“Heeeeeello everyooone! Welcome to ‘The Mad Rat’s Show’! Today, I am going to show you how to create a Flesh Monstrosity!” As soon as I enter the game, I start spouting nonsense. But it’s true that today’s the day! The day where I am going to create the first Hybrid!
This is going to be a very expensive creation, I am going to blow most of my accumulated cp in a single unit. “But it's going to be worth it! Or at least I hope so!”
As when I was creating the Stitched, the first thing the game asks is if I want to use a template. “Of course, I’m going to use templates!”
But there’s a difference when it comes to the hybrid templates. For the stitched, the template was used during the creation, to set how I wanted the stitched to look like, and then is also used for the stitched’s skills, AI, placement in the dungeon, etc.
For the hybrids, I can use them in the exact same way too. But there’s an option where you can also unify the skills, AI, etc. of various templates into a single one. What this means is I can create a template that uses High Elf plus Runesmith bodies to create the Hybrid, and another one that uses Mine’ and Scout bodies. And then put both the hybrid types in another template that controls the AI and skills, so that they both do the same and have the same skills. In this way I can easily create units with any of the two original unit combinations, but they are automatically assigned to the skills, AI, etc that I set for the common template.
But for now I’m not going to complicate things that much. I’m only going to create one template called ‘Lab Assistant’ that uses the High Elf and Runesmith bodies.
The second step, after setting the bodies, is deciding on how the hybrid is going to look like. I want them to be impossible to confuse with either a dwarf or an elf, so I come up with a great idea. “I’m going to use the head and body of the elf, and the arms and legs of the dwarf. And for the union type, I’m going to set them all to ‘mechanical’.”
After modifying everything to my taste, I take a look at the result. The Lab Assistant looks like a normal elf, except that it has very short arms and legs. It is quite hilarious, because it looks like an adult with child’s extremities. Except that when you get close you can see they are actually from a grown-up man, with muscles, scars and calluses. And in the joints between the different parts, there’s a metallic union that resembles a little what appears in sci-fi films when a human wears a prosthetic arm or leg. The union isn’t gross as with my previous creations, it simply looks weird.
And of course, the Lab Assistant is wearing a lab coat. What else could it be wearing!? It’s working in a laboratory!
“It looks good! I’m sure I’ll need to spend time with it close by, so I didn’t want it to look gross… These mechanical unions are very clean, it’s a refreshing view!”
You say that the Champion I’m playing as is disgusting? I don’t see my own character unless I use a mirror, and there are none in the dungeon, so who cares? My Champion can be as gross as I want and won’t bother me in any way.
Now that I have the basic setup, I start the Hybrid’s creation. It takes 10 minutes, so I’m going to mess with the template while I wait.
“First thing, upgrade it to level 2. I already spent 330 cp to create it (230 cp from the Runesmith + 100 cp from the High Elf), so the cost of 10 cp to upgrade is irrelevant.” I mutter as I press the level up button. After the level up, the hybrid’s stats look like this.
| Lab Assistant (Lv 2) | |||||
| HP | 374 (340) | STA | 25 (23) | SOU | 27 (25) |
| EP | 264 (240) | MP | 308 (280) | ||
| STR | 28 (26) | CON | 35 (32) | AGI | 20 (19) |
| SPI | 35 (32) | WIL | 37 (34) | DEX | 41 (38) |
| SPD | 6 | INT | 5 | COM | 3 |
| Innate skills: Mana Attuned (passive), Stoneskin (passive) |
“Fufufu, it has better stats than me! Well, it wasn’t unexpected since the cost to create it is higher than my Champion’s cost…”
It is already settled that the Lab Assistant is going to stay in the Laboratory room, ‘assisting’ me in standing still and doing nothing while making progress with whatever machine or research I want. As a bonus, it is going to work as the last defense of this dungeon, since the dungeon core is inside the laboratory. What comes now is modifying the AI.
“Haha… I want to cry… This looks SO much better than the Stitched AI!” The default AI has a lot more complexity than the one from the Stitched. But the most relevant difference is that this AI has advanced options that come by default, like the ‘Guard’ mode, which automatically follows the selected unit within a range and engages in combat if an enemy gets close.
