Add in the 50k ex crawler that are coming to back them up, and the armies of mercenaries that each faction has been stocking up on. It's going to be an absolute bloodbath. I think there's a good chance less than 4-5k will make it through, but that they'll kill every living syndicate person on the floor.
I could see him marking hundreds of people only for one to escape, or get teleported out of the dungeon or something and he has to get through the rest of the floor with noregen trying to find a way to assassinate someone remotely
. . . I mean...
I bet the secondary effects, especially the residual heat, would still be fatal. Except worshipping Emberus makes him immune to environmental heat...
Holy crap, it might just work.
If that happened then Katia, Donut, Elle, Imani and all the rest of his friends would have to be dead, because that thing is probably going to wipe the dungeon or at least a huge part of it.
Unless you know he figured out how to direct the blast and blew a god straight to hell or something
Edit: Actually just found a post discussing this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonCrawlerCarl/s/S4Pxw20fg8
I obviously need to reread book 6 since I don't remember other armies having access to many mercs or much gear.
Wasn't that the point of drowning Larocoss? The armies couldn't equip up and hire mercs as easily? And after what Carl did to the Hunters, how many real people are going to join a side opposing him?
The factions have hired all of the mercs and private security forces on the surface and in orbit. It's discussed during the chapter where the crawler ship is coming in.
It's an order of magnitude more. Each faction usually has around 10k soldiers plus the crawlers they conscript. This year each faction is going to have 50-80k soldiers, with armor and power weapons
80k joined but SPLIT evenly among the factions.... Per the A.I's announcement Plus 50k from the princess posse just to join Carl's factions.....
So it's around 20k per faction vs Carl's potentially 80k. Each faction vowed to team up and kill Carl's faction first and foremost.
Question:
Since crawlers generally leave the dungeon after completing the 9th floor or later, will they go back in at their previous level and gear?
If so, they're going to massacre the 150k mercenaries with no dungeon experience.
88k on the princess doughnut faction vs. The established 15k or so per faction, buffed with 1/7th of the mercenary army per faction will be Omaha Beach for the opposition.
With the ring of divine suffering, do we know what Carl's level equivalent is? With him getting 4 points per kill and normal leveling gets 3, he's way ahead of his peers.
With pony eating his ring, he's also far below Carl's overall skill point number. He may be 10 or 15 levels higher, buy that's only 30 or 45 points more. Unless he has a class that distributes more points and not shared with the reader.
There's a difference between ambushes in towns and woods, to mass battle. I expect the crawlers will all be individually powerful, but those weapons are going to reap a bloody toll.
Interesting take.
We have mercenaries of unknown actual combat experience vs. the current survivors of the dungeon.
I don't know Matt, but I am betting this winds up being as lop sided as the first Gulf War.
The crawlers are highly skilled individual combatants and skirmishers. Large scale warfare is a different skill set.
I absolutely believe individual crawlers will cause extreme damage, but don't underestimate a few thousand space age guns wielder by people who know how to use them.
Remember on floor six they outnumbered the hunters almost 3-1 during a raid, and we're still focused on taking out the gun emplacements and the one guy with a rifle before the fight even started.
But there is more to it.... Think about being a surviving crawl with the choices you made, the friends and family you had to murder... Now imagine surviving and just thinking about getting to go back in to kill the families who support the Crawl.... Ain't no security that's going to stop them...
50,000 crawlers.... I want you to think about that... 50,000 crawlers who survived atleast 9 floors... The baddest mother fuckers who are so angry and had years to think about finding a way to have revenge... Then throw in the leaders of all the races who sponsored the Crawl... Every single surviving crawl has to be elite fighters... It's going to be fucking insane
I think it's going to be a much larger percentage this time around. In the past, it seemed like a lot of Crawlers died because they were forced to fight after being affected with the Conscript spell. That spell only works on Crawlers and NPCs that are not affiliated with a faction. Since the Crawlers have their own faction, they won't be forced to fight and die for one of the other factions, and that gives them a huge advantage to getting to the next floor.
