"What do you know about this dungeon?"Sela asked after Artha joined the team. The current team's leader was a healer named Sylvester. Boring name. Looked liked real name. Who uses real name in the game?
The dungeon had opened just before noon in the game. Now it was nearing evening. Few hours of dungeon diving had brought lots of information. In what seemed magnimity and graciousness, there was free exchange of the info. The solidarity between guilds and indies was on all time high.
This was, as mentioned before, a newbie dungeon. So, all entrants were seperate instances. Meaning, the teams would not clash within the dungeons. The theory was this would be removed as the game levels up. Pushing lots of players from various paths to kill the boss or killsteal it, what a thrilling way to game. Anyways, it was just one of the theories.
The monsters were actually bunnies. Unfortunately, it was not cute type. These monsters could bite, inducing damage over time. They could stomp or screech which not just did physical damage but also interrupted spells. And apparently they reproduced faster than their real life counterparts.
Less than 10% of the dungeon had been mapped.It might look much, but it was not. It had taken other villages to clear the dungeons to over 50% in few days. But here less than 10% is already mapped. Isn't it fast? Unfortunately no! Because these bunnies were still level 4 and occasionally level 5 ones. Move farther in the dungeon, the level of the bunnies increased, the number of bunnies increased, heck even the tier of bunnies increased and elites became more common.
However, even clearing this early portion of dungeon was profitable. The regular monsters just melted away and loots were automatically stored in pre designated player, commonly with the leader. And the loots were plenty. No wonder players didn't mind dying few times in the dungeons. Even Artha felt tempted.
Sylvester had good rhythm going on. They had entered the dungeon and after walking for some length, there were around 5 branches. He chose second from right and the team proceeded carefully. Even with 2 tanks, 2 healers, all the players were still jumpy. Sela messaged that this path was tested for some length, so there was no surprise for next few feet.
Sylvester guided the people beautifully with the known knowledge, so it was easy peasy. Atleast, they could be guard against sudden appearance of bunnies. In between the waves of bunnies attacking them, there would be a pause. Just enough for players to drink water and eat and apple. It's a newbie friendly dungeon after all. In that time, Sylvester shared the number of loots dropped by these monsters to rise the spirit of the team players. That's why Artha was tempted. So many potions, meat and other items. They even got some equipments - a pair of boots,a pair of gloves and a sword. There were seven people in this team as Artha had tagged along in the end. Just a bit more, and there would be around seven equipment, which meant one equipment for each player. On top of it, there were other items. Even if they didn't get the items, they would get a part of it after getting converted to coins. And there were lots of coins dropped directly. Just fight through 2 branches and each had earned around 30 bronze coins directly. No wonder, players loved entering dungeons.
Sela just shook her head when she saw the eyes of her teammates turning into coins. It had taken over 100 team wipeouts to know details of monster attacks till here. It's not that easy to earn money. Now, it was their turn to map the route. Sylvester was part of unassuming workshop called Source code. This time he was incharge of mapping the area further from this branch. In other words, it was a virgin territory, as no one had any idea when and where the monsters would spawn and how they would attack. That's the reason why Sylvester was dangling the carrot infront of these players, pushing them to the pit and explore the dungeon.
It was not bad. After all, other had done it before, that's why they could traverse till here safely. And earn something extra. Now, it was their turn to give. Sylvester would get more commission if he explored more. That's why he wanted players to be alert and play safely.
The information gathered would then be sold to guilds or alliance of guilds and the details of the dungeon would percolate from there. Making money, giving face to guilds- check.
As the tank, Sela would face the brunt of it, so she tried her best to recover her stamina. She changed her shield, the other one's durability had come down a lot. Issh! These dungeons were hell on weapons and equipments, destroying their durability fastly. Sela really didn't want to use her new shield, it was better from before. However, the new shield could allow them to survive for few more moments. It was worth the hefty repair fee later on.
Artha could only stay behind as he was not melee player. This team had 2 tanks, 2 melee players - a swordsman and a thief, two healers. Now a mage.
Why was a mage not chosen when they are called cannons and they could do damage from distance? One there was damage due to friendly fire. There was no such thing like oh you are my teammate, so this fire will not burn you. Such restriction was removed silently by the time majority of players passed level 3 maps. As all were gun ho about searching for dungeon entrances, they didn't care much about it. Anyways, the players in this village had learnt precision down to dot as they had to concentrate enough to save on mana and health potions. It hadn't hurt them much. But here in village enclosed space where the players could not just dove away, it was a bit difficult. Secondly, most importantly, it was because these stupid bunnies were not just strong, they were highly agile. Unless the mage could predict where that bunny could move later, it was difficult to drop a blast on it. So mages were not much preferred in this dungeons unless they were good. Still, the exploring teams occasionally pulled mages to them. Why? See the example of how Artha was put to work.