Whatever it is, looks nice.

It's too unqiue for a regular level. And with the Rocky Giant sounds more like a danger mission with a miniboss.

This reminds me when I used to play with rocks. I had a weird childhood. Anyway, rocks and jellies and jellies mating with ro- This is getting weird. On the right track so far.

Are all these rock enemies part of the jelly family, having shadow weakness and pierce resistance?

What if Pebbles have defense against all damage types equally except lower normal defense? They would move slower than normal Jelly Minis but be tankier.

The not-statue could be taken a stair higher by having those normal statues you need to complete the floor(s) have a chance to be replaced with the not-statue, but there would still be enough real statues to continue. Not-statues replacing real statues would be randomized so you never know if you pick up a real one or not. There could also be variants of it, one that does your oozing thing that deals damage and another that slows the holder and another that makes you invincible to damage but unable to put it down until it detaches on its own or someone in your party knocks it off you. For even more shenanigans after a not-statue has shown its true self at least once it can turn back to imitate a real statue, but while >5 spaces from any knight it slowly moves towards real statues to confuse players. Okay guys, we now have five sta- There are eight here. What the liquids.

Does the big guy have to be as big as the crowned? It could be the size of Lichens combining where it turns kind of orange and has spikes but still needs more yellow snot to get the two horns. In fact, this could be a new kind of Lichen where Pebbles can combine when their health gets below half with other Pebbles with <50% health to combine their health into one bigger Pebble until they eventually become a big lump of rocks oozing around. This is where I start talking about something that can be a completely different enemy. When this Lichen-Pebble pile gets its health chipped down it drops little rocks that look like Pebbles that knights can pick up and throw like pots, very low chance to inflict stun for a short duration on impact. Pebble corpses could also be used to create a bridge to cross a deep river that blocks knights from continuing to the next floor but there would have to be spawn pads for Pebbles. Maybe crossing the river can have additional rewards like clearing all four rooms on the second Royal Jelly floor.

I think this should be an Arcade exclusive special stratum with no boss, just some unique enemies and map features. It would make the Clockworks seem more like a diverse world inside a world rather than a bunch of gremlin constructed floors with the same old "puzzles" which are simple to begin with. It would have no guarantee to appear except when the update first happens to give people a taste but once that gate falls off stage left people would have to figure out how to get it again. This would open up opportunity to make more special stritims with unique features and possibly special loot that can only be obtained in these special areas used for things like equipment for Spiralmon when the update comes in a few months or so.

Keep those wheels burning.

Will this serve as a regular level or a new prestige mission? Like what Juances said, it can't serve as a regular level unless you request for a new danger mission

Now that I think about it, Luguiru's idea of making it an arcade only stratum that we have to figure out how to find it when mineral'ing a gate makes a lot of sense. The arcade certainly needs something to help revive it, and unique stratums like this would be just the thing it needs. However, once people figure out how to get it into an upcoming gate, it could very well take the fun out of it if people start to abuse it to get the stratum repeatedly for any special drops/loot the stratum may have.

Though, perhaps, entrance to it could be random? Perhaps there could be secret elevators that could have a low chance to appear in any level, or certain types of levels, that would lead to the stratum? Like a secret branching elevator that could be found randomly that would take you to the Rockbound Grove, and if you don't happen to find the elevator (if it spawns, but you don't notice the hidden entrance to the room that contains it), then you could just get on the normal elevator and proceed to the next normal stratum.

That way, people would be flooding the arcade trying to find an entrance to it, but the entrance would have decently low chances to spawn, so the special items/loot that are unique to it would be somewhat rare. I mean, who's to say the gremlins built a completely linear elevator system and didn't put in a few hidden gears or switches to change things up?

Just a thought.

~Magnicth

@Klipik: Not a "rare" spawn, just a decently low chance. Nothing too difficult to find, just an every once in awhile kind of thing. And Not exactly rare items, just drops that are uncommon that you don't find too often in other places, but are more common here. Not anything like special gear drops or tokens, mainly just certain uncommon or harder to find materials, at least in my point of view.

~Magnicth

Hm....I think a payout close to that of RJP would work just fine, if not maybe just a tad higher than RJP. As for status variants, not sure on that one. I think giving it status variants would change the nature and style of the enemies, which might take away from it. I can see the normal version of it, with the enemies you have thought up, easily being filled with stun, so perhaps it could be considered a stun stratum? We don't currently have a stun themed stratum, but that would even further make a case to make it a rare, or uncommon at the least, side stratum.

~Magnicth

Sorry about that, Oaty. I have this bad habit of not reading the replies before replying myself.
Anyways, more monsters, more drops. More drops, more materials. More materials, more weapons.
These could either be the dawn of a new weapon element, Earth, which can be crafted from the materials dropped from these monsters.
Of course, I know there's a material called Rocky Core already but it's unacceptable that this is all they will drop.

What would be status variants, then?

@Oaty So, Gel Drops and cores still? Acceptable and don't we already have a slime that explodes?

@Maginicth Thanks for supporting my idea but I'm gonna stick to what Oat says.

Hmmm. Interesting variants. however, I personally think it would be best to keep it as a sort of neutral stun stratum. Making status variants of it would make it too much like other types of levels and detract from it's uniqueness.

~Magnicth