Dungeon Ecologist

Information

Status

Hiatus

Year

2024

Author

Andrew Reise

• Polling What You Want
  Mar 10, 2025
• Update
  Feb 2, 2025
• Indefinite Hiatus
  May 29, 2024
• Dungeon Ecologist Rewrite
  Feb 22, 2024

Reviews

Community Reviews(9)

• AlthayasRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  These last moths, I read many stories wth dungeons as thema. The classics, reincarnation as a dungeon in a fantasy world, variants in a science fiction environment, another type was the dungeon cooperating with the adventurers or being pacific. And we have also the dungeons on our Earth, quite frequently, Earth is integrated in a System, and the dungeons grow as mushrooms.
  The interesting difference here, is the idea that a class can create dungeons, the author in this first few chapters, has well imagined the consequences of that possibility. I wait with impatience the developments of this story.
• Devaint-dreamerRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  So the MC in this novel isn't some overpowered god like being so thats a +1 straight off the bat! It has in tbteresting concept and I can't wait to see how the story continues!
• WingedAngelRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  Five Stars based on his previous books. His previous books were all 10/10 and he knew how to do it. Will do an actual review at around chapter 20.
• hornblower14Royal Road

  ★★★★★ 5.0

  Writing this review in the early days, but enjoying it greatly so far! Having read a significant number of various dungeon stories on Royalroad over the past few years, I feel confident in saying that this is a different twist on the dungeon master trope, one which if kept up on, looks to have promise! Worldbuilding very much happens, but at a relaxed comfortable pace; no massive infodump here, it happens naturally as the protagonist interacts with various parts of the world.  No grammer problems jarred me out of reading, and the story flowed nice and smoothly. Just a tad too much inner monologue for my taste, but what do I know, as it fit into the tale based on what we know of the main character. Looking forward to future updates!
• LestatioRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  the premise is interesting. It doesn’t seem like it will become a standard dungeon core story. However, as of chapter 8 it feels like we have just passed the introduction so I will follow progress and review more in depth later on.
  gramatically is seems to be good and the mc seems believable.
• KoboldPatrolRoyal Road

  ★★★★★ 4.5

  (as of chapter 8) As the story has just started, this review might change drastically later, but so far, the story is looking promising.
  Basil is a freshly graduated 'Dungeon Maker', a Class that is the basis for the world's economy but which doesn't bring any fame or excitement with it. Instead of starting a long-term slave-like internship like everybody else, he decides to become self-employed. He manages to obtain his first assignment, but the terms and conditions he naïvely signs... uh oh, he better not mess up!
  The concept of the story is very unusual, especially because RRL is full of dungeon core stories: In 'Dungeon Ecology', creating a dungeon is not the managerial and livestock-husbandry-like task of an overmind-broodmother hybrid, instead it is the creative job of an architect together with a fair bit of bricklaying and plumbing. In the first chapters the readers are introduced to the basics of the world, of dungeon making prerequisites and to a handful of people.
  The story is told in first-person internal style from Basil's POV, thus we quickly learn about his inner thoughts, his strengths and some of his faults. Those few other characters that have been introduced are so far only rather simple personalities, but you can't expect better after just a short dialogue or two and a total story length of 41 pages. There have been some explanations about how the world works. Those might feel a bit infodumpy to some readers but they are inserted adequately into the inner monologue of the MC while we listen to his thoughts. The amount of descriptions is okay but they are not very detailed yet. Grammar is good and I found almost no typos.
  In total, 'Dungeon Ecology' looks like it could become a very interesting new experience; *followed*
• MrHrulginRoyal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  It's early days yet for this story, but I'm really looking forward to seeing where it goes. The writing is solid, the worldbuilding is good and the characters distinctive without being caricatures.
• Harmlessbody302Royal Road

  ★★★★ 4.0

  I was quite sad when the hiatus started and am relieved that it is over so that I can read the chapter as soon as they are wrote again!
• NecessityRoyal Road

  ★★★ 3.0

  I like the general story, direction and characters of this book.
  However I can't get rid of the feeling of disharmony between certain story points. It's like having a jigsaw where the pieces don't fit together, you can overlap them to see the great picture but there are slot of holes in it that produces questions that I'm not sure the author can answer.
  Spoiler: Spoiler
  The system appears that it came at most 20 years ago. Yet the MC and others act like it's been that way for generations. He evens says the first generation is stronger than what exists now, Yet that generation should still be around.
  What he does with dungeon isn't that creative from my perspective, not super unlike as it's only been available for research for 20 years and the bestiaries he has access to now than previous years could change his view. However the books he read in the course shouldn't have existed without plenty of research and people actually trying. The fact magic item research exist where sustainable dungeons fail baffles me.
  However it could be a perpetual growth of bias, that the tools and support needed to do their jobs sustainably didn't exist in the beginning and that made people look at dungeon building a certain way. Also, the people who are assigned the dungeon builder class by Janus might be all be too lazy to explore and progress unlike people given the artifact making class.
  However that doesn't explain corporations not pushing for progress in that direction. It's possible that you need to create a sustainable dungeon at the first level of the skill using the weirdly specific ingredients to help grow your class in a different direction from the standard version and so more experienced dungeon masters fail.
  It would make sense to me if a lot of CEO are powerful classers and might have a powerful dislike of dungeon master due to a past event, making sure dungeon masters grow in certain harmless ways due to a enemy that still inspires fear. Maybe the dungeon founder went rog