“If only I had this option with the stitched… I wonder if a brain transplant would make them more intelligent and unlock the Guard mode...”
I start to modify the AI. “For starters, no movement allowed outside of combat. I want you to stand still all the time. Like a living statue.”
I remove all movement related nodes from the Idle state. I still want it to properly defend the dungeon when invaders come, so I leave the rest untouched. After the changes, the Lab Assistant is going to stand still wherever I put it, and only move where I tell it to go in case I need to change where it’s standing.
“Aaaah, how nice it feels to have a unit actually do what you want!”
The only remaining thing now is spending the two skill points that the Lab Assistant has. Since it already has two innate passive skills, I’m looking for an active and a triggered skill to balance things.
“The current stats and skills make it a tanky caster. So a spell for an active and then a passive that triggers when receiving damage? Hmm… Why not?”
I start looking through the skill list, but don’t see any active skill that catches my attention. I end up using a classic spell: Fireball.
| Fireball (Active skill) |
| Cost: 100 MP |
| Deal (5 + SPI) fire damage in a 5 meter radius area. |
Only the triggered skill remains now. After browsing through a lot of them I finally settle on one called Frosty Retribution. Mostly because of its effects, but I can’t deny a part of it is because I like the image of the lab assistant wielding both ice and fire elements.
| Frosty Retribution (Triggered skill) |
| When your HP is reduced to 50% or lower, you release an ice nova that travels for 10 meters. It deals (5 + 0,25 * lost HP + 0,5 * SPI) cold damage to every enemy and immobilizes them for 5 seconds. This skill can only be triggered once every 5 minutes. |
“Ohoho! A nice idea just came to me!” I modify the AI again, and change a very little thing. What I do is make the Assistant save the last 100 MP for when the trigger activates. So that it launches the last Fireball just after the Frosty Retribution.
“This way, the enemies that are immobilized won’t be able to evade the fireball! Huhuhu!” I laugh evilly at my plan.
There’s only a small detail that I want to change, and it’s the weapon that the Lab Assistant is going to wield. In this game, weapons don’t impact much on the gameplay. The damage is determined by the Strength stat, so a fist weapon deals the same damage as a sword, a warhammer, or a bow. And the attack speed is determined by Agility.
Different weapons are mainly for cosmetic and customization purposes and not for actual influence in combat. The only time where the weapon type is important is in some skills that require the weapon to be from a specific type.
Well.. there is one thing that changes from weapon to weapon, and that is the range. But it also comes with drawbacks. For example, a whip has a decent range but is difficult to wield. An experienced player might use it properly, but a newer one… Good luck. And a bow has a long range but its attacks are slower and not suited for melee combat.
And it’s also possible for weapons to collide with the terrain. So big, long, and hard to wield weapons are avoided because a lot of dungeons have narrow corridors and lots of obstacles that can hinder your attacks.
“I’m going to give the assistant a pencil and a notebook. I mean, what else could I give it? It’s a fucking lab assistant! Why would a lab assistant have any weapon with it while working?”
I look through the special accessories and select a pencil for its right hand, and a notebook for its left. It’s going to wield the pencil as a sword, and the notebook as a shield.
“Behold! The mighty combo of pencil weapon and notebook shield! I wonder how many players are going to die from a stab to the heart with a pencil. Hahaha!”
It isn’t long until the Lab Assistant pops from the Operating table. The 10 minutes have already finished while I was modifying the template.
“Oho! It’s exactly like I envisioned it! Pfft…. And is actually holding the pencil as if he’s going to stab someone with it! Hahaha!”
“I finally have my first Hybrid! And also a stand-in for when I need to use the machines or research!” Hahaha, what a lame joke. Because it’s going to literally be standing still all the time… “And the best part is that it only cost me 340 cp! Literally, the most expensive thing in the dungeon! A true bargain if you ask me!”
