[D'sP] Finishing The Fourteenth - Chapter 338 (Patreon)

Doyle took stock of how much extra space he had on the floor. To make the cavern, he had basically turned the sphere into a rectangle and carved it out. This left the corners as free space and given the flattened egg shape of the cavern itself, there was more than enough space for the farm.

Then he placed 170 kobolds on one side and an equal amount of myconids on the opposite side. Which, annoyingly, showed they didn’t quite fit right in the floor proper. Or more to the point, Doyle had an idea about how often they should be run into if someone was walking through the floor and it didn’t match up right.

This was a big headache because he had placed everything already. There is a reason for the saying about measuring twice and cutting once. Doyle could only sigh and begin to shift things around until it all fit. In the end, it was for the best as the floor ended up with the correct monster density.

On other floors, this might not be that important. However, with the two sides it was an important factor. After all, while Doyle would prefer people work their way through both sides, he doesn’t want any specific attempt to be impossible as long as the delvers can handle the heat. That includes making sure things don’t go in the opposite direction either. Too dense and some people would be able to trivialize the floor. Yet if it was too spread out, delvers could avoid too much.

And despite the fact things look fine right now, Doyle is just as sure that he will need to adjust things in the future. For now, though, he allows the two sides to go about making their homes and groups. Well, he had to take a bit more active of a hand in their groupings.

The myconids spread out too much. Sure, there were groupings, but they seemed to be taking after their fungal nature and creating a network of beings. An interesting set up, but it would also turn the entire floor’s myconid population against any delver that disturbed them.

On the other side, Kobolds went in the opposite direction. While the myconids generally gathered around the pool of water, the kobolds almost all ended up in the narrow end with their settlement against the wall. In fact, if Doyle had allowed them, they would have abandoned the main cavern entirely and dug their own area. Not that they didn’t attempt it, but dungeon walls are known for their toughness for a reason.

In the end, Doyle is able to sort things out, at least for the most part. The Kobolds, no matter where they settled, tended to put their backs to the wall or at least one of the larger mushroom trees. It was honestly a little frustrating as he hadn’t had this problem on the fifth floor. Then again, the center was on top of a slight hill and delvers could come from any direction. On the other hand, the myconids easily settled down how he wanted.

Doyle shook his core before plopping down a trio of troop guards and three pairs of assassin vines to randomly guard the stalks and webs that went from one side to the other. Now he just had to decide what kind of resources would be available.

Last floor had his first and only source of mithril and it was going to stay that way for a bit longer. Not only to limit the supply, but to limit the greedy as well. At the moment, those looking for a quick buck haven’t bothered advancing past the sixth floor and Doyle would prefer if they remained weaker than those actually trying to better themselves.

After all, it isn’t like you can’t make money by delving deeper. It just takes more effort to find a buyer, whereas cuts of beef sell for a good bit still. After all, it isn’t like most people will suddenly stop needing to eat.

Mithril? That’s a tempting resource that would draw in the flies if too much showed up. At least this early. Doyle was certain that on other worlds this wouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Though it did bring up a point he had to wonder about and so turned to Ally, ‘Heyo, since dungeons are infinite sources of resources, is the universe just stuffed to the gills with stuff? Like, last time I checked my loot isn’t going to vanish at some point or anything. If anything, being made with a wisp of quintessence makes it more real than even some normal resources.’

Ally shrugs, ‘Not to be rude, but why would people want this trash?’

Doyle pulls back, ‘What?’

Ally sighs, ‘Well, first off, anything dropped before your eighth floor would fit under the term “vendor trash” because only vendors will bother buying it. As for the rest of it? Materials and items to burn for power.

‘One of the ways to enchant stuff is to sacrifice things to provide power. After all, why spend all your Mana pool and still fail when you can burn a bunch of junk to provide that extra power? Of course, the process loses a lot, but at least the sacrificed items are completely gone.

‘Not that any enchanter is actually sitting in a room full of vendor trash to enchant a sword. While it compounds the losses even more, vendor trash tends to be used to enchant small trinkets and carved gems. The result is similar to your Mana stones, except one use.’

Doyle, ‘So basically magical batteries?’

Ally nods, ‘Though since the rechargeable options aren’t the hardest thing to find, they generally get relegated to being used to enchant other things, thus the compounded loss I mentioned. The biggest thing that makes this all work is that you don’t have to do it all at once if you’re using a properly constructed ritual circle. You can keep pumping in more power until the first time you try to pull any out.’

