The Mad Rat’s Lab

“Ladies and gentlemen! For the next monster, I’m going to use a unit most players haven’t seen yet. It’s nothing else than the already extinct but brought back to life. One of our  mighty ancestors, the rulers of the past, the Dinosaurs!”

“Ueeeee!”

“Olololo! A mighty T-Rex! I want to see a mighty T-Rex fused with a Cthulhu monster!”

I shiver at the comments of the ‘audience’. I don’t want to imagine such aberration. If I do, I’m sure it’ll haunt my dreams for a month, bringing me constant nightmares.

“Dinosaurs…? I didn’t know there were dinosaurs in DMA.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk…” I click my tongue and put on my ‘serious professor’ expression. Not sure how it looks with my rat face, but I don’t care. I’m alone anyway. “Do you know nothing? Why do I always have to explain everything to you?”

The audience stays silent. Because there’s no audience.

“Sigh, alright… I have no choice, I guess.” I shake my head and start explaining. Mentally. There’s no need to do it aloud when there’s no one listening.

Yesterday, right after I saved the greenhouse so I could update the dungeon later, after the creation of the first monsters, the game warned me of the new game content being released. They’ve been announcing for a while now, and the players were excitedly looking forward to the content.

And as you might expect, with the new content came a bunch of changes and reworks.

Until now, most patches didn’t affect me or my faction. Or at least, I didn’t notice. But this time, they hit the Flesh Monstrosities. And they hit us HARD.

The thing with the Flesh Monstrosities is that is one of the newest factions, so it makes sense there were things they eventually had to fix. But being so new, added to the fact our faction requires a lot more investment to create the monsters, and the fact that the competitive players rarely switch factions after they get used to their champions and playstyle, delayed this quite a bit.

But now, after the first Flesh Monstrosities reached the highest rankings, the DMA developers finally realized that the fact that we can stack innate skills is cracked.

…no, I’m sure they knew from the start. They must, as innate skills can be easily abused. They knew it was an overpowered mechanic but didn’t want to take away the faction’s main trait, so decided to wait and see what happened.

What happened, then? That they broke the PvP environment and everyone started to complain.

You see… when it comes to PvE – or Dungeon Invasions if you like it best – it doesn’t really matter. Players can create any monsters they want, put as many traps as they can afford, and make the dungeon as difficult as they desire.

Making your dungeon harder isn’t necessarily a good thing, though. Most players don’t enjoy being beaten to death repeatedly while trying to clear a dungeon. But if you want to make an impossible dungeon, you can do it with any faction, it doesn’t matter if the Flesh Monstrosities’ monsters are stronger or not.

But the same can’t be said of PvP. In PvP – or Dungeon Battles – the two teams must be balanced in strength. Skill should be the determining factor.

Innate skills are very powerful, so if one side has monsters with more than one innate skill the balance immediately shifts in its favor. It doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily win, it just makes it harder for the other team to achieve victory.

Furthermore, and I didn’t know about this because I haven’t reached that level yet, the stats at higher levels are also a problem.

Remember when I said that the cp cost of a unit and its stats when added together are balanced?

Well… I was wrong. Very wrong.

Until around the 500 cp cost and up to 1.000 cp at maximum, that remains more or less true. But go any higher than this, and everything starts going downhill. That’s because the stats keep increasing linearly but the cost increases a lot more.

Units in the 10.000 cp range have higher stats than those in the 5.000 cp range, but they’re not twice as high.

If I were to create a unit with 10.000 cp cost by using two 5.000 cp units, I’d get a unit way stronger than any 10.000 cp unit from another faction; giving me a clear advantage on any PvP match. If I use three instead of two units, then it will not only have thrice the amount of innate skills but the stats will also be higher…

…I’m sure you know where I’m trying to go with this.

So, what did they do to fix this problem? They increased the cp value of all Flesh Monstrosities units according to a formula.

The higher the basic cp cost of the unit – the cost to create it, without including the levels –  the higher the extra cp value. A percentual increase.

Units below 200 cp will remain the same. They’re the weakest rabble, only used by low-level players, so they left them as they are right now. Over 200 cp, they’ll cost 10% extra. The cost will keep increasing, reaching 20% at 1.000 cp, and so on.

In short, every unit except the weakest will now cost more to deploy in PvP matches. However, you won’t need to calculate how much it’ll increase as the game will give the exact final value.

Thank god. They saved us a lot of trouble.

And thank god too that the patch didn’t touch anything other than the monster cost. Traps, environmental effects, and everything else remains the same. Otherwise, I’d cry.

“But why didn’t they give us a solution for the extra bodies? They nerfed us, and I’m fine with that, but why couldn’t they give something else in return!? What am I going to do with all the human rabble!?”

I punch the wall until my hand hurts. Well, it doesn’t because this is a game, but you know what I mean.

“Ahaha… Alright, let’s stop my rambling. I’m sorry, I got too excited with the patch that forgot to explain what the new content is…”

Finally, the reason everyone was so excited about this patch and why there was so much buzz about the new content. Something the players have been asking for a long time, complaining it made no sense they didn’t appear in such an amazing fantasy game yet.

It’s none other than the dinosaurs!

DINOSAURS!

…and to a lesser extent, lizardmen.

They go hand-in-hand in a pack, and you can find them in your nearest store… Uh… I mean, you can find them in the newly introduced dinosaur faction, the Lost World.

Life-like dinosaurs, and you can interact with them! Of course, this is a game, but everything is so realistic that you can feel they’re alive.

So, are the dinosaurs realistic? I know lots of people complain that they should have feathers, or that they should look completely different from the vision most people have of them. My answer to this question is: I don’t know. I don’t care.

