The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, Chapters 1 & 2

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Thank you very much to Michael for commissioning this episode! 
We're starting in on the 4th floor, and it's clearly going to be really fucking hectic based on these first two chapters! I'm delighted that our friends are getting personal spaces though, and I'm really interested in what is going to happen with Katia. Hekla, where are you?
Thanks so much to you all for listening, and I will see you soon with a new episode!
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl Book three, The Dungeon Anarchists Cookbook,
chapters one and two. In these chapters, well, Mordecai is

(00:26):
now a toad. We have a woman who doesn't seem
super committed to the group, but we've got to deal
with her anyway. And we also have a whole new
landscape that we're going to be dealing with. And I'm
not just talking about the subway. I'm talking about our
little rooms. I'm excited. Welcome to spoil Me. Welcome to

(01:07):
the show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you very much
to Michael for commissioning this episode. Yeah, you guys, I
know that I am not alone in this. Whenever I
am playing a game and there comes a point where
I get little accessories that I can like you know,

(01:28):
personalize or do anything like decorative or even my loot,
of course, I always get very very into that portion
of the game in a way that can be almost
a game of its own. And there was a point

(01:48):
in my life where I felt like a little bit
of a way about when I would get distracted, and
I say distracted in quotes because I think a lot
of people in the past have tree did that preoccupation
as a distraction from the real game. But I have
matured enough that I realize games don't have a way

(02:11):
that you're supposed to enjoy them or play them. You're
meant to just have a good time. And if my
having a good time is decorating my house in Skyrim,
well fuck off. That's how I have fun. You know.
If I like to go around in the meadows collecting
ingredients to make a bunch of different potions more than

(02:31):
I like combat, who's going to stop me. So I
am weirdly excited about this because I don't know what
kind of I wanted to say regulations, but you know, limitations,
I guess is really a better word. I don't know

(02:53):
what it is in this game that like how far
we're gonna go with it, because the vibe I'm getting
at the outset is feeling a little bit Stardy valley
ish and Stardy Valley. It's a weird combo of you
can personalize a whole lot, but also there are particular limitations.

(03:15):
So this is just going to be something that I
know is going to continue to pique my interest and
I will probably talk about more than anybody else gives
a shit about. Apologies in advance, but also it's my podcast,
so huh huh, Rob is here. Hi, Rob forgot up
three times? Hello? Adhd Seraphim says, the sheer amount of

(03:37):
cozy games that are all about just building your own
house in town or show there's a large audience for
that being the focus. And yeah, it's you know, it's
a fun little thing for those of us who can't
afford to own property or decorate. I am fortunate in
that I do own property through my husband, and that

(03:57):
we have been able to decorate, but not of course
to the extent that I would like, which would include
a large pool, a jacuzzi, hot to probably some other
outdoor accoutrement. Anyway, so I the one tension here being gotcha,
Well we'll get there. I want to mention because I

(04:21):
think it was Rob you said like at the end
of the last episode that you weren't sure if in
the audio book it was going to be mentioned not
to try and figure out the landscape, and it was
not in the audiobook. I do see it here in
the kindle version. You the super awesome reader do not

(04:43):
need to understand the floors into intricacies in order to
understand or enjoy what is happening. Platform names and numbers
and colors are going to be flying by. It's okay
not to remember them. It only becomes important at the end.
There will be a map near the end of the
book to help you understand the endgame. Until then, enjoy
the ride and mind the gap. And yes, zomb is

(05:04):
really a color, which I'm interested also in that. But
I really have to say there has been a new
trend in like writing that I think is due to
people being self published a lot more that is about
the author engaging directly with their readers in prefaces like

(05:28):
this that I am a huge fan of. I just
really like that there is this one to one connection
that is I'm trying to think of exactly how I
want to phrase this, but it just feels like authors
have more personality when they're allowed to do this. And

(05:51):
it's such a small thing that you wouldn't really think
it would matter. And I guess it makes sense that
like the rise of these parasocial realig relationships would result
in this sort of thing. But there are a lot
of books that I wish at the outset explicitly said, Hey,
this whole thing here, don't worry about it. It's confusing

(06:14):
and you don't need to know. Do you know how
much time and energy that would have saved for me
on so many different things that I got like, really
distracted by. I cannot emphasize enough, y'all how much of
a difference it would have made for certain things if
I was just given a heads up about that to
begin with, you know what I'm saying. Anyway, I just

(06:38):
wanted to put that out there because I feel like
I would encourage more publishing houses to engage with this
type of pre content. There's another mystery series I read,
and she does a sort of like content warning thing
at the beginning, and she's always like, you know, you're
taking your risk reading anything, but there are some that phobias,

(07:03):
shamy things going on in here and all of that.
It can be very helpful to just have your mind
in the right place, you know. Oh my god, I'm sorry,
I uh just saw Henry in the chat say. If
you go to Matt Dinneman's Patreon, you can vote on
the fan boxes. The characters get amazing, amazing, Oh my god,

(07:25):
I love that he's actually incorporating this. That is genius.
That is really good. Okay, now I have to start, everybody,
you've got to start. So chapter one forty three quadrillion views,
six hundred and seventy seven trillion followers, and one one
hundred and fifty eight trillion favorites. Pretty good ratio there,

(07:49):
I would say. I was on a call with Patreon
the other day and they mentioned something about how any
creator has ratio of like your followers on your platforms,
about three percent of them are going to end up
being paying Patreon members, and I am at something like

