Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Caral chapters one through five. In these chapters,
everybody gets smushed like bugs inside of buildings, which sounded
pretty terrible until I get to hear what the other
options were, and then I'm like, I think I'd prefer
being squished like a bug inside of a building. I
don't feel like I would be good at this game
at all, at all, at all. Welcome to spoil Me,
Welcome to the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you
very much to Michael for commissioning this episode. And Michael
is here in the chat and he left a long
comment here that I really wanted to share with you guys,
so he says, I'm hoping you'll enjoy this series. Lit
RPG is kind of a hard sell for a lot
of people, and I get why it's mostly wish fulfillment
stuff because the real world sucks. Most of it is
just dumb fun and to paraphrase Felicia Day, it's like
cotton candy, easy to consume and then it's gone. But
in my opinion, Dudgeon Crawler Karl is a step above
since it avoids most of the cringiest tropes of the genre.
It has a lot of puerile and juvenile humor from
the AI. But I'm a teenager trapped in a forty
five year old body, so I love it. Travis Baldry,
Jeff Hayes, and Andrea Parsnow are in my pantheon of
amazing narrators. Okay, so first of all, I have read
some RPG before, and I definitely see what you mean
with it just being like kind of difficult sometimes, and
it really varies. I have had times where I start
reading and I am just like, nope, no, I'm sorry,
I just cannot do this. Is this is like almost pathetic,
how desperately cool I am supposed to think this person is?
And then there are times where I am like so
sucked into. There's a series called Pixel Dust I think
is the name of it, and it's like there was
supposed to be another book, but there are three that
are written, and I tore through those pretty quick a
few years ago. It's been a while since I read them.
I'm not sure if those exactly count. I think they do.
But it's basically a sort of like party that develops
through a server and they don't know each other in person,
but eventually they begin to uncover something that leads to
them needing to know each other in person. And it's
a whole thing. And I really really enjoyed that one,
and I was so like, sort of bummed when I
looked into it. And it's been years and there hasn't
been another one, So there have been versions of this
that work really well for me. So and yeah, the
whole energy of this book from the start, first of all,
I just want to address, like this narrator is gives
a particular energy right off the top that very much
is giving Putty from Seinfeld. I don't know if that
is going to mean anything to some of you. I'm like,
you know, Seinfeld's a pretty famous show, so most people
are probably gonna get what I'm talking about. But Putty,
who is played by Patrick Warburton, it's different than say
he's giving Patrick Warburton because Patrick Warburton has this particular voice,
but the inflections that he gives when he is like
in Emperor's New Groove or in oh my God, what
is the other thing that I was just thinking, there's
another property, oh oh, when he's Brock Samson and Venture Brothers.
That voice is a really different inflection than Putty, and
this guy was feeling like that for me so hard.
Instantly it was like the first four syllables and I
was like, what is Puddy doing here? What? Which actually
kind of works because just like the way he's described
as being a pretty big dude, feels like that falls
into the right imagery in my head. Oh oh, Michael
says the narrator very much just trying to emulate Patrick Warburton.
If I recall, it's kind of how he pictured the
main character. Okay, I love it. Then that's great because
I started listening and I had to stop and I
put in an earbud in my husband's ear and was like,
who is this? And he's just just like Putty? And
I was like Putty. Yeah. So this the energy of
these first five chapters for me is very much like
Hunger Games meets ready Player one. And for the record,
ready Player one gets a lot of shit, and that's
all fair. I covered Ready Player one for Unspoiled book
Club and I'll tell you what, kids, people really expected
me to hate it, and I just couldn't hate it.
I had such a good time, like all of the
criticism that gets levied at it is one thousand percent fair.
But it just didn't matter to me, And that is
a rare thing, you guys, know, Like there are some
stuff I can't I get hung up and I just
can't get past. And it was just Ready Player one
never seemed to feel like it thought it was real deep.
It always seemed to be fully aware of exactly what
it was and just did that very enthusiastically. And I
respect when something is just like, no, this is going
to be like, as Michael is saying, a nostalgia bomb,
this is gonna be that, it's gonna be wish fulfillment.
It is going to be like every nerd who wishes
that he could like capitalize on all the useless trivia
they know. Like the whole vibe of it felt so
weirdly self aware even as it was ridiculous, that I
just couldn't hate it. So when I say that this
is Ready to Player one meets Hunger Games, in my opinion,
both of those are kind of good things. But like
I said, I don't disagree with any of the criticisms
brought against Ready Player one. It's just that, for whatever reason,
I was able to smooth sail right on past him,
and it just didn't drag me down at all. Happened sometimes,
you know. So anyway, the opening of this the transformation
occurred at approximately two twenty three am Pacific standard time.
As far as I could tell, anyone who was indoors
when it happened died instantly. If you had any sort
of roof over you, you were dead. That included people in cars, airplanes, subways,
even tents and cardboard boxes. Hell, probably umbrellas too, though
I'm not so sure about that one. I'm not gonna lie.
You guys who were inside, probably warm and asleep and
dreaming about some random bullshit. I'm jealous. You're the lucky ones.
You were just gone splattered into dust during the transformation.
And you know, normally, when somebody is like you were
the lucky ones, I'm like, oh, jerk off in the corner.
