The Spiralling Sewers Instance.
Inspired by roguelike games, a subgenre of role-playing games which emphasised on procedurally generated levels and permanent death of the player character, Jin had used a few ideas from them to create this particularly new dungeon instance.
While the Demon Rats would eventually disappear after enough cultivators had culled their numbers playing this particular new instance, it would give Jin a good amount of data to see if he should continue to expand this instance in the future as well.
As for now, this instance would work by allowing only one cultivator per dungeon instance. They would start from the top where they would find a porthole to descend down into the next, they would encounter those Demon Rats which would be roaming around the sewers.
Each time the individual cultivator defeats a Demon Rat, Jin expected the rat to drop some loot corresponding to whatever crop they were born from. That loot would then be collected by the cultivator and could be exchanged for Panda Medals at certain checkpoints where they would find a shady looking trash raccoon selling potions, accessories and even weapons. (Some cultivators who later played it felt that it looked like Thomas “Trash” Hook from a certain famous leisure game.)
That being said, the cultivator going in would be limited by the dungeon server aka the System to hold onto two items to help them with their dungeon run. Aside from those two items, the server would lock all items from being used. Therefore, this particular Spiralling Sewers Instance would be a progressive run which was a variant of the Dungeon Cave that the adventurers in the Goblin World experienced.
Compared to the Dungeon Cave, which focused on exploiting the adventurers as much as possible to prepare them for any possible threat within the lower levels, the Spiralling Sewers was the direct opposite.
The cultivator had to earn their medicinal potions, weapons and ammunition to continue travelling down the sewers.
However, there was an additional catch to the latest dungeon instance. Jin predicted that there might be a few cultivators who would try to explore each and every corner of the sewer before proceeding to a checkpoint in the sewers.
Sure, there would definitely be a few goodies hiding in every alternate corner of the complex sewer system, but he needed to stop them from taking too much stuff since this was still a business model.
Thus, he added a gem light mechanism in the instance.
The gem light mechanism would not only light up the sewers but also act as the checkpoints for a safe resting point, allowing them to quit the dungeon instance and return again whenever they felt like it. As time passed, the gem light would dim and if not replenished, the System would actually increase the strength of the Rats by blessing them with temporary magic buffs.
Only with a bright gem light, there would be no penalty. As for the resting point, it could only be used as long as there was light in the gems. That, however, would incur an additional 10% charge of the ticket fee or they could forfeit 50% of their collective resources to return back to that level.
This would invoke the benefit and loss mechanisms in their brain making them choose whether it was worthy to pay that extra 10% or lose half of the panda medals collected within the sewer instance.
Else, the cultivators would only ‘respawn’ back at the nearest stairway or ladder that descended to the sewer level if they died or escaped without a gem light. Naturally, the savepoints in the sewers would be littered with ‘fuel’ to increase the brightness of their gem light, but whether the System would intentionally impede the cultivator’s progress was another issue by itself…
As for the ticket price, it was the same as every other dungeon instance in Jin’s dungeon as he promised to his customers previously that his dungeons were affordable and fun. If someone were to tell that to Jin from a few months ago, he would only see that as making a big loss.
But with the Dungeon World cities as his new source of funds, Jin did not have to worry too much about money for the moment. Not to mention, his current customer base was growing too so quantity would no doubt triumph the low price. Claire had also been making some good and sound investments which allowed the dungeon supplier to go a little wild in his dungeon making process.
However, aside from the price point, he put up a basic guide to help the customers. For example, it not only contained the types of rats they could encounter in the first 10 floors (more would be added upon encounter) but also made recommendations for Grade 1 Cultivators to not proceed any further than the 5th level of the sewers instance, telling them that they should exit upon reaching the sixth level checkpoint.
Otherwise, they ran the risk of losing every single reward they got up until that point.
This dungeon would feature a ‘permanent’ death for the players if the cultivators got killed during their descent into the sewers. The only consolation was that during their next playthrough they would have the chance to recover all of those rewards.
First, they would have to reach the point where they got defeated, and they only got their items back if they were to win against the doppelganger that was hoarding their items.
It was an initiative by the System to replicate the data it had gathered so far about the cultivator to use it against them. If they managed to win against their doppelganger, that meant they were ready to proceed further into the Sewer Instance and be deserving of their rewards.
Otherwise, the doppelganger would gather whatever the cultivator had earnt on its way until they managed to proceed forward. (And of course, deducting some minor rewards in the due process.)
This allowed Jin to earn a little more from the players who persisted as compared to getting money upfront for more sewers while keeping to his objective of improving the cultivators.
And if they managed to reach specific checkpoints and exit, the remaining panda medals they had would be transferred into their Pandamonium Wallet.
The only catch was that the items the cultivators had bought within the instance would not be transferable into their actual account except for the personal things they had brought in less the consumables used. (Of course, if their weapon they brought into the dungeon run had zero durability, it would remain broken after the fight too.)
The surprise announcement of a new permanent dungeon instance – despite it being limited in nature because of the number of Demon Rats Jin could catch – was a welcomed surprise for the cultivators.
Instead of making it a limited-time dungeon instance, he wrote in his advertisement that the monsters appearing would be seasonal. For this particular season, he would reward anyone who tried it out with the loot of those monsters worth double the Panda Medals and this would explain the disappearance of this perk once the Demon Rats had been annihilated.
After all, this dungeon supplier had sufficient monsters in his repertoire to replace the Demon Rats and would think of other perks when it was time to change it.
While ecstatic for this permanent dungeon instance into Jin’s Shop, cultivators in the forum queried if Jin also planned to bring out an exclusive Chinese New Year dungeon instance.
The Boss only replied to that concerning line of questions with the following.
“Trade Secret.”