(08:14):
seventy eight percent because I have so few followers, Like
everybody who follows me is a supporter already practically when
they do it, it's it's the whole way that Unspoiled
has become successful enough for me to scrape by has
kind of worked backward from how it tends to normally

(08:37):
work for a lot of podcasts, and I still haven't
really figured out why it is that it works that way.
But I haven't even cracked a thousand followers on Instagram,
you know, and I have like five hundred and something patrons,
So you know, I realized that's fifty percent, but it
was less before. Anyway, I am really interested in the

(08:58):
fact that we are going to be doing subway, cars, tunnels,
all of this. I would love to know what inspired
the choice to do this. Is there another game that
has something like this in it that he thought, Hey,
that'd be fun. Is this something that like just he thought,
what a great setting in general, because it gives so

(09:19):
many opportunities. But overall, I feel like this acute sense
of anxiety and dread and claustrophobia just at the idea
of it that I think is fantastic, because the other
settings have felt weirdly kind of comforting, and I know

(09:42):
that sounds weird, but like the similarities to Skyrim do
make it feel almost cozy in my mind. And this
is getting across the vibe of the first dungeon more.
I think the first floor, where it was just hallways,
but doing it in a more creative way. So I

(10:04):
we get the description of this and that the next
stop of the car, and they all have to one
get dressed and two Doughnut specifically because she's that character actor.
She has to pick a new class every floor. And
it's sort of interesting because what happens is she chooses

(10:25):
a new class, but the old spell that she has
I think it's a spell doesn't go away the way
that they expected it to. Let's see, I'm trying to
find the uh here it is. It's an unintended benefit.
A lot of these rarer classes weren't available because she

(10:47):
didn't meet the minimum requirements. But as her stats increase,
the classes she offered on each level will be better.
There's another benefit I hadn't anticipated. She received a level
five negotiation skill with that Artist Dally class before you
guys left the third floor. She'd raise the skill to
level seven, and when she lost the class, the five
levels went away, but she retained the two she'd received,

(11:09):
so it bumped itself up to four on its own.
And Carla's like, wait a minute, is that supposed to happen?
That seems like a bug, And He's like, I think
it might be, so don't say anything. And I'm wondering
how long they'll be able to keep that going. And

(11:32):
from now on we should keep an eye out for
classes with rare spells. If she levels the spell at
least once, then I think she'll keep it pretty dope.
So I'm going to kind of like jump ahead, because
there's a lot of sort of getting ourselves situated and
trying to figure out where the next mob is going
to be, YadA, YadA, YadA. And we have this moment where,

(11:56):
because Katya is four times the constitution of Carl, she
is going to have to precede him into the train
car ahead because they don't know what's going to be
in there. And it's obvious that even though she understands
her stats make this reasonable, that's as she puts her job,

(12:18):
she doesn't want it. She doesn't like doing this, and
I mean, it's frustrating, but I also can't really be
mad at her. You know, I don't want to be
first through any of the doors in this fucking game either,
you know, come on, I want to get annoyed, and

(12:38):
I just kind of it falls flat. It falls flat.
So they go in car after car there's nothing there.
And finally the train begins to slow down and Dona
is like, there are a lot of monsters coming up.

(13:00):
They see these weird baby demons called drex It's they
are very very unpleasant sounding. It starts off with like
everybody loves babies, right, what kind of asshole does love babies,

(13:20):
and I was just like, slowly raise his hand. I
find a rare few babies cute. Most of them I
find a little bit repulsive. And I'm sure were I
to have my own child that would go away. I'm
sure I would fall in love with it, whatever, whatever.

(13:43):
But mostly all I can see is like this waste generator,
you know, It's just it throws up, it peas, it poops,
it screams, and it's very very delicate, needs to be
watched at all times. Like everything that a baby is

(14:04):
is just the opposite of what I want to deal with. Ever,
and I see that first before I actually see their
cute little chruby cheeks, you know. And sometimes, let's be honest, guys,
babies are just not that cute. Sometimes babies are real
weird looking. It's fine, but yeah, I have a lot

(14:28):
of friends who, you know, have been having kids over
the past few years. And there are some that I
follow and they I see their kids' pictures and I'm
just like, oh. And then there's some that they post
their kids' pictures and I'm like the and I genuinely
I'm not exaggerating. I remember scrolling the other day and
a friend's kid came up and I literally went uh
because the kid is just not cute at all. So yeah,

(14:50):
don't like babies and demons that are babies. It sounds
like the worst combo. Think you no, no, no. And
then there are these new monsters jick, let's see jicken inky.
I hope I'm saying that right. And basically it's another
case of if you don't fuck with them, they won't

(15:11):
fuck with you. But they don't find this out until
too late, when they have already fucked with them, so
they're now in for it. Those are actually on the train.
The others are outside of the train, So we have
a combo of beings that we are going to have
to deal with here. Both of the creatures wore tattered

(15:36):
and threadbare double breasted suits with gold buttons. Under the
dark suits were white, blood spattered dress shirts. One had
a bow tie. Both wore conductor style hats with golden
letters across that said janitor. The one without the bow
tie had a pin back button on his breast that
read how may I hurt you? I don't know why

(15:57):
that got me, but laughed out loud, I don't know
why it's not that good a joke. It just caught
me so off guard, I think, so uh. We have
Donut doing her usual magic missile, and then Mongo leaps
half the length of the car and lands on them

