Dungeon Crawler Carl: A LitRPG/Gamelit Adventure

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Crawlers who badmouth Borant Corporation or the Syndicate may find their experience being accelerated. Meaning they will face an endlessly spawning horde of monsters until they die horribly. This was such an entertaining audiobook. The world building, the crass and often times ridiculously dark humour and the plot all came together in this enchanting story. I’ve come to expect a level of just pure fun when it comes to books by Matt Dinniman, and I’m glad to say that the narrator also gave a spectacular performance and brought all the characters to life. The direction of the character development was justified in the impossibly difficult situations that Carl and Doughnut constantly find themselves in. It just gets worse. The Valtay "brain worms" inhabit other bodies, sometimes willing, sometimes not... Carl isn't sure what to make of them, but he actually gets sponsored by them.

Genre Savvy: Carl wants to loot the mayor's body, but Donut has seen horror movies before and doesn't want to sneak into the room full of sleeping monsters. Post Class Selection / Point Allocation (STR = Toe Ring + 3, / Gauntlet* + 3; CON = Shirt + 4, Ring + 1, Ring + 2, Boxers + 2) Skyfowl didn't have arms. Just feet and wings, like regular eagles. "Can you still, you know, do potion stuff in that body?" Katia was an underpowered, underleveled filler character in Hekla's party. Hekla just gathered as many women around herself as possible to turn her crossbow into a killing machine, but that left everyone else trailing behind. Katia's race and class were ... underwhelming in Hekla's view, so she tossed her to Carl and Donut as part of a larger plan. However, with their help, she developed into a strong character and a strong person, able to lead the way on the fifth and sixth floors. Where her Doppelganger race is initially difficult and painful for her to use, she rapidly becomes so adept at it that she can shift into many configurations with ease.Only a few dare venture inside. Once you’re in, you can’t get out. And what’s worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it’s game over. In this game, it’s not about your strength or your dexterity; it’s about your followers, your views. Your clout. It’s about building an audience and killing those goblins with style. Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Carl has a lot of problems with his ex-girlfriend Bea, but since she's dead he doesn't see the need to bring them up. Especially since she was essentially Donut's mother, and Carl really doesn't want to ruin Donut's memory of her by telling her about how she was planning to sell Donut as a breeder and replace her with a kitten. Turns out Donut knew the entire time. Also turns out Bea's not dead. Parental Incest: The only way for Vrah to be cured of her Enthusiastic Double Gonorrhea is to pass it on to someone else, but all the other mantids on the floor are dead. So her mother pays an exorbitant amount of money to manifest in the Dungeon as a shapeshifting deity, takes on a male mantis form, and relieves her. Then shapeshifts into a female mantis and starts pumping out baby mantises for revenge on Carl. The Crawlers agree that it's all kinds of messed up.

Contrived Coincidence: In-Universe, anything that's supposed to be random is actually subject to the (sadistic, murderous) whims of the AI. Hunter Iota points out that the odds of him "randomly" appearing right in front of Carl are pretty slim, and Quasar, when mentioning the Zerzura spell's random targeting, confirms that "when I say random, I mean in the worst possible area." Game Master: The Syndicate AI. It doesn't have completely arbitrary power, it has to be more or less fair to the crawlers, but since it can see everything that happens everywhere and can control loot, random encounters, and information, it can easily make or break someone's crawl. Too bad it's showing signs of becoming increasingly insane. With a foot fetish and a crush on Carl. Ultra-Stabilized, Size-adjustable, race-adjustable alleviating sleep apparatus: Good Rest bonus +10% all stats(*) Carl gets a lot of mileage out of exploiting the system rules. Sometimes exploits get patched, but other times they remain feasible. Even Evil Has Standards: One of the few things that is actually banned from the crawls is using "collected" children or pregnant women as NPCs. (Although considering what's still allowed, that restriction seems a bit arbitrary.)Due to the biscuit and realizing that her life beforehand was nothing but just laying about doing nothing special, Donut was rather rude towards Carl. Almost to the point where Carl wanted to leave Donut behind in the dungeon to strike out on his own. She apologized and they have been working together (with some hiccups) to survive. While Donut has moments where she can charm NPCs to give the group what she wants, she can also be extremely abrasive in less than opportune moments.

Special mention to Fire Brandy, who gains awareness of the dungeon and makes a Heroic Sacrifice to help the crawlers pass the floor. Confusing Fog (5 secs per INT = ~150secs [“a good two and a half minutes” may actually be 145 secs])For example, Donut's full name is GC, BWR, NW Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk. GC means Grand Champion, BWR means Breed Winner Regional, and NW means National Winner, while Queen Anne is an upscale neighborhood in Seattle and she's thus the Chonk of Queen Anne and her title of Princess isn't redundant with that of Queen. And that's just for her name and is never explained in the books. Tran loses his legs in the Country Boss fight at the end of the sixth floor, but survives thanks to a heal spell and gets a flying wheelchair from a benefactor. Hekla tries to arrange for Katia to be killed in a way that will cause Carl to get into a fight and get himself killed too, so that Donut will be left alone and open to joining Hekla's party. Frank lost a hand to a trap, and he was drunk during race selection so even though it could have been healed by taking the right race or class, he was left without it after.

Hello, Crawler. As you're about to find, this is a very special book. If you're reading these words, it means this book has found its way into your hands for one purpose and one purpose only. The top ten crawlers all get bounties on their heads, payable to any crawler who kills them. On the bright side, every time they survive and go down a floor, they get paid the bounty, too. By the sixth floor, Carl is in the number one spot, and the 300,000 gold comes in handy. Power Perversion Potential: The changelings in "Hump Town" are all prostitutes who are willing to use their powers to put on a show. Louis and Firas quite appreciate forms like Slave Leia, for example. Boring, but Practical: Carl states outright that his preferred mode of operation is "quiet efficiency," contrasting with Donut's much more stage-friendly persona. Against single enemies, he punches or stomps them. Against bigger or more numerous enemies, he blows them up with cheap explosives. No messing around with magic or poison. Ironically, his "boring" methods usually result in huge catastrophes that level cities and nearly kill him as well, making him at least as entertaining to viewers as the more charismatic Donut. S: Oh, he's becoming quite a scary and driven dude, isn't he? But he is actually making progress in his plans, so I'm really curious to see after what we've seen from him on this floor, what he is planning on doing on the next.He repeats it on the fifth floor during a specially designed battle that goes beyond the typical scripted boss battles.