But honestly, this, once you get to reading, I was
sort of just like, yeah, I don't know, I think
he's right. Actually, I think that sounds fair. So we
get this fun little background where he talks about how
he wound up outside in boxers pink Croc sandals that
barely fit a leather jacket and holding a cat named
Princess Donut to the Queen Anne Chunk and apparently like
worth a ton of money. This cat won a cat
show like every fucking weekend. I am very, very interested
in what the Queen Anne Chunk is going to be
turning into because it seems pretty clear to me, like
it's a gamble. Who knows, you know what I'm saying.
But I already right away as soon as he was like,
this is you know my situation. As I wound up here,
I was like, oh, okay, so you were inside chasing
this or outside chasing this cat. If there is one
thing I know, it is chasing animals that have run
out of the house at odd hours of the day
in pajamas or other inappropriate clothing. I had to chase
Pippin across the street the other day, and it was unfortunately,
like the middle of the afternoon, and I was in
my pajamas and that's never a good look. But you know,
especially these days, I just felt like such a slob.
But this bitch ran out because somebody else's dog was out,
and so he went to chase their dog, and so
I blame them, really but uh yeah, I like the
whole way that this starts off. I enjoy this bit.
He had a girlfriend named Beatrice who goes on a
trip and doesn't tell him that her ex boyfriend's going
to be there. I figured it out pretty quick when
I saw the picture of her sitting on his lap
on Instagram. I don't like drama, and I don't deal
well with it. Whether she was actually cheating on me
or not, it didn't matter so much. She lied, so
I called her up and I told her we were done.
I really admire this. This is the sort of thing
where I'm like, I there are times where I get
really frustrated and I'm like, just talk to each other.
You know. This is one of those times that, in
my opinion, there is nothing that you could tell me
that would make this be okay. Like you can't just
sit on the lap of an ex and not tell
me that they're there, no heads up text. Hey, I
didn't know he was gonna be here, but I arrived
and it turns out they invited him and they didn't
tell me or warning that, Like, Hey, so he just
dumped some girl and I'm gonna be in his lap
on a photo because he wants to make her jealous,
but there's nothing going on. I swear not that that
would be believable, but at least it would be an
attempt to explain a thing away, you know. But it
just there's nothing about this that for me feels inappropriate.
His reaction, I think that's exactly how you want to
handle somebody who starts to like toy with you like this.
I'm just too old for it, you know, Like he's
cutting it off at twenty seven. I feel like he's
doing really well because a lot of us put up
with too much shit for too long, until we finally
start to get to a point in our lives where
we're like, life's too short and I don't need to
waste time on somebody who's decided to pull some bullshit.
So yeah, Donut has all of these like ribbons and
a whole bedroom dedicated to her trophies and her catbox
and all of this stuff. I never considered myself a
big fan of cats, but if we're being truthful here,
I like Donut. That cat did not give two shits
about anybody or anything, and I could respect that. If
Donat wanted to sit on my lap while I was
blasting away on PlayStation, and she sat on my damn lab.
If I tried to pick her up, she hissed and
scratched and jumped right back up there, and then she
looked at me with a squished face that said, what
are you going to do about it? I'd been tempted
more than once to throttle the thing, but I'm not
an asshole. Plus I could respect the little monster's tenacity.
Some of my buddies would give me crap about it,
and he spending all this time with a fuzzy cat
that was probably worth more than I would make in
a year, But I enjoyed it. I enjoyed having that
ball of fuzz sitting in my lap. So what happens
is Beatrice had no smoking rule, and he decides just
to give her the finger after they break up that
he is going to smoke like crazy inside the house,
and he decides to crack the window a little bit,
and Donut, for some reason, decides at that moment, after
never having done this before, it seems, to jump outside
onto a tree, and I think that this points to
she knew something was up. Like all I could think
was this cat was aware that some shit was about
to go down. She fucking knew how don't know doesn't
really matter at this point, but it just felt. I
felt very strongly about the significance of her doing it now,
of all times, when she's never done it before. And
of course he has a moment of just being like, fine,
fuck her, I'm gonna leave her out there now. I
think he says exactly what temperature it was, but uh yeah,
he says it was well below zero, which was unusually cold,
so probably she would have frozen. It always depends on
the animal, but you know, if she's a cat that's
used to being inside and cared for, I don't see
her doing super well outside on her own. There's also
the possibility of her being able to find somewhere to
hunk her down and stay warmer. So she may have
been okay, but you don't want to take that risk,
especially like as he puts it, I'm not an asshole.
I definitely have a kitten that runs outside all the time.
She has finally learned how to get down off the
roof by herself, because she's learned how to crawl down
trees and not just up them. But she I have
gotten to a point where I do have to like
leave her outside sometimes because trying to chase her she
will go where there's no following, and it makes her
stay outside longer if I chase her. So if I
just go out inside and pretend like I don't even care,
eventually she's at the back door crying to be let in.
So that's my tact that I take, But especially when
it's cold out, she wants to come in pretty quick.
So also, there is a neighbor named Missus Parsons who
apparently always makes complaints about noise and stuff. So the
cat screaming out there, I really think the cat did
this to save him. I would like to give her
that credit that she knows what's going on. She jumps
outside because she can tell. And then she stands out
there screaming basically, get the fuck out of the house.
