[D'sP] Material Placement - Chapter 388 (Patreon)

And while Ace was having problems deciding where to put a couple of buildings, Doyle had his own placement problems. Though for him, it was how to distribute the new loot. Not only had he gathered a bunch of stuff during the quest, but the system then went and told everyone he had been given them. That means he can hand them out with no one getting suspicious.

Doyle flips through his various monsters. ‘I think the golems would be a good monster to drop the polymer. They already incorporate quartz in their structure so it wouldn’t be completely out of left field.’

Ally shakes her head, ‘Give it to the kobolds on that floor. While the golems use quartz, they aren’t exactly beings I would think of as having made it. Kobolds though? They could do it.’

Doyle, ‘My thing is that I could see the golems, if they were creatures, as naturally producing it so as to form their plates and such. Though yeah, the kobolds on floors 13 to 15. That way it would represent them trading it with those on later floors and giving the outlet of mithril bars a theoretical place to be going.’

Ally nods, ‘That could work. As for the cable? I’m thinking floor 7 because of the ruined city vibe. In fact, you can probably have the assassin vines and lesser shadow wolves drop your cooling plates there as well. Just add some features around that make it look like there were once cables and such, but they got stripped out.’

Doyle, ‘That is such a good idea, I’m going to do it right now so I don’t forget.’ and he proceeds to take about five hours to place holes and channels throughout the seventh floor that people would recognize as being for wires and plates.

Doyle gets back to Ally, ‘Okay, that’s done. Anywhere else I should throw the cooling plates? I want people to find them, but not take up loot drops that are more important.’

Ally, ‘Maybe add heating plates as a potential loot drop for all regular myconids? While they don’t mind making a fire, they still don’t like it all that much. It dries them out and fries their spores.’

Doyle nods, ‘Good idea, any myconid or higher advancement has the chance of dropping a heating plate.

‘Now to add in the four elemental tin and copper ores. I’m not going to add new ore deposits on old floors. They have more than enough as is. Instead, I’ll either replace or give a chance for them to replace the pre-existing deposits occasionally.’

Ally, ‘In moderation, of course. To start, I’m thinking that on floor 3, have a one in three chance that one deposit there will be attuned randomly to one element. That will give them a taste while not being so common as to make later deposits unneeded.’

Doyle, ‘Not many other deposits besides that, so I’m thinking we mix up floor 9 a bit. At the moment it has deposits from front to back of tin, copper, and finally iron. What if instead the iron is in front, the back of randomly tin or copper and always attuned, then the middle has fifty fifty odds of being attuned?’

Ally, ‘Iron is still valuable.’

Doyle, ‘And will only be more valuable once we start having charcoal drop. The question is where?’

Ally, ‘Well, the floors with trees would make the most sense, so floors 2, 13, and 16 would fit the bill. The question is how limited you want the drops to be.’

Doyle, ‘I feel like I’m overloading them, but I’m tempted to just have the kobolds on those floors drop it. Like, on 13 I specifically have some axe wielding kobolds I basically set as being the charcoal makers. Someone has to create it to power the mithril forge after all.’

Ally shrugs, ‘Eh, kobolds just make the most sense. It isn’t like you have a lightning-struck treant to drop it for you.’

Doyle, ‘Fair enough. Though I think we’ve distributed everything that needs distributing. Time to set the drops in stone.’

The ores were the easiest and hardest to set up. All it took was changing up how he spawned the ore in. On the other hand, this touched on automation and since he had the spare Wisdom, meant he had to take the time to automate floors 3 and 9 in the first place. Wouldn’t do to forget that they were meant to occasionally have attuned ore or not have it.

After that, it was just a matter of making four new loot rules. Which meant his total used Wisdom was now 145. Quite a substantial amount, but after leveling to ten he still had more than that many to spare. In fact, with 163 extra automation points he could easily automate the remaining nine floors. And even then, he still had 73 Wisdom he could use for other things if needed.

Sure, his later floors basically never needed resetting more than once or twice a day, depending on how much Ace’s people ran the dungeon. Still, it was nice to know he wouldn’t miss it if something was happening. It would be embarrassing to have an empty floor and confusing for the delvers.

They’d probably go crazy trying to figure out who had still been on the floor when they got there. Maybe not, though? It would just depend on whether they had realized how fluid the instances had become.

And speaking of confusing the delvers, Ace is mighty confused up on the surface. He had waited a little to place the bird coup and had only just now put it down. Except the blueprints were clearly just the basic model as what showed up went beyond it in many peculiar ways.

