The nice thing about insects that specialize in eating eggs is that well they specialize in finding and taking eggs back to the dungeon.

  Over the past few days I have obtained some new bugs and even a few arachanids.

  The cobwebber is quite expensive once it starts spamming webs, but I get one of them as the webbing can provide the first semblence of defence for my cave.

  I also get a handful of crickets, lynx spiders, and flies as the spiders can hunt any insects that enter, while the flies and crickets should be able to find somethings outside that the egg grazers have difficulty with.

  I get 3 skinks as they are rather expensive, but seem like they should be good at gathering materials.

  I don't bother making the egg investment as I have kept my mana topped up with the eggs my bugs gathered, each egg they find gives different amount but the fruit fly (lowest) gave 0.01MP per egg and 0.001DP, while the skink eggs (highest) gave 0.2MP and 0.1DP per egg.

  I can also control when and how much of dead things brought into my dungeon that I absorb, so I was able to spawn things as I went through the pile to avoid going over my maximum. I was also able to get mana and DP from the dead eggs, not only the ones still alive when I brought them in.

  I have saved up a solid 10DP, and chose to spend it on a new upgrade I found in the menu.

  At first glance this skill seems useless, but things change now that I have grass. The maintnence cost that I pay in mana for my monsters is dependent on they amount of food they need to eat, and this should also apply to the grass.

  So if my grass has a free food source to grow, and my monsters eat the grass, it should lower the overall cost of my monsters, it also gives me something to actually do which may have biased my decision a bit.

  While light shines down from my walls I make a test bed of grass while not paying the maintnence cost, after having them all wilt and die after a day I try again with a pool of water in the soil this time so they don't all dehydrate again and this time they grow properly.

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  I have some of my crickets eat the grass and get a pleasent suprise, I get mana when the grass dies. It is a tiny 0.0001MP, but it represents a larger opportunity. I get MP when my monsters die, my monsters can eat and reproduce using the grass that eats for free, I can make a monster ecosystem that feeds me free mana!

  I don't even notice one of the skinks and some of my other monsters joining the egg grazer bugs in hunting outside as I immerse myself in plotting grasses and schemes.

  Sometime later....

  Finally, everything is set up.

  My maidbane set up a web system that my lynx spiders can ambush in to hunt insects in. The webbing also scares away birds and small animals.

  I plotted several patches of grass, I also managed to make the sunlight only light up the areas with grass while keeping my webbed entrance in the dark, I have also set new rules to motivate my monsters.

  I spent a while making these rules, I spent even longer explaining them to each and every monster I had. There was no group chat, and each one needed it to be explained in a way that they understood. The cobwebber was exempt as it requires too much food to hunt and is usefull for building dungeon traps.

  Something interesting happened after one of the monsters hunted in the danger zone and another was rewarded for hunting outside.

  It would have been nice if I got this reward before spending days talking to my monsters, but I am mostly relieved that I no longer have to explain the rules to every monster I create.

  The hunting has also gone well, I got some flowers and berries that let me add some berry bushes to the danger zone, and I also got some beetles and even a bee, the bee had a slight problem though.

  The bees can't reproduce without a queen and die after a single attack while being as expensive as a spider. I create a group of 50 for a special squad that is exempt from hunting so that I can kill a small animal that invades, but they don't integrate into my ecosystem and aren't cost effective, but they are good to have for emergencies.

  The beetles have good defence, but they are still at the bug level and aren't too useful at hunting so I make a few to add to my ecosystem and let them do their thing.

  The skinks have proven useful in hunting, they can gather resources fairly quickly and are good at avoiding getting killed while hunting. There have been a few casualties for the bugs hunting, but populations are quickly expanding and causing the MP cost to raise higher than the hunting rewards.

  This is why I made it so that eggs need to be hunted for being in the safe zone, I set the cost of protection equal to the cost of the eggs to make it as fair as possible while staying manageable. I don't know why the eggs cost MP to maintain when they should have all the food provided by the yolk, but any eggs I don't maintain immediately die so there isn't anything else I can do.

  The cave is pretty lively now with the constant buzzing around of bugs, I have grown all the way outside the cave in size now with the excess MP, and upgraded my max mana pool and regeneration using DP from the hunters. I finally have enough MP to buy a second room.

  I haven't maxed out the size of my first room, but I want a second room further in so that I can spawn things when an intruder arrives and I need to spawn something to counter them. I also want to avoid getting hit by a ranged intruder in the first room.

  I create a new room and move myself into it, there isn't a door conecting the rooms but instead a portal at the end of the first room that coonects to this one, my monsters can move freely between the different rooms. I call up my web worker and start on some more elaborate traps.

  I offer some mana incentives to get some bugs to gather some rocks, I have the maidbane make a multilayered web that can hold the weight. I have some of the skinks tunnel out some small holes in the ceiling with a bar of rock remaining through the center that the web can loop around, there are four of these holes and they are able to suspend the rock filled web from the celing.

  I test it by having a bug bite through the web to make the rocks fall, and while the trap does work, it takes a minute for the bug to chew through the webbing. I test just chewing through webbing, and the only way to manage on short notice is to have 3 lynx spiders bite from different sides.

  I reset the trap and build 3 more in the first room, and 1 in the second room with a special position for lynx spiders to work here for daily mana. I am slightly miffed that I don't get a trap making achievement, but oh well.

  I have had a few new intruders, but they were small bugs that got easily hunted by the lynx spiders in the webbed entrance. What is more worrying is that some birds have started nesting outside my cave, they seem to have taken note of my bugs and skinks moving back and forth from here, this in turn has negatively impacted the hunting squads and brought more attention to my cave.

  This can't be allowed to continue, so it is time for some.... drastic measures.