It wasn’t until after I was sure that I was uninjured that I noticed the notifications floating in the air.
You’ve been killed by Goblin Archer.
Respawn in 3...2…1..
You’ve respawned a Respawn Crystal.
You lose 30 XP. XP needed to level 3: 42
My concern over my health quickly turned to anger at the experience loss. It turned out that there’s a 30% experience point penalty when you die. This one death lost me all the experience points I’d earned over the last few days. I was almost to level 3 when I died, and I’ll admit that I raged a little in my room at the loss of experience points.
After I calmed down, I was more determined than ever to improve my monster killing skills. I thought I was being smart by spending most of my dungeon earnings on a simple laser pistol for 120 credits. It only did 3-5 damage per shot, but according to the description it used my TP as a source of energy, which meant that at the cost of 5 TP per shot I could squeeze out about 28 shots before I ran out of TP. Unfortunately, when I tried to use it in the dungeon, I got a message that high-tech equipment wasn’t allowed in this dungeon, which meant I wasted all those credits. I stashed the laser pistol in my inventory for another dungeon.
My death and respawn also inspired me to learn from the Goblin’s tactics. I figured out the reach of the club wielders and how to dodge their attacks. When they missed, I counter-attacked and smacked them on their football-shaped heads with a club. When the Goblins grouped up with bow users, I learned to stay mobile. I drew the club users away, then dodged around them and rushed the bow users. Once the archers were dead, the club wielders were relatively easy to kill. A similar tactic worked on the large groups of club-wielding Goblins. I hit one, then ran away, drawing just that one away to a place where it was isolated. Then it was easy to kill the solo Goblin. Occasionally, I had to retreat in earnest if I attracted the attention of three or more Goblins in a group.
By the time I’ve finally reached the castle, two full weeks have passed but I’d regained the XP I lost and made it to level 3. I dropped two points into intelligence and two into wisdom and found my health up to 120, my mana at 190, and my TP at 170.
The castle itself was a maze with three levels of monsters. On the first level were skinny versions of the Goblins that use spears. They patrolled the hallways and attacked alone. The monster was good with its chosen weapon, and I found it hard to get past the spear in the narrow corridors of the castle. It wasn’t until I noticed that the creature kept trying to attack my head, that the idea of using the Roll ability occurred to me. The next time the Spear Goblin tried to stab me in the head I activated Roll and found myself tumbling under the extended weapon. When I came back up, I was close enough to use my club and killed the creature with a few strikes to its head.
I picked up the spear the Goblin used but found I couldn’t use it well until I spent a skill point to unlock the Piercing Weapons skill. I used the extra reach of the weapon to devastating effect on the rest of the first level of the castle.
On the second level, there were a series of ledges I had to climb up and walk along. There were giant man-sized snapping turtles along the way that walked upright and threw a seemingly endless supply of hammers. Even though I recognized the creature as a rip-off of the Hammer Brothers from Mario games, they killed me once by knocking me off a ledge I was trying to climb, making me fall to my death. When I went back again, I had to time my jump to the ledge the hammer thrower is at and can kill it.
Once I beat all the hammer throwing turtle men and made my way past the ledges, I made it to the final floor. The final floor was just a long hallway that lead to the boss room. The boss that guarded the princess turned out to be a weird mash-up of a long-necked dragon wearing a crown with a spiked turtle shell. When I used Inspect on him I learned how outclassed I was.
King Kanon
Level 4
Health 200/200
Mana 150/150
King Kanon is the dungeon boss that kidnapped Princess Plum. While he did so out of love, it doesn’t make it any less creepy.
Abilities: Fireball, Turtle Defense
Weakness: Cold, The Love of a Good Woman
When I walked into the boss room, the door behind me slammed shut, locking me in. King Kanon had some long-winded speech about him being in love with Princess Plum and that no plumber was going to come between the two of them. I could only shake my head at the bad dialogue. When he was done, he attacked by shooting fireballs that did thirty points of damage each time they hit. As you can imagine, it didn’t take long for me to die.
After I respawned, I returned home and looked through the System Store for something that would protect me from the fire but only found a fireman’s jacket that reduced fire damage by 10% and even then, it was way out of my price range. Instead of immediately going back, I took a few days to puzzle out a way to beat the boss. I knew there had to be some trick or strategy that I just wasn’t seeing. I beat the Goombies by figuring out when it would leap kick. I learned how to kill the Goblins by figuring out how to counterattack and lead them away into more manageable groups. The spear wielders I was able to defeat using the ability I absorbed from the Blobs. It wasn’t until I remember that ability that a plan started to form in my mind.
With my increased Inspect skill combined with Analysis, I was able to see what special abilities each monster in the dungeon had. The Blobs only had the Roll ability; the Goombies had a Flying Kick ability. The club-wielding Goblins had an ability called Smash that brought their club down in an overhanded attack for extra damage. The archers don’t have any abilities, but the spear wielders had one called Stab. The hammer throwers had just the one that I’m looking for though; they had a unique ability called Hammer Time that let them throw hammers in an arc. I leapt for joy when I saw what the ability did, and it fit right in with my plan.
The first step of my preparation was to trick the hammer thrower into wasting ammo. I stepped into his aggro radius and then once he started throwing his hammer, I stepped back out of range of his arching hammer throws. It’s a tactic I remember using playing those old 2D games. Here, the thrown hammers didn’t disappear, and I collected the stackable ammo in my bag. They stacked into groups of twenty, but I had to pull them out one at a time to use them. After I got enough ammo to fill my inventory, I killed the hammer turtle and used Absorb. I cleared out the second level of the dungeon and killed seven Hammer Turtles but don’t get their special ability. I had to climb back down to the first level of the castle and spend time killing the Spear Goblins until the Hammer Turtles respawned. When they did, I headed back up and killed them all again. I repeated this cycle until I finally got the ability Hammer Time.
Hammer Time- Level 1
F
Active
This is a unique ability that launches a hammer as a ranged attack. To activate, think or say ‘Hammer Time.'
Note: Wearing parachute pants while using this ability increases damage by 20% but lowers reputation with all females.
After reading the ability description, I seriously considered buying some parachute pants but dismissed the idea. After all, I’d have to wear them in public to the dungeon, and that would draw way too much attention to my studly self. As soon as I had the ability, I practiced throwing hammers, only to discover I sucked at it. Even with the ability I only hit my target 1 out of 5 times. I realized that there was probably some skill I was missing. Sure enough, when I searched through the Skill menu, I found a Throwing skill which increased my chances of hitting a target. According to the skill description, my dexterity skill also played some role in my accuracy.