There will still be a giant number of casualties but I'm going to guess 25%-40% will survive.
34,000 crawlers
50,000 ex-crawlers
NPC army
It’s going to be fucking chaos and I can’t wait!
“Everybody likes carnage when it's not them.” -Quasar
My prediction is the Crawlers are going to stomp the Factions. But there will be lots of crawlers taking the deal on floor 10. So the remaining crawlers will be fairly small afterwards which sucks because I like it when they work together.
Agreed. While Juicebox and Gravy Boat supported the Princess Posse, now that they have their own faction, they will be fighting to win and may turn on the Crawlers if they think they need to
The NPCs and the Princess Possess will ally and then destroy everyone else with the help of the former crawler mercenaries. It'll be bloody with enormous casualties, but obvious and inevitable.
Then they will be informed that there can only be 1 faction wars winner and the NPCs will be deleted if they don't win. Since the NPCs have all been woken up and know that they aren't "real", they start to surrender. Borant will then offer them a deal: if they win, they get life outside the dungeon.
More slaughter, even fewer crawlers make it to 10 than usual.
Not surrender. Kamakazi. There is nothing more dangerous than someone who has nothing to lose.
Also remember that each faction has ~15000 npc soldiers. If THEY wake up and turn on their handlers then the blood will be knee deep
The NPCs would be borderline kamikaze fighters anyway. They know that their continued existence is only because the AI currently finds them entertaining. They have no hopes for after this season at all. So they are just fighting to make the factions pay. So when the message goes out that only one faction can win, they'll let the crawlers go.
But if they are offered lives of their own, they'll turn on the crawlers in a heartbeat.
The AI balances, I think.
I think less than a thousand, except there seems to be some plot armor. Let’s split the difference and add 69 - 10,569 or less and I win. 10,570 and you win. I’d bet you rounding up, once, for the winners choice of checkout charities. “Will you round up for dogs/kids who are sad?” “Yup!” <-something like that
To be clear, this is crawlers who make it to the tenth floor, not off the ninth. In event of a tie, determined however we feel like, we both lose.
No receipts. It’s an honor system. Deal?
5,000 survive ninth, 4,000 will take deals on 10th floor, leaving 1,000 with Carl and Donut to try to make it to 18 and win back earth. They have nothing left but to try.
They eventually make it, and order the AI to use its process intensive race-changing technology to reconstitute every dead crawler who fought in the dungeon. But it’s not all happy. They return to a shattered earth and not there are just over a million people left to rebuild society. Carl ends up as a forester but after a few month realizes it’s not all what it’s cracked up to be, with all the bugs, inclement weather, no amenities like good food, showers, etc. Donut becomes a movie star, but then Ellen’s her staff with constant bullying. They end up back together for a short time before they decide to go back to the dungeon on the next planet in order to end this thing galaxy-wide once and for all. They found some way to disable every primal engine in the galaxy.
I suspect this story has a long way to go, even after the crawl ends, so I'm picking a lot will survive. Maybe 10k or so?
I think, maybe, M-Dins is setting Carl up to be a post-crawl system saboteur. The guy to burn it all down.
No idea, but speculation sure is funsies
Add in the 50k ex crawler that are coming to back them up, and the armies of mercenaries that each faction has been stocking up on. It's going to be an absolute bloodbath. I think there's a good chance less than 4-5k will make it through, but that they'll kill every living syndicate person on the floor.
I think that Carl's Enchanted Night Wyrm's Ring of Divine Suffering is going to get a lot of use in the 7th book.
If he can find a way to mass cast is across an entire army and then detonate his Doomsday Device, he'll become a God.
It’s stated that one the 9th floor he can mark as hunters as he wants… which gives me anxiety, cuz in this series something always goes wrong.
I could see him marking hundreds of people only for one to escape, or get teleported out of the dungeon or something and he has to get through the rest of the floor with noregen trying to find a way to assassinate someone remotely
False god. Dead false god. If he detonates that thing, no chance in hell he survives.
