VERY ROUGH draft of Chapter 91: Leveling up (Patreon)

This chapter is a lot of 'Infordump'. Skills, stats, increasing them, spending experience. With Milo putting off spending exp, (a decision made at the time and the story sort of rolled along with a break), it left a lot to do.
I'll be going back, checking numbers, making charts look prettier and trying to make it more interesting. But here it is for now.

????OMG, Patreon seems to hate tables.....OK, so I have to figure this out. Until then, I'll omit the stat sheet and list of core skills. Damn, That really puts the Dump in InfoDump......

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Allocating his experience to his skills turned out to be surprisingly easy. He had too much. No skill could go over level 5. He allocated experience until all of his skills were at rank 5. At that point he recieved a message:

You have exceeded the amount of experience that you would normally be able to earn in Tier 1. That's why I sent the nice message, which frankly, you ignored and just kept on killing stuff. Big Stuff! Like World-Bosses and nice old wizards who are revered throughout the world for their kindness and knowledge.

Normally, a little Murder-Hobo like you would be just told that you lost it all. So sad! But...someone has told me that "A debt is owed." and I shouldn't penalize you for stuff that REDACTED did.

-You may add excess experience to any of your stats directly, if you have a skill that uses that stat. This isfor Tier 1 only, and no, you can't go kill more stuff!

-The restriction on spending only 27 points on increasing your stats with CSP is removed. For Tier 1 only.

I'd really like to know the whole story some day. Interested in some experience in Storytelling? Just a thought.

Milo wondered what "A debt is owed" meant. His best guess was some sort of apology from Wally. He'd take it, it let him gain a few extra stat increases. It took 2000 points to get to Rank 5 in a Stat, and 3000 to get to Rank 6. Then 4200, 5600, 7200, and finally 10,000 for Rank 10.

He had 1500 experience to put into his stats. DEX, AGI, INT and PER were already at 10 or higher. Mindful of the bonuses for having his stats at 10, he examined ways to add the 1500. DEX need 1000 to go to Rank 10. AGI needed 200 to get to Rank 7. PER could gain a rank with 1200 experience. But the obvious way was to take DEX to rank 10 giving him a total of 15 and grabbing a Heroic Perk, whatever that was. The other points went into raising AGI by a point.

He spent 42 CSP to take all of the various 'Spirit of...' skills, and raising statis that way. He didn't bother with charisma. How much was that going to help him to fight monsters? And most people found a reason not to like him no matter what. This left him with 60 Core Skill Points to spend.

His list of Core Skills had changed slightly. There some new options to look at. But the first one he bought was two levels of regeneration for fifteen CSP. He was accutely aware that he something inside him just waiting for a chance to dissolve him down to goo. He didn't like the wording on Mutant Regeneration, and stopped at taking the third level or regeneration.

Unlimited Dark Vision was next. He could already see in the dark a little, aided by glowing lichen and mushrooms that seemed to be everywhere. But there would be dark places in the world where no light would touch. At least he hoped so. Anothe ten points spent, leaving him thirty-five.

Never lost seemed essential, and the 2nd and 3rd levels of Skilled Provider looked good. Any miner would take a better chance at gems or rare ores being found now and then. Eight more spent, twenty-seven to go.

He considered Strong Claws and Slashing Tail. He had bought his tail fighting skills early on, but not increased the damage. Shadowblight had always been enough to kill nearly anything, and now without the magical weapon, he realized he'd become reliant on it. He bought all of the levels of Slashing Tail, and the first two of Strong Claws adding +40 damage to his tail, and +20 to his claws. The last two points went into another level of Abundance and the second level of Breathless. He was done and could head up to Tier 2