Dungeon of Chance: Even Odds: A Dungeon Core Novel (Serious Probabilities Book 1) Jonathan Brooks (book recommendations txt) 📖

“Now all you need to do is fill in your dungeon rooms.  Pick and choose what you want to use from your Available Monsters and Available Traps menus, and visualize them inside each of the rooms you have.  There is no defined rule against putting monsters inside hallways, but it is also considered bad form to do so – traps are fine, though.

“As for other rules, there are 3 that you need to follow in order to be successful.  Number 1: Place 5 – and exactly 5 – of your weakest monsters inside the very first room.  This is to allow brand-new Heroes a chance to grind upon the weakest of your monsters without risking too much.  It wouldn’t do to kill them all before they get a chance to do anything, don’t you think?

“Number 2: Your Boss Room, which for right now is the one nearest your Dungeon Core, should hold your strongest monster, or monsters, plural.  Keep in mind, though, that if you place a monster too powerful for any of the Heroes nearby to defeat, the room will essentially be wasted until they get much stronger.  You can always change things up whenever you need to, so you aren’t limited to what you choose right now.

“And Number 3: There is a limit to how many monsters and traps you can place inside of your dungeon.  If you go to your Transcribed Status, you will see that your ‘Star Limit for Placement’ right now is only 15. This limit will increase as you advance your Core Stages, however, so it hopefully won’t be that restrictive for long.”

So…I’m assuming that I can only place 15 Stars-worth of monsters and traps inside of the dungeon?  And if I were to place my Colossal Serpent, that would eat up an entire third of what I can place?  His previous excitement was dimmed a little as he began to see the problem there.  He was suddenly glad he hadn’t obtained a 10-Star, as great as that would’ve been, because then he would be severely limited in what else he could place in his dungeon if he had wanted to use it.

“Yes, precisely.”

Clay was thinking that he was starting to get a hang of things, finally, though he knew he still had a lot to learn.  Of course, that was until he had to decide what to place in his dungeon, because now there were way too many things to choose from.  Perusing his list, he decided to work on one room at a time, which helped to narrow down his choices. [5]

According to Dwight, the first room near his entrance needed to have 5 of his weakest monsters in it, though how he was supposed to intuit whether they were weak was a bit of a mystery. He was able to eliminate his 2 and 5-Star monsters, at least, as well as his Rare Troll, but from that point it was a bit of a tough decision.  Since he had no idea how each would fare in a fight, having never seen any of them other than in the glass slab, there was no determining how well they would work together.  So, he surmised that the only way he could select among them at present was based on appearance.

Clay mentally selected a representative of each Common 1-Star monster he had and placed them in the first room to look at them.  He didn’t really worry about their Element, because other than a few changes in each type of monster, they were essentially the same as far as he could see.  So, he had a Bat (which wasn’t large but could attack from above); a Boar (which was formidable-looking though slow); a Rat (large for their kind, but not appearing too dangerous); a Spider (they creeped him out a little, but he could see their potential as they seemed capable of moving quickly); a Slime (slow and ponderous movement, but difficult to harm because of their jelly-like form); a Fern (a stationary plant with different attributes); and a Serpent (relatively small compared to his Colossal Serpent, but still 8 feet long and 5 inches thick).

Is there any way to…I don’t know…see these in action?

“Why would you want to…oh,” Dwight responded, confused for a moment.  As a former Hero, he probably would’ve been able to tell right away what was the best option, but since he wasn’t a Hero….  “No, unfortunately you cannot.  Your monsters cannot be directly controlled by you, and their only purpose is to challenge Heroes; they will not attack anyone or anything, except for whoever comes through the entrance of your dungeon.  And don’t worry: If they, or one of their attacks, even try to get near your Core, they will disappear, leaving you completely safe.”

Hearing that he couldn’t control them was a bit worrying, but it seemed as though he was safe from harm.  From them, at least; what Dwight also implied was that if Heroes managed to get through all of his rooms and intended him harm, he was essentially defenseless since he couldn’t have any monsters near his Core.

Seeking the weakest of his monsters for the first room, he started to eliminate the candidates one by one.  Boars were out, because they seemed powerful; Serpents were also out, because these ones looked very quick to strike and could prove deadly; Bats he passed on, because they were too unpredictable attacking from the air; the Spiders he thought were too creepy to be used first thing when a Hero walked in; and the Slimes seemed a bit difficult for a beginner to effectively kill consistently.  That left the Rats and the Ferns, both of which seemed not too powerful for his first room.

He was tempted to just put all Rats