Get out of the house, get outside. You can't be
inside the house anymore. Come outside. And he's just like, God,
why is this cat being so cranky? And she's just like,
I'm saving your life, you piece of shit. So Missus
Parsons has her head stuck out the window and she's
talking to him when the building gets smashed flat and
it cuts her head off. There. I have been coming
across a few too many things in media that I'm
covering lately where somebody's head gets cut off by a window,
and I'll tell you what, It's got me really fucking
paranoid these days. I really have been sort of like,
maybe I just don't ever want to stick my head
through a window for the rest of my life. It
had the building was there and then gone, but it
hadn't disappeared. It was like the building was a massive
tin can that had been crushed by a giant cosmic boot.
Wind rushed at me and it was instantly dark. The
street lamp just to my left was gone. The buildings
all around me were gone. The cars on the street
were gone too. Everything was gone except the trees and
the bicycles and the bike wrecks and Marjorie Williams moped
that was still booted by parking enforcement. I could barely
see anything except in the distance thanks to the lack
of buildings. A fire burned, there was utter complete silence,
and he says where the cars were parked on the road,
car shaped indentations of dirt appeared as if they'd been
pulled down toward the center of the Earth being ripped
directly through the asphalts, and then he sees Missus Parson's
head by his feet. This is one of those things
where it's such an unbelievably surreal image that I try
and think sometimes when I'm reading things, how would I
have reacted in this particular situation. I really have nothing
on this one. I genuinely have no earthly idea what
the fuck I would do. I mean, he says that
he feels like he wants to throw up, and immediately
I was like, yeah, okay, I could do that. I
could throw up. We could do that. That feels like
a reasonable next step. And then all of a sudden,
a person speaks. And what's fun about the audiobook is
that they do voice effects whenever it's the system speaking
to make them sound more electronic, and so it really
helps to like differentiate things, and I like it. I
think it works really well. Surviving humans take note per
Syndicate Rules sub Section five forty three of the Precious
Elemental Reserves Code. Having failed to file a proper appeal
for mineral and elemental rights within fifty solars of first contact,
your planet has been successfully seized and is currently being
mind of all requested elemental deposits by the assigned planetary Regent.
Every interior of your world has been crushed, and all
raw materials organic and nanimate are in the process of
being mined for the requested elements. Per the Mind Material
Reclamation Act, along with sub Section thirty five of the
Indigenous Planetary Species Protection Act, any surviving humans will be
given the opportunity to reclaim their lost matter. The Borent Corporation,
having been assigned regency over this solar system, is allowed
to choose the manner of this reclamation, and they have
chosen Option three, also known as the eighteen level World Dungeon.
The Borent Corporation retains all rights to broadcast, exploit, and
otherwise control all aspects of the World Dungeon, and will
remain in control as long as they adhere to Syndicate
regulations regarding World resource reclamation. Upon successful completion of Level
eighteen of the World Dungeon, regency of this planet will
revert to the successor a Syndicate Neutral Observer AI myself
has been created and dispatched this planet to supervise the
creation of the World Dungeon and ensure all the rules
and regulations are properly followed. So first of all, the
fact that like it's oh, you didn't you didn't file
your claim for your own resources, and you get to
get your resources back if you want, but you have
to fight in this game show to do it. This
is some of the whitest shit I ever heard of
my life. This is like real colonized, and I'm kind
of loving it because this is just what the shit
that you know what, I'm not gonna do this. I'm
gonna wait and see what happens later because it might
be more relevant. But you guys, the way that we
handle resources on native lands to this day, we act
like all of our bullshit and underhanded dealings is in
the past and that now we've learned our lesson and
it is the biggest scam in the world, the way
that we have found ways to like continue to exploit
these people and pat ourselves on the back like we
are like making reparations anyway. I just the combination of
just you should have filed for your matter. And also
there is an Indigenous Planetary Species Protection Act, but this
is what the act does, which is like doesn't feel
real protect to me, my God. The first level of
this dungeon will open approximately eighteen seconds after the end
of this announcement. First level will be open for one
human hour only. Once entrances are closed, you may no
longer enter. If you enter, you may not leave until
you have completed all eighteen levels or if you meet
or if you meet certain other requirements. They don't say
until you're dead. They should, but they don't. They just
say certain other requirements, which is hilarious. If you choose
not to enter the World Dungeon, you will have to
sustain yourself upon the surface of your planet, and this
may be the last communication you receive during your lifetime.
All previously processed matter and elements are forfeit. However, you
are free to mine and utilize any remaining and naturally
a Korean resources for your own benefit. I don't even
know exactly what falls under that category what counts as
previously processed matter and elements? Like what it sounds like
to me is basically anything that's been manufactured is ours,
and you guys can go mine brand new or but
if it's been built already, that shit's ours, which is
I mean, really, what other option is there? At this
point that to go into the dungeon, and they describe
the number of entrances to each level, and that they
will always decrease by half starting with one hundred and
fifty thousand, and each lower level will have a longer
period of reclamation. It is recommended you immediately find and
utilize the tutorial guild. Multiple tutorial tutorial guilds will be
seated throughout the dungeon on levels one through three. So
at this point, Carl is realizing that he is going
to freeze to death. It's below zero outside. He has
no pants on, he doesn't even have proper shoes on.
