[D'sP] The Rest Of It - Chapter 380 (Patreon)

Not wanting to waste time, the two began to go through everything the kobolds had brought back. Among it, there was honestly a lot of trash. Cracked glassware netted Doyle seven levels in his vial pattern. While another collection of broken up glass went straight to his glass pattern, boosting it by an astonishing 18 levels.

More interesting were some of the clear samplers. Squares of cloth; cotton, canvas, and silk. Doyle was mostly certain he could have gotten the same from town, except the silk. However, the silk was higher quality than not while the other two had interesting patterns in their weave. Good to raise his honestly low pattern level of five by 22 levels to 27.

And, of course, there was also a sample of leather. Though Doyle could tell as he deconstructed it, that it wouldn’t do much for him. The leather seemed to come from some sort of scaleless lizard about the size of a small cat. More to the point, it was clearly not for sturdiness, but comfort and so, while nice, only raised his leather pattern six levels. Though to be fair, it did double the level.

Then there were three different samples of wax. One came from some form of bee, but the other two were plant based. With that it was more the variety giving a boost, but then again, his wax pattern had only been level 1, so five levels was not to be looked down on.

After that, they went through the backpack of one kobold that contained only scrap pieces of metal. However, despite calling it scrap, this might be the most useful because it wasn’t rote metal. Well, some of it was, but the rest was magical.

Not just magical, as in having been reinforced by all the mystical nonsense in the air now. No, they were attuned to a sub element of earth, crystal. Which certainly points to how hard that world tilts towards the stuff.

Anyway, this didn’t actually create a new metal as some attunements can, so it showed up as a new bit of nomenclature in the status sheet. So far there had been square brackets that told you at what level the created item would work at, seen in the enchantments and arrays. And of course the parentheses which would note the minimum level at which Doyle could spawn something in his dungeon, both with monsters and materials. Though until now the only item that had a requirement was mithril.

Oh, and parentheses took up double duty, also being used to note specifics about something. Which when Doyle considered it, did fall in line as long as you let it be a bit broader. This was in a bunch of places such as his own race which was dungeon core (diverse strange caverns) and the void kobolds (voibolds) as well simple notations such as how his world energy pool has the natural refill rate in parentheses. And with that realization, Doyle slotted in the new notation as just an extension of how the square brackets worked.

Ally conveniently had kept a snapshot of his metal patterns before deconstructing the new samples.

{Metal Patterns: mithril (lv20) lv20, gold lv20, silver lv20, copper lv20, iron lv17, tin lv16}

Which allowed them to really compare the results.

{Metal Patterns: iron (crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv43, copper (crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv31, tin (crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv29, gold (crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv22, silver (crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv22, mithril (lv20) lv20, lead (crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv17}

Most obvious, well besides the crystal attunement, was the addition of lead. Though copper and iron, both received quite a few levels. But yeah, it was the way the crystal attunement was noted that really drew the eye. While a bit cluttered when all together, Doyle found it easy to parse once separated out.

It was crystal attuned, had to be spawned at level ten equiv, and the crystal attunement worked at a specific level. The only truly new part beyond a bit of nesting was the -10lv part and just reading it revealed what it meant. Negative ten levels or better yet, minus ten levels and it simply meant the crystal attunement was working at the materials pattern level minus ten.

However, despite this being a bit self evident to Doyle, he double checked with Ally as well as asking one other question, ‘Does the nesting ever stop?’

Ally laughed, ‘Don’t worry, the system does what it can to prevent over nesting in one place, preferring to break out new tables over going more than one deep. Sometimes it is even more proactive, as all of your collected pattern tables show.

‘Just think of your metal patterns. They’re in the metal patterns table, which is in the materials pattern table, which is in the dungeon patterns table. Your new lead pattern could have been like so.’

{Dungeon Patterns (Material Patterns (Metal Patterns (lead (crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv17) lv43) lv63) lv99}

‘Now, ain’t that a mess? As for your guess at what “minus ten levels” means? You’re spot on. The lead isn’t attuned deeply enough to be its own material, which would receive its own pattern. They’re too similar. While at the same time, the attunement is hard enough to manage that you can’t just churn the stuff out at the same level as regular lead.

‘Though another way to look at, it is that part of the pattern represents how much mystical power you can shove in it. This isn’t something you can actively train, sadly. Rather, just a part of getting better and usually increased through other skills, allowing patterns to increase even if nothing has changed about it.

‘Anyway, attuning a material will eat up part of that space you could be shoving power into. So instead of a bar of iron with 43 levels of magic in it, you have a crystal attuned bar of iron with 10 levels of crystal attunement and 33 levels of magic. Now, it obviously isn’t that direct.

