The Mad Rat’s Lab

“Hello everyone! Did you miss me?” I raise my arms and shout inside the dungeon. But I don’t get any response whatsoever.

Today is Thursday, so it’s been two days since I last played DMA. I was worried if the stitched were crying because they missed me, but it seems everything is alright.

“First of all, let’s check the dungeon’s current status.” I open the notifications and see that there have been two more invasions. “Oh! I managed to defeat one of the invaders! In total I received 140 cp and 11 xp!”

The player who died in the dungeon also left a public review: ‘This dungeon is crazy dangerous! Be ready to feel like you are useless if you dare invade it!’

“Hmm… What? Dangerous? Do you know you are the only one who has ever died in the dungeon so far? Not even other player’s mobs have died yet… In fact, the rest of the players stomped the dungeon and the stitched couldn’t even scare them. What the hell is that player talking about? Maybe he was incredibly unlucky and thinks that everything that happened was planned…? Nah, it’s impossible to be so unlucky.”

I consider the review as ‘a noob player’s crazy ramblings’ and forget about it. I got four extra corpses from that player’s invasion. It seems I can get corpses when I get invaded, and bodies too, if I manage to capture them. But since the Champions can’t be captured, only the support mobs can be captured, I’m going to forget about it for now.

With the four corpses from the failed invasion, the Corpse warehouse is almost filled, with 24/30.

“Just in case, I’m going to build another Corpse warehouse. As the (made-up) saying goes: you never know when you are going to need a lot of corpses.”

So I spend 100 cp to build another Corpse warehouse. Now the capacity is at 24/60. I don’t think I’m going to fill the new one any time soon.

 

Today I’m going to try my luck with another dungeon invasion. But this time I have a plan. I’m going to invade a level 2 player’s dungeon, specifically one from the Stone Lords faction: the dwarves.

My objective is to obtain bodies from their race. Dwarves are very tough, they compete for the highest HP, CON and WIL stats from all humanoid races. But the thing that makes them stupidly sturdy is the innate passive they have: Stoneskin.

It’s almost the only damage reduction in the game that doesn't need the attack to be from a certain type. It reduces ALL damage from ALL skills and basic attacks. Only skills that don’t deal damage and instead reduce the HP directly aren’t affected. Like the Death Butterfly’s ‘Decaying Touch’.

If I can get a few of their bodies, I am finally going to be able to create the first Hybrids. And they will have this damage reduction passive.

“Don’t you think it’s a good plan? Well, I do, and I don’t care about anybody else’s opinion.”

And the reason I’m choosing a level 2 player dungeon is because I want to get a Runesmith’s body if possible. Runesmith is a dwarf unit with very high Dexterity that costs 230 cp.

I want to get at least one to use in the creation of a Hybrid, which is going to be the laboratory helper, and will operate the machines for me so that I don’t need to stand still all the time when creating monsters.

A level 1 dungeon is unlikely to get a 230 cp mob, so I have no other option than to try with a level 2. I already found one such dungeon: ‘Kah-Damun Fortress’.

“Everything is ready, so let’s go!” I say while starting the dungeon invasion. As expected, I’m bringing the four Followers and one Kidnapper with me.

 

The first thing I see is… an underground tunnel. “Oh, it feels like I’m back home!” But this one is clearly excavated. The floor is flat and the walls are straight. It is only wide enough for two humanoid units to fight side by side.

“Let’s see how I fare in a higher player level dungeon. I don’t think I’ll be able to conquer it, but I can simply go back when I feel like doing so.”

When doing a dungeon invasion, the highest rewards you can get are when you conquer it. But there is also the option to return to the exit and abandon the invasion. If you do so, you still get rewards you deserve depending on how far you got. It is way better than getting killed, which gives you a very little amount of rewards.

I start walking through the tunnel. Soon, I can hear the *Clink! Clink!* noise of picks striking rock. The sound must come from Miners, the dwarf basic unit. The sound comes from the end of the tunnel.

And sure, when I exit the tunnel, I find myself in a wider cavern where five miners are striking the rock with picks.

The dwarves notice us, and one of them shouts something. “Must be the leader of the group.” Then, the dwarf who shouted leaves the cavern through one of the tunnels. “Or maybe not. Did it go to warn other units about the invasion? How smart!”

The four remaining miners approach us with their picks, ready for combat. They are slower than most units, but still faster than the stitched. “Damn stitched! Do you have a single good point? If so, tell me! Because I can’t find it!” I complain as combat starts.

I look for a while, trying to assess the difference in combat prowess between the stitched and miners. They are both basic units, so their combat ability should be similar, right?

“So why are you losing by this wide of a difference!?” I complain. The stitched are taking a lot more damage than the miners do. At this rate, they are going to be defeated. So I join the fray and launch a Chain Lightning.

