Defend the Core! (Dungeon Core Quest)

@Amilia Do you know where you want to put the quality dice?

Year 1042, Oris, Okrasi Province, Slaria
The city before you, one of the first few you ever built, stands before your very eyes. From the lizards that walk peacefully down the road to the beautiful plants growing in every corner and window, sourced all throughout your dungeon. You finally breathe a sigh of relief as you watch your monsters live happily without the looming threat of invaders entering your dungeon. Already your monsters are fighting harder, enduring for longer, and taking more of the invader with them in the process. After All, everyone fights harder with someone to protect. Now you just have to deal with the twenty other problems that have popped up with the city's formation.

Time to choose your dice:
[]Floors: From living breathing ecosystems to labyrinthine corridors floors encapsulate them all
[]Monster: Roaring monsters and spelling slingling gremlins, monsters are those that directly stand up against those who dare enter your halls.
[]Traps: A constant plague to a dropping boulder, traps are what keep invaders from your body without the physical component of monsters.
[]Research: From the flows of the world to items that harness the latent energy of the universe, research is the way to get them.
[]Core: A hidden room to a crushing rule on all that enter, core is for your entire dungeon top to bottom.
[]Free: From a much-needed push to a more slow approach free dice allow you to freely allocate where the dice will go, however, you can only have as many as your max amount of dice in a category. (5 Currently)


Turn 20:
Mana: 585 (930 Mana per Turn)
DP: 108/160 (271 DP per Turn)
[]Fourth Floor: With the revival of your fossil monsters as well as the variety of even stronger monsters entering your dungeon, you can now build a fourth floor. This will expand your limits and hopefully, finally decouple at least a decent part of your mana generation from the whims of the invaders who live outside your dungeon. (1 Dice) (+10 DPpT) (+50 MpT)

With your frankly overdue expansion of your dungeon, you have quickly planned out the new areas of your dungeon and prepared for the coming tide of Tier 2 invaders which are sure to enter your dungeon now that you have primed the next few floors to handle the influx of higher level invaders and the increase in mana pressure on these floors which manage to stall the lower level invaders from entering these deadly halls.

[]Delta Ecosystem: With your newly expanded floor you can now work on new ecosystems, one that seems like would provide a large increase in mana would be creating a delta ecosystem, therefore lessening the costs of all aquatic monsters through the use of more waterways allowing invaders to be attacked more often. (20 Mana per Dice 332/375)

The development of your secondary plants has started with a slight disappointment, while not as explosive as some of your other progress this year, you have continued to make steady gains in the growing and developing of the secondary plants and animals needed for the monster which lives in this delta ecosystem to feed on. While there is still more work to be done, taking the time out of your busy schedule to continue the development of this ecosystem is sure to pay off.


[]Rune Hall: From subtle carvings to large rune-covered doors, the rune hall with their even stouter denizens and pointy hats, ensures that every magical trap in your dungeon is in proper shape, making sure they have enough mana and are repaired when they inevitably break due to the invader stomping through your dungeon. The rune hall promises to be on top of repairing your magic-based traps and save you time and mana which can be spent on other things. (25 Mana per Turn 283/225) (+10 MpT) (+5 MpT for each Magic-based Trap)

With the completion of your rune hall, you have already felt the effects even if they are miniscule in the grand scheme of things. Magic traps no longer waste as much mana as they did before, and your attention gets slightly stronger as you no longer have to pay attention to every mana trap. All of these things are good and hopefully, as you continue to lessen the load on your mind, by continuing to produce places for your monster to stay and your traps to be repaired, you will gain back more and more of your ability to really focus on things.

[]Curseland Dragon: While not a true dragon, this boss is sure close, by taking the old mutations of the fossil monsters and applying them to your already strong monsters, you can now make a truly monstrous monster. Covered in crystals and adorned with the affinities of earth and curses. This boss bears the ancient grudges of a more primordial time, stalking a cursed land, you are sure this boss will stop invaders in their tracks.(60 Mana per Dice 187/335)

Picking up after a bit of time, you have immediately gone back to work on the hybrid before you. With the bones finished you have started to form the muscles and scales of the pseudo-dragon. While a slight pain due to the extreme hardness of these scales you have quickly passed, this hurdle can now begin working on the actual organs of this monster, forming organs which will give it a boost in overall ability as well as bring it closer to a true cursed monster.

