The Mad Rat’s Lab

Lately, I’ve been feeling like I’m missing something, but I was unable to locate what it was until today. Today, Sunday, I was looking at the comments that people wrote in the two videos I uploaded: ‘It’s Alive! It’s Alive!’ and ‘Whac-A-Zombie’.

It came to me in a flash, as if lightning had struck me, and now I can’t stop thinking about it. What is it? In those two moments, I was fooling around and having more fun than any other moment. And you know why? Because I was role playing properly the craziness and unpredictability that the Mad Rat represents.

So I’ve decided that today I’m going to spend most of the time trying to define a persona. And from now onwards, I’m going to try to interpret the persona as best as I can. Why? Because it’s more fun, of course. At least for when other players are present, because it’s when my persona is going to be most relevant.

“Hmm… the thing now is deciding on which kind of persona. It’s settled that must be a crazy character, but how much craziness?”

I don’t want to create a persona that can’t properly talk or one that is so traumatized that can barely do anything. But a low craziness, affected for example by a common obsession won’t be enough.

“So a middle ground? Crazy up to the point that you can talk with the Mad Rat but you can’t properly communicate, because it will do whatever it wants all the time. No compromises allowed.”

I imagine a possible conversation of me talking to some dungeon invaders. To get a better feeling, I interpret both mine and the invader’s lines.

 

“So you came to my laboratory and are now trying to destroy it?”

“Hmm… Sir? We are lost and trying to find our way out. Can you help us?”

“Oho! You now want to fool me and try to escape? So that you can return later with reinforcements!?”

“No, sir! We just want to get out of this cave!”

“Do you think I will believe your lies? Monsters! Get them all killed!”

“B-but sir…!”

“Stop spouting nonsense and face the consequences of your actions!”

 

Ok, it’s not bad, but this only displays craziness and selfishness. There’s very little personality there. I should try adding something more, maybe like this?

“You! Foolish mortals that dared invade my most precious and sacred place! You shall face my wrath and that of my most prided creations!”

Naaaaah, this sounds too much like a phrase a stereotypical demon king would say. Too cliché, and it also doesn't fit the theme of the dungeon.

Maybe something more childish? Treating the monsters as toys, and invaders as ‘future toys’?

“Noooo! You destroyed and killed my toys! Bwaaah! No, no, no! You are gonna pay! I’m gonna make you pay! And then I will turn you into my new toys, and we’ll play together forever! Hehehe! New toys! New toys! Lalala!”

I shudder. Too cringy. I’ll never say something like this again. This can be interpreted in very weird ways and don’t want to be seen as a deviant. And something like this?

“Fufufu! Hahaha! You invaders (heheh) are now (hehehe!) going to die! (fufufu!) My creations (huhu) come (haha) and kill them all! Hehehe! Hahaha!”

Too much laughing. I am looking for some maniacal laughter but this is clearly too much. Maybe if I limit it to only at the start or end of the conversation? Or for when I’m not talking at all… I imagine a new situation.

I start laughing while coming close to the enemy, hidden in the shadows of the dungeon. “Hahahaha! Fufufu!” After I show myself, I say. “You! You came at the perfect time! Hahaha!” I say while raising my arms. “Now come to me, my newest creation! Show me your power!” I then point at the enemy. “And you! Struggle as much as you can and amuse me until the end! Hahaha!”

“Yes! Yes! I like this! This mix of mad scientist vibes and laughter feels good! I think I’m going to settle with it.”

 

Now that I have the concept settled, it’s time for me to start loading the game and test it a little. How am I going to test it? I’m going to wait until a player dives into my dungeon and try to move and behave like the persona I just decided upon would: the real Mad Rat.

Once inside the game, a message pops in front of me.

“Oho! So my player level has risen by one. And I got extra cp, nice!” It looks like my dungeon has gained popularity recently and received a few invasions since last time. “And now I have 13/250 xp to player level 3. Wow! I now have 835 cp, with the rewards from the level up and the other player’s invasions! I’m rich again! But I’m not going to look into the other rewards now, I’m here for the persona.”

The only thing I do is create two more Mines and Farms, because I’m going to need a lot of food and metal soon. And the sooner I build them, the sooner they start producing resources. This reduces my cp by a whooping 500. The whole level up bonus is already gone.

There are currently two invasions into The Mad Rat’s Lair. Most players don’t bother defending from other player’s invasions, mostly because there can be multiple invaders at the same time, each with its own dungeon instance. So it is impossible to properly defend the dungeon when the number of instances increases. But I’m going to defend them now, since I want to develop the persona by interacting with other players.

I enter the first dungeon instance. In this one, I can see a human champion walking through the tunnel area. There’s an option to open a screen to watch the invaders, similar to the one in the Dungeon Battles. But I don’t receive the Champion’s buff. I assume it’s to balance things, since the defending player has all the units in the dungeon on its side.

