The only thing left to do now is add the boss room. I like to keep the boss rooms rather small and contained but I also wanted to give the mages and archers room to do their thing. They're going to need it with the boss I have in mind. It's also going to be one of the most expensive rooms I've created just because of the stuff I need to buy in order to make it work the way I want it to. The room itself is a simple 10m x 10m x 10m room. The set dressing is what's expensive. Well, that and the boss itself.
First, I go ahead and add stone to make the room feel cavernous. In the center of the ceiling, I leave a giant hole to 'let the sun in'. It took a bit of work to get the beam of light shining down like I wanted, but it worked out in the end and gives the cave a magical feel. In reality it's just a skybox behind that hole but the effect is impressive all the same. As for the expensive part well, I bought a couple of Iron nodes. The reason those are expensive. If I had to guess it would be the fact that they are able to grow iron ore by absorbing the ambient mana. I only bothered to get two of them because the room is so small I figured any more than that and the room would just end up filled with iron ore.
As for what the fourth-floor boss will be I've decided on a level 25 iron golem. It's a bit expensive, in fact I had to save up for a while after getting the two iron nodes just to afford it. As for abilities and skills there wasn't much I needed to do. I did however make it slightly magic resistant just to keep mages from ending the fight quickly with a lucky shot. Archers would need at least two or three lucky shots, so it evens out. I still can't do anything about the very obvious weak point. Then again, I don't really want to. I do want these fights to be winnable after all.
After that I decide to wait for a bit to let the mana build up. With more and more people able to clear the first-floor boss now there's always someone in my first two floors. I do find it interesting that Archers make up less than 5% of the delvers. I would have thought the ability to deal damage from a distance without needing magic would be way more popular. Perhaps the number of archers will pick up once my rooms get larger. After all the max range back on earth was close to 80 meters and in a world with magic and, more to the point, actual skills it could be much further.
After putting it off for a few weeks while watching the delvers. I finally decide to place down a simple 10m x 10m x 10m room to act as the fifth-floor entryway. The moment I do though I start getting a bunch of messages from the system, whoever or whatever it is. Reading those messages makes me wish I had placed down the fifth-floor entryway much sooner.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Well, this just makes things a lot more interesting. Before doing anything else I have to put those mini bosses to use. The fourth and third floors were easy I just picked a random dead end using the tried-and-true eny mini miny moe method. Of course, I did have to remove mobs to bring the total number down to three before slightly increasing the level of one of them. On the rare occasion that I had to remove more than one mob I gave my mini boss skills so that the overall difficulty of the room would be harder than it was. However, I also increased the amount of loot in the chests by 25% to compensate for the increased difficulty. As for the first and second floors, I had to wait until the dungeon was closed for the night. I'm suddenly very happy I thought ahead and got Clyde to agree to that.
As for the instancing, that was relatively easy to set up after the dungeon was closed for the night. Technically I could have done that at any time, but I waited because I didn't know what would happen and I didn't want delvers to leave early because they got scared. Turns out I didn't need to worry though as there was no visible signs that anything changed inside the dungeon. I now have multiple identical copies of the first four floors. As for which one is real, well they all are and also none of them. They are all identical to the original in every way. However, most of them are just copies of the original. Even I can't tell which one is truly the original.
Pattern combination is something I'm really looking forward to though. I might even consider completely redesigning the third-floor boss. I originally had another idea for it after all, but I lacked the ability to bring my idea to life.