[]Lizard Scouts: Scouts, something that has been a mostly untapped ability of yours. While your monster's strengths are top-notch, their scouting ability is not. Consistently some of your stronger monsters have walked into traps set up from a variety of invaders. By modeling your new monsters off of the rogues that litter your dungeon, you can create scout-type monsters to spring and disarm these traps. (30 Mana per Dice 277/245) (+10 DPpT) (Unlocked Hidden Assassins)

Continuing work on your scouts, you have quickly ironed out the errors in their makeup, and have spread them throughout the dungeon. Already you have seen the boost they have given to your forces, no longer walking into as many traps or ambushes your scouts have allowed more and more of your bipedal monsters and even some of your less intelligent monsters the ability to truly disarm the traps and thwart the ambushes of invaders. However when the monsters do thwart an ambush they seem to have a hard time actually fighting invaders, but by taking inspiration from some of the invaders you believe that you can create assassins to get the drop on some of the invaders.


[]Lizard Soldiers: While your Lizard bruisers have their brawn to match up against even the stronger invaders, their intelligence leaves much to be desired. However, by taking the time to go over their abilities and increasing them across the board you can bring them to a further level, making sure that they can fight on an even greater level, coordinating with each other, and bringing extreme strength to those who would enter your dungeon. (45 Mana per Dice 256/235) (Quality: 54) (Unlock Dargi, The Dragonling General)

Now that you have designated your soldiers for radiation treatment, you have quickly spent the time to finish enhancing every part of their abilities. While something that has taken up half of the year, the rest of the time was spent applying your radiation technique to them. In the process you have discovered something, by applying radiation to them it has slightly increased their ability to withstand blows, scales reinforced with a type of mana weave. However, these reinforced scales seem to shine in the light, making it harder for them to spring ambushes. While not the end of the world, you believe that with a better understanding of radiation, you increase the odds of better mutations.

[]Apply the Changes: Increased strength in the scales of your soldiers is always a good thing, giving them the ability to withstand slightly more blows and come back out swinging is something that is good to have even if it costs them the ability to hide as well as their brethren.

[]Don't Apply the Changes: Your dungeon is a maze of darkened tunnels, ambushes around every corner, and a paranoia-including hellscape for invaders. By applying this mutation you risk ambushes being foiled due to the shining of their scales in the light. It seems more prudent to not apply the changes and continue with the base monster.

[]Crystal Monsters: Reminiscent of the out-of-control crystal that has haunted your dungeon, you can take your experience researching this crystal and instead try to create a new type of monster. Fully made in these pieces of crystal these monsters promise to be extremely tough to fight and be painful to truly break into their vulnerable core. (75 Mana per Dice 153/95) (+12 DPpT)

Quickly you have developed and implemented your crystal monsters, by taking your idea of golems and instead using crystals you have developed a strong monster that can scale quickly with the invaders at each floor, after all the more mana inside of the crystals the tougher they are. These monsters have already started to become the bane of the invaders inside your dungeon, bending and breaking weapons plenty.

[]Basic Mechanical Traps: Whirling gears powering swinging blades, to massive hammers falling on invaders, your mechanical traps are some of the more specialized traps. With no mana embedded in these traps and the strength of metal in these traps ensuring that these are obstacles to be avoided rather than fought through, this aspect ensures that it will force the less athletic invaders will struggle to pass these trials (15 Mana per Dice 171/215)

Not a lot of work has been done on your mechanical traps, so focused on other things that need to be taken care of, it has slowly but surely slipped into the background for you. Being overshadowed again in the process. However, you believe that all it takes is continuing to devote more time to it, in order to continue to develop these traps.

[]Pyrotechnic Traps: Mana ore explosion, something unexpected but now something that you can take advantage of, by placing a variety of mana ores beside each other you can now weaponize these explosions to activate when invaders come close to them, making a variety of new traps which blend into the background, only showing how much mana has been stored in these mana materials when they explode. (25 Mana per Dice 190/175) (+15 MpT)

Unlike last year, like the explosions that these traps produce, you have quickly finished and implemented these traps, whether the invaders are in your winding tunnels or your water-filled traps, they have been stopped again and again by your explosive traps, blocking off the way forward, dropping the roof on top of them or sometimes even exploding right in the middle of their groups. Whatever the reason you believe that these traps were truly worth it for their ability to surprise even the most prepared party.

[]Basic Labyrinthine Traps: More of an ecosystem in size rather than a trap. Labyrinthine traps cover a large area, leading invaders in random directions and getting them lost, while this may seem like a lot of work, these traps are incredibly cheap and allow for a variety of ambushes throughout these huge traps, promising to stop invaders from getting deeper into your dungeon. (10 Mana per Dice 93/325)

Your initial impression with this idea was correct, more like an ecosystem than a trap, you have quickly started excavating giant labyrinths for you to use. While it is relatively cheap to do, you still have to actually design traps for it as well as the ability for them to quickly change, so as to not allow invaders to fully map out your labyrinth. However while it may seem that there is a lot of work left, you believe that finishing this project will be worthwhile.