“Let’s see how good I can roleplay!” I say as I go close to the place where the invader currently is.

I look for the nearest group of stitched and predict where they’re going to meet and fight. The enemy has the Champion’s buff and is accompanied by four support units, so trying to fight alone would be a suicide.

“Fufufu! Hahaha! Do you know where you are!? You are in my laboratory!” The enemy player keeps moving closer, sword on hand. He makes a horizontal slash from a certain distance. I don’t know what he’s doing at first, but then I see a half-transparent blade slash that’s coming in our direction. “W-wait! What are you doing!? Let me finish at least!”

I manage to evade the flying slash on time, but the stitched aren’t as lucky and are killed with a single hit.

“Shit!” Now I don’t have meat shields anymore. “Hey! Can’t you see I was trying to speak with you? You jerk!”

I start running away while I cast a Chain Lightning. It bounces between him and the support mobs, severely reducing the health of the support units. But the champion takes little damage.

“Hahaha! I’ll make you regret acting like a jerk!” I shout while running through the tunnels. I’m moving through as many mushroom zones as I can. The enemy is chasing after me, so he is going to eat as much poison as I can make it possible. But we have the same speed, so I can’t effectively run away. Even worse, I have little EP and Stamina compared to him because of the champion’s buff, so he is going to reach me when I run out of them, sooner or later.

He launches a few more flying slashes in my direction, but I manage to evade most of them. Still, he manages to reduce my HP by half with those that do hit. But the mushroom strategy worked and I managed to kill all the support mobs and reduce his HP by an extra quarter too.

We are now reaching one of the tunnels with the underground river. One that has a narrow passage and a cliff next to it. I’m going to try something here.

“If you come any closer, both of us are going to die! Hehehe! Go back! I’ve warned yoooou!” I say. The first part in a crazy tone, and the second part in a motherly tone. It’s very hard to role play when you don’t have much experience and the opponent is making everything he can to break the immersion.

And as the jerk he is, he continues running in my direction. Well, I’m going for mutual destruction then. I cast as many Cold Blasts as I can while resuming the running, but this time I let him get closer to me. My Stamina is getting low, so I can’t continue with the same speed, but there’s also a hidden reason as to why I slow down.

I’m incredibly unlucky with my casts, but finally, about the eighth time, the enemy is immobilized and stops moving. Immediately, I turn around and grab him. Then, I jump with him into the river. He’s immobilized so he can’t resist.

“Hahaha! You see this? You forced me to do it! You are going down with me! Hahaha!” I say while falling towards the river.

The river current starts dragging both of us towards the underground lake inside the big cave. During this time, we continue fighting, this time in extremely close range. By the time we reach the underground lake, I’m already a corpse. He still has almost half of his HP remaining, but after the chase his EP, MP and also Stamina and Soul are very low. His battle capability is severely reduced. He is making an incredibly angry face right now.

“Serves you right! You stupid player! Haha!” Since I’m dead, he can’t hear me anymore. But I still continue to mock him. It’s for my own satisfaction.

Now he can only do one of two things: abandon the dungeon invasion and receive reduced rewards, or risk it in a do-or-die bet. He doesn’t hesitate too much and chooses to continue the invasion.

I continue to watch the invasion out of spite. I want to see him die! And I don’t get disappointed, because he does.

The shortened version goes like this. He roams through the tunnels and continues to take some poison damage. Once he reaches the place where I threw both of us into the river, he spits and insults me. “Oh, so you can actually talk! What a surprise!” Then he reaches the laboratory and starts a fight with the Lab Assistant.

The fight looks even at the start. But the enemy invader has very low EP and MP, so he can’t display all his might. The turning point is when the Assistant’s HP is reduced under half and the triggered skill activates. The huge amount of damage from the trigger plus the immobilization, followed by an unavoidable Fireball settle the match.

“Hahahaha! Serves you right!” I can’t stop laughing after seeing his face just before the Fireball hit him. He was like ‘Oh, no, fuck this damned player (me)!’ I even received extra cp and xp for defeating him. “Thanks for the extra bonus, you jerk! Hahaha!”

After rolling on the floor laughing for some time, I decide it’s time to continue with the original objective. I look at the current invasions. There are two again. The first one, which was already ongoing when I entered the game, is almost finished. I spent too much time with the jerk. But in the second one, the player is just reaching the tunnel zone.

“This time’s an orc! I hope he knows how to properly behave and isn’t a stupid player like the last one.” I say as I enter the dungeon instance.

This time I’m not going to make the same mistake as before. I’m going to appear from a place where the enemy cannot reach, plus I’m going to bring the Lab Assistant with me. It goes where I tell him to go, so the plan should work properly.

 

“Fufufu, Hahaha!” I slowly move towards the orc while releasing a high-pitched laugh. Then I appear from a higher place, very difficult to reach unless the enemy can fly. “Welcome! Welcome to my lair!”