(16:20):
feet first. And Mongo had decapitated the monster and was
in the process of swallowing the head. My target hit
the ground. I stepped onto its chest, caving it in.
You have received a temporary five percent bonus to Dexterity
and Constitution thanks to your team's mascot, which is this
little thing that's built in now with Mango. I love

(16:41):
this and it will be very handy. So now we
can focus entirely on these fucking baby things. And what
Carl has forgotten is that he didn't use his pedicure
kit within the last like twenty four hours. So eventually

(17:03):
his foot wind's up in one of their mouths, and
he fully like, lets it happen, because he just assumes
I'll be fine, And then the baby sinks its teeth
in and he almost hits the fucking ceiling because it
is so painful, which foot injuries are particularly awful. We
all know it sucks balls. It's part of why a

(17:25):
portion of Die Hard with him walking over broken glass
is like agonizing to watch and then him sitting at
the sink pulling the glass out of his foot, like
so yeah, that one felt like I in the I
felt it in my gut when it was described. You know,

(17:47):
let's see alarm module. Each of them were tiny cubes
about the size of a pair of dice. Two items
for the price of one. A favorite of the paranoid
and the rich. You can use this module to add
an alarm element to a trap your building, or it
can be used as a ready to go trap for
those who can't be asked to sit down and make
their own. When triggered, it will play a very loud song,
and by very loud I mean Norwegian black metal loud.

(18:09):
You may program the song at a sapper's table. If
you do not or are unable to pick an alarm tone,
a random culturally important song from the past US Billboard
Hot one hundred will be chosen. As soon as he
said that, I was like, Oh, this is gonna be great.
What's he gonna pick. The first song that we're getting

(18:31):
for this book is Furglicious, which, honestly I know the song,
but it's not a song that I know to be
able to sing it off the top of my head,
and I am just imagining what it would be like
to watch this on screen where Ferglicious just starts blasting
in the midst of this scene. There are a lot

(18:54):
of movies that do the thing where I'm gonna ironically
play a really upbeat, cutesy maybe song for kids even
during this extremely bloody, awful like mowing down of people.
You know, I can't remember the name. There was a

(19:14):
movie where it was like a young kid who was
a fighter and they play like some lollipop song while
she basically slaughters like eight people in this small room.
And I remember, even at the time being like, oh boy,
they're doing this. This is so played out. I can't

(19:35):
believe they're doing this. And it was years after I
first felt it was played out that they kept doing it.
Kick Ass, that's the one, and Michael says, hit Girl,
and yeah, yeah, yeah, kick Ass, it's the exact movie.
Thank you. I love the fact that I described something

(19:57):
that's like a little generic, but you guys like knew
what I mean. And I'm wondering did we all have
that reaction to that song playing, because it just it
felt I'm trying to be like subversive. You know. It
just felt like we've done this and you really think
you're being clever right now, and it's not so anyway.

(20:18):
This doesn't feel like that to me because it's being
explicitly said by the AI that this is what's happening.
So that's sort of like lamp shading it in a
way that I think works. Actually, Sometimes lamp shading stuff
just feels like the author being like, I know, I know,
but let me do it, you know. And then there

(20:38):
are times where the lamp shading it's like yeah, oh yeah,
it's about to happen, and that's what this feels like,
you know. So I am really looking forward to, like
if we get to use this again, what this is
gonna play or you know, maybe it won't, maybe it
won't come up again. Maybe this will be the only time.
I am personally hopeful we'll come across this tool a

(21:00):
few more times, because I really would have some choices
of songs to choose, and of course my instant mental
notes jump over to like hip hop and rap pop,
but it would also be kind of fun if we
did something that was like kiss from a Rose, something

(21:21):
really slow paced and sort of like a love ballad
or something, because that would also feel really weird. In
the moment, all I'm saying is this is a full
of potential, and I hope that we get more of it. Okay,
So I ran to the far door and put my

(21:43):
ear against it. Sure enough, the rabbit babies were screaming
and attacking the door on this side too, but they
hadn't broken into the gangway yet. So he sets the
trap a duration until the heat death of the universe.
I had four options, trigger now, set delay, set target,
and remove trap. I left it alone and turned toward

(22:04):
the door in the janitor car. Now we would know
if they breached the door behind us, and the spikes
would hopefully keep them off that door for a short time.
And I love when he runs past Mango and says,
stop eating gross shit. You're gonna make yourself sick again.
Mongo grunted and followed me back to the door. That
felt like Mongo one hundred percent understood him. Is that

(22:25):
just me? Like? I feel like Mongo's intelligence is increasing,
like he's understanding better than he did. I am here
for it. So Mordecai is saying, uh, I just watched
a train pull up and two crawlers got off. There
were mobs on the train, but they were magically prevented

(22:47):
from getting off. So don't disembark until you get to
a transfer station. And I love Carl. Yeah, thanks for
the tip. The loud speakers crackled. Coming up on Mora
station number eighty two, home to the Psycho stickers, Watch
out for those guys, the announcer chuckled. Next stop is

(23:09):
the transfer station number eighty three, where one may access
the Yellow Line and the Nightmare Express. After that is
through south the station number eighty four. Thank you for
riding the Red line. I want to know how much
of this this author had figured out himself and how
much he was just picking random shit while he taught.
While he wrote you know so yeah, this is when

(23:32):
he gets his foot eaten and has to take a
health potion and then for Delicious starts to play. Uh,
we don't have time. We're running aft toward the back.
We're going about going in about fifteen seconds. When I
say go, we run, and I love Conscious says, how's
that going to work? I don't understand, and Doughnut yells

(23:53):
just go with it. When Carl says to do something.
We do it. Also, I love this song every time
we get a little reminder of how into like pop
culture stuff. Donut is. It's like a little a little
tasty little tree. It's like I can rapped a little candy.