[]Specialized Affinities: With the completion of basic affinities it is time to research specialized affinities, from blood to sand. These affinities are often made through bizarre combinations between the four basic elements from the use of earth, water, and fire to make ice to the use of water, earth, and air in specific quantities to make blood affinity. It will take a long time to go through each grouping of specialized affinities but at least it isn't mind-boggling and mana-twisting high affinities such as time or space. (20 Mana per Dice 454/500)

With the end in sight, you have quickly continued to document more and more mana types. While somewhat tedious the strange ratios which sometimes don't make sense have been a topic of interest. From the form of extinction mana in the form of a mix of astral, magma, and deep ice, to the scroll mana type which is formed from the use of ink and paper mana, you have truly found bizarre mana types which have seemingly been formed in a slapdash order. However, with the end in sight, you believe that with just a bit more research you can call this project finished.


[]Ancient Mana Types: Ancient Monsters, while they may have been inoculated into your mana types now, that doesn't mean you can't begin research on these older, more primeval types of mana. While it may not have a lot of uses, as most spells require the newer mana types, that doesn't mean it is without use, this will help you further develop your theories about mana allowing you to refine your mana collection skills. (30 Mana per Dice 228/375)

Continued work on the Ancient mana types has happened with slight delays. Spent more time on discovering minutiae this year rather than any true big breakthrough you have continued to plod along some of the larger prehistoric monsters, putting in more and more work to truly call this project finished at some point in the future.

[]Hidden City: With the creation of more of your truly intelligent monsters, you may have created a problem. While the rest of your monsters are fine sleeping pretty much anywhere you designed for them, it seems that the bipedal monsters need more social interaction than the various rites and customs your regular monsters go through. By taking these more social creatures and hiding them deep within your tunnels, so deep that your frequency is almost blinding, you can create a miniature city like the one outside your dungeon, a place for your intelligent monsters to rest and be social. (45 Mana per Dice 307/265) (+5 DPpT) (Unlock Trading Denizens) (Unlock Scholar Monsters)

Taking the time to finish up the last touches on the hidden city, you believe that finally your cities are finished, Already your intelligent monsters have moved in and have begun interacting in new and strange ways. From the selling of goods to the communal raising of children where before it was a family-assigned duty, all of these changes have been strange but welcome. What hasn't been welcome is now how much attention it actually requires to run these cities, but with some brainstorming and a little stealing from invaders, you believe you have the solution. However in order to actually do that you must deduce how the decision will be made

Choose your Government
[]Write-In

[]Absolute Mana Control: With the revelation of how much mana you truly waste, showing in the shimmers that you now know as wasted mana, an energy that could fuel a multitude of projects. You can now spend the time honing your mana control until you no longer feel like you will waste all the mana you have at your disposal. (40 Mana per Dice 205/350)

Ironing out inefficiencies in mana has been something that is probably overdue for some time now. However, you have quickly continued work on ironing out the inefficiencies inside of your spellwork. While something that has been long overdue, it doesn't mean that it isn't boring, poring over every single spell and mana thread and looking for inefficiencies is boring and dull work, but slowly but surely you have ironed out more and more of the kinks in your mana control.

[]Stimulants: Chemically increased strength, something that you thought was impossible. However with an increased understanding of how chemicals work you believe that you can weaponize these increases in strength granting your monsters a boost as well as hinder invaders as their strength, speed, and power drain out of them when exposed to your chemicals. (35 Mana per Dice 26/285)

With all of the hubbub this year you haven't been able to truly get to work on the stimulants that would increase the strength of your monsters in a way that magic could not, however, that doesn't mean that you haven't begun preliminary work on the form that your stimulants will take.

Rumour Mill:
Insider Special! Mercanieries in the Ice: With interviews of some of the mercenaries spreading throughout the Slaria, more and more of the Slarian mercenaries are turning back towards the dungeons as a way to make a living. These interviews talk about the strange abilities of these people Litva is facing, from their strange ice spells which spell death to all those that touch them, to the strange ape-based monsters that have rampaged from one of the ports near a mountain chain. All of these stories and more have slowed down the mercenaries to a trickle at least for now, before Litkva increases the rewards for mercenaries.

Crystal Rush in Okrasi: While somewhat already a cornered market, more and more crystals have been found in the Okrasi dungeon, boosting the already growing profits of the province. While demand has risen with the finding of a crystal-producing dungeon, the crystal market has always been known to be extremely fickle, no one knows how this will actually turn out in the long run but right now profits are up due to it.

