Fist look into the Dungeon Economy

To his surprise, it wasn't as empty as he expected it to be. He was more than ready to start this new life with basically nothing, but it seemed that whoever put him there still had some generosity left.

The Storage screen was separated into two parts, one that was dedicated to any items that he currently held, which were a few and another that was dedicated to the resources he held.

The items he currently had were the following: 1 free equipment token/1 skill tome/1 random tier 3 Summoning token/1 free building token/1 emergency Dungeon block token.

All of the items were quite easy to understand their function, all of them were consumable items that could give you a certain object or effect once used, though especially in regards to the dungeon block, he wished that he knew exactly all the effects of it before he had to use it.

'And the random Summoning is basically a guaranteed SSR gacha pull, it's kinda odd that this is the only item that has been explicitly stated to be random.'

But he is well aware that in reality, this items are not boons but necessities in order to survive. From what he noticed, the organizer of all of this is clearly worried about 'fairness', so it wouldn't give this if it though it wasn't necessary.

So having this in mind, he decided to postpone the usage of all of this tokens until he was completely certain of what he needs from it, he is very concerned with wasting them since the Beginner Protection Period won't refund them once used.

Looking towards his current resources, he was able to see that there were many different types of resources that will probably serve all their unique purpose. Some were familiar, others he hadn't the slightest idea what they were.

The resource he currently held the most of, were some type of purple crystal which he had 10.000 units of. Considering their resemblance in color to the energy that was around the core, he is almost certain that it is mana, or at least a solid form of it.

Then there were other resources that he had a 1000 of each, they were 'food', 'wood', 'stone' and 'metal' which he labeled as the basic resources, while there were dozens of others that he had none of and among them there were many that he recognized such as 'gold', 'Cloth' and 'herbs', while some others he couldn't recognize either name or functionality, which he decided to label as exotic resources.

Keeping how much he had in storage in mind, he opened the store in the hope of finding out the value of the resources he had while also looking to browse the items and get an idea of what he can get from it.

Opening the store panel, he was met with a list depicting all the different types of items for sale, they were depicted on the following categories: consumables/blueprints/equipment/resources/traps and defenses/dungeon props.

Those categories held what you would expect, the consumables had item such as health restoring potions, antidotes, scrolls and some tokens like the ones he held.

The blueprints had the schematics of many buildings ranging from an armory, economic buildings that produces certain resources or defensive buildings like watchtowers.

Equipment had all the weapons, armors and accessories that one might need, such as swords, spears, magical wands, leather armor and enchanted rings.

Resources held the many resources available in bundles such as wood and metal for sale, if you're in desperate need of them.

Traps and defenses have the same structures that he saw the blueprints of previously, but this time he had the option of directly purchasing them instead of having to buy a blueprint and then expending resources to build it. The cost is higher but it's worth it if you don't have a lot of time.

Dungeon props are other kinds of items that can be added to the dungeon that doesn't need blueprints and instead can be placed to serve some miscellaneous purpose, such as: torches of many colors, doors, gates, treasure chests, mirrors and many others.

And one thing that became very clear to him, and is that 'Mana Crystal's' will serve as his main currency from now on, since everything in the store can only be bought with mana crystals instead of precious metals like his old world. So considering the sheer amount he has in his possession, he will probably rely a lot on the store in the days to come.

But looking at all the prices also made him realize that 10.000 is nowhere near a sufficient amount, so he intends to find a way to obtain more as soon right after he finishes looking through all the system features.

Taking all of this into consideration, he came to the conclusion that the store is both a blessing for any beginner Dungeon Master but also can become a pit that one can easily fall into.

The ability to easily purchase any items that one might need can generate a lot of convenience and comfort, especially for an mentally unbalanced individual that is already trying to cope with being forced into this role. This will result in one becoming completely dependant on this function and its shortcomings will eventually become impossible to ignore.

Even the excessive amount of crystal one is given at the start can be seen as a way to make one misjudge the value of that resource and spend it recklessly. He may just be thinking nonsense due to paranoia, but the way this function presents itself just rubs him the wrong way.

But moving away from his own speculations, he moved on to the next feature which was the building of the dungeon itself.

Opening the 'building/expansion' tab, he was presented with another map of his Dungeon, but this time the map was divided into grids that allowed him to have a more accurate sense of space.

