A Dungeon has to primarily worry about two resources: Mana and Currency. While the Dungeon gets a certain stipend in both – depending on the Dungeon’s size, meaning, how many floors it has – both resources can be exhausted in the blink of an eye.
Of course, an adventurer can give both to the Dungeon – Mana by simply doing things, from just sitting around to heavy exercise and death. The rule of thumb is, the more heavy the exercise is, the more Mana the Dungeon will get.
As for Currency, the Adventurer has to lose his spare change while inside the Dungeon. Probably not many will do that unless they have perished. Folks usually keep their money close.
What do these resources do?
Mana is used for everything, the Dungeon does. Expansion is fueled by Mana, as is getting and maintaining the Monster's Order of Battle (the MOB), producing loot, and even researching or enhancing stuff.
Currency, on the other hand, is there to get important stuff from the Dungeon Shop. New Monsters, new loot, new Blueprints, new resources, and new Perks all cost money, the better the stuff, the more the Dungeon Master has to pay for it. Incidentally, if the Dungeon wants to give money as loot, it has to be done from this pool too. Zoli may be a lazy, greedy moron, but he dodged an arrow here – with all the backlog he has, handing out money would be the best way to bankruptcy.
How does all this work in detail?
Assuming, you want to make a new Floor (i.e. Zone for The Grand Dungeon of So'ee), you have to have a vision, of how the Floor would look like, you fork out the Mana-cost and with a wave of your hand, you have a new Floor. This Floor will be bare-bones, mostly just a potential for a Floor or an outline. You still need to wave your hand around for more detailed work. A hill goes here, a stream there, a few ruins here, a copse there…
Oh, wait!
Do you even have the “Blueprints” for plants? No? Go to the Dungeon Shop and buy some with Currency!
Same as with the MOB. You can recycle the same basic monster ad nauseum, but if you want something different, you have to go to the Dungeon Shop and start shopping.
Since every Dungeon has to choose a main Theme at the get-go (Animals, Undead, Plants, Sapients, Elementals… whatever), it is important to stick to that Theme. Sure, the Dungeon can buy literally EVERYTHING, but MOB, that isn't from the main Theme will be more expensive to buy and maintain.
The Dungeon now has compellingly cultivated customized content, i.e. a Floor and a MOB, but what about the most important stuff, a Dungeon has to provide, loot?
While every monster provides some built-in loot – basically its body parts, if the adventurers have the Skills to harvest them (and there are a LOT of Skills!) – and the adventurer can pick pretty flowers, fell trees, or dig up stones, all of these will be, well, body parts, flowers, wood, and stones. Nothing special. If the Dungeon wants to provide something not-so-basic, it has to either get some interesting Monster or has to start manufacturing stuff.
Of course, the Dungeon has to know the properties of said stuff first.
Assuming, that no adventurer just leaves a Legendary Sword of Hacking lying around, that the Dungeon can deconstruct (i.e. put into the Research Schedule), the information and the knowledge have to come from somewhere. But from where?
You probably guessed right: The Dungeon Shop! EVERYTHING is sold there. For Currency, of course.
The Dungeon has two options here: Buy a one-off, or buy a Blueprint. A one-off is just one piece of gear, clutter, or item, as soon as something happens to it (an adventurer loots it, it is destroyed or it is deconstructed for its Blueprint), it goes poof. With a Blueprint, the Dungeon can manufacture as many pieces as it wants. A gazillion Legendary Swords of Hacking? No problem – as long as the Dungeon has the Mana for it…
(Before you point out an exploit: Buying a one-off, and deconstructing it for its Blueprint is actually more expensive, than buying the Blueprint in the first place. Both in Mana and Currency, that is)
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The Dungeon now has the Blueprint and can produce LOOT. The easiest and fastest way to do it is to just wave its imaginary hand around, and the item would materialize. If the Dungeon has Mana to throw around, this is the best way.
But it is expensive.
Everything has to be done by Mana alone. Shape the item, fill it with “content” and fix it in the world’s reference frame.
The discerning Dungeon, however, will invest in "virtual" or not-so-virtual workshops (a blacksmith, tailor, leatherworker, alchemist…) and actual raw materials. While both cost Mana to maintain (the Upkeep), and the Dungeon would need to buy the Resource Nodes for Currency, in the long run, it is more economical.
Well, not accounting for Perks. There is a basically endless amount of Perks a Dungeon can buy (for Currency, of course), from Upkeep Reduction to Better Materials, Extra Research, Faster Research, you name it, the Shop has it. Even outright Cheat Powers – but those will be prohibitively expensive.