And he hears a trumpet blast and he looks and
sees this thrift store that has been smashed to the ground,
so it's no longer there, but the space where it
had been a spotlight pops up. I saw an additional
spotlight appear about a mile away. I saw a few
more littered throughout the city. Even from this distance, I
could feel the warmth radiating from the brightly lit hole
in the ground. So he heads to shelter, which I'm
not mad at. Dungeon floor one time to level collapse
five days start of chapter two. So he heads down
there and he doesn't hear another soul. Doughnut, of course,
is with him, and the stairs go on quite a ways.
They're carved and like have this pattern. It says could
have been fish or maybe demons. The almost Asian looking
carvings gave me an uneasy feeling. These stairs weren't here
just a few minutes ago. The whole thing is made
of buildings and cars and people of the world. Who
did this? How did they do this? So he finally
gets to the bottom, there's a door and a box
pops up into his site. So what we're getting is,
you know, the player view in a video game, and
he has to learn how to control these boxes and
options and stuff with his mind and learn how to
navigate them only by thinking about them. So this winds
up taking him some practice a little bit later. But
this is a rendition of Kua Tin, the dominant species
of the boring system and principal owner of the Borran Corporation.
Make sure you recognize these guys. There'll be a test later.
Was that last part supposed to be a joke? I
don't think so. I don't think so. I just don't.
I don't know, so he opens the door and U
fucking Donut bites his hand and he gets greeted a timer.
Four days, twenty three hours, and forty eight minutes. Crawler
number four thousand, one hundred and nineteen Princess Donut Level
one Race Cat class not yet assigned. You have been
designated Crawler number four one hundred twenty two. You have
been assigned the crawler Carl. You are assigned the race
of Human. You are currently level one. You may choose
a new race and class as soon as you descend
the third floor. Your stat points have been assigned based
on your current physical and mental profile. See the stat
menu for more details. Congratulations, you've earned your first achievement.
Crazy Cat Lady. You've entered the World Dungeon accompanied by
a cat. Ah isn't that sweet? Reward? You've received Bronze
pet Box New Achievement Trailblazing, Crazy Cat Lady, you are
the first Crawler to have entered the World Dungeon accompanied
by a cat. You must really love that thing to bed.
You're probably both going to die a horrible death at
any moment, or maybe not. Look at the prize you
just received. Reward. You've received a legendary pet box, and
it goes on like this early adopter, empty pockets, Why
aren't you wearing pants? Unarmed, combat lone or all? Because
he came down alone, is one of the first to enter,
has no pants on, doesn't have any weapons, all of
these things. And I really enjoy the way that this
is done in kind of like real quick succession, because
when you start a new video game, this is how
it feels. They give you all kinds of achievements for
doing all of the most basic shit, to the point
that it feels annoying almost that you're getting these achievements,
even though you get little prizes for them. You want
to play the game. Can you fucking leave me alone
a little bit? You know, like I do. Start to
get very irritable about it. Later on, every time you
have an achievement, it's like a fucking parade should be
thrown because they start to get so far apart. But
at first you're just like, you know, ah, shut up.
So he sees a sign that says dad tutorial guild
with a lot like an arrow pointing out an alley.
I stepped into the new achievement, fall into an obvious trap,
so lights flip on, and there is this like Bonker's
contraption that a Goblin is steering Goblin murder Dozer contraption,
a Goblin built steam powered machine designed to mow down
and slaughter unsuspecting dungeon crawlers. I hope you're up to
date with your tennis shots. And he gets a description
of the types of goblins, the engineer, their levels, YadA, YadA, YadA,
And I love that the engineers the in cells of
the Goblin world. They have a hard time finding a date,
which makes them extra angry. If there are any females
in your party, they will attack them first. Oh my god.
I'd like the fact that Carl is just like, how
can they make these jokes? Like, you know, he's asking
the right questions right away and we actually get real
answers to them. So the uh, let's see. He finds
the tutorial guild and he goes to the door and
it's closed and there are the two level gob the
two two level goblins. Oh my god. The two level
two goblins seem to give up on waiting for the
bulldozer to negotiate the tight turn and hopped off and
started jogging toward me. From behind the door. I heard
the rattling of chains and turning of locks. What do
you want you moms ain't allowed in here? You know that. Hey,
this is a tutorial guild, the things that I was
supposed to go in here. You're a crawler. Wait, by
his left tip. We opened up and I didn't even notice.
I must have slept through the announcement. Nobody tells Mordecai anything.
There used to be a newsletter. It was delivered every
few cycles, reliable as can, but then it just stopped.
