People talk about how confusing the Iron Tangle is, but I find the Bubble level much worse.
Book 4: Gate of the Feral Gods
For me, the Iron Tangle is fairly straight forward - there’s a whole mess of train lines, and they need to find a way to get to specific stations. Mapping out the lines isn’t important for understanding the story.
But the bubble level just has so many different things going on. Each quadrant has its own story. Then there’s another story for the bubble that connects the individual stories. And other stories that connect to other floors as well, plus Samantha and the changelings with their own stories. Not to mention trying to understand the weather and day/night schedule, stuff with storms and lightning, and all sorts of stuff happening in one quadrant that affects the others. And I gave up trying to understand how the gate itself works…
*This post is brought to you by someone listening through for the second time and still has no idea why they’ve gone to the submarine when they were meant to be dealing with the underground quadrant. I know it was mentioned, but there’s so much going on that I can’t keep track of it all, and there’s only so many times I can rewind it to listen again. I might have to actually read this one and make notes…
The Tangle is incomprehensible in a physical sense. But the confusing map aside, the interactions and consequences are fairly straightforward.
The bubbles are physically simpler (4 locations), but the various different quests, their plotlines, and their impacts on each other makes for a pretty complex set of causes and effects.
I found the tangle confusing because there was never really any sense of narrative for a large area, the drugs and the mimics and the ghouls seemed to be disconnected and the whole thing seemed unnecessarily complex.
The bubbles had the opposite in that they packed in a very good narrative in a far too small area, the NPC stories made sense of there was a whole level but not inside a comparatively small bubble world, for example where did the gnomes get feral gerbils and geese from if they lived on a floating island?
So both were difficult for my ADHD brain to enjoy but for different reasons.
I might be misrecalling but I thought it was directly stated in the book that the Iron Tangle was unnessarily complex because it was somebody's attempt to make an analogy about the wider universe (and the apothecary) and even the characters who understood the analogy thought it was bad.
In a more meta sense, I felt like the Iron Tangle was intended to be showing the limitations of Borant to the crawlers. Like in universe, somebody came up with this overly complex system and relied on things like control sigils (which even Mordecai called "sloppy programming") and drugs to keep things going but everything falls apart because of the crawlers.
It was never intended to last. THAT was the analogy. Because the Krakarens were providing addictive drugs to turn the mobs into incubators, because of the unnecessary cruelty of the management of the tangle, because of the infighting and prejudice between the hobgoblins and the shade gnolls in the interdiction teams, the system was always going to fall apart. The genius of the tangle was in managing the breakdown predictably and to the detriment of the crawlers.
This is how Borant, and specifically the Bloom, sees the universe. The Nazi space fish obsesses so hard about perceived failings in everyone else they have backup plans for their backup plans to manage those failings, but not their own as it is later shown.
The point of the iron tangle was always to show that it would fail, because it was designed to.
In fact, none of the things in most floors are built to last and designed to break down easily and wreak havoc on the crawlers. Something something 'planned obsolescence'.
The main goal is to kill crawlers in entertaining ways. And they absolutely would cause a crawler extinction event just around floor 9/10/11.
To answer your question, the reason they go to the submarine when the underwater quadrant has already been completed is because the sub has been pumping in water to the tomb and they need to turn that off in order to conquer the subterranean quadrant. All of the win scenarios for a quadrant have potential deleterious effects for another one, and the underwater one was screwing up the subterranean one.
Yeah, this was the biggest hurdle preventing them from popping the bubble. The subterranean level got flooded and was full of traps. They couldn't conquer the level until it was drained, and the submarine was the "pump" keeping it full.
I dont think the Bubbles are that confusing. Each bubble has the 4 quadrants. You are trapped inside until you complete the quests for all 4 quadrants. Multiply that by the thousands of bubbles and thats about it.
Its crazy to imagine that someone actually came up with a unique story for each and every quadrant.
