While it's nice to take a day off and just relax, and for most people it's actually necessary. I, as a dungeon, can feel the need to continue advancing. It's hard to describe this feeling but I also can't ignore it. Paradoxically the deeper I get the stronger this feeling gets. Well, perhaps deeper isn't the right word but I'm certainly getting larger. At any rate it's time for me to get back to work.
For the next room I decide to make the ground completely flat. The ground I end up with is so unremarkable that it's remarkably unremarkable. Though, compared to other rooms on the sixth it's unremarkableness makes it the strangest of all. On this completely flat ground I create several plant golems disguised as little bumps in the terrain. The slight unevenness of the terrain caused by the hiding plant golems actually makes the room look more normal. Especially given what I did with the other non-cave rooms on this floor.
After that I create another pack of dire wolves and just like with the other pack I have them patrol the room so that delvers only encounter around four to six at a time. This time however they will not be guarding treasure. On top of the wolfs and plant golems I also add some griffons to this room. and just to be extra nasty they all have the wind blade skill. It's time I started incorporating more skills into my mobs anyway. Aside from griffons I also add a few morning deaths with the swift strike skill to really round out the mob variety in this room. Naturally, in keeping with the pattern the mobs in this room are all level 29.
I hadn't really planed on adding anything else after the mobs, but I can't shake the filling that this room still feels too empty. So, I go through the room and toss out a few random berry bushes here and there. These berries however are much more mana dense than the ones on the second and third floors. I consider adding trees but that would be contrary to my design for this room. It's supposed to be a wide-open field after all.
Only one more room left before the boss room. Well technically I could make the next room the boss room or I could add more rooms until my instincts start screaming at me to go deeper, but I think one more will be plenty. The good news is that with more people exploring the fourth floor now I only need to wait days instead of week to get enough mana to purchase another room. I did get most of the mana needed while working on the previous room, but even so the time I need to wait between placing rooms has shrunk to almost nothing compared to when I placed the sixth-floor entryway.
After gathering the necessary mana to exchange for the world energy needed for another room. This one is going to be special. About a third of the room is taken up by the same cave system as the cave path, complete with a few room-like caverns before emptying out into a cliff side. In this section I add a few stone golems, giant scorpions, giant spiders, and cave crawlers. I also make sure to add the other stuff found in the cave path, though not nearly as much as in the other cave rooms for obvious reasons. I do add Hardening to the list of skills for both the giant scorpion and stone golem. This increases their defense slightly, but at level thirty a slight increase makes a world of difference. Especially if delvers haven't yet reached tin rank themselves.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
As for the rest of the room, it will be made to resemble the 'scenic' path. Complete with griffons, plant golems, dire wolves, and even a few groups of goblins. Feeling a bit mischievous I give the goblins the trap making skill as well as the ambush skill. The trap making skill is self-explanatory, but the ambush skill makes it so that they understand how to catch delvers off guard and attack when they least expect it. Combining the two skills makes it so that the trap placement will be near perfect. Along with the wind blade skill from the griffons and the new iron paw skill from the dire wolves, this room should be a challenge for any delver wishing to cross it. It will also be one of the most diverse rooms yet as far as mob variety. Each mob in this room will be level 30 as well.
As for the plants and other things, I add some orange trees here and there as well as a few medicinal herbs. I also place a treasure chest containing five gold coins, two health potions, two mana potions, and a random piece of tin rank gear with a random enchantment. I set a rule to make it appear in one of five random locations. After that I go back over all the rooms making sure they all have what they are supposed to have. The rooms are getting so big now it's a good idea to get in the habit of double or even triple checking to make sure I didn't, for example, forget to add iron ore nodes or traps to one of the cave rooms.
The only room left is the boss room. While I'm waiting for the mana to build up, I decide to work on the boss itself. Specifically, I plan to use the pattern combination skill that has basically been collecting dust, figuratively speaking, since shortly after I got it. I start by grabbing both a goblin and dire wolf pattern. Removing the legs from the goblin and the head from the dire wolf, I put them together to create some kind of bizarre wolf goblin centaur thing. It's honestly a pain in the ass to get it looking right because of the huge size difference. I end up having to make the goblin torso much bigger than normal just to make the whole creature look somewhat normal.
I then equip this thing that I have yet to even name with a tin rank iron club and shield. To help it use this equipment I raise its intelligence to just below the level of sapience. Finally, the boss pattern is ready, I just need a room to put it in. I don't wait too long though as I soon decide not to place a full-size room for the boss room. How big of a room do you need for a single encounter anyway. After some though I decide to make it the size of the rooms on the third floor. That should give both delvers and the boss plenty of room to maneuver without being so big they need to hunt for each other. As for the landscape itself I make a flat grassy area with a few trees here and there. For the finishing touch I make it so that this boss drops a single platinum coin.