Invader Stats:
32.5k Invader Total (4k Growth per Year - 2.5k Deaths Per Year)
Food: Large Surplus
Water: Medium Surplus
Mana Materials: Large Surplus

Year 1043, Larveta, First Floor, Oris Dungeon.
When you appear before city leaders, you are shown a scene of complete anarchy. So much is happening it is better to just go with the highlights. First, a vine-fused acolyte comically choking a crystal-studded scout over a disparaging comment about plants. Next two weapons granted soldiers, dueling throughout the audience chamber after a comment about the luster of their scales. After that is the full-on brawl on the floor of the chamber, from scouts to acolytes at least half of the delegates are in this mosh after a fourth-floor scout insulted those who are floors above her. And finally and frankly the most bizarre, the water-controlling competition between the aquatic delegates, every drop of moisture in the air bending to will to prove who is best at controlling water, which still remains a mystery for why they even started this.

Whatever the reasons, they quickly settle down when you physicalize your attention, suddenly the mass of mana above them lightning up in a teal color, as your mana stalks flare around you, singling your attention, focusing on the current messes before. After a bit and the voting finally going through, you focus on the current "Dungeon Dragon Administrator" or admin for short.

Covered in lush green scales, her body is covered in a type of moss that you remember freezing all that gets near on command, which was gained from the prehistoric records. It also can wrap around animals and drain them of their life, but you don't believe she makes much use of that ability. Already you have started to gather what type of person from her speech at the nomination ceremony. While she has the expected devotion of the position, extreme compared to the invaders, other than that and perfunctory opinions, she is focused on keeping the newly made cities secure from rouges and sneaks, rather than any establishing of life in the cities, believing that it will happen on its own. While she is probably true you look forward to what laws they bring to your attention.

Turn 21:
Mana: 1515 (930 Mana per Turn)
DP: 108/160 (271 DP per Turn)
Free(5 Dice):
Floor(5 Dice):
[]Fifth Floor: Surprisingly you have extra attention after making the fourth floor, with this development, you believe that you can work on expanding your dungeon again, developing another floor, and allowing further resources to be harvested from the invaders. (1 Dice)

[]Shadow Ecosystem: Hidden in the half-light of your tunnels, you have gained an idea. With the expansion of a second frequency you want to make use of it to its fullest, spreading from a variety of shadow corners of your dungeon, you can make a world of shadow. These hidden floors will take advantage of the way your monsters now have the shadows cling to their skin, and create a truly frightening environment for the invaders to enter, full of dark ambushes and gleaming claws this environment promises to lead to more invaders to their deaths. (50 Mana per Dice 0/195)

[]Mangrove Ecosystem: Growing a variety of mangroves over one of your swamp ecosystems, you can create a perfect environment for your illusionary traps and monsters to fight. From the hidden pathways, which are just the roots of some truly giant mangrove trees, you can lead these invaders further and further into this natural labyrinth, afterall all it takes is one brief distraction and their slipping into the poisonous waters underneath. (30 Mana per Dice 0/200)

[]Delta Ecosystem: With your newly expanded floor you can now work on new ecosystems, one that seems like would provide a large increase in mana would be creating a delta ecosystem, therefore lessening the costs of all aquatic monsters through the use of more waterways allowing invaders to be attacked more often. (20 Mana per Dice 332/375)

[]Murky Water Ecosystem: The crushing depths, something that is impractical at a base level, not having enough water or space to create the effect of thousands of feet of water crushing someone. However, by embedding the spell to increase the pressure of water inside the entire ecosystem, you can make a truly perilous area for invaders to explore. From within these murky depths monsters that should never see the light of day hunt down invaders who struggle and fight against the ever-growing pressure of being in something so antithetical to their entire existence. (60 Mana per Dice 0/205)

[]Lizard Hoards: From your smaller venous geckos to the large lizards that wander your dungeon you have an abundance of reptiles that live inside your dungeon. By tailoring large parts of your dungeon you can increase the comfort as well as the lethality of your monsters, making tailor-made ambush spots, therefore increasing the mana you gain from all types of reptiles inside of your dungeon. (20 Mana per Dice 0/275)

[]Monster Reefs: A crocodilian monster to schools of sand-bending fish your dungeon is seeded with all sorts of aquatic monsters, therefore it makes sense to tailor the waterways even further to specific species, increasing the total number of monsters you can hold as well as the efficiency of them. (25 Mana per Dice 0/225)

[]Gremlins Shop: From complex machinery to labyrinthine floors, the gremlin shop with its goblinese denizens and their knack for gears and trickery is sure to repair and revamp any physical-based trap in your dungeon. It promises to increase the mana you can save, allowing you to spend more of your elsewhere rather than rearming every physical-based trap in your dungeon. (20 Mana per Dice 0/275)

[]Witches Hut: Dangerous compounds to quick spreading diseases, the witches hut with its green-skinned, chemical-focused denizens allows them to create a multitude of various concoctions, from dangerous pathogens to toxic minerals these denizens promise to refill all of your environmental-based traps, saving you the time it takes to find replacements as well as mutate them into the correct configurations. (30 Mana per Turn 0/175)

