Dungeon Core Online: Remastered Edition - Book One by Jonathan Smidt

James thought he would be just another adventurer in the world’s most anticipated dungeon delving VRMMORPG. But when he logs in, he soon finds out that he won’t be diving the dungeon – he will be creating it. Pretty awesome right?

At least that was what he thought when he boldly chose ‘Random’ as his dungeon type…

Then he summoned his first mob. A fearsome, bloodthirsty demonic… Chicken.

Still, Demonic Farm Animals are the least of his worries. The person who is supposed to be teaching him the ropes is a weirdly advanced AI pixie who drinks too much and is overly fond of gambling. Oh and some mysterious figure seems to be watching and judging his every move – so signing that NDA is feeling like less and less of a solid choice.

Either way, James is up for the challenge. Even if it means building a dungeon around kamikaze sheep, enraged cows, unhygienic pigs and yes… Dickens.

At least his next randomly selected mob type can’t be worse… right?

James is recruited to play as the dungeon in a new VRMMORPG. During the day he attends high school (dealing with bullies and negligent teachers) and at night he hops in her emersion pod to manage his dungeon (dealing with bullying from the lead developer for some reason.) Time is experienced at an accelerated rate in the virtual world, one day for every hour in real world time, so while the real-virtual time is technically balanced, far more of the book is the video game. Being a dungeon is secret, so his only confident is a drunk, gambling addicted advanced AI fairy.

This first book is focused on dungeon building and watching players experience the dungeon. James's dungeon is “Random” type, so he doesn't know what kind of monsters he's working with until he starts building each floor, and his options are always weird.

DCO is set a few decades in the future. There are lots of references to other LitRPG books and pop culture throughout the years. James doesn't get all the references and sometimes looks them up but other times it's just an easter egg for the reader. If you don't get all the references, that's not going to hamper your enjoyment. But being familiar with “dungeon core” style books might help.

Audiobook performed by Travis Baldree, who is excellent as always.

I Received an ARC copy for honest review.

I would like to say this is one of the good dungeon books out there. It's a 4 star book. The reason I deducted 1 star because the book is little bit slower at start but picked up the pace in the middle.
Loved some of the characters. And it still needed some fleshing out for some characters. Anyway give this a chance if you like dungeon stories, you will never regret.