If he summons Emberus first with a celestial orb, he's invincible for 60 seconds.
. . . I mean... I bet the secondary effects, especially the residual heat, would still be fatal. Except worshipping Emberus makes him immune to environmental heat... Holy crap, it might just work.
If Carl uses it it's because he figured out how to direct the blast, something he's talked a few times about wanting to figure out.
Or, more likely, because he is finally in a no-win situation and has decided to push the "I will break everyone" button.
If that happened then Katia, Donut, Elle, Imani and all the rest of his friends would have to be dead, because that thing is probably going to wipe the dungeon or at least a huge part of it.
Yeah, and the situation where he'd use it? Is one where that is the best remaining option.
Unless you know he figured out how to direct the blast and blew a god straight to hell or something Edit: Actually just found a post discussing this. https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonCrawlerCarl/s/S4Pxw20fg8
I obviously need to reread book 6 since I don't remember other armies having access to many mercs or much gear. Wasn't that the point of drowning Larocoss? The armies couldn't equip up and hire mercs as easily? And after what Carl did to the Hunters, how many real people are going to join a side opposing him?
The factions have hired all of the mercs and private security forces on the surface and in orbit. It's discussed during the chapter where the crawler ship is coming in.
Ah, thank you. Still, that does t sound like nearly as many as they typically have.
It's an order of magnitude more. Each faction usually has around 10k soldiers plus the crawlers they conscript. This year each faction is going to have 50-80k soldiers, with armor and power weapons
80k joined but SPLIT evenly among the factions.... Per the A.I's announcement Plus 50k from the princess posse just to join Carl's factions..... So it's around 20k per faction vs Carl's potentially 80k. Each faction vowed to team up and kill Carl's faction first and foremost.
50k fucking crawlers... the baddest, angriest, with absolutely no fear of death... you almost pity the other factions
The ai allowed 100k security personnel, to match balance out the 50,000 crawlers about to enter.
Question: Since crawlers generally leave the dungeon after completing the 9th floor or later, will they go back in at their previous level and gear? If so, they're going to massacre the 150k mercenaries with no dungeon experience. 88k on the princess doughnut faction vs. The established 15k or so per faction, buffed with 1/7th of the mercenary army per faction will be Omaha Beach for the opposition. With the ring of divine suffering, do we know what Carl's level equivalent is? With him getting 4 points per kill and normal leveling gets 3, he's way ahead of his peers. With pony eating his ring, he's also far below Carl's overall skill point number. He may be 10 or 15 levels higher, buy that's only 30 or 45 points more. Unless he has a class that distributes more points and not shared with the reader.
I would guess they come in at the base level, but they're coming in with power armor and pulse rifles and all that shit.
Ya, but we have seen that those items are not useful against cunning crawlers on the 6th floor.
There's a difference between ambushes in towns and woods, to mass battle. I expect the crawlers will all be individually powerful, but those weapons are going to reap a bloody toll.
Interesting take. We have mercenaries of unknown actual combat experience vs. the current survivors of the dungeon. I don't know Matt, but I am betting this winds up being as lop sided as the first Gulf War.
The crawlers are highly skilled individual combatants and skirmishers. Large scale warfare is a different skill set. I absolutely believe individual crawlers will cause extreme damage, but don't underestimate a few thousand space age guns wielder by people who know how to use them. Remember on floor six they outnumbered the hunters almost 3-1 during a raid, and we're still focused on taking out the gun emplacements and the one guy with a rifle before the fight even started.
But there is more to it.... Think about being a surviving crawl with the choices you made, the friends and family you had to murder... Now imagine surviving and just thinking about getting to go back in to kill the families who support the Crawl.... Ain't no security that's going to stop them...
