Lewd Dungeon, Chapter 348 (Patreon)

Chapter 348 – Raid Composition

As far as I knew, no other dungeon on Earth had put together a Raid. The concept itself wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to people from Earth, since the MMORPG genre had made raids a staple of end-game content for decades, to the point where even non-gamers had heard the term. However, none of the dungeons in the Global DEN had a raid, yet.

However, in the Galactic DEN, I’d seen plenty of dungeons talking about raids. Essentially, a raid was a special floor (or series of floors) in a dungeon that were designed for larger groups than normal. The actual size of a ‘raid group’ changed, depending on the dungeon, but it was always larger than the somewhat standard group of six that seemed to be the basic formation most adventurer groups took.

From my own research, I understood why six was the ‘magic number’, so to speak. Whether you were going out into wild, untamed places, or delving dungeons, any group had certain roles that needed to be filled. If you didn’t have someone who was at least able to hum a few bars on a role, then a party left itself vulnerable, and that could easily spell death, if you didn’t find some way to compensate.

There were both combat and noncombat roles one had to consider when putting a party together. Combat was the side most people thought about more heavily, simply because people tended to get very concerned about things that kept monsters from eating their face. However, the noncombat roles were just as important, and needed to be accounted for.

Combat basically broke down into Defenders, Healers, Melee Damage, and Ranged Damage. Some also included things like Elemental Damage, Magic Damage, Non-Magic Damage, and the like, but those could typically be covered for with gear, or even by consumables added to gear, like an oil that temporarily let a sword do fire damage. The first four were the big ones, and the ones everyone acknowledged needed to be covered.

Melee and Ranged Damage were the most straightforward. They made things hurt, and hurt a lot, with the only difference being whether they did stuff close up, or at range. Rogues burying a dagger in someone’s spine, or mages standing at range launching spells were both damage dealers, and they both had strengths and weaknesses. The reason you needed both in a well-rounded party was because sometimes threats were too close for a ranged attacker to set up and fire, and sometimes they were too far away for a melee attacker to hit them.

Healers were also fairly simple, in concept. It was a foregone conclusion that people were going to get hurt while adventuring. Discounting those oddballs who either had so much defense that they could walk through nuclear blasts and be fine, or ones who were so fast that they could literally sidestep bullets, everyone was going to get hit by something, eventually, and then they’d need a healer to patch them up. And it wasn’t just damage, either. Healers also played a big role in keeping parties from succumbing to things like poison, disease, curses, and other nasty ailments which might cripple or kill a party otherwise.

Defenders were the simplest role at first glance, but had hidden depths and variety to them. The Defender’s job was to keep threats from attacking other members of the party, so that they could do their jobs. The role of a Defender was not glamorous, but it was very necessary. Ask any quarterback playing football where they would be without an offensive line keeping them safe long enough to make a pass, and you’d know how bad off a party would be without a defender.

Most defenders specialized in wearing heavy armor to withstand attacks, and using taunts or certain skills to force enemies to focus on them, but those weren’t the only ways to be a defender. For instance, a Monk who could dodge attacks easily could be a great defender, especially if they had gear or skills that would allow them to withstand area effects or compensate when there was a blow that they needed to take, for one reason or another. The main goal of a defender was to force the enemy’s heavy hitters to focus their attention on them, trusting the healers to keep them up while the damagers took out their targets.

To cover the most basic combat needs of a party, you needed, at minimum, three people, preferably four. But when you added in noncombat roles, things got trickier. Noncombat roles could be broadly defined as Scout, Survivor, Talking, and Utility.

Scouts did as the name suggested. They scouted an area, looking for enemy ambushes and finding traps. Disarming those traps was also typically part of their job, as well as picking locks on doors or chests. However, their main job was to ensure that the party did not constantly find themselves walking into kill zones. Because their job often required stealth, and maintaining some distance from the rest of the party, this role was almost universally held by attackers, since the healer or defender getting separated from the group could potentially cause the entire party to die.

The Survivor role was also sometimes called the ‘what is it and how do I kill it’ role. Analyzing and identifying enemy strengths and weaknesses, figuring out which attacks worked and which didn’t, recognizing potential dangers, and so on. However, the Survivor role also included things like ‘can I eat this’ and ‘what do I need to do to set up camp in this terrain’, amongst other things. Basically, all the things you absolutely needed to know in order to keep from getting killed when you were in a sticky situation.