(24:13):
It's like a little where there's original. I don't know,
I love it, but yeah, just it's it's a combo
for that. It's her loving fer Delicious, which is just
so unbranded and being like, bitch, do what he says,
which she's much nicer than that about it, but that's
the vibe of it is just like he knows what
he's fucking doing. Listen to him. Yes, thank you for

(24:34):
the vote of confidence. Donut correct And also, Katya, please
if you don't have a plan, just do the thing
like this is. This is always my approach is if
somebody is telling me to do something a certain way
and I don't have any good reason to not do
it that way. If I don't have my own plan,

(24:56):
if I don't have a particular like outcome, I can
immediately see that's going to be negative. I'll just do it.
If it's an emergency situation like this, fucking do it.
I don't need to know yet we'll have the part
where it's figured out later. It's fine. So what he

(25:18):
does is casts protective shell which stays in place, and
I was thinking it was going to stay in place
on the train, but it stays place in the tunnel.
So the train passes through it and winds up mashing
all of the creatures into the back. And so once

(25:39):
they actually like have to get off the train, they
have to walk through all of these body parts that
are I mean, it's it's really really gross. And then
there's also this like hedgehog Ogre. Let's see, Car sixteen
was completely filled with blood. Body parts were splattered around

(26:01):
the seats and walls where the direcs had gotten stuck.
Each corpse had dropped about five gold pieces. The Ogre creature,
apparently called a psycho Sticker, had been so obliterated it
didn't even register as an X on the map. That
is something. You fucked it up so bad. It's not
even a corpse. It's too many pieces to count. That's

(26:25):
really something. And Kotcha is like, oh my god, this
is really gross. I've never seen anything like this. And
Cupcake is or donut, why do you call her cupcake?
Where do you even get that? I don't hate it.
I'll say that cupcake can be like donuts alter ego maybe,
But she just tells her to get used to it,

(26:47):
which is good advice. Honestly, I'm wondering her saying, like,
I've never seen anything like it. What was it like
working with Hekla. Obviously she didn't have to do much
of the work the way that she's acting, but I
would think it would get pretty fucking bloody with Hecla. Also,
I'm wondering about that anyway. Do you think the trains

(27:14):
get more and more filled with monsters the further it goes,
Katya asked, surely they have to get off somewhere. That's
a good question. And it is like, this was around
the time I started to think there is going to
have to be a huge death toll to this floor.

(27:36):
I just felt the solution that Karl came up with
with the protective shell is very clever in a way
that a lot of people aren't clever. And if that
is the only way to get out of certain situations
is to be kind of ingenious, then that's gonna be

(28:00):
the end of plenty of folks out there. Also, there
had been a mention of like having a momentum based
attack being really advantageous, which now we're understanding what that
is probably about. So let's see. I lean forward to
examine the track below. It looked like a regular subway path. Mango,

(28:26):
don't you'll get zapped or squished? Probably both. The pet
grunted and turned away. I'm saying, he knows, he fucking knows.
Red Line trains approximately every ten to fifteen minutes. There
was a single dot on the line, about a third
of the way from the bottle. On the bottle bottom,
it was labeled you are here station eighty three. I

(28:48):
felt the haptic buzz of my escape plan still activating.
The map became alive. Additional words appeared. The remaining dots
populated the lines, starting at station eleven and ending at
station four thirty five. It appeared that the trains only
traveled one way, ascending up the line, which was kind
of weird. If it was a second train that went

(29:10):
from high to low, it wasn't indicated here. The transit
stations were now circled on the map. They were not
at regular intervals, but there were quite a few of them.
In addition, every five stations had red squares over the dots,
but it didn't say what that meant. A box sat
in the left corner of the map. It read safe
rooms appear at all transfer stations. Stairwells appear at station's

(29:34):
number twelve, twenty four, thirty six, forty eight, and seventy
two on any colored line. The map didn't give any
more details in order to give the names of the
other lines at this station, though I knew from the
announcement there was also a Yellow Line platform and a
Nightmare Express platform somewhere around here. So again, the advantages
that he has with his abilities being able to get

(29:56):
more information from this map, how many people don't have
like that? And how fucked would you be regarding a
lot of information, you know, Yeah, this was really Once
you find out later how many people are dead, I

(30:17):
was sort of like, that just makes sense. This feels
like a meat grinder. This feels like it is designed
to kill off a lot of people. And I know
that it's weird to say that, because like that's the
point of every floor, but it feels that's explicitly what
we're trying to do, rather than that be a result

(30:39):
of the floor being entertaining, you know what I mean.
So they find a safe room and there's a guy,
a little mole man named Limp Richard, which just truly,
what are you doing? So restrain yourself? And I love

(31:02):
mullmen and mule women actually just call themselves men and women,
and quite frankly, it's exhausting. So he has stuff to sell,
but they're like, we need to rest first, and Mordecai
appears when they come in, and he used to be
this gorgeous incubust and now he is a toad dude,

(31:27):
grolk infantry and Karl calls him a frog and I
immediately was like, not a fucking frog, and Mordecai says,
don't call a real Grolk a frog if you meet one,
and I was just really glad to have him sat straight.
You know, I have this reaction to certain things where