Monsters (5 Dice):
[]Curseland Dragon: While not a true dragon, this boss is sure close, by taking the old mutations of the fossil monsters and applying them to your already strong monsters, you can now make a truly monstrous monster. Covered in crystals and adorned with the affinities of earth and curses. This boss bears the ancient grudges of a more primordial time, stalking a cursed land, you are sure this boss will stop invaders in their tracks. (60 Mana per Dice) (187/335)

[]Basic Golem Monsters: Giant rock with no weak point to a viscous acid monster, your basic golem monsters promise to be a large roadblock against invaders, separating from other monsters in that rather than become overall stronger, you take the approach of being harder to damage, from the liquid like slimes to the rock golems, these monsters promise to force invaders to fight differently to defeat these monsters. (10 Mana per Dice 0/225)

[]Elemental Monsters: Bodies of flame to air-shaped whirlwinds, you can now in an entirety direction in regards to affinity, rather than giving monsters various flavors of attacks you can now make monsters solely of affintiatied mana, making them their own attacks and forcing mages to the forefront to deal with these new monsters, making them rely on counter-affinities to even damage them rather than a standard steel covered invader. (15 Mana per Dice 0/175)

[]Swarm Monsters: A pack of bipedal monsters, or a lounge of lizards, you can take your experience with making hive minds of bugs and instead start connecting monsters with each other, allowing them to coordinate to an eerie degree, movements precise and fluid as one whole group. However this comes with a cost, these monsters will be weaker individuals, and a large portion of their mana put towards keeping the link open and running. (40 Mana per Dice 0/225)

[]Room-Sized Plant Monsters: Twisting roots filling a whole room, to vines covering every angle, you can create rooms in which have to fight an entire room of the same monsters, allowing you to focus more monsters on other things as well as allow the room-sized monster increase coordination, making them capable of complex tactics because they share the same mind. (40 Mana per Dice 0/125)

[]Heat-Sensing Monsters: From magic to plain old camouflage, there is a multitude of ways to hide, however, one that most people don't think of is heat, something that doesn't really come up that often heat is all around us as well as requiring a very technical enchantment and it can be taken advantage of through the use of heat-sensing monsters, your monsters will be able to find anybody hiding through camouflage or invisibility. (15 Mana per Dice 0/125)

[]Sonic-Based Monsters: While the frequencies in your dungeons were painful, at least you learned something from the experience, by taking your experience with sounds you can now create monsters that turn those hated sound waves against them rather than yourself. These monsters promise to disrupt various mana attacks as well as cause an overall loss of coordination with their attacks. (15 Mana per Dice 0/125)

[]Fairy Monsters: First found in your visions, you can make these small creatures to hopefully help you better understand the frequency which emanates from your faean domain. These creatures would be small in stature and fly on two wings assisted by their mana, this affinity mana would allow them to cast more magic than their small size would suggest and give more groups of monsters truly dedicated magic casters. (40 Mana per Dice 0/125)

[]Imitation Monsters: With the recent growth of hidden rooms, you can keep up the paranoia inside the dungeon, from strange voices whispering or screaming for help, to strange monsters, eerily similar to everyday objects except for the fact that they lure you into them and then strike, with tongues, venom and teeth, these imitation monsters are sure to trick any adventures entering your dungeon. (20 Mana per Dice 0/175)

[]Pyrotechnic Monsters: With the completion of your monster mines, you can now begin work to creature monsters that take advantage of your new discovery of pyrotechnics by putting two different types of mana materials together it generates an explosion which you can take advantage of by developing monsters, whether the actual materials or ones which just weapons made out of these materials, you can create a new weapon in your fight against the invaders. (25 Mana per dice 0/200)

[]Basic Mushroom Men: With your spreading experience with intelligent monsters, you can now change from a primary animal focus to a more plant-based approach. By taking an understanding of how to form intelligence and adding it to your mushrooms, you can create a creature with full ability to use the multitude of effects that your mushrooms have in their grasp. From fire to paralyzation and even ones that cause mutations, you can give these effects to a truly intelligent life form and watch as these mushrooms use it to the fullest. (40 Mana per Dice 0/155)

[]Hive Mind Monsters: Mushrooms, the nervous system of plants, sometimes spread throughout an entire forest. By taking this information you can apply it to the rest of your monsters, by taking in a variety of mushroom parts. These monsters can be added to a tactical network. Eerily coordinating to take down invaders and responding faster than ever before you can truly take up the strength of your monsters with this ability. (50 Mana per Dice 0/105)

