[D'sP] Something Besides Monsters Taking Up The Spending Limit - Chapter 315 (Patreon)

With the new knowledge on how smelting magical ore works, Doyle needed to learn more about arrays so he can hopefully improve what he already has. Worse, Ally wasn’t able to help him all that much. While she had a lot of access to things like social media and news, the system restricted the more knowledge and learning based stuff she could see on the universal internet.

Not everything, of course, but having a wiki overview of how arrays work is at best enough info to get in trouble with and not much else. Though at least the information was somewhere to start. In particular, it gave Doyle enough information to break down his current array.

Because at a very basic level, arrays are a way to connect a bunch of small effects into one whole. Whether this was to control the effects more precisely, strengthen the effects, or combine them into new and strange effects. At a high enough level of abstraction, arrays are math problems. Of course, the devil is in the details.

The symbols and lines used to make an array weren’t numbers and math operators. To create a working array requires an understanding that things like enchantments don’t. Worse, Doyle cheated to create his current array and thus doesn’t have the basic understanding needed to even make the current one.

Anyone can scratch the array for a simple fire starter into the dirt. Only those who have studied arrays can actually get it to start a fire. The only exception is when someone understands the elements being used to a deep enough degree. Though that one exception is particularly important as that is how most new arrays are discovered. Because in the end, arrays are an attempt to create an effect beyond what the creator could otherwise.

And there was the rub. Doyle really wanted to play with arrays, except after learning about them, he realized he didn’t need it for this particular use. After all, he was a dungeon core and had near god-like control over his dungeon. If he wanted to make a small area of dense world energy? There was of course limitations, but for a small smelter? The effort was barely noticeable.

In the end, all it took was to give the kobolds the smelting skill for the stupidly cheap price of two points total. Then they made a smelter and Doyle pinned double the amount of world energy in it. Though that might have been overkill as the system alerted him to a fun little quirk.

{High Density Locked World Energy Area created

845 points used to maintain the area.}

Yep, just like how monsters required upkeep, special areas like this also required it and something like locking in twice the world energy was expensive. Not the most expensive, sure, but it did represent enough points that he could have placed almost 17 more kobolds on the floor. At least this meant he wasn’t going to have to set it up again after every group of delvers came through and knocked the smelter over.

Though the cost did mean that Doyle wasn’t going to be setting up too many such smelters. It also highlighted the need to figure out arrays. While Doyle guessed they would probably have an upkeep cost if installed in the dungeon, it wouldn’t be that high. Also, arrays would provide more control.

The area had double the world energy not because Doyle had specifically wanted an area that dense. No, he was rather limited by his ability to control the details. Beyond that, he could 100% confirm he had reached the bottleneck Ally had told him about.

Before, when pressing up against his limits, there was some give to it. Maybe Doyle couldn’t improve a whole level’s worth, but reaching a fraction of the way into the next level? That was possible. Now, though, the limit felt like an iron wall with no give at all. The area was twice as dense and not a percent of a percent more or less.

In fact, reaching the limit causes a reality defining shock to spread through Doyle. If before he was like a god, now he fell back to the ground. Sure, he could still do stuff a deity can only dream of, but his limits were all the more defined. So much so, he fell into a state of worrying around his floors to try and find that missing piece.

This lasted hours before Doyle’s mind finally settled down. If it was that easy to notice a problem like this, it wouldn’t be a bottleneck. He would be better off fidgeting with arrays.

Instead, he turns back to the thirteenth floor and the lonely smelter. Well, it wasn’t completely alone. Doyle had created three kobolds with the smelting skill, which thankfully came with the knowledge of how to craft the most basic tools for the job. Of course, someone with a dedicated crafting skills related to stone or metal work would always do a better job. Still, knowing how to at least get the most basic of things set up yourself was a wonderful bonus to any skill that included.

So with smelting taken care of, sort of? Still needed fuel and that was going to mean charcoal. On the most basic level, the stuff is easy enough to make. You light wood on fire and then cut off the oxygen. There was, of course more to it, but the most basic design of a charcoal kiln is literally just making a stack of wood and covering it in mud.

Now, for higher quality charcoal you need to be a bit fancier and an actual skill would help, but Doyle wasn’t going to bother. It would produce the highest quality mithril, but that wasn’t really the point. If the delvers wanted quality mithril, they could smelt it themselves. This was just to get the smelting operation up and running in the most basic form.

That meant five axe kobolds to handle it. They could both defend with their axes and cut down and prepare the trees needed. Though simply saying it needed five kobolds is a little flippant. Doyle spent a couple days balancing things and found that five produced a little bit more than needed.