Now that I finished the hybrid, I want to spend the rest of the cp upgrading the dungeon. “I’m sure that I’m going to need more stasis capsules in the future, but 100 cp for each is very expensive…” Luckily, I found some technology research that will help me with it.
| Small stasis capsule |
| Research cost: 20 cp, 10 food, 10 metal. Research time: 10 min |
| Unlocks a smaller version of the normal Stasis capsule. In the Small stasis capsule, you can store bodies of units smaller than humanoid size. |
“Yes! With the small stasis capsule, at least when I capture small critters, they won’t occupy a normal stasis capsule. So I can actually use the normal capsules for humanoids and similar sized units and the small capsules for some critter units.”
I immediately start the research, and make my newest creation, the Lab Assistant, stand still close to the ‘experimentation set’ so that the research progresses.
“Oh, how good it is to be able to move around instead of standing at the same place all time!”
After the research finishes, I’m going to build two small stasis capsules. They cost only 20 cp to build, they are cheap because they are mainly for storing non-combat units. The total cost of the research and two small capsules is going to be 60 cp. I reserve the cp and continue looking through the technology trees.
“In the near future, I’m going to research the Siamese and use the Scout and Miner bodies I currently have to create some of them. But I don’t have the cp needed yet… Should I save it, or spend it on other things right now? Hmmm…”
“The other option would be to research some traps… Also… I remember that I previously unlocked the tech called ‘Poisonous mushrooms’, they should be useful, no?”
“Fufufu! Hahaha!” After reading the tech description, there are two things that are incredible. First of all is that the tech unlocks, as its name says, poisonous mushrooms that I can add into the dungeon.
But they aren’t the kind where you must eat to get poisoned. No, no. There are different kinds, but all of them only need the enemies to be close enough to the mushroom to work. And best of things, most of them only work when enemies get close and do not activate when my units do so.
And the second thing is that this tech unlocks a lot of techs with mushrooms that can inflict different status effects: ‘Paralysis mushrooms’, 'Confusion mushrooms’, ‘Fear mushrooms’, etc.
This tech is considered as a hazardous terrain tech, so it is more expensive than the normal mushrooms. And it also costs more cp to place the mushrooms in the dungeon. But they are worth the cost. I decide to research the ‘Poisonous mushrooms’ by spending 30 food and 30 cp.
“Now, where should I put them?” I start wandering the dungeon while thinking of the best places to put them in. “Should they be avoidable? Predictable? Or hidden and impossible to avoid?”
After thinking for a while, I reach a conclusion. “Yes, I believe this is the best option. If I put them here, the players have no other option than taking damage or wasting a lot of time.”
The place where I’ve decided to put the mushrooms is in the tunnels, in specific, the places where it’s easy for the players to get lost in. Also, I’ve chosen the mushroom type that emits a small poison cloud when an enemy gets close enough. The tunnels are narrow, so it’s impossible to completely avoid the mushrooms. Furthermore, if they get lost in the tunnels, they will need to pass through the same mushroom fields again and again.
The actual effect isn’t that strong, but damage can quickly add up if unattended. “It applies a poison debuff that deals 1 HP damage every second for 10 seconds to every creature that is inside the poison cloud.”
It is possible that the stitched get caught in the poison too, but since the mushrooms only release the poison cloud when enemies are close, they can only be poisoned if combat happens near the mushrooms. And it’s a bad decision for the enemy players, because the poison stacks for every second they stay in the poison cloud.
“Yep, this is nice! Something that I hope will make some players cry! And if unlucky, maybe even cause some player’s death! Hahaha!”
After the Hybrid creation and the new mushrooms, I’m only left with 35 cp. I didn’t add too many mushrooms to save as much cp as possible, but I’m back to being poor.
“Well, nothing I can do about it! Everything was absolutely needed. Especially my stand-in.”
When ‘The Mad Rat’s Lab’ got famous, players started sharing maps that depicted the dungeon’s zones. In those maps, there were always zones painted red with skull marks, with labels that said ‘Warning! Here be mushrooms!’.
They warned players to try to avoid those zones if possible, or at least to avoid fighting there. Not because the mushrooms were too deadly, but because you could never know what mushroom types you would find when going inside. Most players who ignored the warnings never managed to leave those areas alive.
Radosh Today makes it a month since I published my first chapter! Thanks everyone for reading this far!