[]Shadow Monsters: With the way your frequency now grants your monsters the ability to hide in shadows more easily, you have gained the idea to make monsters out of these shadows. While you have no idea where to start with these plans, how to even animate shadow, an intangible substance in the first place, or how to make them attack when they are intangible, you believe that all it will take is some hard work and of course, mana to bring your vision to life. (45 Mana per Dice 0/245)

[]Lizard Calvary: Movement, one of the things that you have an extreme edge on against the invaders. While they have to slog through the winding corridors of your dungeon and fall to traps and ambushes. You can take this edge a step further by binding something that has been a long time coming. By taking your basic animals and your bipedal lizard you can bring them together into a single unit. Riding their animal companions you can make a fast-moving force that can attack in a blitz and leave the invaders wrong-footed. (30 Mana per Dice 0/165)

[]Airship Monsters: The sky above, something you can barely see from the entrance of your dungeon. However with the ever-growing ceilings as you dive deeper and deeper into the dungeon you believe that you can create mobile platforms in the surrounding air inside your dungeon. These platforms will hold a variety of monsters that can utilize their ranged attacks to harass invaders without stopping, forcing them to counter this air-based attack, taking time away from their attack to your more landlocked monsters. (40 Mana per Dice 0/155)

[]Lizard Sorcerers: A meld of your newly made acolytes and the already-established sprites. By binding the small mana sprites to the acolytes you can increase the affinity these sorcerers have access to, utilizing more and more specific elemental spells for a decreased cost. However, binding these sprites to the lizards may have a few cosmetic changes as the lizard's affinity increases. (50 Mana per Dice 0/115)

[]Lizard Wizard: Taking the opposite direction from your sorcerors instead of focusing on just one affinity, by diversifying in affinity and the spells, you can give your magic lizards access to more utility from fire spells to just simple force spells your lizards will be able to counter any spell that the mage invaders use. (45 Mana per Dice 0/175)

[]Chemical Monsters: With your understanding of chemicals you can take it one step further and make monsters who use this property. Reusing an old concept you can create an amorphous body specially designed to the chemicals inside of them and force reactions when ambushing invaders. Besides your slime-like creatures, there are also a few more solid monsters in the mix as well, but whatever their shape these monsters promise to be a trial for invaders. (40 Mana per Dice 0/220)

[]Alloy Monsters: Both figurative and literally you can take your understanding of how crystals can be added to monsters and make a mix of metal and flesh, these monsters taking the durability of metal and the flexibility of flesh. However these monsters also represent truly pure metal monsters, golems made out of pure metal, hitting harder and withstanding truly dangerous blows, whatever monster you want you are sure that these monsters will increase the defense of your dungeon. (60 Mana per Dice 0/245)

[]Ancient-Hybrid Monsters: Taking it one step further you can continue to blend the mutations of the prehistoric monsters into a select few monsters of your dungeon, enhancing these select few monsters and truly making them something to fear with the truly unstoppable mix of new and old, making something that the world has truly ever seen. (70 Mana per Dice 0/115)

[]Hidden Assassins: Scouts are well and good, but you need a bit more bite in them, by taking your scouts and teaching them how to sneak and hide better, as well as giving them access to the notice-me-not frequency, you believe that they will be able to sneak throughout your dungeon and get the drop on any of the invaders inside your dungeon. (55 Mana per Dice 0/115)

[]Dragi, The Dragonling General: With enough experience, you believe that you can finally start work on something that has been building for years at this point. Implementing your first raid boss, taking the intelligence of your more magic-focused monsters you can combine that with a cunning that would lead his war party to cut through any invaders who believe that can try to one-up him, however, one problem with implementing this raid boss is the use of a frequency slot, while it will provide a bonus to all physical bipedal monsters it is still a trade which must be thought of. (Requires Open Frequency Slot) (105 Mana per Dice 0/425)

Traps (5 Dice):
[]Basic Labyrinthine Traps: More of an ecosystem in size rather than a trap. Labyrinthine traps cover a large area, leading invaders in random directions and getting them lost, while this may seem like a lot of work, these traps are incredibly cheap and allow for a variety of ambushes throughout these huge traps, promising to stop invaders from getting deeper into your dungeon. (10 Mana per Dice 93/325)

[]Basic Mechanical Traps: Whirling gears powering swinging blades, to massive hammers falling on invaders, your mechanical traps are some of the more specialized traps. With no mana embedded in these traps and the strength of metal in these traps ensuring that these are obstacles to be avoided rather than fought through, this aspect ensures that it will force the less athletic invaders will struggle to pass these trials (15 Mana per Dice 171/215)