(31:50):
I feel like there is a very distinct difference and
everyone pretends there isn't and there really really is enough already.
It's the same as I feel about turtle and tortoise.
You know, they are different, they are different. Okay, so
uh this is when uh, he says, I no longer

(32:12):
get the daily updates or a newsletter, but I do
receive notifications of court decisions. You guys got screwed, but
at least you're alive. Shit, I said, looking at the
player counter. We had three hundred and eighty nine thousand,
four hundred and forty one remaining crawlers. That was several
hundred thousand dead since the last time I've looked. What happened,

(32:36):
I asked, horrified. I only know what I saw on
the recap episode. There were several group quest events just
like yours, happening across the over city during the last
couple of days. Usually the third floor is relatively easy.
They generally try to have six or seven hundred thousand
mikeus to the fourth floor. The factions aren't going to
be happy if the crawlers are culled too much. By

(32:57):
the time the sixth floor opens, it's usually twenty days
and you only have ten. Expect the AI to push
back with better gear and higher awards, especially after that
veto Now, I am still I know that he says
that there were like these big quests and that probably
got rid of a lot of people, but I'm still
putting it down that this is a meat grinder. I

(33:18):
don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe this isn't his, but
it feels like they were in immediate danger in a
way that they weren't when they started out. On when
he first gets dumped in the game at the very
beginning of the first book, he gets attacked pretty quickly,
right so fair I'm trying to remember exactly what he

(33:40):
runs into on the second floor, and I feel like
he gets a little time to orient himself before there's
an attack. The third floor, they're able to like chill
a bit and explore before they get involved in anything.
This just felt like it was a real abrupt, sudden attack,
you know. So now we have to buy personal rooms,

(34:12):
and Donut loves doing the negotiation part, and it's really
hard to watch because she's talking to a Bobka named Wyndita,
and as things go on, Donuts starts to really get
like fixated on getting her away just to prove that
she can, and at one point is trying to convince

(34:33):
this poor Bobka to pay towards Donuts room. And I
was so relieved when we don't have to do this, guys,
because I was like, this is not going to play well.
And that's what also Carl says a little bit later,
so they're not supposed to really negotiate, but there is

(34:56):
a little bit of a streak that they're in there
that they can negoti on. And while Dona is distracted
with that, Carl is starting to go through some of
the boxes that he has, and one of them has
New Achievement. They like me, they really like me. You
are one of the first crawlers to have achieved five

(35:18):
hundred trillion followers. You have a platinum fan box, so
thirty hours fans decide what's going to be in the box,
then new achievement. The early bird gets to squirm. You
went down a set of stairs more than six hours
prior to the levels collapse, and that does not get
him a reward, and then error reward, an achievement removed

(35:41):
by syndicate court order, and then Huck Aquaman, you've done
something so spectacularly controversial courts and lawyers had to get involved.
The end result was my decision being overturned. You've received
a platinum. It's not my fault. You fish headed assholes
roperly program your quest box and he shows Mordecai what's

(36:05):
in it, and Mordecai is like, this isn't actually that unusual.
But then once he sees what's in the box, that
is when he sort of takes a step back and
is like, oh, I didn't think that it would even
be allowed to do this. This is almost as good

(36:28):
as a celestial box. This is a huge fuck you.
So there's a few things. The first thing that we
get that sort of explains why nobody was recognizing Carl
as the magistrate is enchanted necklace of the hate bourgeois.

(36:51):
It is considered a great honor to be the custodian
of this burden. Each jewel encrusted upon this charm represents
a settlement owned and controlled by the bearer still maintains
a settlement's jewel. Upon the collapse of the level, the
holder of this necklace will permanently receive a tax stipend
every ten days from that settlement based on size and population.
In addition, each gem will impart additional benefits based on

(37:13):
the town. In order to upgrade this necklace, one must
first conquer a large sized settlement. Upgraded necklaces will also
upgrade all existing gems. And he's got a poor sapphire
that brings plus five to Dexterity level five talent strike
and four hundred and thirty two gold every ten days,

(37:35):
which isn't bad, you know, that's kind of dope. I
am interested if this is going to create a conquering
sort of energy in Carl, where now he's going to
be interested in taking down different villages that he wouldn't
otherwise have done it with just to get this accomplishment.
But I don't know. We'll see, so let's see. Oh,

(37:59):
the silver quad boxes each have a thousand gold coins
and a group of scrolls. He gets more confusing Fog
and heel, which he's really happy about because confusing Fog
played a large role in them being able to succeed
in some other attacks that they had to deal with.
And then the Platinum Tyrants box also comes with ten
thousand gold as well as that necklace, and then coupon

(38:22):
for a free personal space upgraded to Level three, coupon
for a free Tier one environmental upgrade, coupon for a
free Tier one crafting table, coupon for a table upgrade,
and all of those are times too, except for the
Personal space one, but they each got one of those.
So he sees that donut hasn't noticed. She hasn't opened

(38:49):
her boxes yet, but Katya has and she's clearly talking
to Hecla about it. And when he brings this up
to Mordecai, Mordecai is like, it's fine. You know a
lot of this that she can use, she'll just take
with her. But if we are going to be able
to get those upgrade to gets off her, it would
be great. I really really want those, actually, and I'm

(39:11):
interested what he intends as far as how they could
get them. Does he want to trick her and trade them?
Does he want to kill her? I don't think killing
her is like first on his list, but I have
to assume Mordecai can be kind of cutthroat, and maybe
it's not off the list. I don't know. But he