The ‘Talking’ role was more than just talking, of course. Other names for it were the ‘Social’ or ‘Face’ roles. Basically, this was the negotiator of the party, the one who bargained for a better deal in a contract, smoothed things over when authorities were upset with something the party did, seducing their way into a potential enemy’s good graces, or any number of other things that required someone personable to talk things out. While there was less call for this kind of role in a dungeon, obviously, it was still a vital role even for a party that did nothing but delve dungeons, since they still had to do things outside the dungeon.

As for the Utility role, that was typically the ‘everything else’ kind of individual. Useful (but nondamaging) spells like Flight fit this role, as did people who could make or repair equipment in the field. People who could solve puzzles in a dungeon fit in here, as well. Basically, the Utility role was all those little things that people didn’t think of as being important until you needed them and didn’t have them. However, it also included people who could (with a bit of magic or gear) easily be a backup for one of the other roles, allowing for better versatility.

All these roles, combat and noncombat alike, were required to have a successful adventuring party. And you generally wanted at least some kind of backup, in case the Demon God Murphy (who I was only somewhat surprised to find actually existed now, thanks to the System) got involved, and caused things to spiral out of control, and someone getting taken out of commission. According to the general consensus on Earth, and in the galaxy at large, six was a good number to ensure that you had someone to cover each role, and someone to back them up if they went down.

So why only six, and not more people? Well, even without dungeons putting in Dungeon Laws to keep armies from just rolling over them, like I did against the Golden Host, there were practical reasons. The larger a group was, the more upkeep it required. Food, shelter, maintaining gear, and so on. That meant you needed more resources, but were splitting the resources you brought in more ways. And the XP they got from killing monsters went down the more people were in a group. At a certain point, the group was just too big to be effective, and usually split into smaller groups.

That was actually how the first Adventurer’s Guilds came to be, according to the System. A large group got too big to be sustainable on its own, and so they broke into smaller groups, who remained allied with each other, sharing information, and backing each other up when needed. This proved to be effective, and so it was repeated elsewhere, and eventually the Guilds, as they were known throughout the galaxy, were born.

Bringing that back around to dungeons, what was the difference between a Raid, and an army just steamrolling everything in front of them? Two things, typically. First, was size. A raid was usually somewhere between twelve and forty-two people, not counting pets, summons, and that kind of thing. It got a little fuzzy when you dealt with necromancers, summoners, and the like, since at higher levels they could be a whole raid group on their own, but that was generally how the numbers went.

The second thing was that Raids in a dungeon only happened on designated Raid floors. Sure, sometimes you had a dungeon that was a Raid Dungeon, but those were special types. Basically, they were a rare dungeon evolution when breaking into a new tier. But Raid Floors were something that any dungeon could implement, if they wanted to.

But why would a dungeon make a Raid floor? Why not just keep on doing what they’re doing? There were plenty of reasons for it, honestly, but the biggest reason was that dungeons that had ‘woken up’ understood the need to have things actually pulling people in, and encouraging them to dive to the deepest depths. Having new and different challenges as you descended the dungeon helped keep people’s interest, especially since, with those new challenges, new rewards were usually available.

Which also explained why adventurers joined up to take on Raid floors. Yes, the dangers they faced were likely far, far too much for any adventurers to take on, even as a normal party, unless they vastly out-scaled the power level of the floor (and that was only possible in dungeons where the monsters did not scale with the power of the adventurers who faced them), but the treasures, both in items and in raw materials, were always worth the danger. Depending on how skilled a group of raiders were, a single Raid could set them up with enough coin that they would be able to live a comfortable life, and not need to do any adventuring for a whole year. Not a luxurious life, but a comfortable one, with a roof over their heads and food on the table, with enough left over to have some entertainment.

Of course, that did assume they didn’t just use most of it to repair and improve their gear, so they could advance to the next challenge. Adventurers didn’t become adventurers because they were looking for a simple, relaxed life. People who were happy and content with their status quo did not go out risking their lives killing monsters, after all.

As for why I was going to be putting a raid in the dungeon? That much was simple. I was going to be the first dungeon on Earth to have a raid floor. And it would be a raid that could stand up to any of the ones that were found in the wider galaxy.

I just needed to craft a story that would tie it in with the last few floors. Something that would make people remember it, and talk about it wherever they went. Something like a battle for control of the city itself, for instance.