‘Your level in a pattern doesn’t directly correspond to the level of power within it. It would surprise me if your iron pattern had more power in it than your max monster level and likely much less. Though your mithril pattern is currently a direct one to one, as if you had a level zero material shoved full of level twenty magic.’

Doyle, ‘What about people who actually have to smelt the metal bars instead of making them whole cloth?’

Ally, ‘That will mostly be the same, though barring special training, they’ll have a much lower infusion ratio. Also, instead of adding an attunement, they tend to instead focus on skills to maintain a material’s pre-existing attunement. So they’d start with crystal attuned iron ore and while smelting it, work to prevent that attunement from dissipating.

‘Not that they can’t add an attunement. Just that step tends to be broken out into its own skill. While in theory all you need to do is shove enough of the proper power into a material to attune, there is a reason that out in nature the process either takes years on end or a catastrophe.’

Doyle, ‘Fair enough, does the crystal attunement do much for any of these metals?’

Ally shrugs, ‘No clue. The cost is pretty low for a sub element, but metal and crystal are actually pretty close to one another. After all, metals naturally crystalize, though the physics definition of a crystal and the magical definition certainly aren’t one to one.

‘If I’m to go by what the scraps looked like, the other civilization likely used the stuff to better connect to their quartz tech. After all, what good is a Mana cable if you can’t plug it into something? 

‘As for what good it will do for you? We’ll just have to test what the crystal attunement does. I’m guessing it might reinforce metal’s natural crystalline structures, making it harder if maybe a bit more likely to shatter. Until you get into material and attunement combos that are their own thing, an attunement tends to just be a simple modifier to the materials properties.’

Doyle, ‘Well that’s less exciting than I expected.’

Ally rolled her eyes, ‘It’s already magic, what more do you want? Though I will admit that there are probably niche interactions that will make it useful. For one, burning it as a power comp for an enchantment gets double worth out of it if thematic to the enchantment. Also, since it is already a magical material beyond just being reinforced passively by magic, the quality of anything made with it will have a higher cap compared to a regular metal of the same type.

‘Not too useful right now, but later on I’m sure the town will love the crystal iron for sharpness enchanted blades. Both to make the blade with and to burn for the enchantment. Though if you make a deposit of crystal gold? Well, the second common coin type will likely pop up. The craft coin. Your world is just much too behind right now for it.’

Doyle, ‘Fair enough, now let’s finish with the rest of this stuff.’

And next up was a collection of quartz samples. To be expected, given what they knew of the world. Though Ally found it a bit odd that none of them were crystal attuned like the metal. Her best guess being that any such quartz was instantly snapped up and used for the most important stuff.

Oh, and the system probably didn’t want to give them any. As while it wouldn’t change anything, a material attuned to its own element can be very powerful. This was more likely than not as suspiciously, they got a single sample of each type of quartz they already had and raised their pattern levels by exactly ten.

It was at this point that Doyle began to gain a few new patterns. There was nothing earthshaking, the system wouldn’t allow that, oh no it wouldn’t. And first on the list was the pattern for bricks, coming in at an astonishing level 72. Doyle and Ally both agreed that was likely because the quartz bricks were pretty much one of the crowning achievements of the dead civilization. Well, the quartz synced polymer was, but that only weighed in at lv32.

The much lower level, likely the result of the kobolds only managing to get a hold of a subpar sample. It had basically been in what Doyle felt was best described as a mini caulk gun. A product which would have been used by people to fix any drafts or fill in small holes.

Though calling it subpar isn’t quite fair. They had diluted the mixture somewhat to add in a thickener as the polymer itself was fully a liquid before setting. Without a bit of thickness to it, the stuff wouldn’t have been all that good for patch jobs. This still meant that it wasn’t as good as a pure sample would have been.

Then, after all that, only a bunch of scrap was left over. A variety of stuff from poles and rope to screws and plywood. It was the widest selection of stuff you’d expect to find in the house of someone very into DIY, but who also tends to give up about a third of the way into any project. Doyle was going to deconstruct the stuff one by one to see what he would get, but that wasn’t an option.

The moment he began to deconstruct one of the poles, it all went. This shocked the both of them, though the resulting gains made some modicum of sense. What Doyle gained from all that random stuff in levels to most of his kobold trap patterns. Some more than others, though it made sense as well.

The pitfall pattern only got raised by three levels, matched by the murder hole. Simple enough to explain, there wasn’t much in the assorted stuff that could improve a hole in the ground or wall. A popular trap of the kobolds, the rockfall trap, gained 11 levels. Which seeing as the scrap had a bunch of fasteners and such, made sense. Same with the tripwire that went up seven levels. And last, but not least, the dart trap gained a whopping 17 levels. Most likely from the fact it is the most mechanically complex.

Two Extremes - Chapter 379

He Won't - Chapter 381