For example the throne room he currently resides in is a complete circle a diameter of 20 grid units, the core room meanwhile has a diameter of 5 units, the healing fountain room is a square shaped room that is 10×10 grid units and lastly the entrance which is shaped as rectangle is 5×10 units. All this rooms are connected by 2×5 corridors except for the one between the core and throne room which is 1×5 units.

This has given him more solid metrics that he can work with, but the real deal was that now he could freely expand the dungeon from here and add new rooms in the expansion section, which had many shapes and sizes at his disposal.

Meanwhile in the building section, there were many structures that were separated into the following categories: Economy/Military/Technology/Manufacture/Habitation/Traps and defenses. Most of those buildings were lacking a blueprint to be built, so his options were few.

In Economy there were mines, lubercamps, hunting lodges and more, these buildings focused on producing resources.

Military held the training field, shooting range, Sorcery tower and other buildings that focused on strengthening your minions and keeping their edge.

Technology had Military academies, Magic Academies, Engineering workshops and other buildings that allow one to gradually acquire improvements and new tools to use.

Manufacture were the Forges, Alchemy huts and other buildings that turn basic resources into items or more advanced resources.

Habitation had a variety of buildings related to allowing beings to survive in the dungeon such as housing and other buildings that he assumed were dependant on the type of Minion your dungeon had such as golem refueling stations, undead totems and more.

And finally the traps and defenses section held the various items one would use to keep intruders at bay, such as spike traps, watchtowers, environmental hazards and more.

Looking into all the buildings has also given him a clear idea of where each of the basic resources are used.

Wood is by far the most used resource when it comes to the basic buildings, all buildings also have a comparatively small mana crystal cost as well, stone is used for more advanced buildings like the technology ones and it's also used in defenses, metal meanwhile had very little use but he figures that metal is necessary for more advanced buildings and forging weapons and armor for your minions and that left only food that had no use for either building or buying anything but he is certain that it will become important when it comes to the Summoning part.

Speaking of which, after having a brief look into all the buildings he has access to, he moved on and decided to look into the Summoning panel next.

Previously, even if there was a very large selection for him to look through in the store or the building tab he could easily navigate it since it was all neatly separated into categories. But opening the Summoning tab has left him completely overwhelmed with all the options.

There should be close to a hundred different choices for Summoning and they were separated into two categories: worker and warrior. And that number was just referring to the ones he could summon at the present.

Currently, he could only summon tier 0 minions, that made him realize how much value the tier 3 Summoning token really had.

They included two variants of every species of summon, one warrior and one worker. The list included every species of fantasy creature one can imagine from goblins to orcs, slimes, undead, centaurs, gigantic insects, drakes, ogres and even dark elves like himself.

The Summoning itself would cost both mana crystals and food to be completed, with the exception of golems and some undead which instead of using food have their entire cost based on mana crystals. Some were as cheap as 50 crystals and 45 food while others could cost as much as 500 crystals and 750 food which showed that there was a big discrepancy in power between them and that's just for the tier 0 summons.

But one thing that he found very peculiar is that the Dark Elves in particular were very cheap at 75/45 for the worker and 90/75 for the warrior in crystals and food respectively, which put them among the cheaper summons along with goblins, hobgoblins, slimes and lower undead which one would already expect to be underwhelming.

That could mean that they are weak just like them and dark elves are also low level summons, but that could also mean that he has received a discount for those particular summons since they are of the same species as him after all. He's more inclined to believe the second theory considering all the great features of this body he experienced already such as his great perception, night vision and inhuman flexibility.

The two Dark elf summons are called: Dark elf serf for the worker and Dark elf cutthroat for the warrior. Aside from their names, there's also a bit of additional information such as their food upkeep which is 1 and 1.5 per day respectively and the efficiency of the worker is presented as being 60% while the warrior was classified as a 'damage dealer'.

He would have summoned them just to see how they look like, but his conciousness stopped him since they would cost upkeep and he isn't sure if it would be returned to him as a refund after he unsummoned them along with the Summoning costs.

So now, all that was left for him to do was to look into his own personal status screen. This was not only the thing he was the most expectations of, afterall, who wouldn't be exited to look into their stats after receiving a system? And that also would serve to get to know more about the Dark elves as a race and if it's worth it to summon them.

So taking a deep breath to calm his excitement, he exclaimed in his mind:

'System, bring up my personal panel!'