What Ace had expected was basically a mini-castle of sorts. A stone block building with a single tower and a lot of windows. Like some rich guy’s garden folly, and Ace could see that was at some point the base for this place.

Except someone had massively expanded upon it. There was a wooden tower next to the stone one. At any point possible, little wooden perches had been pounded between stone blocks and all the flat surfaces had cages. And oh, the cages there were! Metal, wood, reed, bamboo, some kind of string netting, and more. If you can make a cage out of it and especially if you might find the material while scrounging around, there are cages made of it.

More than just cages, though, were the birds. They weren’t the ones advertised as being messengers, though. Rather, birds of all types and descriptions, as long as it wasn’t too big. And as Ace is distracted, a being walks out of the front door that was partially obstructed by an elaborate birdcage designed to keep the inside shaded yet still allowing you to see what was there.

Though Ace doesn’t stay distracted for long. Just long enough though for one of the random passersby to be quite rude as they can’t help but exclaim, “What the hell are you?!”

Which, to be fair, was a decent question. The being seemed to be made of some sort of goo and it was certainly goo. Dribs and drabs of the stuff was constantly dripping off of them, only to ooze its way back to the beings feet and rejoin it.

Well, feet is a bit of an exaggeration. They look like they’re wearing a robe or dress that is much too long for them, except you can clearly see it is just a part of their body, what with how transparent they are. At least there isn’t anything to see, as they aren’t wearing any clothes to begin with.

Ace waves the crowd away, “Hello, I uh, wasn’t expecting the building to quite look like this.”

The being raised a line of ooze on the area that would be a face, “Trying to ignore the questioning mind right there and their query? Do not worry! I take no offense. For I am an ooze with a curse. The curse of having eaten a few too many sapients at one point or another such that I gained a soul myself. Dreadful curse as it makes things like fitting into polite society and the passing of time matter.

“But I have my birds! Wonderful creatures capable of flight and so many colors! Beyond even what you might see. So many that I had to develop new skills just to view them all! As for what moniker you might refer to me by? The ooze! Simple can be best at times. No genders, please. I am a they/them sort of person, if you would.”

Ace swallows, “Well, fair enough. So. So, what’s with the messenger coup’s look?”

The ooze swells up quite literally as there appears to be a bubble forming in their body. Though the display is clearly to indicate pride. “You, lucky town that you are, won the lottery and were assigned the magnificent me!

“Believe it or not, but messenger birds are about the most common method of fast communication during most of a planet’s integration period. Now, for some reason, they tend to move away from them to other forms of communication once possible. However, this does mean that the system needs a lot of such coups. And as it is not mission critical?

“Well, the system will offload the work to other beings. Why bother making and maintaining the perfect coup when there are people like me perfectly willing to do it ourselves? Now, we are restricted because the original blueprint must still be the core of the building and we can not build outside of the designated space. Other than that, though?

“We are free to show our own creativity as long as it can be shown on a newly integrated world like your own. And so, we have my display of my feathered friends. Or rather, pets as none of them have developed sapience yet. They likely never will either.

“Still, I can fulfill any of the usual needs. The caveat being that you may not use my own personal birds. That would be cheating! The system can not have that.”

Ace sighs, “So let me get this straight. You’re the person running this coup. For doing that, the system gives you more free rein in the style and size. This resulted in the monstrosity of a building in front of us.”

The ooze shrugs, “That seems to be the case.”

Ace turns to the gathered crowd, “You heard the ooze! Now move on, we don’t have birds for other places yet, anyway. It will be open to the public in the future, but for now there’s nothing here.”

The ooze burbles, “Open to the public, are we? That is an uncommon twist. Even places that had easy communication technology before the system tends to lock these places down. After all, there are only so many birds. Would be a shame if you need to send a message, only to not have a bird ready.”

Ace turns back to them, “We’ll have birds reserved for emergencies. Ones that only get used, even in emergency, if there aren’t regular birds ready for use. Besides, at the moment, the number of places we might want to send a message to is quite limited.”

The ooze nods, “Still in the early stages then. I am sure you will change your tune once you meet up with other communities. The birds to them will be precious and expeditions to trade birds will be great endeavors for the first few decades. Though I have never seen a place not abandon fine establishments like my own, once magic-coms or the like are up and running.”

Ace, “We’ll cross that road when we get there. For now, I’ll leave you to settle in and for the system birds to have a chance to spawn in. I’ll assume you still have more than enough room despite the clutter.”

Building Placement - Chapter 387

Plank To The Face - Chapter 389