“Heeeeeello everyooone! Welcome to ‘The Mad Rat’s Show’! Today, I am going to show you how to create a Flesh Monstrosity!” As soon as I enter the game, I start spouting nonsense. But it’s true that today’s the day! The day where I am going to create the first Hybrid!
This is going to be a very expensive creation, I am going to blow most of my accumulated cp in a single unit. “But it's going to be worth it! Or at least I hope so!”
As when I was creating the Stitched, the first thing the game asks is if I want to use a template. “Of course, I’m going to use templates!”
But there’s a difference when it comes to the hybrid templates. For the stitched, the template was used during the creation, to set how I wanted the stitched to look like, and then is also used for the stitched’s skills, AI, placement in the dungeon, etc.
For the hybrids, I can use them in the exact same way too. But there’s an option where you can also unify the skills, AI, etc. of various templates into a single one. What this means is I can create a template that uses High Elf plus Runesmith bodies to create the Hybrid, and another one that uses Mine’ and Scout bodies. And then put both the hybrid types in another template that controls the AI and skills, so that they both do the same and have the same skills. In this way I can easily create units with any of the two original unit combinations, but they are automatically assigned to the skills, AI, etc that I set for the common template.
But for now I’m not going to complicate things that much. I’m only going to create one template called ‘Lab Assistant’ that uses the High Elf and Runesmith bodies.
The second step, after setting the bodies, is deciding on how the hybrid is going to look like. I want them to be impossible to confuse with either a dwarf or an elf, so I come up with a great idea. “I’m going to use the head and body of the elf, and the arms and legs of the dwarf. And for the union type, I’m going to set them all to ‘mechanical’.”
After modifying everything to my taste, I take a look at the result. The Lab Assistant looks like a normal elf, except that it has very short arms and legs. It is quite hilarious, because it looks like an adult with child’s extremities. Except that when you get close you can see they are actually from a grown-up man, with muscles, scars and calluses. And in the joints between the different parts, there’s a metallic union that resembles a little what appears in sci-fi films when a human wears a prosthetic arm or leg. The union isn’t gross as with my previous creations, it simply looks weird.
And of course, the Lab Assistant is wearing a lab coat. What else could it be wearing!? It’s working in a laboratory!
“It looks good! I’m sure I’ll need to spend time with it close by, so I didn’t want it to look gross… These mechanical unions are very clean, it’s a refreshing view!”
You say that the Champion I’m playing as is disgusting? I don’t see my own character unless I use a mirror, and there are none in the dungeon, so who cares? My Champion can be as gross as I want and won’t bother me in any way.
Now that I have the basic setup, I start the Hybrid’s creation. It takes 10 minutes, so I’m going to mess with the template while I wait.
“First thing, upgrade it to level 2. I already spent 330 cp to create it (230 cp from the Runesmith + 100 cp from the High Elf), so the cost of 10 cp to upgrade is irrelevant.” I mutter as I press the level up button. After the level up, the hybrid’s stats look like this.
| Lab Assistant (Lv 2) | |||||
| HP | 374 (340) | STA | 25 (23) | SOU | 27 (25) |
| EP | 264 (240) | MP | 308 (280) | ||
| STR | 28 (26) | CON | 35 (32) | AGI | 20 (19) |
| SPI | 35 (32) | WIL | 37 (34) | DEX | 41 (38) |
| SPD | 6 | INT | 5 | COM | 3 |
| Innate skills: Mana Attuned (passive), Stoneskin (passive) |
“Fufufu, it has better stats than me! Well, it wasn’t unexpected since the cost to create it is higher than my Champion’s cost…”
It is already settled that the Lab Assistant is going to stay in the Laboratory room, ‘assisting’ me in standing still and doing nothing while making progress with whatever machine or research I want. As a bonus, it is going to work as the last defense of this dungeon, since the dungeon core is inside the laboratory. What comes now is modifying the AI.
“Haha… I want to cry… This looks SO much better than the Stitched AI!” The default AI has a lot more complexity than the one from the Stitched. But the most relevant difference is that this AI has advanced options that come by default, like the ‘Guard’ mode, which automatically follows the selected unit within a range and engages in combat if an enemy gets close.