[]Basic Runic Traps: From an immolation rune to a paralyzation circle, you can further spread and create new runic traps throughout your dungeon, promising to fire quicker, be more complex as well and be more hidden, from runes that sense heat to ones that can sense intelligent life, you can further tailor your traps to focus on certain types of invaders to fully account for their weaknesses allowing for an increase in mana production inside your dungeon. (25 Mana per Dice 0/195)

[]Basic Pathogen Traps: A spore or a bacteria, a spreading sickness or a rotting virus, pathogens allow you to spread death throughout your dungeon, even if those outside your halls have found a way to stop your sickness, it just means you can concentrate it further, from clouds of spores to animals which give bacteria, there are a multitude of ways to slow down and stop the invaders entering your dungeon and pump them for their mana. (10 Mana per Dice 0/250)

[]Fungi-based Traps: From spore to shroom, mushrooms are easy to hide and can have extremely detrimental effects, from the hallucinogenic spores to a form of parasitism that leads to repentant acts of violence, spores can be fine-tuned to cause all sorts of mental problems to a group of invaders entering your dungeon, creating divides in groups of invaders and making sure that they spend more and more time, being affected, making them waste their mana as well as their life to escape your dungeon. (15 Mana per Dice 0/250)

[]Illusion Traps: Visual tricks, from hiding holes in the ground with these illusions to hiding a variety of other traps, hidden pressure plates, and plant traps that look like bushes, you can take these illusionary tricks and spread them throughout your dungeon. This augments your already placed traps making some of them harder to find, however, you need to refine this technique to truly hide the mana from the invaders' mages. (20 Mana per Dice 0/270)

[]Tree-based Traps: Trees are some of your more understood monsters, while you may have used them to create monsters, now you can go in the opposite direction and instead create traps out of these large plants. By taking a variety of effects and granting them to one tree you can make a multi-use trap that can target a variety of weaknesses in the invaders that enter your dungeon allowing you to reap the rewards. (35 Mana per Dice 0/140)

[]Contract Traps: Contracts, something that you have made a lot of use of, from the mana laws that litter your dungeon to the research into intention mana, you have a plenitude of experience with using mana to bid invaders to do something. However you can take it one step further, by placing a variety of contracts onto some of the more intelligence-based traps and making a multitude more, you can create another way to drag invaders down a level, making them handicap themselves for their greed. (45 Mana per Dice 0/245)

Research (5 Dice):
[]Internal Mana Flows: A mana-enhanced slash to fire-covered punches, you can take a look at how invaders flow their mana through their body, helping you to understand your monster mana flows, as well as your own mana flows, after all when entering your dungeon their mana should leave their body en-masse, leaving them deficient in mana. (35 Mana per Dice 0/300)

[]Specialized Affinities: With the completion of basic affinities it is time to research specialized affinities, from blood to sand. These affinities are often made through bizarre combinations between the four basic elements from the use of earth, water, and fire to make ice to the use of water, earth, and air in specific quantities to make blood affinity. It will take a long time to go through each grouping of specialized affinities but at least it isn't mind-boggling and mana-twisting high affinities such as time or space. (20 Mana per Dice 454/500)

[]Intention Mana: Crushing geases to smooth stands of the fae, intentioned mana is often used to bind, trick, and mislead, whether that is binding them to their word or crushing them for their transgressions. Intention mana is used for every type of bond. By researching this phenomenon more closely you can begin to unravel this mystery and allow your mana to have a distinct advantage in punishing invaders when they enter your dungeon. (20 Mana per Dice 0/300)

[]Large-scale Mana Runes: From a demon summoning circle to a war ritual, large-scale runes are used to enchant and focus various pieces of mana into a complex mana weave, opening up the world to more complex mechanics than just affinities, creating portals to making mana shields, you can create these complex functions and seed them throughout your dungeon stopping invaders from just using a counter-affinity to stop your specialized monsters and letting them roll over you. (25 Mana per Dice 0/300)

[]Artifact Weapons: Artifacts, the fusion of scientific understanding and the reality-bending power of magic, by fine-tuning the effects of magic you can get a stronger effect and a lower mana cost in general. By taking your experience with mana weapons and a deep understanding of mana and the material realm, you can start to create truly unique weapons to gift your more unique monsters. (30 Mana per Dice 0/245)

[]Set Gear: Synergies, something that you know intimately now, provide bonuses throughout your dungeon and give you an edge against the never-ending tide of invaders. By taking this understanding you can apply it to the gear you give your monsters, allowing them to gain a synergistic effect through their gear, weapons, and abilities. While costly these effects promise to apply a multiplier to your gear-making adventures, giving an overall boost to your dungeon. (25 Mana per Dice 0/295)

[]Ancient Mana Types: Ancient Monsters, while they may have been inoculated into your mana types now, that doesn't mean you can't begin research on these older, more primeval types of mana. While it may not have a lot of uses, as most spells require the newer mana types, that doesn't mean it is without use, this will help you further develop your theories about mana allowing you to refine your mana collection skills. (30 Mana per Dice 228/375)