After my intervention, the miners are quickly defeated while the Kidnapper manages to capture one of them. I came here to capture a few, so I’m not worried about the need to save mana.

Now, from the tunnel where that dwarf escaped, I can hear the clinging sound of metal armor and weapons. “Hah! It did go and bring reinforcements!”

From the tunnel, the miner who ran away appears again, followed by five more dwarves. Two of them wield shields and spears. They look like real guards... but what worries me are the other three.

“The hell is that? Isn’t it a cannon!? It looks like it was improvised and shouldn’t be too powerful… but still, it’s a fucking cannon!!”

Two dwarves are dragging a small cannon on top of a wheeled platform. And the last dwarf is operating the cannon. “A Runesmith! The dwarf operating the cannon is a Runesmith!”

“I’m incredibly happy that I found a Runesmith. I must capture it right now!”

But all happiness fades away when I hear a loud and thunderous explosion followed by an impact that makes me fly until I reach the cavern’s wall.

“Ouch!” I say at the same time as I raise from the ground. “That single hit took 1/4 of my HP away! You fucker!” The runesmith is already preparing to fire the cannon again. “No you won’t!”

The stitched are currently engaged in melee combat with the two dwarf guards and the miner. They are losing, but will be able to hold for a while. So I go for the ones near the cannon.

When I get close enough, the dwarves leave the cannon and prepare to engage in melee combat. The three wield maces. I start by casting a Chain Lightning, and the two dwarves that were dragging the cannon are immediately reduced to 1 HP and stunned. But the same doesn’t happen with the runesmith. It still has more than half HP remaining.

“You are really sturdy, huh?” We start hitting each other with our weapons. Before he strikes me with the second attack, lightning courses through the runesmith’s weapon. When it hits me with the mace, the lightning is transferred to me and a notification pops in front of me. ‘You are stunned’ it says.

“Shit! I can’t move! I’m stunned!” How ironic that I got stunned by an electric skill, the same thing I’m doing all the time, and how I planned to capture the runesmith.

The runesmith hits me a few more times for the three seconds I’m stunned. In one of the attacks, it imbues the mace with fire and inflicts me with the burn status, which reduces my HP every second for 10 seconds.

“Ah! I can finally move!” I immediately strike the runesmith with my staff a few times in revenge. After its HP falls below a quarter, I cast another Chain Lightning and it is left stunned on the ground. I immediately start the capturing process.

But before I can finish, a mace strikes me on the back and interrupts the capturing process. “What is it now?” I turn around and see one of the cannon helpers attacking me.

“Wasn’t it stunned? Oh, right! I was stunned for three seconds, so the dwarf’s stun time must have run out!” But now the runesmith awakens too from the stun and both attack me at the same time.

“Shit! I must use Chain Lightning again! And I’ll be left with no MP after casting it!” I complain while I cast the spell again. Both are stunned now, leaving me enough time to capture the runesmith. “Yes! I got it!” I say after the process is completed.

I look around. The Kidnapper is capturing the cannon helper that I just stunned. I don’t see the other cannon helper corpse, so it must have been captured too. “Good job there!”

But the situation with the rest of the stitched isn’t good. They have managed to kill one of the two dwarves with a shield and spear. But two stitched are dead, and the other two have less than a quarter HP remaining. I assist them from behind, with some staff attacks, and manage to save them on time.

All dwarves are dead. Now the only remaining thing related to the dwarves in this cavern is the cannon. But I can’t really use it for anything, nor can I bring it back to my dungeon. So there’s nothing more I can do here.

I decide to continue moving through the same tunnel where the dwarves came from. I don’t know about the other tunnels, but there should be something in this one, because it’s where the reinforcements came from.

"I'm very happy because I have already obtained what I came here for!" I keep jumping and singing while walking.

 

*Rumble* The ground starts to vibrate. Then, the ground erupts, exactly under the Kidnapper, which is walking next to me. A cloud of dust and stone fragments is generated and something appears from within. I can barely see what is happening because of the dust cloud, but this ‘something’ starts rampaging and the Kidnapper takes damage.

When the dust clears, I can see the corpse of the Kidnapper and a giant worm-like creature. It's about two meters long and 30 cm wide. It's covered by armor that looks like rock plates, and its huge mouth is still biting on the unlucky stitched’s corpse. “Wow! This is a Tunneler, isn’t it? Nice! I didn’t expect to see one today, but I must capture it if possible!”

Tunnelers have a special innate skill that allows them to move through solid terrain and ambush enemies from unexpected places. A perfect addition to my dungeon if I manage to capture it! Though they aren’t especially strong compared to other non-basic units, their innate skill is invaluable! Even if I still can’t create any kind of unit with the Tunneler, I’m going to keep it in reserve for when I can.