All right, the Dungeon has now a new Floor, hired employees (ehm… spawned Monsters), placed Merchandise (ehmm… loot), but the Floor is still not ready.
For now, every Monster is just a Level 1 Normal, which is the default.
On Arkadia, there are three tiers, into which every living or undead entity falls: Normal, Elite, and Boss. The difference between the three is basically how many Attribute Points or Character Points one gets. In Dungeons, this means extra Perks or Abilities. A Boss can have three, a Miniboss two, and an Elite one (and a Raidboss five). You may have noticed "Miniboss" and "Raidboss" in the list, those two are Dungeon-specific categories, one is between Elite and Boss, the other above even a normal Boss in strength.
Please note, that in order to be the Floor Boss, the entity doesn’t have to be a “Boss” in strength, the Dungeon can choose to make a simple Critter the Floor Boss (the previous Dungeon Master did just this: she named random Level 1 Normal as Floor Bosses and was done with the work).
Zoli is just in the mindset, that a "Boss" has to be Floor Boss since it is in their name. A Boss is the boss. There is no rule to do it that way, however.
Of course, there are limits, to how many entities of a given category and Level a Floor (Zone) can support:
Only ONE Boss with a maximum Level of twice the Floor’s number. For example, on Floor (Zone) 1, the maximum Level would be 2, on Floor (Zone) 100 Level 200.
ONE Miniboss per number of the Floor with a maximum Level of twice the Floor’s number. In the example above, Floor 1 could have one Miniboss with a maximum Level of 2, and Floor 100 could have 100 Minibosses, each with a maximum Level of 200.
THREE Elites per number of the Floor with a maximum Level of twice the Floor’s number.
There is no limit for Normals and Critters, only that their maximum Level can’t be larger, than twice the Floor’s number.
(The Dungeon can have ONE Raid-Boss per forty Floors, but that is still in the far future)
Putting on the finishing touches, a Dungeon can place Rules and Decorations into the new Floor. Rules consume Mana as upkeep but can give the floor a certain flair: swirling mist, unusual weather patterns, water, that flows uphill, sensory overload. You can name it, you can make a Rule out of it. The "stronger" the Rule, the more Mana you have to pay for the upkeep (the previous Dungeon Master placed those insanely strong Rules to protect pretty flowers, and it showed in the cost). There ARE Perks, which do or can do the same as Rules, but you have to pay with Currency for them but don't need Mana afterward.
The last point of interest is Decorations. Basically, everything is a Decoration, that can't leave the Dungeon – it doesn't have been 'fixed' in the world's reference frame, so to speak. While you can't take that Legendary sword outside, it can and does function splendidly inside of the Dungeon. Actually, most trees and stuff in Zoli’s Dungeon are just Decorations, since making them real-real would be a waste of good resources. Nobody cares about run-of-the-mill trees. While the upkeep for Decorations is in comparison low, it isn’t zero.
An interesting thing about Decorations is, that the Dungeon doesn't need to have a Blueprint to make them. The Dungeon just imagines them, and they are there. As a corporate HR-Manager, Zoli just can't get the mechanisms into his head – at least consciously not. Do you remember his überboss-Chair? Fake. Most of his mansion and corporate HQ? Fake.
No one cares, since no one can leave the Dungeon anyway.
(I'm almost sure, someone will ask if the MOB can be made 'Fake'. Sure, it can be made that way! There is, however, a tacit understanding, that the MOB has to be 'Real', although there is no rule saying it. However, the Dungeon would need to make the loot ‘dropped’ by a slain Monster ‘real’ so the adventurers could take it outside. As long as you don’t have the Blueprint for it, you would need to buy or research it. Please don’t point the scheme out to Zoli, since he would probably jump on the opportunity.)
The very last point, a Dungeon can do is research and enhancing. The Dungeon has this pretty flower that does flowery things, but the Dungeon likes one specific part of those flowery things. The Dungeon forks out a little bit (or a truckload, depending on the item and property) of Mana, waits a bit, and that specific attribute will be enhanced. Made better. Gotten more prolific. Same with other items: The Dungeon has the Blueprint for a steel longsword, but wants a slightly different longsword made out of Unobtanium, That would actually be TWO pieces of research, first for the different form and second for the different material.
Normally, a Dungeon has all the time in the world, what are a few days of research for one piece of something? The newborn Dungeon probably doesn't have that much stuff to research in the first place.
Assuming, you research as you go, expansion and research will go hand in hand. Of course, if you go ahead and build a HUGE Dungeon of, say, 131 Floors, but don’t even research one thing…
I hope the explanation was clear. If you have questions, I'm happy to answer them!