| “ | Acey: bwahahahaha Acey: this is gonna be funny xD Tox: uh oh |
” |
—Eris constructs her dungeon
| ||
The Skeleton Den, also known as the Den of Skeletons, was a Hyper Dungeon protecting the only elytra the Badlands during Dragonhollow's Fourth Era.
Description[]
Buried deep beneath the sands of the Badlands, the Skeleton Den was a 41x41x19 dome carved out of the stone, dirt, and gravel by Eris.
There were no natural entrances or indications from the surface of where it was located.
It was defended by more than twenty very fast skeletons named Bone wearing golden and diamond armor and wielding flame bows and Fire Aspect swords. Their leader, carrying the elytra, was a more powerful skeleton called Boss Bone.
Because it was unlit, many enemies were able to spawn inside in addition to the dungeon defenders.
Enemies[]
All regular mobs could spawn inside the dungeon due to low light levels.
Inside the Den. Light is visible from the tunnel dug by Eris and Jack, Rocco's fist-tunnel, and Nut's own shaft. The sand tower in the center was from Nut's ill-fated second attempt.
x10 Blade Bone- x10 Bow Bone
- x1 Boss Bone
Treasure[]
This dungeon contained no treasure chests or additional loot.
- x1 Broken Bone Wings
History[]
Finding the Den[]
In the last days of the Fourth Era, as mines were excavated ever deeper in the search for what remained of the Badlands' scarce resources, citizens of Dragonhollow began to suspect that there was no stronghold in the realm. That meant that the End was inaccessible.
Acey announces the Den via the Community Board
Eris confirmed their suspicions. Several adventurers petitioned her to construct one while Nut suggested she hide a single pair of elytra flying wings somewhere in the Badlands.
On 4E:422, Eris secretly created an underground Hyper Dungeon she christened the Skeleton Den and created a guardian to defend its Bone Wings prize. After overhearing her lament that it was too close to Bad Landing, Tox began to systematically dig exploratory tunnels and shafts of varying length and depth to try to discover its location and claim it for Hyperion.
The tunnel Eris dug below Jack, Tox, and Rocco that eventually revealed the Den.
Several days later on 4E:423, a practical joke inadvertently led to the dungeon's location being revealed. Jack, Rocco, and Tox made the dubious decision to bury Acey in the sand after finding her standing not far from Prosperity. In retaliation, she returned the favor by burying them in the sand and then digging a series of huge pitfalls beneath them. After sustaining repeated damage, Tox hearthstoned home while Rocco plummeted to his death. Only Jack managed to survive, and in doing so, discovered that Eris had revealed to him the location of the Skeleton Den itself.
First Attempts[]
Jack publicly announced the coordinates but warned would-be raiders that recovering the elytra would not be easy. Realizing that it had become a race, several adventurers gathered their gear and headed to the coordinates. Rocco was the first to arrive and decided to save time by mining straight down—with his bare fists. Predictably, he punched through the domed ceiling of the dungeon and plunged to a quick demise.
Nut and Jack managed to fool Rocco into believing that the elytra had already been found, giving her more time to acquire it herself. She chose a more complex strategy: ride a pillar of sand down a vertical shaft and then quickly kill the dungeon defenders with lava poured from buckets. Jack warned that her strategy could easily lead to the elytra itself being destroyed. Unfortunately, she was killed twice from fall damage while descending and then a third time by the deadly flaming arrows of the skeletons within.
Tox sacrificed speed for safety by entering a cave system fifty blocks away from the dungeon and then digging laterally towards it. Applying his raiding experience from the Dungeon Quest event, he set up his usual design of a "killing floor" on the ground level of the dungeon and an "overwatch" observation platform above where the entire dungeon could be observed safely for planning purposes.
The Skeleton Den was located near Prosperity.
From the platform he witnessed the last of Nut's deaths but deemed it too risky to try and recover her items. He went to work battling those within.
Suddenly, he was impossibly attacked by an unseen foe despite there being no access from the dungeon itself onto his "killing floor." Tox fled into his fallback tunnels, closing gates behind him as he went, but it did no good. As he wound his way through the many passages, he kept taking damage, seemingly from both both ahead and behind. When he'd crouch and spin around to defend himself, he'd be hit from behind and set aflame. Using health II potions, he continued to swing his sword madly hoping to make contact, but he never seemed to do any damage. Near death and out of potions, he sprinted for a nearby chest stocked with golden apples, but he never made it, shot down in the back.
Eris cackled with glee as she watched unseen. She blamed the invisible enemy on an inexplicable distortion of time that slowed everything down for Tox, but he remained suspicious that she was responsible for his death.
Nut contacted Tox offering to work together, suggesting a new strategy of tunneling underneath the dungeon. However, in past dungeons he had found that to be an unwise approach unless simply going for a central treasure chest. Here, they had no way of knowing which enemy carried the elytra, and at least one of them had already gotten through his defenses so the idea of yielding the high ground to them did not interest him. He declined the partnership, since there would be no easy way to share the elytra afterward.
Knowing that time was of the essence, he quickly returned to the Den. At any moment another adventurer including Nut could arrive and easily retrieve the loot with little effort now that the skeleton horde had been thinned.
Tox found his assassin—now a completely visible Bow Bone wearing his lost armor—and began preparing a riskier, far more direct plan...
Enter Elytra[]
Facing a possible deadline, Tox decided the only sure way forward was to engage his enemies on their turf. He drank a Potion of Swiftness so that he could match their enhanced speed, a Potion of Night Vision to improve visibility within the dungeon and separate the spooky skellies from their lesser brethren, and a Potion of Fire Resistance to reduce the damage done by their powerful weapons.
Then he entered the Den directly and did battle, using his bow where possible and switching to sword and shield as the skeletons charged.
HyperSilence tests the elytra
As they fell one by one, he began to grow concerned that the elytra had already been recovered or destroyed. That concern turned to dismay when only a single skeleton remained, outwardly identical to the others...
As Tox rained down arrows upon the last of them, he realized it was far more resilient than the others. After Boss Bone took several Power V flaming arrows unfazed, it turned to attack him directly. Tox's Sharpness V blade did little to deter it and, low on health, he fled back to the safety of his tunnel network to regroup and reheal.
He consumed a Strength II potion for extra damage and returned to the Den for one last confrontation.
Evading creepers and zombies, Tox engaged Boss Bone mano-a-mano and slayed him, recovering the Bone Wings and evacuating the dungeon as even more mobs converged on his position.
The Bone Wings themselves were broken and unusable, so he decided to return to Hyperion headquarters. First he placed it securely within an ender chest, in case opportunistic bandits might be waiting in ambush behind every sand dune and cactus, waiting to kill him and steal the treasure after the hard work had been done. Later, HyperSilence successfully repaired the elytra and Tox climbed to the high glass roof of Stony Sands to take the inaugural test flight.
| Hyper Dungeons | |
|---|---|
| Dungeon Quest | Arachnodome • Cloud Cay • Cylinderella • Ghast Globe • Guardian Trench • Lava Sphere • Rabbit Reef • Sea Sphere • Witch Tree |
| Dungeon Quest II | Eyeland • Frigid Floe • Hardhome • Husky Dungeon • Kyklooppi's Kove • Nether Dungeon • Skelly Dungeon • Slimey Dungeon • Spidey Dungeon • Strayton Place |
| Other Dungeons | 25k • Blue Vexmere • Gold Vexmere • Red Square • Skeleton Den • Thundermere • Venomere • Withermere |