Doyle nods, ‘Okay, that makes sense. All the extra material and likely some that isn’t gets burned up in making more powerful gear. Is there a difference between using vendor trash and higher quality stuff?’

Ally, ‘The big benefit of vendor trash is the fact the power is so weak. You can just dump everything in without a care. At higher rank the type of energy contained starts to become relevant. You can’t just toss a sword that uses Mana and a cape using Qi into the same gem. Beyond that, at even higher ranks, you have to start worrying about what element a power is aligned to. Don’t want to stuff Ice Mana into a gem that already has Fire Mana. Not that you can’t enchant something with both, but it would require planning and people wouldn’t bother with it for a simple power component.’

Doyle, ‘What about materials? I’ve got metal ores down on the third floor. Wouldn’t it be better to train someone using it?’

Ally, ‘Oh, don’t worry, people won’t ever be tossing raw ore at a gem. Crafting adds value and for low rank materials? That can triple the value! Of course, that is about the limit because better crafters won’t bother messing with vendor trash materials. While they won’t be 10x-ing more level appropriate materials, that is simply because the base value is so much higher.

‘You can look at the improvement being done as a flat addition and a multiplier. If a trash material is worth one as a base, adding a straight ten to it is a big jump. However, when they can use a base 100 material, that ten isn’t worth as much, but the hidden 20% comes into play. Of course, those numbers are mostly nonsense, but you get the idea.’

Doyle nods, ‘You want flat bonuses early on, but the multiplier is king for large numbers. At least, it is as long as those flat bonuses don’t scale multiplicatively as well.’

Ally, ‘And they certainly don’t scale that fast. Not that you can easily see the values, which is actually why the battery method is used so much, even if you do have to deal with the double loss. See, unlike most other items, it is really easy to tell how much energy is being stored in the battery.’

Doyle, ‘Ah, yeah, that would do it. Knowing what you’re working with is important with crafting, and being able to slap a number on something is quite useful. Though I just realized something, those gems must be masterwork quality to be enchanted, right?’

Ally nods, ‘Gems of all quality are in unending demand, especially dungeon drops since you don’t have to waste any of the material by carving them to be of masterwork quality.’

Doyle brightens, ‘That’s it! I can put a couple gem veins on the floor.’

Ally frowns, ‘Since it is ore, they lose the masterwork quality since delvers have to mine them. If you had the monsters drop raw gems, that would work.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘No, I don’t want to give them ready to enchant gems. They’ll get veins until deeper. I’ve got to make sure they train people on gem carving. Get some people to learn a valuable skill for later.’

Ally shrugs, ‘Fair enough. Go and figure things out then. I think you have a week before anyone is ready to really push deeper. Their fights with the kobolds aren’t as bad, but they’re not that good either.’

Doyle, ‘Fair enough.’ and he turns back to the floor to decide where the gems should go. The most obvious location would be on the walls since that is the most stone forward area. However, it didn’t fit what he wanted for the floor.

If delvers could just skirt the wall and find resources as well? Too easy! No, the gem veins needed to be in the middle of the room. In fact, as he looks at things, the area to place it becomes obvious.

Doyle would have the vein show up between the halfway point and the closest edge of the pond. This shrunk the area people had to search, but it was in just the right location for monsters to stumble upon any attempts to mine the gems. Which they would have to do, because he wasn’t going to have monsters do it for them this time.

Also, the vein would be only on one side and randomly located. The only question now was which type of quartz he would use. In general, quartz is seen as semi-precious, but he does have one option that wasn’t always seen that way; the amethyst.

At one point, they were actually seen as equal to other high end gems. That is, until they found large deposits. Anyway, they’re pretty and purple, so in they’ll go. And while Doyle was only going to place one vein, it wouldn’t be a stingy vein. Also, unlike many of his ore veins, it would respawn if the floor is empty and a new delve team enters the floor. And new in this case just means they weren’t the last team on the floor.

In theory, people could mine the gems as much as they wanted. And as far as Doyle was concerned, power to them. After all, if they wanted to trudge through his floor and work the vein for hours it would only be good for him. Even if someone figured out using earth magic to shift them out of the rock, he would be fine, as that use of magic would probably feed Doyle even more than the hard physical labor.

And with that, Doyle was happy with his fourteenth floor. It wasn’t the fanciest, but he enjoyed the design. Maybe with a little more work, he could have had the two sides actually interact with one another, but having two separate groups wasn’t a problem. Maybe on a later floor he can do something with cooperative or competing monster tribes.

Comparing Kobolds And Myconids - Chapter 337

Diversification Of Powers - Chapter 339