Monster Creation
Now on to one of the most important things for a dungeon. Making it's monsters!
All monsters have a cost in DP. The more powerful or rare the monster, the more it costs. Not all expensive monsters are powerful, but all powerful monsters are expensive. Monsters come in (ranks), (Common), (Uncommon), (Rare), (Epic), and (Legendary), and each one increases the base cost by a multiple of at least 5.
For instance, a basic, common slime is about 100 DP (surprisingly not the lowest cost monster), but has rather abysmal stats across the board (more information in the "Monster Template" below), while a legendary slime variant can be upwards of 312k DP depending on how it's modified.
Monsters can be customized during creation to add your own flair to them. This lets you reinforce a theme for your dungeon, or just make them unique. Want to have Horned Rabbits in your Water Dungeon? Why not add a gills and scales to them? Want a massive mouse for some reason? Increase it's size! Stats are also modifiable.
There is a catch, however. Each option costs DP. So at the beginning you'll probably only have basics to work with. (Note on discounts later in this info dump: When it says the discount is "overall" that means that it effects the final cost as a multiplier. Otherwise the discount is a percentage of the monster's original cost subtracted from the final cost. Total overall discount can never exceed 90% off.)
A cosmetic change is actually rather cheap, as long as it doesn't effect their combat ability. So making something blue will be less expensive than making something bigger. (For the sake of convenience I have decided this is optional. Cosmetics have no cost except the humanoid option. If you want to add the cost to increase your difficulty, go ahead, but it's no longer required. Mainly 'cause I keep forgetting about it. lol)
The only exception to this rule is if you choose to make the monster humanoid. This increases final cost by 50% of the initial price. Has no effect on already humanoid monsters, such as skeletons or goblins.
A stat change is expensive. 10 DP per stat point increased, and it increases in cost by an additional 10 every 10 stats. Example: 1->2 costs 10 DP, but 10->11 costs 20 DP.
Each rank has a certain number of Free Skill Points available to them before you have to increase them using DP, and all their stats start at 0. The amount doubles with each rank. (Common) monsters have 50 points to distribute, (Uncommon) have 100, (Rare) have 200, (Epic) have 400, and (Legendary) have 800.
You can give a monster negatives to get a discount on their costs.
Cosmetics generally never give the monster a negative, but making a monster smaller drops its price by 10 DP per use. The size options change the monster by 10% of it's original height. You can only decrease a monster's size 8 times for a maximum of 80% smaller and 80 DP off. Increasing a monster's size has no affect on stats, but increases its mass, increasing max damage potential and making it harder to reach maximum speed. Size can be increased indefinitely.
Giving a monster a weakness will decrease the final cost by 20% of the initial price. You can only give a monster 5 weaknesses. Weaknesses give it either an obvious weak point or a weakness to an element/damage type. When something hits it with it's weakness the damage is increased by 50%. In the case of making it weak to Holy magic healing spells instead do damage equal to what it would have healed, +50% on top. There are options for "General" weaknesses that give a higher discount at the cost of being multiple weaknesses rolled into one. An example, a weakness to Magic in general gives your monster a weakness to all magical damage, instead of specific elements. This gives a 60% discount, because it gives the monster such a big weakness. If, for whatever reason, you wish to make a nearly useless monster, you can get a 90% reduction to final cost by giving it the Non-Combatant weakness. It makes it so the monster can not fight at all, it can't use skills to heal it's allies, and it can't do anything but try to dodge or take attacks made at it This would have the benefit of making it cost only 10% of it's final cost, meaning a 100 DP monster would only cost 10 DP.
Skills cost a lot of DP. The cheapest skill is about 100 DP. The more impressive the skill the more it costs.
All monsters come with 1 free, basic skill based on their species. A slime would be able to have something slime related, mimicry to let it mimic an opponent's form and gain a buff, acidic slime to deal damage just by being in contact, etc., while a mole might have an earth manipulation ability to make it easier to move through rock and dirt.
Obviously the higher the Rank the more expensive the Skill. The cheapest Common skill costs 100 DP, the cheapest Uncommon is 500 DP, the cheapest Rare is 2500 DP, Epic is 12500 DP, and Legendary is 62500 DP. Better skills obviously cost more. Please keep things reasonable. No super cheap OP skills.
Most monsters only have animal instinct levels of intelligence and only understand basic instructions. You can upgrade them to full sentience for an increase in price of 10% the initial cost of the monster.
Giving speech to a monster that can't normally speak costs 100 DP. Always.
Making a monster unique locks you from ever producing more than one at a time anywhere in your dungeon, but gives a 20% discount to the overall price.
You can have up to 3 monsters designated as a Mini-Boss per Floor. They can be the same type of monster, or different monsters, but once you have three the option is locked. Monster must be marked as a Mini-Boss during creation and you can not just spawn an existing monster as a Mini-Boss to try and get around the price. If you make a new Mini-Boss a normal, non-mini-boss version will also be added that can be spawned as a normal monster. The normal version costs the 10% less than the Mini-Boss version and has it's stats reduced by 20% if it's on the same floor as the original Mini-Boss. This option gives a 20% discount to the overall price.
Making a monster a Boss locks you from spawning more than one of them on the floor they're set to be the boss of, though, like with a Mini-Boss, you get a non-boss version template so you can summon them on later floors as normal monsters. This also gives a 75% discount to the overall price.
Making a monster a Wandering Boss has the same restrictions of making a monster a Boss, but allows them to roam a bit. They can wander up, or down, 2 Floors from their original floor, covering a total of 5 Floors. You can only have one Wandering Boss for every 5 Floors, starting on Floor 3, and their territory cannot overlap. This gives a 50% discount to overall price.
Mini-Boss, Boss, and Wandering Boss are exclusive upgrades. You cannot have a Wandering Mini-Boss.
Making a monster tame-able gives a 20% discount to overall cost, but monsters are susceptible to taming. In this world anyone can tame a monster, as long as it's marked as tame-able. There are two methods to taming a monster: First is to force it to submit and acknowledge your superiority and control, generally by beating it to within an inch of its life and showing it that it's pointless to resist or using magic to force its mind under their control. The other method is much more risky, but generally causes the monster to be much more cooperative, befriending the monster. If a monster finds that it likes someone enough, they might voluntarily become their pet. This is an option for those that don't plan to be aggressive towards the people of this new world, or desperately need that little extra cost reduction, as this has the potential to lead to the intruders using your monsters against you.
Once you've made a monster it is saved as a template and can be recreated at 10% the final cost, allowing you to populate your dungeon, or "respawn" your monsters without going broke.
All monsters are given basic knowledge considered necessary for them. If they're sentient they gain some of your memories to allow them to understand language and behavior better. The amount of knowledge they take from you is based on your subconscious. For instance, if you design a monster that looks like a famous monster, say a slime that can absorb and steal the skills and forms of it's victims, it will gain any knowledge you subconsciously think it should get, allowing it to act as the character you designed it to resemble. You can control this by concentrating on what you want it to know, specifically, if you don't want it to know everything, know a little more than necessary, or act a specific way.
Monster "templates" can not be changed once created. But can be deleted, if you want to re-create the design later.
Monsters require upkeep in the form of nutrition. Things like Slimes and Undead are relatively easy to sustain, as they can use ambient mana to keep themselves going, though slimes can also eat organic material as well. But for things like beasts and insects you will need to either provide the required food or allow them to hunt.
A monster can be sent on a hunt and will return when they are satisfied. This can be a small source of DP as well, if you can get the monster to bring the catch back before killing it. If the monster is noticed by people it might increase the risk of invaders.
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