The dinosaurs I’ve seen so far don’t have feathers and look like those from the famous dinosaur movies.

It’s too early to know how strong this faction will be, but the trailers were amazing. Plus they didn’t come alone, they came with the lizardmen: humanoids that tame and interact with them!

As you might expect, humanoid dinosaurs would be too weird, so they settled for lizardmen. Not like they aren’t amazing by themselves, but they’ll never reach the same heights as dinosaurs do.

So, to celebrate the introduction of this new faction, I decided to go into a Lost World dungeon and capture a few to put into my dungeon.

I didn’t go as well as I planned.

The faction is so new there were barely any dungeons created, and all of them were full of weak dinosaurs, the first two or three unlocked units. Which makes sense, if you think about it; but the disappointment was huge.

Can you imagine? No triceratops, no brachiosaurus, no stegosaurus… not even a single T-Rex!

‘A dinosaur dungeon without a T-Rex isn’t a dinosaur dungeon!’ I internally scream.

“Khm… so, anyway. I decided to celebrate the new patch by capturing whatever dinosaur I could get my hands upon, as weak-ass as it might be. And I got a few of these babies.”

In front of me, the game displays a 3D model of the dinosaur in question. On top of it, the name Velociraptor is displayed.

“Yep, it’s a velociraptor, one of the most famous dinosaurs. Since they cost 100 cp, they’re one of the weakest units but they have an interesting innate skill I’d love to abuse. It’s called Pack Tactics.”

The more units with Pack Tactics attacking the same target, the more damage they take from each.

I won’t complicate this monster too much, because abusing Pack Tactics is very easy: you just need to create lots of monsters with that skill and, if possible, increase the maximum number of monsters that can attack the same enemy at one given time. After all, the more monsters with the same skill, the higher the damage.

But every unit has a collision box, making it impossible for more than a certain number to attack the same target, right? How can you improve it?

For other factions, I don’t know if it’s possible unless they find a way to enlarge or reduce the monster’s body.

But for me…

For me, it’s pretty easy. I just need to fuse them with another unit that has a wider attack range. Like, I don’t know… something with tentacles? It’s pretty simple for me to do it.

No, don’t look at me like that. It’s obvious I’m not going to use an Abyss unit. I’m planning on using the Giant Octopus, from the Deep Seas faction.

Thanks to the Giant Octopus, I’ll solve two problems at the same time.

The first one is, as I’ve just said, the attack range. With the tentacles, they’ll be able to use melee attacks from a further distance. This will increase the maximum amount of monsters attacking the same enemy simultaneously.

The second one is the ‘hide in plain sight’ I want to achieve with most, if not all, of the monsters I’ll put in the botanical garden. The Optic Camouflage innate skill is perfect for this.

“I want to keep the Velociraptor as the base. Then, I’ll add the tentacles here and there…”

Using the game menu, I change how the monsters will look. I add tentacles on the sides and where the Velociraptor’s claws – tiny hands? Umm… whatever they’re called – should be. Four on each side. I also make the monster bigger without changing its proportions, until it reaches a meter high. I can do this thanks to the fact that the Giant Octopus is a meter tall.

When I finish, the monster looks quite terrifying. At a single glance, it’s clear this is a dangerous monster.

Oh, and I’ve already settled on a name: Mimeoraptor.

“Fufufu… hahaha! With their nearly permanent pseudo-invisibility and their high range to abuse the Pack Tactics skill, I’m sure they’ll quickly kill any invader they find.”

As for the AI, I leave it as it comes by default except for two small changes.

One, they’ll spawn in groups and stay in groups when moving around. It’d make no sense otherwise, as the Velociraptor’s innate skill kind of requires it.

Two, they’ll target the enemies one by one, concentrating all the attacks on the same target until it dies before they move to the next.

“Aaah, what a perfect work. A highly aggressive ambusher that will kill the invaders one by one, until all of them are dead… Furthermore, nobody will expect a dinosaur in my dungeon when there are almost no dinosaur dungeons yet. I’m sure it’ll help my dungeon grow in popularity.”

Alright, I’ll show you. Here are the Mimeoraptor’s stats.

It’s a Basic Chimera and both units cost 100 cp, so it’ll cost me 220 cp for each unit I create.

And I want a lot!

But it’ll take me a while… I first have to wait until the Beexies are created before I can see the first Mimeoraptor come out.

The Velociraptors are very fast, that’s why it has 8 SPD. They aren’t as fast as the Wererabbits, which focus almost exclusively on it, but it is a crazy number anyway. Most units that are considered fast don’t exceed the 7 SPD, after all.

Oh, yeah. As for the skills, I decided to keep it simple for now. The only two skills I gave them are Bleeding Strike, to further increases the damage they deal, and Dauntless, which increases the damage against stronger units.

In case you don’t remember, here are the skill’s descriptions:

“And now that I’ve finished the Mimeoraptors… Now, it’s finally time for today’s main dish! The terror of the botanical garden! The (non-official) boss of this new area! The master of ambushes and instant-kills, the… To be continued in the next episode.”

“Hahahaha!” I laugh. “You always fall for it, don’t you? Fufufu! Hahaha!”

 

“Hey, do you want to fight some dinosaurs? Then go to The Mad Rat’s Lab and enter the new area: the greenhouse. There, you’ll find some. I’m sure you’ll enjoy them, hahaha! I wish you good luck!”

- It was unusual that one of the first dungeons known for having dinosaurs wasn’t a Lost World dungeon but a Flesh Monstrosities one.