It honestly took quite a lot of charcoal to smelt the mithril and Doyle could have doubled the number of charcoal producers and still not kept up if the mine wasn’t so limited. How limited you might ask? The whole thing maybe had ten bars of the stuff.

The ore produced by the vein was of very low quality and such a mine would likely be passed over by a town the size of Wolf’s Rest. Ally figured it would be the sort of place where one guy would set up a claim and handle everything by themselves. Even then, they would finish up within a few months. Of course, for most regular people, ten bars of mithril for a few months’ work is still very much worth it.

The simplest use for the stuff is as a wand core and all that requires is turning it into a wire and threading into place. Even a basic wooden dowel would end up as a decent beginner wand if you did that and no one is going to waste mithril on that. More likely, the stuff will be used to make the entire body of the wand. While most metal wands are avoided for weight concerns, mithril is light enough for it to sometimes even weigh less than traditional wands.

So the fact that his kobolds could mine out the entire vein within a week was an impressive feat. If carried ore and metal dropped one to one, the dungeon would be producing way too much of the metal. As it is though, unless someone is mining it themselves, they might get one bar of the stuff.

Still more than enough, but not so much that Wolf’s Rest would allow others to take it. While on most worlds, a dungeon producing such a small amount of mithril would be seen as trivial, it will be a strategic resource for the town. And it certainly didn’t help that the world was likely over a year away from naturally formed mithril to show.

To Doyle, that meant extra protection. So, along with the three smelters and five on charcoal production, he added another 20 kobolds. Most of them sword and board fighters, with five of them on magic. Oh, and instead of random elements; they were fire, water, wind, earth, and healing so as to provide coverage.

Doyle had been tempted to add some actual smiths on top of that all, but decided against that. Instead, ingots would be transported “off the map” as they were made so there wasn’t ever more than one hanging around as a potential reward. Of course, what really happens is that he had set any finished bar to despawn after a random amount of time, but that is all part of the pageantry of the scenario he was setting up.

Though once his little diorama of a kobold mining operation was done, it left him with the rest of the floor. And sometimes? Limits are exactly what you need to actually finish something. The kobold camp and mine was easy to set up because it had to be something specific.

Now Doyle was facing down what was a spiraling mountain road to the top with free rein to do whatever he wanted. If he hadn’t already restricted himself to the birds and golems, he would have lost a lot of time to choice paralysis.

He still lost a lot of time to it, mind you, just not as much. In fact, from a certain perspective, all the previous faffing about with the kobolds could be seen as avoiding it as well, even if those things did need to get done at some point. Either way, he eventually figured it out.

For the kobolds and including the smelter, Doyle had spent 3,395 points leaving him with 51,793. Well, he had an extra 6132 points, but that was the ten percent he reserved for the farm. From that, he compared the cost of the monsters he wanted to use. The hexape golems for 70 and, of course the new birds, still needed to name them, for 50.

If Doyle split the points evenly, he could have had 431 of each. That wasn’t what he desired. The golems were interesting, but the floor was very much tailored for the birds, but that number had given him a good starting point. So he cut the number down to 200 golems in groups of five. After some testing, Doyle cut the number to 170 golems so they were properly spread out. Though he did adjust the groups to be bigger and smaller as felt right.

Doyle was left with the points for 797 birds. Quite a few birds, enough that they could probably overwhelm Ace and all the other founders at the same time. In other words, maybe a few less than would make him completely comfortable, but more than enough for him at the moment.

Sure, sending them at a party in one giant group wasn’t all that fair. So instead, Doyle spread them out and had them nesting in the trees. In fact, they’re set up so that in normal circumstances, not all of them even end up attacking.

Rather, like what he attempted on the wolf floor, the birds would be a constant stream of danger. They would attack in a group and as some died, birds within a certain distance would come to replace them. Also, the further along a party is, the more birds are attacking at once. Plus a few other rules so that someone doesn’t get away with trying to run through without killing anything and the birds feel just right.

That way, as long as a group is trying to kill the birds, they could get through the floor after having killed only a percentage of the total. Some would probably see this as a punishment for the strong. After all, the faster you kill the birds, the more they show up to fight. The delvers who actually want to push themselves? They’ll appreciate the challenge.

Oh, and of course there was one twist to this all. Whether directly or through his ant network, Doyle can call the wrath of all the birds down upon the enemy. Sort of like in that one game when you hit the chicken analog too many times.

Cutting Back - Chapter 314

A Fun Report - Chapter 316