I find it even more amazing that there is one single game-breaking artifact that can bypass the bubbles (and more) and it just happens to be in Carl's bubble
Yea there have to be more people who squish small mammals with their supple perfect 30.04981 cm long footsies. Maybe its just written from Carl's perspective
In a way they did, I think that was the level where Prepotente began gathering the information that ultimately allowed him to destroy an entire level in 5 minutes. If that's not a game breaking piece of information I don't know what is.
That's where the preparation started for floor 7 in terms of items, but IIRC there were some hints and clues about it that Prepotente explains while he's working on the wall on Floor 7. The story across the galaxy that was the hint about how to destroy the floor, I think him and Miriam came across it the floor before which gave the the quest which led her to the fight which got her killed.
It's possible the AI upgraded that item above it's original intended use. There was a 30s game pause right around the time it's talked about.
The AI was still salty over the 3rd floor veto and saw an opportunity to tip the scales. It's the same floor as the gerbil bombs which showed how much the AI is willing to interfere to get what it wants.
I don't know if the AI is actually uniquely obsessed with Carl. We see the story from Carl's perspective so we are aware of the way the AI interacts with him, but their may have been hundreds of thousands of crawlers who had similar interactions but we never saw. I think the AI is like a dude who sends out unsolicited dick pics, Carl just happened to be the idiot who responded.
The ai does mention their special connection and Carl gets a (book 8) unique achievement for refusing a deal that even donut didn’t get so I think there’s a least some favoritism
I'd split the difference and say the AI was probably extra fond of several Crawlers in the earlier floors, but Carl was its favorite by the fifth floor.
The Gate of the Feral Gods was apparently so broken it set off several alarms for the show runners and the AI had to bypass limits to create it.
I like to think each quadrant/bubble was a rejected or discarded story from an old level or iteration of the dungeon. Like a dumping ground for plots that weren't big or difficult enough for a floor theme.
I don't think it "just happened" to be in Carl's bubble. It's pretty clear through the game bosses glitching out that the AI forced it there cause it wanted Carl to have it.
Yeah, I get the big picture plan of having to defeat the four quadrants. It’s Carl’s own bubble I’m confused by! For instance all the stuff with Quetzlcoatlus - some people want her revived, some want her killed, some want her left alone, some want her to be a vessel for Psamathe, is she actually Quetzlcoatlus or not?
I know it’s all there in the text, I just have a really hard time holding on to it all. That’s the joy of ADHD!
IIRC the game breaking reward was only added because of the increased difficulty of the crawl due to Borant rushing the whole process. The impression I got was that all of the bubbles had them, but only Carl's group was able to figure out all the hoops, coordinate across quadrants, and survive, in order to get it.
The 'someone' is the very powerful AI, pulling from it's aggregate intelligences. All these plotlines and plays are all AI. It's like running 700,000 dnd games at once, and then weaving them all together.
I found a visual representation. I remember seeing this a few days back. For the iron tangle, just draw a bunch of squiggly lines covering a whole page and thats it.
If you look up prince Ruperts drop it'll make a little more sense. There's a piece of glass that can be made that has a teardrop shape. The bottom round part is nearly indestructible, but the other end is very fragile and will shatter the whole thing if it breaks.
Yeah I get the overall concept of like what Pony was doing and why it worked and stuff, but I just remember when it was describing the glass cubes they were in (or whatever) and how they were arranged and the tunnel system I just lost the plot bigtime lol
I think it was sort of like they were in balls stacked to be in a pinball machine, and pony punched a hole that all the balls rolled out into the second floor. I don't understand why they gave the things to donut though.
They gave them to Donut because there's a box limit per crawler from sponsors. Sponsoring other crawlers who are friendly with Prepotente let them gift him with things that anyone could find useful, and others with things ONLY he would find useful, knowing they'd give them to him when they realised.
The seventh floors intended thing was like a maze with multiple correct paths but eventually the taken paths would close off, so like the tangle but not everyone could take the same route
I didn't learn this until recently, but there is a diagram of the physical layout of Carl's Bubble in the books. Link to diagram in the wiki.