Budget cuts. I'm guessing they were always cutting corners. I
thought we were opening for another two years. So eventually
he tries to say, you took too long. Too long,
I can't open if there's already mobs outside. I took
too long. And finally, as the one comes up behind him,
he loses his temper, and long story short, he beats
the shit out of it and kills it, stomping on it,
and it's one glance up at the bulldozer, which it
stopped to pick up the second goblin. Relieve me of
any potential regret. Hey, hey, stop, you can't come in here,
he was saying, his back now turned donut he was
talking to the goddamned cat. So he's like, you were
going to fucking let me in there? It's clear, but
for five seconds, so according to you, like you don't
you can let me in when the mob isn't right
here right, And then he when he gets in, he
gets achievements for being in the guildhall, He gets stats
on Mordecai, and he starts asking him, of course, about
how all of this works. Now, for the interest of time,
a lot of this I'm going to sort of gloss
over because it works the way that a video game
mostly works, and I don't think that I need to
explain a lot of that. Even if you're not really
a gamer, I think you are going to know the
basics of all of this. There are baddies, some of
them are, and our non playable characters. They don't have
a lot to do with the actual plot, and you
just deal with them and then you move on. You
can't kill them, you can't affect them in any real way.
Then there are ones that you do have to interact
with our bosses, you know all this stuff. And he,
after getting inside the fucking doughnut, knocks over this creature's
mother's ashes and takes a shit in them, which is uh,
that sounds right, That sounds pretty much on brand for
a cat. So Carl Dodger's back outside. Briefly, the whole
top of the machine was nothing but a fur lined,
recessed hole with benches running the length. The ceiling was
much lower than the long main hallway. When I stood
my full height, I could reach up and touch it.
I rushed forward and grasped onto the regular goblin. The
creature barely weighed anything. I picked him up and he grunted.
In surprise, he unsuccessfully attempted to hit me with his stick.
With all of my strength, I threw the goblin forward.
He rocketed out of the passenger area of the dozer,
sailed directly over the head of the engineer, and crashed
onto the tunnel wall, then bounced back, landing directly onto
the spinning front blades. Oops. So then the one that's
left is oh, yeah, this is the one that he kicks.
That's right, You're in my world. Now. You need to
speak my language, you weird green piece of shit. To
my surprise, the goblin grinned. I could tell he understood me.
You're not speaking your language. You're speaking Syndicate standard, you
idiot slave. They programmed it into your brain. Do you
really think you'll survive past? As he was distracted by
his own soliloquy, I leaped forward, snatched the pot off
his head, and clabbered him with it. The goblin stumbled.
I smacked him again. He careened off the side of
the tractor. His health bar appeared after I had smacked
him the first time, but it was still well in
the green. His knife went flying, so he starts to
sit up, and then I jumped off the murder dozer,
aiming both feet towards the chest and stomach of the
still recovering god goblin. I'm not sure if I mentioned
this earlier, but this is important information. I stand six
foot three inches in away, about two hundred and thirty pounds.
What I'm getting at is I'm a large dude. The
goblin was small, and he hardly had any mass at all.
The effect of me jumping onto him from high above
was like someone smashing a fat jelly doughnut with a sledgehammer.
Ea iso gross, yeah, oh my god. In the chat,
Michael is saying this is like Lyndon beating on a
bunch of six year olds in the tournament from the
Cradle series. I love that comparison. So at this point,
he realizes that there's a problem with the dozer, and
he has just enough time to get back into the
guild and slam the door before it explodes, and Mordecai
is like, what the fuck was that these walls should
not shake like that? And he has to explain to
Mordecai is like, oh shit, that would definitely have killed you,
So good thing you were in here. So finally we
get to the training and we get the explanation of
what exactly the deal is with this world, and we
find out that Mordecai used to be a being on
a planet that got dropped on like this and he
made it to level thirteen. Now he doesn't make it out,
but he is still alive. So like, evidently if you
get to a certain point, he gets down to floor eleven.
That's what it is. Once you descend to floor ten,
you're given several options to exit the dungeon. The deeper
you go, the better those options are. And I thought
that was really interesting that there are different ways in
which you can negotiate your way out, and so he's
been working for them, and they change his form according
to whatever the theme is of the dungeons that they
are doing for this particular season of the game. And
all of this works very similarly to the Hunger Games,
where you're being watched almost all the time, except for
in bathrooms, which I think probably is going to be
important at some point. You can have followers views like
view numbers, and the more followers and fans you get,
the more likely you are to get patrons, and they
give you good, rare shit that you wouldn't get otherwise.
But you have to really make yourself stand out in
terms of personality and style for them to notice you.
So you know, it's like the Hunger Games with it
being a sort of popularity contest. I have no doubt
if we had been a little further along in our
development of social media by the time she wrote those
the concept of views and fans would be absolutely like
integrated into how the game worked. It wasn't, but that's
definitely the energy of the games. So we also find
out that there are worlds seeded with humans that are
basically allowed to ripen until it's time to harvest them,
and he like the there's I think, he says, like
nine other human seeded worlds. But I have to imagine
that a lot of like the way social media works,
is them preparing us for the concepts that come out
within this game. Like it just feels like that would
be the way to say this up, you know. Sat
Michael says he actually race changed during his Dungeon crawl
from his original sky followers to a changeling, otherwise his
form wouldn't change with the dungeon. Oh okay, I missed that,
thank you. So he also says guild masters prepare for
years for each new Dungeon world. I've been preparing for
this longer than you've been alive, and he describes all
the stuff that he has learned about pop culture and stuff,
which again it's very much giving ready player one and
the group Borrent is evidently like really really powerful. When
he brings it up, Mordecai gets real shifty about the
way he talks about them and the tone he uses,
and he's like, they're not always watching like actively they
could always be, but plenty of people talk about them
because they're like the people sponsoring this, so they're not
looking all the time. But you just don't want them
to zero in on you if you are on camera
and you say some off shit about them. I think
the wording he uses is they will accelerate your experience,
which I assume means that they will give you some
things to fight that are like above your level. So
I'm trying to make sure because I'm like already running
out of time. I only have fifteen minutes left. He
learns how to use the controls identify the creatures that
are around him, even corpses. It will tell him like
who that was and what level they were, and YadA YadA.