(39:33):
explains all of those upgrades are really expensive, so in
addition to the loss of income from the acquisitions, they
get a small cut of all dungeon purchases. It's a
tradition for your sponsors to make you by your own
safe space, but to then buy you some upgrades in
your first loop box. By preempting the sponsors, the AI

(39:55):
is giving you a leg up and is saving your
future sponsors a lot of money, I mean a, thus
freeing them up to give you better stuff. And we
tune back in and when Dita is almost in tears
at Donut trying to like basically swindle her out of everything,

(40:16):
and they finally tell her, open your box and check
it out. And I was really worried about how these
coupons were going to work, you guys, because what I
thought was that it was going to be something like groupon. Now,
I have nothing against the concept of groupon in terms of,

(40:40):
you know, something that gives you a discount. If a
business is looking to drive new customers, they are you know,
getting people through the door by offering something at a
discount for their first time, and then if they like it,
they will do it again. But the fact of what
groupon actually has become is they take such a huge

(41:01):
portion of the income from that already discounted service that
a lot of businesses wind up with almost nothing. And
depending on the type of business, the person who then
provides you that service is paid so little that it's
almost a slap in the face. So, for example, a

(41:23):
massage therapist would charge let's say if you're at a spa,
it would be one hundred and twenty five dollars for
an hour massage. Now right away, the spa is probably
taking half of that. Right So, let's say our therapist
gets like around sixty bucks. If there is a group

(41:50):
on and somebody comes in and they get that service
at eighty dollars, what you would think. What you would
think is that the business is like, okay, well we
split the usual price half and half, so this eighty
dollars will split half and half. But it doesn't work

(42:14):
that way because one it's going through groupon, so they
take I think somewhares around ten percent right off the top,
and then oftentimes the business will still take their standard
sixty bucks out of it, even though the price was different,
they have it as their standard. So the actual therapist

(42:36):
winds up with like twenty dollars when they would normally
make triple that for an hour of labor. And I
know that it seems like it's only an hour of
work and you're getting twenty bucks. That's more than a
lot of us get for an hour. But massage therapy
is a really physical job and requires a lot of
schooling and training if you're doing it right, and so

(42:59):
that is absolutely a huge ripoff. My mom is a
massage or was a massage therapist. She has since retired
from it because it's so physical and she couldn't do
it anymore. And there is also like when I was
getting married the first time I found a group on
for a sprays tand and I went in and the

(43:20):
woman I showed her the group on, and she got
so angry, not at me, but she was like, I
have removed my business from group on no less than
four times, and it keeps putting me back up and
I do not want it there. And she's like, I'm
sorry to even say this to you. I'm not trying
to taint your experience, but it's just really difficult because

(43:43):
it's such a steep discount, we can't afford to do it,
and I've tried to remove it and it isn't working.
And I knew she wasn't trying to fuck it up
for me, but it did make me feel really bad
at the time, you know, like what was I supposed
to do? It was unprofessional of her to tell me,
but it did also kind of like help for me
to know that's something that can happen and that's how

(44:04):
it works. And apparently a lot of these middleman sites
are like this. There's a really popular event planner in
New York City who has a podcast and she shared
how she put her own business up on the not
and she tried to take it down, and the not

(44:26):
only would not let her take it down, but they
used AI to change her own business description to sound
like she does certain services that she doesn't do, or
to change her overall like the vibe of the post
because she's trying to go over something that's a lot
more sophisticated, and it made it really kind of playful

(44:48):
and informal. It changed the fucking actual text of her
about section like that's insane, and then wouldn't let her
delete it. So anyway, all I'm saying is I know
that these like third party sites feel like you're getting
a real steal or you're finding information in an easier way.
They always are fucking with the business, though it's always

(45:12):
the business that winds up paying for it somehow. Same
thing with like grub hub, you know, anything that's like
a meal delivery service, they will take such a cut
that in the end that business like there's all kinds
of weird adjustments that they will make at certain hours
of the day, and all of a sudden, this business
is winding up getting like, you know, twelve percent of

(45:36):
the profit they normally were getting. So anyway, I just
I kind of was worried, guys that it was going
to be like that. And it turns out that dungeons
more fair actually than our our current system is in
some ways, which is really it's really saying something. It's

(45:57):
really saying something. So oh yeah, sorry, I'm just seeing
all of this chat here. Seraphimsy is by this point
you got to figure everyone either has some kind of
broken stuff on their own or as total scrubs who
aren't going to make more enough money and sponsorships to
be worth keeping around. And given the way costs likely scale,

(46:20):
the level three is likely worth way more than three
level ones. I agree. This is the understanding that I
have about a lot of the leveling up. It's not
just like you know, the number, it's not the number
one times the level. It seems like it's like exponentially more.
And Michael brings up, doesn't that happen with door dash

(46:41):
and uber eats restaurants having problems trying to take themselves
out of the app YEP, and the other thing that happens,
and I'll end this ranch shortly, I swear, But I
didn't know this until literally like a week ago. You guys,
if you ever come across a restaurant that has like
kind of a fun, offbeat name and they're just making
food that's sort of ordinary, you know, fried chicken sandwich

(47:03):
or stay fahetas or whatever, check out the address for
the business itself, because I watched a TikTok where she
goes through all of these fucking restaurants and it's the Chilies,
it's Arby's, it's Olive Garden, it's Burger King, and they've

(47:27):
just made up a name and put themselves in as
if they are a small business to make people think
they're supporting a non chain, which I think should be
fucking illegal. I mean, it's basically like shell companies and
money laundering at a micro scale. I don't what. It's