“If only I had this option with the stitched… I wonder if a brain transplant would make them more intelligent and unlock the Guard mode...”
I start to modify the AI. “For starters, no movement allowed outside of combat. I want you to stand still all the time. Like a living statue.”
I remove all movement related nodes from the Idle state. I still want it to properly defend the dungeon when invaders come, so I leave the rest untouched. After the changes, the Lab Assistant is going to stand still wherever I put it, and only move where I tell it to go in case I need to change where it’s standing.
“Aaaah, how nice it feels to have a unit actually do what you want!”
The only remaining thing now is spending the two skill points that the Lab Assistant has. Since it already has two innate passive skills, I’m looking for an active and a triggered skill to balance things.
“The current stats and skills make it a tanky caster. So a spell for an active and then a passive that triggers when receiving damage? Hmm… Why not?”
I start looking through the skill list, but don’t see any active skill that catches my attention. I end up using a classic spell: Fireball.
| Fireball (Active skill) |
| Cost: 100 MP |
| Deal (5 + SPI) fire damage in a 5 meter radius area. |
Only the triggered skill remains now. After browsing through a lot of them I finally settle on one called Frosty Retribution. Mostly because of its effects, but I can’t deny a part of it is because I like the image of the lab assistant wielding both ice and fire elements.
| Frosty Retribution (Triggered skill) |
| When your HP is reduced to 50% or lower, you release an ice nova that travels for 10 meters. It deals (5 + 0,25 * lost HP + 0,5 * SPI) cold damage to every enemy and immobilizes them for 5 seconds. This skill can only be triggered once every 5 minutes. |
“Ohoho! A nice idea just came to me!” I modify the AI again, and change a very little thing. What I do is make the Assistant save the last 100 MP for when the trigger activates. So that it launches the last Fireball just after the Frosty Retribution.
“This way, the enemies that are immobilized won’t be able to evade the fireball! Huhuhu!” I laugh evilly at my plan.
There’s only a small detail that I want to change, and it’s the weapon that the Lab Assistant is going to wield. In this game, weapons don’t impact much on the gameplay. The damage is determined by the Strength stat, so a fist weapon deals the same damage as a sword, a warhammer, or a bow. And the attack speed is determined by Agility.
Different weapons are mainly for cosmetic and customization purposes and not for actual influence in combat. The only time where the weapon type is important is in some skills that require the weapon to be from a specific type.
Well.. there is one thing that changes from weapon to weapon, and that is the range. But it also comes with drawbacks. For example, a whip has a decent range but is difficult to wield. An experienced player might use it properly, but a newer one… Good luck. And a bow has a long range but its attacks are slower and not suited for melee combat.
And it’s also possible for weapons to collide with the terrain. So big, long, and hard to wield weapons are avoided because a lot of dungeons have narrow corridors and lots of obstacles that can hinder your attacks.
“I’m going to give the assistant a pencil and a notebook. I mean, what else could I give it? It’s a fucking lab assistant! Why would a lab assistant have any weapon with it while working?”
I look through the special accessories and select a pencil for its right hand, and a notebook for its left. It’s going to wield the pencil as a sword, and the notebook as a shield.
“Behold! The mighty combo of pencil weapon and notebook shield! I wonder how many players are going to die from a stab to the heart with a pencil. Hahaha!”
It isn’t long until the Lab Assistant pops from the Operating table. The 10 minutes have already finished while I was modifying the template.
“Oho! It’s exactly like I envisioned it! Pfft…. And is actually holding the pencil as if he’s going to stab someone with it! Hahaha!”
“I finally have my first Hybrid! And also a stand-in for when I need to use the machines or research!” Hahaha, what a lame joke. Because it’s going to literally be standing still all the time… “And the best part is that it only cost me 340 cp! Literally, the most expensive thing in the dungeon! A true bargain if you ask me!”