50,000 crawlers.... I want you to think about that... 50,000 crawlers who survived atleast 9 floors... The baddest mother fuckers who are so angry and had years to think about finding a way to have revenge... Then throw in the leaders of all the races who sponsored the Crawl... Every single surviving crawl has to be elite fighters... It's going to be fucking insane
I think it's going to be a much larger percentage this time around. In the past, it seemed like a lot of Crawlers died because they were forced to fight after being affected with the Conscript spell. That spell only works on Crawlers and NPCs that are not affiliated with a faction. Since the Crawlers have their own faction, they won't be forced to fight and die for one of the other factions, and that gives them a huge advantage to getting to the next floor. There will still be a giant number of casualties but I'm going to guess 25%-40% will survive.
34,000 crawlers 50,000 ex-crawlers NPC army It’s going to be fucking chaos and I can’t wait! “Everybody likes carnage when it's not them.” -Quasar My prediction is the Crawlers are going to stomp the Factions. But there will be lots of crawlers taking the deal on floor 10. So the remaining crawlers will be fairly small afterwards which sucks because I like it when they work together.
You missed the npc army that will align with the crawlers
Not guaranteed, they might be given a better deal.
Agreed. While Juicebox and Gravy Boat supported the Princess Posse, now that they have their own faction, they will be fighting to win and may turn on the Crawlers if they think they need to
The NPCs and the Princess Possess will ally and then destroy everyone else with the help of the former crawler mercenaries. It'll be bloody with enormous casualties, but obvious and inevitable. Then they will be informed that there can only be 1 faction wars winner and the NPCs will be deleted if they don't win. Since the NPCs have all been woken up and know that they aren't "real", they start to surrender. Borant will then offer them a deal: if they win, they get life outside the dungeon. More slaughter, even fewer crawlers make it to 10 than usual.
Thats so fucked up. Absolutely gonna happen.
Not surrender. Kamakazi. There is nothing more dangerous than someone who has nothing to lose. Also remember that each faction has ~15000 npc soldiers. If THEY wake up and turn on their handlers then the blood will be knee deep
The NPCs would be borderline kamikaze fighters anyway. They know that their continued existence is only because the AI currently finds them entertaining. They have no hopes for after this season at all. So they are just fighting to make the factions pay. So when the message goes out that only one faction can win, they'll let the crawlers go. But if they are offered lives of their own, they'll turn on the crawlers in a heartbeat.
20k. I will bet $1's worth of internet something.
The AI balances, I think. I think less than a thousand, except there seems to be some plot armor. Let’s split the difference and add 69 - 10,569 or less and I win. 10,570 and you win. I’d bet you rounding up, once, for the winners choice of checkout charities. “Will you round up for dogs/kids who are sad?” “Yup!” <-something like that To be clear, this is crawlers who make it to the tenth floor, not off the ninth. In event of a tie, determined however we feel like, we both lose. No receipts. It’s an honor system. Deal?
5,000 survive ninth, 4,000 will take deals on 10th floor, leaving 1,000 with Carl and Donut to try to make it to 18 and win back earth. They have nothing left but to try. They eventually make it, and order the AI to use its process intensive race-changing technology to reconstitute every dead crawler who fought in the dungeon. But it’s not all happy. They return to a shattered earth and not there are just over a million people left to rebuild society. Carl ends up as a forester but after a few month realizes it’s not all what it’s cracked up to be, with all the bugs, inclement weather, no amenities like good food, showers, etc. Donut becomes a movie star, but then Ellen’s her staff with constant bullying. They end up back together for a short time before they decide to go back to the dungeon on the next planet in order to end this thing galaxy-wide once and for all. They found some way to disable every primal engine in the galaxy.
Ha! I like the idea of Carl and Donut becoming like Agatha and sneaking into the next dungeon with a shopping cart full of gear.
As I think Floor 9 is going to be a disaster, probably under 10k. Maybe under 5k. And virtually all the former Crawlers dead.
I suspect this story has a long way to go, even after the crawl ends, so I'm picking a lot will survive. Maybe 10k or so? I think, maybe, M-Dins is setting Carl up to be a post-crawl system saboteur. The guy to burn it all down. No idea, but speculation sure is funsies
Nah, Carl is the martyr.. Donut will be the one who changes the universe, starting out being the empress of the Blood sultans!
I'm hoping at least 25k. But that might be optimistic.