(47:50):
just our whole economy is based on bullshit. It's such
a joke. And then we act like, oh, well you
can't do that. Yeah we can. We can literally do
whatever we want as long as we have enough money.
That's all there is to it. So anyway, it just
makes me really really angry. It just makes me really

(48:13):
really angry. So let's talk about talent strike. Birds have
ugly feet, disgusting feet. Really still, there's something sensual about
the side of a hawk swooping down upon its prey,
talent's out and slashing. This whole thing is read by

(48:34):
the audiobook narrator with a real tone to it, as
you can imagine, turns the side of your bare foot
into a fast moving slashing weapon, increasing the damage against
opponents by up to level of skill times your regular
kicking damage for level of skill seconds. Each kick using

(48:55):
this skill has a two percent chance to insta kill
spell evisceerate. This melee skill has a cool down of
five minutes. Higher levels of this skill increase damage duration
and chance of casting inviscery. A level fifteen of this
skill will result in talent Strike being permanently active. That

(49:18):
is badass. This is going to be very handy. I'm
super interested in seeing how he uses this. It's also
going to be a really weird skill to like practice
because the side of your foot is just such. It's

(49:39):
not the normal way that we tend to use our
feet as weapons. You know, Normally we're going for the
ball of the foot or the heel of the foot
places that we can put a ton of pressure, and
the side of our foot is a vulnerable area, you know,
So learning to use the side of our foot is

(50:00):
I feel like it's gonna require some odd movement that
it's going to take a while to get used to.
And maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe it's not super vulnerable,
but it feels to me a layman like that's just
you know, I don't know. Seraphim says, unless the sharp

(50:22):
edge of the side points down, I guess, so I
was assuming that it was coming out the side, like
you know, if James Bond has a knife built into
the sole of his shoe, it comes out parallel with
the sole of his foot. But maybe it doesn't. I
don't know. Bang bro lol adds both fire and electrical

(50:49):
damage to any currently equipped item five minutes plus one
minute per level of spell requires five minute cool down.
May not be cast on flesh. Actually it can be
cast on your own flesh, but I really wouldn't recommend. It.
May inflict burn and shock on targets. Can also be
used to cook hot dogs and other items, also mix fries.

(51:15):
It can work on his gauntlet, and Mordecai is, like,
your foot's in vulnerable a lot of the time, so
you probably could do it, but I don't know, you
better not. And then Donut she opens hers and she
sees the coupons. She'd also received the fan box, but

(51:38):
other than that, she hadn't gotten as many boxes as
I had, and I was wondering if that was going
to be something. She notices and starts to feel a
little bit of a way about. But she gets a
new tiara that has white stones in it instead of
purple stones. Enchanted tiara of Mana Genita, made in honor
of the lost children of the world, because nothing helps

(52:01):
soothe the tears of grieving parents like watching someone else
dress up all fancy plus three intelligence increased ability to
detect mobs on the map, removes automatic hostility by worshippers
of Mana Genita, who is an obscure goddess. And I
it's like it doesn't do as much as her other tiara,

(52:26):
but it also isn't like threatening, so I'm for it.
I love the fact that we have all decided Donut
needs a tiara at all times, like, okay, So her
tiara was taken. Well, what's the new one gonna be.
It's not even a question if she gets a new one,
it's just well, what kind of tiarro will it be?
This is the kind of energy I would like to

(52:47):
also carry. I deserve my tr I Actually, I'll be
honest with you, guys. I have literally three tiaras in
the room with me right now. One of them I
wear when I do squats with my barbell because it
helps to keep your head up, your chin up, because
people have a tendency to tuck their chin down and
curve their spine on a squat, and wearing a tihara

(53:11):
it keeps that mitigated somewhat. So that's my tip for
the day for your posture doing squats. Okay, let's see
the cats crunched up her face? What do you think, Mordecai?
Should I read it or maybe we can sell it?
And Carl is like, she's asking opinions before she reads

(53:34):
a like, oh, well, isn't she growing up fast? And
she gets a spell called hole that makes a temporary
hole on any surface, depending on the level you are,
like that determines how thick the surface is that you
can actually get through and Katchia got an arm bracer

(53:57):
that will turn into a shield, and her arm chained shape,
forming into what looked like a buckler sized glob of
blue polyester. Yeah, the shield is supposed to be metal,
I think, but when I activate it, it just looks like
the surrounding area. She reached down and wrapped on the
shield with her knuckles and it gave a metallic ring.

(54:18):
If I practice, I might be able to make it
look like anything. Mordecai says, I can change it shape too.
That shield has a shatter enchantment. Use it in conjunction
with your rush ability. And Carl says, I hadn't realized
exactly what you can do with that race. So if

(54:40):
you're wearing a helmet that's made out of metal, and
you reshape yourself to look like a normal human wearing
a bikini, you'll be able to make any part of
your body metal. I'm gonna be honest, guys, I have
no idea what he's talking about here. It just like
this wasn't making sense to me. Morde kind of says,

(55:02):
if she's ninety percent flesh and ten percent metal, she
can make herself look like a regular, unarmored human. But
what you perceive as her bikini or her feet or
her hands can really be the material from the helmet,
as long as it's ten percent and it's continuous. I
am not understanding this in relationship to like, it feels

(55:28):
like Carl knew more about what she could do with
it than we know as readers. For him to jump
to the conclusion that he jumps to, does that make sense?
It felt like we barely got any info and she's
just like it. When I activate it, it looks like the
surrounding area, and if I practice, I might be able

(55:50):
to make it look like anything. I don't. I don't
know it just it felt like he almost is it
like Carl is like too creer for me to handle.
Is that what it is? I don't know. Michael says
she can shift the helmet anywhere on her body she wants.