I grumbled a bit about that three in intelligence. Yeah,
I never did do great in math, but I never
considered myself a slobbering idiot. And then he thinks about
his friend Billy, who is an idiot who had come
out of a bar and peed on a the cops
bicycle while the cop was giving someone else a ticket
for drunken disorderly. But Mordecai says, intelligence told you the
bike belonged to a police officer. Wisdom told you not
to urinate upon it. We all have a wisdom stat
but it doesn't appear on that list. It used to
but they discovered changing one's wisdom greatly changed their personality,
so it's no longer adjustable. I thought that was pretty interesting.
I like the the differentiation between wisdom and intelligence. I
believe that games like there are plenty that do do that,
but yeah, that is like intelligence. Being able to just
look at a thing and tell what it is is
very different from being able to determine the best course
of action now that you have that basic information. So
the first level of the dungeon was off limits to
live viewers, so these stats wouldn't move until I descended
to the second floor. That really surprised me. I figured
that the first level was going to be the one
that was the most like ridiculous to watch, sort of
the way that when you watch like America's Got Talent
or something, they would often show I don't know if
they do this anymore because it's been a long time,
but like, for so you think you can dance, for example,
do you get to watch a lot of the auditions,
And sometimes they will show you auditions that are particularly good,
and they will also show you the ones that are
really really cringey and terrible. And I've always felt so
like kind of conflicted about that because a lot of
times the ones that they show where somebody is really terrible,
it can feel like really exploitative. But also, these people
showed up here knowing that they might get on TV,
and they signed away the approval to do that, and
so they opted into this knowing eyes open, you know.
But a lot of times there's a feeling of like
this person didn't fully understand how humiliating this is going
to look, you know. So I just really thought that
like the first level and seeing all of the people
who wind up getting like weeded out almost immediately would
be a really big part of getting into the first season.
But I almost think that maybe it's too much blood,
Like you lose so many people so quickly that the
cameras can't keep up, and maybe it's not that fun
to watch, and it's just sort of like sad, I
don't know. So he says, you need to kill with
style and excitement. Maybe come up with a catchphrase. I
managed to accumulate almost thirty million followers and four patrons.
That's the only way I survived once I hit the
second floor. Watchers from across the universe had the ability
to tune into any crawler. They wished Warrant would continue
to air highlights. So the longer I survived, the better
my chances are getting featured. Anytime someone watched me for
just about eight seconds or so, it counted as a view.
This stat didn't help or hurt me, but it was
a good indicator of how interesting I was. You might
not like it, but pay careful attention when I tell
you this. Obtaining patrons is crucial to your survival. There
is plenty of great loot in the dungeons that will
help you survive, but the best loot comes from benefactors. Patrons.
Views lead to followers. If you're being followed, it means
the viewer has bookmarked your crawler ID they can look
it on you whenever they want. Following leads to favorites.
If you're favorited, that's a good thing. It means the
viewers are getting live updates on your stats and condition.
They get notifications if you're fighting. If someone's favorited you,
they really want to know how you're doing. Viewers only
get a certain number of favorites, so consider it an honor.
But ultimately it's all about the patrons. Lots of favorites
will always lead to patrons. Patrons are usually organizations, not individuals.
They'll see someone has a lot of favorites and they'll
sponsor you. It's an advertising thing. They sponsor you by
purchasing boxes for you. There are dozens of types, and
each box has six quality tiers. Bronze, silver, gold, platinum, legendary, celestial.
Most patrons can only afford or are willing to send
you silver or gold. Bronze tends to be crap. Some
of the richer patrons may send you platinum, though the
cost has got to be astronomical. A bronze benefactor box
is better than a plain gold adventurer box. A benefactor
box may contain items from the patron's home world. You'll
never find a pulse rifle or automated power armor in
any sort of box in the world Dungeon, but it's
possible to get from a patron and then he brings
up toilet paper and Mordecai toilet papers. Complimentary restrooms are
liberally populated throughout the map. It's the only place the
viewers cameras can't follow. The last Dungeon warrant managed didn't
have rest areas, and the crawlers were pissing and crapping
all over the place. Crawlers lose viewers when they're shitting
in the middle of a hallway. It's gross. I really
love that that is specifically mentioned. Bathrooms are important, and
I love that even when we have just decided to
set aside all humanity, we are still not going to
be completely uncivilized and have some fucking bathrooms. Thank you.
So we spent the next several minutes going over a
few other menu items. Uh, and Mordecai is like, you
know what your proficiencies and things are actually like kind
of above average. You're starting from a pretty decent place.