I strike it with the staff to see how much damage it takes. About 1/4 HP. I need to make sure to capture it, so I don't want to accidentally kill it, nor want to waste too much MP with multiple Chain Lightning strikes.

The tunneler strikes back and bites me. I’m now restrained and can’t get away… plus I’m taking damage every second while it keeps biting into me.

“You dare!” I say while striking again with the staff one time, and then another one. I finish it with a Chain Lightning and immediately start capturing it.

Oh, and I said it was giant, but it’s actually about the same size as a human. It’s giant, but giant compared to real life worms. This means I can actually capture it because it can fit inside the Stasis chamber.

“Yeeees! Everything is going nice! I already got what I came here for and then an extra bonus with the Tunneler!” The only bad thing is that the Kidnapper wasn’t very lucky there and got killed.

 

After walking some more through the tunnel, I hear more metallic noises. “Here they come again!” I can see four more dwarfs coming our way. They all wield shields and spears.

We engage in combat and then I notice my mistake. “Shit, in the tunnels they hold the advantage!" The tunnels are only wide enough for two units side by side, but since they wield spears, they can use the extra range to attack from behind! It’s as if my only two remaining stitched are fighting 2vs4! "And I can’t reach the enemies with the staff!”

So I do the only thing that I can do in this situation: cast spells from the back to turn this situation around. I start by casting Chain Lightning. But I only manage to reduce the health of them by about a third. Well, not even a third for the ones at the back because the spell deals reduced damage after each jump.

“This isn’t good… I need to remove at least two of them from the fight and turn it into a 2vs2… Otherwise the stitched are going to die soon.”

So I cast two Cold Blasts on one of the front dwarves and three Cold Blasts on the other one. I’m not very lucky with the status effects and only one spell immobilizes one of the dwarves for a short time. Still, it buys the stitched some extra time before they get killed, so it’s a good thing.

“Now it’s the time! It’s now or never!” If it doesn’t work, I’m going to run away and escape this dungeon.

Spending most of my remaining MP, I cast another Chain Lightning towards the dwarf with the lowest health. The lightning strikes the first dwarf, reducing it to 1 HP and leaving it stunned. Then, it jumps towards the other dwarf in the front line, taking more HP away than with the first strike of the spell, and leaving it stunned on the floor too. The damage on the last two dwarfs isn’t as high but it still takes away a good HP chunk.

“How did the lightning deal more damage to the second target? Hmm… Oh, yeah! The Shared Voltage skill!”

I completely forgot about it until now, because all enemies either were instantly reduced to 1 HP or had too much HP, but when a unit is reduced to 1 HP, the excess damage jumps to the closest enemy. This means that with the Chain Lightning skill, both the normal lightning jump damage and the Shared Voltage damage are added on the next victim! It is actually possible that each successive enemy hit takes more damage than the previous, instead of less!

“Though it would need an absurd amount of luck and planning for it to work like this…”

Meanwhile, the stitched have already killed the stunned dwarves and are moving towards the last two dwarves. “Lucky! Now I’m sure I can finish them all with Cold Blasts and get some extra rewards before running away!”

I spend the remaining MP casting more Cold Blasts. I have enough to cast four of them, so I start casting again. But, when I cast the third Cold Blast, a message appears in front of me.

“!??” I look around me in a phantasmal version of myself. But I don’t see anything unusual. No sneaky assassin units, no unexpected trap, no dwarf squad with a cannon, not even ranged units behind the dwarves wielding shields and spears. “So what the hell has happened? Why did I die?”

I take a look at the combat log to understand what happened… And what I see makes me want to cry.

“It seems… like… I killed myself…. with the Maniac passive…” I lower my head in shame.

“Well, at least I got what I came here to obtain: a few dwarves' bodies and, especially, a Runesmith! Plus a Tunneler! But I got very little cp and xp for being killed…”

It didn’t end with the best result, but it didn’t go so bad either. Still, I’m imagining Ricard laughing at me and calling me noob for weeks if he ever finds out. Yep, this is going to be my best kept secret from now on.

“Why aren’t there more players that play the Flesh Monstrosities? Isn’t the answer evident? They are the ones with the worst starting conditions. You need so much extra work to get the dungeon working properly that no other faction can even compare.

And what’s worse, you must continue to invest large amounts of time to upgrade the dungeon, way more than any of the other factions. Nobody wants to spend so much time on a faction when they can simply use another faction and be done with all the problems. There’s a reason why there are no top ranked dungeons from the Flesh Monstrosities!”

- Interview with a player who started with the Flesh Monstrosities and switched to another faction.