the npcs would be simple. They were meant to greet adventurers and check their badges or other forms of identification. To that end, these greeters would be somewhat tapped into Dan and the system itself, which in turn were connected to the World Crystal. Through this, they could check said adventurer’s information and match it with any that their organizations had provided. Naturally, this information would be added to the person's system profile, which itself would be created when they stepped into the teleporter.
To begin, the teleporters would take dungeon explorers to Typic Town, albeit in different areas of the town. Some would be taken directly to the town square, while others would be left by the gates or other general areas like the market or tavern. From there, adventurers could use the knowledge they were provided before entering Dan’s dungeon to decide whether they wanted to head out and explore or actually talk to some of the people in the town.
Now, it was important to point out that adventurers could leave the dungeon whenever they wanted. To do so, they had to find one of the many factions in the dungeon and access their teleporters. Dan had placed these teleporters in various places throughout the main base of an existing faction. The teleporters would always work unless an event prevented them from doing so.
Once adventurers or otherwise went to re-enter the dungeon, they had a few options.
First of all, they could be taken to Typic Down again or dropped off at one of the teleporters they had discovered. On the other hand, however, if an adventurer had finished the event of an area, they could choose to be randomly teleported somewhere in that area. Naturally, if they had done all events in the dungeon, they could choose to be randomly teleported anywhere in the dungeon. Dan restricted this feature to avoid dropping adventurers in the middle of a place or scenario they weren’t aware of.
For people who would get the future teleportation tokens that could bring them into Dan’s dungeon without entering through the lobby. Well, they would be taken to the area where their dungeon token was gained. Specifically, they would be teleported to the main base in the area, meaning Typic Town, the big tree in The Druids Domain, or one of the caves in The Rocky Caves. For these individuals, and to make things fair, the token would be a one-time use but would allow them to teleport inside and be teleported back to the place they were located when they came in. These individuals could then spend however long they wanted in the dungeon before leaving. The whole point was for them to spend their time gaining another token. Since once they were teleported out using their token, it would disappear.
Individuals with tokens could also leave through the main teleporters in the lobby, but once they did so, their token would still vanish as if they had used it to teleport out. Speaking of the lobby, outside of the booths with the teleporters. The rest of the lobby was filled with couches and other comfortable seats, along with coffee tables. The lobby wasn’t a place for adventurers to stay for long, but it was still a place that Dan wanted them to spend some time in. To further push this fact along, Dan created a bar-like counter on the bottom corner of the cave.
On this counter, Dan placed blue crystal orbs and various menus. This bar would be manned by a few more of his creations. Their purpose was to give the food that spawned on the two tables that Dan placed behind the bar. The idea was for adventurers to see the menu, choose their food, use the orb to give up mana, and then Dan would use the system to spawn food for them.
The entire system was relatively simple, but it was something Dan was happy to provide. Not only would it show adventurers one of the workings of the dungeon early on, but it also gave them a reason to stick around in the lobby and make conversation. Not that it was needed, but Dan wanted his dungeon to feel alive and not seem as mysterious and threatening as it seemed. And the best way to show that to a newcomer was for them to see adventurers hanging about in Dan’s Dungeon Lobby.
