My weapon still needs to be reloaded, and I open my Inventory.
Inventory -slots 11
Hammer
Grenade Ammo - Smoke
Grenade Ammo - Fire
Grenade Ammo - Ice
Grenade Ammo - Electric
Grenade Ammo - Explosive
Grenade Ammo - Proximity Mine
Trap - Electric
Trap - Rope
Trap - Wall
I decide to reload with ice grenades and hopefully slow down the attackers. By the time I’ve slid six grenades into my launcher, John is already firing with his handgun. It takes three shots from his gun to kill a kobold, but he has an extended magazine in the gun that allows him to shoot almost continuously. By the time the kobolds reach the wooden wall, their numbers are down to 18. Lillian, who’d been waiting patiently for the kobolds to get closer, leaps off the roof in her silver armor. The moment she hits the ground, she’s slicing away at kobolds with her blood-red katana blade. Each slice of her sword cuts away a piece of a kobold.
The kobolds, directed by the Kobold Foreman, spread out around the walls, and begin to attack the wooden wall. Within minutes, the wooden wall starts to crumble as the kobolds attack it with picks and axes. The wooden wall south of the coop, unfortunately, doesn’t have a backup stone wall. We just didn’t have the resources to build it. When it goes down, I fire grenades at the kobolds. A cloud of frozen gas erupts from the grenades, not doing any direct damage but freezing one kobold and slowing down the rest trying to attack the metal coop protecting our egg. The freeze effect lasts long enough for Lillian to kill the foreman, the last of the kobolds.
When the last kobold dies, another horn blows, and a new timer appears telling us wave two will arrive in another 10 minutes.
John asks what we’re supposed to do now. We don’t have enough resources to build anything else, and he doubts just the three of us are going to be able to survive long if the monsters get tougher each round.
Looking around, I notice the bodies of the kobolds have disappeared, but their weapons have not. There must be some way to renew the resources. I take one of their picks and run over to the nearest boulder and strike it. A little rock icon appears above the boulder after I strike it and John yells that the stone resources has increased by five.
That’s it! Lillian grabs one of the axes and starts to cut down trees around us, increasing the number of wood resources we have.
John grabs another pick from the floor and helps gather resources.
While the two of them gather resources, an idea occurs to me. Why just have walls that the monsters have to break through? Why not use them to funnel the creatures into my traps? It’s what we did for those zombies. I scratch a crude drawing on the ground. Our coop in the middle with a larger square around it for the stone wall, which John needs to finish building. Outside of that, we can have walls arranged that make hallways that snake towards us for the monsters to come through. Along the hallways, I can lay down the traps I have in my inventory. They’re not much, but they’ll do damage without our group having to waste ammo on killing the monsters directly.
John has time to finish building the last stone wall on the south side of the coop and set up a few lanes made out of wooden walls on all four sides of us. I lay down my last trap before the horn blows, and we’re forced to defend our egg.
Portals to the north and west open this time. Somewhere near fifty kobolds pour out from each, and this time there is no hesitation from them. They charge towards us, but once they hit the wooden walls, they stall momentarily until then find the opening into the hallways. Like I thought, the monsters take the path of least resistance and enter there. From our position on top of the coop, we have the perfect view to watch the upcoming mayhem. As the kobolds travel through the hallways, they activate trap after trap. First, the wall traps that shoot out nails piercing the first kobolds to trip them. Then before they leave the hallways, they’re shocked by the electrical trap that does double duty in damaging them and stunning them. Lillian and John finish off any of the kobolds that manage to make it out of our little maze of death. Not a single monster even makes it to the stone walls this round.
The third round, we gather more resources and John discovers that new options to build have appeared. Once he mentions it, I notice that we haven’t been getting any XP for killing kobolds. It turns out that the build system has been getting the XP instead. We now have multiple options on how to upgrade our building.
Building supplies: Wood (155), Stone (95), Steel (0)
Building options level 1: Walls, Floors.
Upgrade points available: 3
Upgrade options: Enhanced walls level 1, Enhanced floors level 1, Trap floor, Trap ceiling, Trap walls
Multiple trap options can be unlocked, but each costs its own upgrade point, and each enhancement also costs an upgrade point. We have to decide what to upgrade or unlock quickly. After a brief discussion, we use two points to enhance the walls and floors. The enhancement increases the durability of the floors and walls by 10%. We also spend one point to unlock a floor trap that shoots sharp metal spears into anyone that walks on it. They cost ten wood and five stone to make, and the trap takes 15 seconds to reset before it can be activated again.
The horn blows, starting Wave 3 before we can drop any floor traps, but the wall and floor enhancements are automatically applied. This time, portals appear on the east and west sides of the coop. In addition to kobolds with axes and picks, we also have kobolds with bows and arrows.
The trap hallways still take out a significant portion of the oncoming monsters but more make it through this time and even though Lillian takes the ones on her side out like a champ, she can’t be in two places at once. Covering the monsters on the east side falls to John and I. Between the wide damage range of my grenades and Johns accurate shooting, we manage to survive the round with the coop taking minimal damage from the kobold archers.
Round four, John immediately begins laying down floor traps, Lillian and I gather additional resources. We face off portals from the north and west. Orc warriors are added to the mix this time. They do more damage and have more health than the kobolds, but aren’t as agile or quick. The new floor traps stack damage though, and few orcs make it through our trap hallways.
Each new round is basically a repeat. We gather resources. We use upgrade points to enhance our walls and unlock or upgrade our traps to counter the new types of monsters that come through each round.
Round 5 we get orcs with shields that take less damage from frontal attacks, so we install wall traps that shoot arrows to hit them from behind.
Between rounds 5 and 6, we figure out that we can recycle the metal tools and weapons left behind for the steel resource. Allowing us to enhance the walls and make better traps.
Round 6 we get a new type of speed kobold that runs faster than most of the traps can activate, so we add floor traps that have tar and slow movement down.