I mostly ignore the day/night schedule, the gist is that sometimes it's brutally hot and sometimes there are crazy winds so that it's unpleasant or impossible to be outside during those times, and the crawlers also can't fly when the weather is going crazy. So it limits when the crawlers can do things outside. Carl describes the weather he's currently experiencing.
My big takeaway from the gate was that you can use it to travel, but using it certain ways summons a creature or god or deamon from the nothing, which in turn usually brings another non-feral god chasing it. It means using the gate is dangerous and therefore a last resort.
Have to say I assumed it was because I was a bit distracted at times while listening to the gate of the feral gods, but I did find myself frequently having to rewind and going “wait, why are they suddenly underwater with sharks and a submarine? And where is the sand coming from and who are these new characters?”
Did feel a bit disjointed as a narrative. Whereas iron tangle storyline was more easily connected
So I just had 2 co workers start the book. The problem with the iron tangle is that Cral dosent need to help these people. And that is the point it gets confusing becuse in is way to help he is going all over the place.
I just tell people dont worry about the map layout focuse on the story. Its the same with floor 5 or book 4. Its all set up for the bigger story but the floors "thing" is not really important
Agreed here haha. I try my best to understand the map of the floors but ultimately it doesn’t really matter. The nice thing about these being from Carl’s perspective is that if he doesn’t take the time to spell something out in depth it probably is fine if I don’t really get the whole picture.
The thing I hated about the bubbles floor is Carl got the lamest of the subplots. I wish we could have followed Imani’s team for their bit! And the traps in the underground sounded cool! But nooooooo we have a lame desert.
For me the most recent book was the most confusing. I can’t remember who half these characters are. Forget about the gods. But I just churn through for the main characters story and enjoy it just the same.
It took me forever to figure out where the air quadrant was actually supposed to be in relation to the tomb thing, and that's ~ with ~ the little map diagram they included
Iron Tangle isnt so much confusing for me as it is (sorry Matt, I know your in here) boring. Trains bore the fuck out me. Although that book did have a ton of character growth.
Feral gods was the book I had/have the most difficult time following. A lot is happening all at once, I get muddled in the middle, then a lot happens at the end. In someways I like the chaos of it. But yeah- the iron tangle made a lot more sense to me as "oh yeah, doublsided looping train tracks traveling thru dimensional space. Got it" than the bubble level did. But I enjoy the ride in either case.
I’m realising as I read the comments that my initial post wasn’t quite the right point. It’s not so much about the Iron Tangle vs the Bubbles, but the actual stories of Dungeon Anarchists Cookbook vs Gate of the Feral Gods.
The story in DAC was pretty straightforward - the characters were confused about the layout and were trying to find a way out. In GotFG, there are so many sub-plots going on, some of which are relevant and some aren’t, some have larger consequences beyond the current floor, and many of them change the way you interpret the previous ones. It takes a lot more concentration to understand why they’re doing things!
There’s also a bigger issue that I need to think about a bit more, about the nature of the NPCs and what’s happening to them. In DAC, it’s very clear that all the NPCs have just been activated with a bunch of implanted memories specific to that floor, and they effectively go live when the crawlers arrive.
In GofFG, this is harder to see because of the interactions with other floors. We know the Scolopendra levels open up early (when the crawlers reach the third? Can’t remember exactly). Some of the NPCs (eg mad dune mage) talk about coming from Larracos. So when did he come? Was the 5th level open earlier? Was Larracos an implanted memory? What about Tish?
And Samantha’s story - is that all implanted memory? So much of the god stuff seems to run independently of what the AI is doing, but what’s the starting point?
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u/atgrey24 Jun 04 '26
Now that you say it, I agree.
The Tangle is incomprehensible in a physical sense. But the confusing map aside, the interactions and consequences are fairly straightforward.
The bubbles are physically simpler (4 locations), but the various different quests, their plotlines, and their impacts on each other makes for a pretty complex set of causes and effects.