[]Luck-Based Equipment: With your curse traps now spread throughout the dungeon you can now take the time to do the inverse, by isolating the curse signature in items, you believe that you can create the inverse effect and instead gift unnatural luck to your monsters inside the dungeon. (35 Mana per Dice 0/285)

[]Targeted Radiation: With your radiation research research finished you believe that you can now refine this concept of radiation, refining wavelengths and isolating patterns in your monster's bloodline to truly choose the best types of radiation for every new monster in your dungeon. (55 Mana per Dice 0/225)

[]Personal Teleportation: While the monsters inside your dungeon have access to the summoning circles, you believe that you can take it one step further by researching a way for a variety of your monsters to be able to teleport throughout your dungeon without having to find a summoning circle to bring them elsewhere. (75 Mana per Dice 0/150)

[]Deep Affinity: With the plans for your murky water ecosystem, it seems prudent to further research into this slightly incomprehensible mana type, something that is sure to help you further understand the effects of mana as well as the probable way to gift it to your monsters and make new forms of the various uses you have for mana types in the dungeon. (55 Mana per Dice 0/225)

Core (5 Dice):
[]Crystal Monoliths: Mana, the most precious resource in the world, the counterpoint to matter, the answer to heat death, you can't have enough, with the creation of these crystal monoliths, rune-covered, storage obelisks that suck mana from the outside world into your dungeon, from the air to the earth you can suck in more and more mana to fuel your advancement. This influx might overstrain your abilities, highlighting the sheer amount of mana you using unless you hide it, allowing those invaders to tap into your mana streams inside your dungeon and supercharge themselves. (20 Mana per Dice 0/200)

[]Change Synergy: Now that you have spent some time getting used to how synergies are used, you believe that you can change what frequency you are focusing on and instead bring some of the other ones to the forefront, gaining new bonuses and keeping the invaders on their toes. (1 Dice) (Triggers Subvote)

[]Poison the Ground: Like termites invaders entered your land and raided your home and body for your precious resources, things made by your work, sweat, and tears, all gone due to their pillaging. Enough is enough, no more of these so-called humans entering your dungeon and skinning your children, and no more mages with their greedy eyes throwing themselves into your grinder for your core, promising unlimited wealth for their dynasty. No more soldiers apathetic to all around them, only finding joy in blood. No more rouges with their coin-loyalty, only in it for a quick buck. No more tamers, hunting for their next victim to breed and distort into an obedient puppet. No more clerics and their false worship all in it for a quick breath of their gods' power. You'll kill them all, from the toxic chemicals in every animal and water source to the clouds of sand tearing lungs and making them drown in dry land, the land is yours and only yours, they have entered your lair and you say when they die. (10 Mana per Dice 0/100)

[]Absolute Mana Control: With the revelation of how much mana you truly waste, showing in the shimmers which you now know as wasted mana, the energy that could fuel a multitude of projects. You can now spend the time honing your mana control until you no longer feel like you will waste all the mana you have at your disposal. (40 Mana per Dice 205/350)

[]Stimulants: Chemically increased strength, something that you thought was impossible. However with an increased understanding of how chemicals work you believe that you can weaponize these increases in strength granting your monsters a boost as well as hinder invaders as their strength, speed, and power drain out of them when exposed to your chemicals. (35 Mana per Dice 26/285)

[]Trading Denizens: Trading, is something that you intellectually know, but never truly thought you could do, after all the invaders don't know you exist and you own everything else in your little world. But with a new development in the cities and a slight increase in difficulty you believe that you can make places for you to trade with invaders, gathering goods in return for some of the monster parts. However that still leaves you with to trade, however you are sure you will figure it out in time. (55 Mana per Dice 0/240)

[]Scholar Monsters: By taking some of your more intelligent and cunning monsters, you believe that you can start to develop what the invaders call a "bureaucracy." While something that you don't really understand, you at least understand the concept of delegation. By giving these monsters the ability to implement your laws and deal with the minutiae of taking care of the various cities spread throughout your dungeon. (60 Mana per Dice 0/145)

[]Mandate: With the creation of your government, elders and delegates all elect a common administrator who all works to take care of the cities and worship you, you know can mandate laws and have them be followed rather than just the brute force way you usually had to do it, communicating through mana, instead you can save a little bit of mana and have the administrator and her minions go through the process.
Write in what law (1 Dice)
-[]Write-in

Invader Stats:
32.5k Invader Total (4k Growth per Year - 2.5k Deaths Per Year)
Food: Large Surplus
Water: Medium Surplus
Mana Materials: Large Surplus