He You know, we go through a lot of the
menu stuff. A lot of this I felt like really
didn't need to be gone through. It's fine, but it
just seemed a little bit redundant to me. And we
find out about how like when the stairways populate to
getting downstairs, they are hidden and eventually they are guarded
and you have to get through certain bosses in order
to pass through. The levels that are finished are like
they get smashed, so you are crushed in those as
you would have been into building. If you don't find
your way out in time, which is pretty rough, and
the guild areas are the areas like there are also
rest spots where you are safe from being attacked, and
you also can like recharge your stat bars and stuff.
But and you can basically like stay there and not leave.
But once the place closes, you will die. And I'll
say right now that I probably would find myself holed
up in one of those rooms and just chill until
the place crushed me. I would rather that than be
like run over by a goblin steam boiler machine. I
don't know, that's just mehm. So are you stuck here
for the rest of your life? No, this is my
last tour. Once this nightmare is over, I become a
full citizen. I receive a moderate stipend, and I'm free
to make my way in the universe. Will you go
back to your home planet? No, it's not open to me,
he said. It's not open to him in such a
way that makes me feel like the fact that he
took the deal with these guys means that he's like
persona non grata. And I may be wrong about that,
but there was just a vibe to it that it
didn't seem to me like it was I am not allowed.
That's a different thing to it's not open to me.
Felt like technically I could, but that wouldn't be good
for me, you know. And we find out that, like,
there's eighteen levels and nobody has ever made it all
eighteen levels, not one time. Level thirteen is the deepest
anybody has ever gone, which is pretty upsetting. So let's see, Oh,
here it is your inventory. This season, Born's trying something
a little different. Last season, it was slop based. It
allowed one to carry multiple items, but limited in capacity
and had weight limits. This season, each crawler is given
a dimensional inventory and AI cataloging system. Basically unlimited storage,
and if you can physically lift it off the ground
by yourself for about four seconds, you can put it
in your space, no matter how big it is. The
only rule is you can't store living creatures. They will
immediately die. Also, the storage is time locked, so food
doesn't go bad. That's a big one. We had an
issue last season with crawlers starving to death watching thousands
of lethargic, unmoving players as they waited for the timer
to run out. Yeah, it was no good, so Born
fixed it. This uh idea of like if you can
pick something up no matter how big it is, and
you can store it. I just keep imagining, like, you know,
a pretty decent sized rock and you just like open
your inventory and just drop it on somebody, depending on
how you are situated. It seems pretty convenient. You know.
I'm sure that we'll get better objects and rocks, but
to start off with, based on the things that he
finds in the boxes that he opens, a rock is
pretty that feels on brand to me. So let's see. Oh,
when he finds the legendary pet box, Mordecai kind of
freaks out and it's just like Jesus Christ, I can't
believe you got that right when you walked in, And
generally is like there is a good amount of stuff
in here for you already. So I really enjoyed a
couple of these. Some of these jokes are like a
little plaid, and some of them really cracked me up.
There is I'm trying to find the spot here. It
is okay, new achievement, you've killed a mob. You're a murderer.
He probably had a family. The way this guy delivers
these is very funny. New achievement, you've killed in our
mom with your bare fucking hands. Holy crap, dude, that's
kind of fucked up. New achievement. You've killed a mob
a higher level than yourself. You're getting the hang of this.
Don't let it get to your head. New achievement potophilia.
You've used your bare feet to crush and kill an opponent. Hey,
that's my fetish. Seriously, keep doing it. You'll be rewarded.
This will help reward You've received a gold shoe box,
which eventually we find out has a toe ring in it,
and he's mad about it. But I would guess that
toe ring might be even more beneficial than shoes, because
that is a gold shoe box. So I feel like
that shit must be doing some But yeah, so he
says Mordecai. You can only open boxes in safe areas.
The safe rooms will always appear on your map, even
if they're within the fog of war. If you haven't
visited in an area, it won't show specifics of the
hallway even if it's in range. The fog of war
covers places you haven't yet visited. Don't forget. The level
itself is going to collapse on your head. After a
certain amount of time. The only way to survive is
to keep moving deeper. We have ten loop boxes. That's
a lot, but not a crazy amount. Usually people come
into the tutorial with two or three. You can hoard them,
but when you decide to open them, you can't pick
and choose which ones. It's an all or nothing thing.
There's no real tactical reason to hold onto them since
you can't sell a transfer unopened boxes. And it's important
to note that while it's possible to receive unstable or
damaged loot, you'll never receive outright cursed lout. But that
doesn't mean everything is safe to try on. Always read
the descriptions before you activate or wear something. Always, always,
no exceptions. And I am not looking forward to the
first time that he just puts something on without fully
reading it, because I feel like that is going to happen.