(56:10):
Rob says she can incorporate equipped items into her mask,
which she can shape shift. Oh oh, Michael says Rob
said it better. SERFM says no, seems pretty logical what
he came up with based on what was said. I honestly,
I am kind of getting it based on what Rob said,
but I feel like I'm not really getting it. Does that, Like,

(56:35):
I am having trouble imagining what it is. He's saying,
if you wear a helmet made out of metal, and
you reshape yourself to look like a normal human being
wearing a bikini, you'll be able to make any part
of your body metal. So then the helmet would disappear

(56:57):
because she made herself look like just a regular person
with the big without a helmet on, and so it's
she's pulled it into herself and I'm sorry, guys, Sarah.
And basically she's just a giant lump of body, and
whatever gear she has equipped, she can move around that
mass however she wants. Okay, I feel like maybe it's

(57:22):
the way that Carl describes this that feels the way
you guys are describing it is much simpler, And so
I think that's what I'm having trouble reconciling because Karl,
I feel maybe overcomplicated it in the way he delivered
his suggestion here. Anyway, Yeah, this is when he says

(57:45):
we need to get as much armor on you as possible.
He has new stats forty one plus three with when
Gauntlet formed Intelligence fifteen Constitution thirty four Dexterity twenty three,
Charisma twenty five and later on, and he distributes some
of his points and he's like, I need to do
more Dexterity, but I don't think that's going to be

(58:05):
as handy on this floor as other things. I This
is when we run into Katya and her not wanting
to use that particular coupon with them, and Mordecai having
to explain to her it's fine, you can keep the
upgrade ones. But and it seems like she's sort of

(58:28):
not almost like suspicious of Mordecai's explanation of things, but
she goes ahead and does it anyway. So this is
when they hand over their coupons to Wendida, and as
we find out later, this is actual money for her.

(58:49):
This is a huge, huge windfall. And by the time
that they have all purchased their personal spaces and upgrade
them it, she's like literally crying, it's ten thousand and
five thousand for each union, but it would only require

(59:11):
two of them. Here's what we're doing. Make sure you
get all this down. We are turning in all three
of these level threes, and then we're going to conjoin them,
which makes it a level five. If Katcha leaves, they'll
drop to level four. And yeah, she shows them the
upgrade options, and there's lots and lots of interesting options

(59:34):
depending on what you want to prioritize. And quests and
access to like job listings and stuff is a major
one that comes in a few different forms depending on
the types of quests you're interested in. But because they've
decided they're going to avoid quests this floor, they focus
on actual physical equipment a little bit more, and they

(59:58):
look at beds and he recommends the ultra stabilized bed,
so we only have to sleep for two hours now.
I was both fascinated and horrified at the idea. Yeah. Look,
I have frequently said, as somebody who has a lot
going on in their life that I enjoy, I wish

(01:00:20):
I didn't have to sleep, but I don't really mean it.
I resent having to take a break from things that
I like to do. But sleep is fucking necessary. It's
just it's necessary for like a whole different aspect of
our brain than we even fully understand about ourselves, you know.

(01:00:42):
And it may be that you feel rested in a
physical way, but are you you know, like dreaming is
supposedly defragging all kinds of subconscious thoughts and half formed
things in your head. If you really take eight hours
to do that and now you're only giving it two hours,

(01:01:04):
is it gonna function the same way? Is it? Like?
I don't know, I really don't. I feel like this
sounds like handy but is actually horrific. I don't know,
I don't know. I don't know. Uh So they get
an automatic shower, don't want the one like in the
production trailer, but they can't afford that, and then they

(01:01:26):
get an enchanted crafting studio. I love that the shower
lowers their detectability, and he writes, which meant we could
sneak around better, And I was like, what it means
is you aren't gonna stink, so people won't be able
to smell you because you're clean. Katchya also spent only
one of her coupons on a training room, which would

(01:01:47):
allow us to train for one hour a day on
any specific non magical spell we wanted. That's awesome. Eventually
there is a bomber's studio that he can get where
he can blow shit up, and it's fine. He can't
do that in the current one. But it's out there
as an option progressively. And if there's a kitchen option

(01:02:10):
which like the food you make in it has buffs,
there's stuff for Mango where he gets buffs as well.
There's just a lot of things in the future that
will be really really helpful to giving them an edge
on a variety of fronts. So they get an achievement
for being a homeowner, welcome to the neighborhood, and conjoin

(01:02:34):
personal space of team the Royal Court of Princess Donut.
I love it. And that is the end of chapter two.
So sorry, there's still people explaining Kachi's ability in some
ongoing ways. We'll get into. Seraphim says, let's hope the

(01:02:58):
sleep skipping machine doesn't turn them all into eyebooger monsters.
I love Doctor Who, but it really can be stupid
at times. I don't remember that one. Oh God, I'm
oh God, yeah, Doctor Who is? You guys know how
I feel about it. All right, I'm gonna wrap this
one up, but really really looking forward to reading more

(01:03:19):
and impatient for Tuesday, so I will see you all
next Tuesday. Cunts did lou motherfuckers? That was an Spoiled

(01:04:00):
Network podcast