The orc looks in my direction and says. “Bufu! Your lair? This is little more than a few rocks and mushrooms!”

Oho? It actually answered! But is he insulting my dungeon? This offense shall not be pardoned! (in a serious and haughty tone) But I’m going to take this chance to practice. “Yes, my lair! And you came at the perfect moment. Hahaha! I was waiting for a guinea pig to appear! You’ll have the honor to test my newest creation! Fufufu!”

“Huhuhu! Guinea pig? Newest creation? Bwahaha! So you are the mastermind behind this diabolical dungeon!? Bring it on! I’m always itching for a real challenge!” He says while opening its arms wide.

Diabolical dungeon? Mastermind? What the hell is he talking about? I’m just a normal player with a somewhat unpredictable dungeon. That’s all, I swear! Police, please don’t take me away! Also, what are you? A musclebrain?

“Hahaha! You’ll regret your decision! But it’s nice to have the guinea pig collaborate with the testing! Fufufu!” I answer. At the same time, the Lab Assistant appears from the nearest tunnel and it immediately casts a Fireball towards the enemy. The fire explosion kills two of the enemy champion’s support units: two goblins.

“How cowardly! A sneak attack! Heh, what was I expecting from someone who stays far away and only looks while we fight…” Says the orc.

“Cowardly? I took the trouble to warn you! So don’t complain. Hahaha!” I stay where I am, watching the fight that’s happening below.

There’s one fun thing, though, and it is that the enemy orc didn’t properly look around. It’s currently standing very close to some poison mushrooms. So if the combat actually takes place in this tunnel, he’s going to receive large amounts of damage from the poison.

The fight earnestly starts when the enemy Champion and the remaining mob, another orc, engage in melee combat with the Lab Assistant.

And sure, they do start fighting surrounded by the poisonous mushrooms, which make them all, lab assistant included, start taking poison damage. And the poison stacks start to accumulate. You can only accumulate up to 10 stacks, since they last 10 seconds and only one per second can be obtained. But still, 10 HP per second is a lot.

The second Fireball that the Lab Assistant throws only hits the support orc. And its innate skill activates. Wow, even with the dwarf’s high defenses and the innate skill that reduces damage taken, the assistant is taking quite a lot of damage from simple basic attacks. Orcs are true brutes!

When the assistant’s HP goes below half, the Frosty Retribution activates and immobilizes both of the orcs. The enemy champion still has a decent amount of HP left, but the support orc gets killed with the following Fireball.

Now only the enemy champion remains but its attacks are even stronger than before, since the innate passive has activated. When he manages to kill the lab assistant, he has very little HP remaining. Only a few more seconds inside the poison cloud released by the mushrooms and he is going to die.

 

*Clap! Clap!* “Fufufu! To think you could beat my greatest creation… I underestimated your strength!” I say, mockingly. I don’t forget to clap for the ‘champion’. Haha, you understand the joke, right!?

“Bwahaha! You call this a fight? This was only a warmup!” The orc responds, making a flexing pose. His muscular arm makes me envious. My arms are sticks in comparison.

“Well… If you say so… Fufufu! But I recommend that you look at your current status! See you again! Hahaha!” I say. Then, I wave him goodbye while laughing maniacally and walking away. I didn’t even need to personally fight this time. Why do I go back, you ask? I made him waste enough time with this short talk.

“Wait! Don’t run away you coward!” Shouts the orc. Then, I suppose he actually looks at his status screen, because the next thing I hear is him shouting out of despair. “Noooo! Not this again! Am I really going to die only because of the fucking poison!? Fuck! My HP is going to reach 0 before the poison runs out!”

Then he starts spouting nonsense. “Hahaha! So this was all again planned, huh? I couldn’t do anything again… I’ll return another day, and beat all your evil machinations! Just wait and see!”

And he dies. What was he talking about? I don’t understand what he was talking about at the end… Evil machinations? Everything planned? It was you who didn’t look around and started the fight inside a poison cloud. I just appeared here to try and roleplay my persona. Well, whatever.

It did go quite well this time. At least I think so. Thanks to the orc, I could start acting my role in an actual conversation, unlike with the human jerk. It still feels weird to interpret the Mad Rat’s persona, but I hope I’ll get better and more used to it in the future.

“Pffft! Hahaha! But how could he be so blind to not see the poison cloud? If only he moved a few meters away he could have survived!”

“If you ever hear a high-pitched maniacal laughter, run away, and don’t look back. NEVER! Better yet, if you can leave the dungeon, DO SO! It is probably the Mad Rat coming towards you to test its newest creation. And believe me: YOU. DON’T. WANT. THAT!”

- First thing written in ‘How to Stay Sane in The Mad Rat’s Lab’, even before the guide’s index.