IWUAaDNW: Exploration 2.2, Growth 3.8, Exploit 4.5

Hallways did not have to be jointed with the floors of the rooms they connected to. I could build a hallway that started very close to the ceiling, leading to an opening barely tall enough for a man to squeeze himself through. When I tried to build a room attached to that hallway, though, I found that I couldn’t.

So apparently all rooms had to be walkable to, but hallways were fair game so long as it was possible for someone to get inside in some other way.

That was fine. An idea was starting to form in my head. I dismissed my experiments, then created an alcove hallway that joined the far room with the curved hallway that went to my core room, connecting to it right over the pitfall. Whoever tried to get inside that way would inevitably fall into the pit. As an experiment, I tried to curve the new hallway so it also touched the other curve of the core hall, but found hallways could only connect to one room or one hallway.

[...]

This hall, and its connectors, would be my way to carry my fast fliers around for rapid response in case of a threat. Whoever tried to invade me would be assailed by bugs coming from both sides, stored in that hallway until they were needed. Whoever tried to cross the pitfall would have to worry about bugs pouring out constantly from a hole while they were trying to cross the pitfall. If they fell in, they would have to climb out while under heavy attack. At some point, one of my venomous bugs would get lucky, and I’d have one less attacker to worry about.

—IWUAaDNW: Exploration 2.2



"Then, uh…” he pointed up, “Well, there's a big honking hole in the ceiling, and I think it really shouldn’t be that high.”

And there was. My bugs could, with some difficulty because of their mass, climb up walls and ceilings, especially if those walls and ceilings were full of bug crawling holes. Humans couldn't do it nearly as easily because the loam walls broke apart easily. In other words, crawlspaces built into the ceiling were absolutely unassailable by adventurers.

They also, I had noticed, did not count as rooms, but neither did the system consider them to be valid paths. I couldn't build rooms up there.

As for how I'd built them, well, it turned out that floors and ceilings were viable surfaces for hallway building. As well as room-building, although in those cases the system helpfully provided stairs. And so, I had built a network of hallways, filled with bugs, with openings only at the top of certain strategically placed rooms. With the number of bugs I had crammed in there, whoever decided to invade me would be in for a hard time, for a very long time.

Gwen nodded. "Dungeons don’t follow physics. Remember the ocean dungeon Ulfric told us about?”

“Uh, is that the one where they had to walk along a beach, then climb up a tower into the sky and ended up over a molten lava pit?” he paused. “Oh yeah, that one. Right.”

Gwen palmed her face for a moment, then sighed. “Well, those holes have been there for a few days, and they’re full of bugs. Mostly spiders and wasps, from what I've seen."

Wasps could just fly in there. Spiders had extremely dexterous limbs. Beetles and ants, though, were clumsier and heavier, so getting them up there usually wasn't worth the trouble. They also didn't have good ways of coming down, whereas.... well, wasps flew, and my jumping spiders were meant to jump.

—IWUAaDNW: Growth 3.8



Eira looked up at the bug chute over her head and raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware dungeons could do that,” she said.

Ulfric grunted. “It’s rare. Normally, really old dungeons use holes like that as pitfalls in later levels to get adventurers into more dangerous floors. We call them Weeding Pits, because if you’re stupid enough to fall into one, you deserve to get weeded out of the adventurer pool.” He snorted. “Taylor uses them as a way to transport her bugs around and set up ambushes.”

—IWUAaDNW: Exploit 4.5