Now that I finished the hybrid, I want to spend the rest of the cp upgrading the dungeon. “I’m sure that I’m going to need more stasis capsules in the future, but 100 cp for each is very expensive…” Luckily, I found some technology research that will help me with it.
| Small stasis capsule |
| Research cost: 20 cp, 10 food, 10 metal. Research time: 10 min |
| Unlocks a smaller version of the normal Stasis capsule. In the Small stasis capsule, you can store bodies of units smaller than humanoid size. |
“Yes! With the small stasis capsule, at least when I capture small critters, they won’t occupy a normal stasis capsule. So I can actually use the normal capsules for humanoids and similar sized units and the small capsules for some critter units.”
I immediately start the research, and make my newest creation, the Lab Assistant, stand still close to the ‘experimentation set’ so that the research progresses.
“Oh, how good it is to be able to move around instead of standing at the same place all time!”
After the research finishes, I’m going to build two small stasis capsules. They cost only 20 cp to build, they are cheap because they are mainly for storing non-combat units. The total cost of the research and two small capsules is going to be 60 cp. I reserve the cp and continue looking through the technology trees.
“In the near future, I’m going to research the Siamese and use the Scout and Miner bodies I currently have to create some of them. But I don’t have the cp needed yet… Should I save it, or spend it on other things right now? Hmmm…”
“The other option would be to research some traps… Also… I remember that I previously unlocked the tech called ‘Poisonous mushrooms’, they should be useful, no?”
“Fufufu! Hahaha!” After reading the tech description, there are two things that are incredible. First of all is that the tech unlocks, as its name says, poisonous mushrooms that I can add into the dungeon.
But they aren’t the kind where you must eat to get poisoned. No, no. There are different kinds, but all of them only need the enemies to be close enough to the mushroom to work. And best of things, most of them only work when enemies get close and do not activate when my units do so.
And the second thing is that this tech unlocks a lot of techs with mushrooms that can inflict different status effects: ‘Paralysis mushrooms’, 'Confusion mushrooms’, ‘Fear mushrooms’, etc.
This tech is considered as a hazardous terrain tech, so it is more expensive than the normal mushrooms. And it also costs more cp to place the mushrooms in the dungeon. But they are worth the cost. I decide to research the ‘Poisonous mushrooms’ by spending 30 food and 30 cp.
“Now, where should I put them?” I start wandering the dungeon while thinking of the best places to put them in. “Should they be avoidable? Predictable? Or hidden and impossible to avoid?”
After thinking for a while, I reach a conclusion. “Yes, I believe this is the best option. If I put them here, the players have no other option than taking damage or wasting a lot of time.”
The place where I’ve decided to put the mushrooms is in the tunnels, in specific, the places where it’s easy for the players to get lost in. Also, I’ve chosen the mushroom type that emits a small poison cloud when an enemy gets close enough. The tunnels are narrow, so it’s impossible to completely avoid the mushrooms. Furthermore, if they get lost in the tunnels, they will need to pass through the same mushroom fields again and again.
The actual effect isn’t that strong, but damage can quickly add up if unattended. “It applies a poison debuff that deals 1 HP damage every second for 10 seconds to every creature that is inside the poison cloud.”
It is possible that the stitched get caught in the poison too, but since the mushrooms only release the poison cloud when enemies are close, they can only be poisoned if combat happens near the mushrooms. And it’s a bad decision for the enemy players, because the poison stacks for every second they stay in the poison cloud.
“Yep, this is nice! Something that I hope will make some players cry! And if unlucky, maybe even cause some player’s death! Hahaha!”
After the Hybrid creation and the new mushrooms, I’m only left with 35 cp. I didn’t add too many mushrooms to save as much cp as possible, but I’m back to being poor.
“Well, nothing I can do about it! Everything was absolutely needed. Especially my stand-in.”
When ‘The Mad Rat’s Lab’ got famous, players started sharing maps that depicted the dungeon’s zones. In those maps, there were always zones painted red with skull marks, with labels that said ‘Warning! Here be mushrooms!’.
They warned players to try to avoid those zones if possible, or at least to avoid fighting there. Not because the mushrooms were too deadly, but because you could never know what mushroom types you would find when going inside. Most players who ignored the warnings never managed to leave those areas alive.
Radosh Today makes it a month since I published my first chapter! Thanks everyone for reading this far!