So the Uh Bronze Pet Box has pet biscuits, scroll
of Heel Critter, The Bronze One's Bronze Adventure has Potion
of Healing Times too common, fingerless gloves, Bronze weapon box,
toad cudgel a stick, Bronze weapon box poker. It was
literally a fireplace poker, a wrought iron stick with a
screw on point at the end. I would swear that
in the audiobook he says a wooden stick with a
screw on point to the end, because I was sort
of shocked that anything used for fire had would. I
don't know if this has like been corrected or if
I'm remembering wrong in the audio book. It does not matter,
but it just caught my attention because I had intended
to comment on it. Poison antidote times two, crawler biscuit
times one hundred torch times twenty silver goblin box dynamite
times five lighter goblin pass. It flew and smacked up
against my left inner forearm. I could feel it burning
against my skin like I was being branded. The pain abated,
and my jacket was otherwise undamaged. I don't know what
that means, and he doesn't ask. There's a lot of
this that it just happens to him and we just
sort of brushed past it. I'm hoping that this means that,
like goblins are just going to leave him alone, but
I feel like that's way too easy. Gold apparel box
and chant night gaunt, cloak of Stoutness, enchanted troll skin,
shirt of pummeling beside me. Mordecai gasped the moment the
two items appeared. I hope that was a good thing.
And then the toe ring and then legendary pet box
pet biscuit times five hundred. So we find out that
the pet biscuits do different things to your animals, and
sometimes it will make them dangerous and they will be
teleported out as long as you are in a safe zone,
which is why it's so important to only feed them
these when you're in a safe zone, because otherwise they
don't get teleported away and you potentially will get hurt
by whatever is being done to them because they'll be
transformed into different creatures or whatever. Also, they are so
attractive to pets that if you pull out more than
one at a time, they will just eat all of them,
So you've got to be really careful about using them.
And he's like debating because he finds out it's ten
pieces of gold per biscuit that maybe, let's see, I'm
trying to find that it is it. I feel like
it's more gold than that. Uh, if you feed it
to her, Oh no, it's worth a couple thousand gold.
Oh that's a lot damn enhanced pet biscuit worth a
couple thousand gold. So he's standing there deciding if he's
going to feed it to donut or not, and she
just attacks him and fucking tastes it, and as soon
as she does, she turns into a mass of flesh
and splatters, and he's like, well, what the hell happened
to her? And Mordecai looks at her and is like, oh,
she's transforming. She didn't tell a port a way, so
whatever's happening to her is and considered something bad. But
we're gonna have to wait. It's probably like five or
ten minutes, and that's how chapter five ends. And I
was so like, come on, I want to know what
the cat's turning into. I can't decide what's like for
the best, because ideally, in my opinion, the cat turning
into something that can be mounted is best. You can, like,
you know, ride a little horsey down these hallways. That
does mean that the cat takes on most of the
risk in stepping on things or whatever. But the cat's
gonna be running around anyway unless you plan to carry
her in a little papoosca or what do you call it?
On you so she I don't think would allow that,
so she'd be at the same risk anyway. I suppose also,
of course, becoming something like a fire breathing dragon potentially
very helpful. Maybe if she turned into something that you
couldn't ride but that could carry stuff, maybe you get
more storage. Uh yeah, I don't know, Like there's a
lot of a lot of possibilities, and I feel like
maybe I'm not even thinking big enough, Like could she
turn into a straight up car? Could she turned into
a bulldozer? You know, I know that's not animal ish,
but maybe it's not restricted to that. I don't know
what the options are that'd be nice. I feel like,
just ride a bulldozer right through everybody. Oh god, I'm sorry,
Michael is leaving so many comments that I've missed. You
might be good at this game. Thinking of inventive ways
to use system mechanics is the court to anyone trying
to break the game and become op. Regular pet biscuits
are just food treats. He got the enhanced with just
a special one, right, because well he got both. He
got regular pet biscuits in the first box, the bronze box,
and then he got the enhanced ones in the legendary box.
The most people would think catgirl something that can be
mounted due to the genre. Oh my god, I should
have known not to phrase it like that. That's my
own fault, So your supposition is especially funny. I feel like,
you know, if I were a cat and I was
in this position, what I would want to be done
to me? And it's tough because I think most cats
would be like, I am already the ideal perfect killing machine.
There needs to be no alteration to my being. I
am one with death, and I feel like they would
just reject it. But you know, I think, what if
she got wings? That would be something that would not
necessarily be super useful to him, but would be really
helpful for her, potentially avoiding certain types of traps. Of course,
then she might be more vulnerable to other types of traps.
If she were able to fly in, he could ride
on her back. Perfect. If she's like spat acid, maybe
the thing is finding out that sort of thing. How
do you find it out without getting hurt in the process,
because there's no take back seats. It's not like you respawn.
If you get killed, you just die. That's it. So yeah,
so okay, I'm going to wrap this up, but yeah,
this is These are very promising first five chapters. I
had a really good time reading these, so I hope
that you guys enjoy the coverage and let me know
what you think and if you're I saw some people
talking in the books channel on the Discord about reading this,
but a lot of it was thankfully covered with spoiler tags,
and then we wound up making a spoiler channel in
the discord, So anybody who's listening to this, if you
want to talk spoilers very much and make fun of
something that I said that I'm super wrong about, or
be gleeful that I got something right and didn't realize it,
that is the place to go. I always put the
discord link in these the show notes so you can
head there. There's a no spoiler channel for those who
are following along with me who want to talk to me,
but the spoiler channel obviously I am not allowed in.
So that is just for y'all to commiserate with one
another about how much smarter you are than me, which
you know, it's really cruel and you guys are sick,
but what can I expect? All right, everybody, thank you again.
I hope you enjoyed and until next time, did alone. Motherfuckers,
that was an unspoiled network podcast.