The next major event took place only a few days after they made the move to level 3.
[Notice: Contenders cannot control another dungeon like a puppeteer patch. Dungeons cannot hold other dungeons core’s hostage.]
It was only the third patch of the battle. The first that had not been directed at them. Of course moments after the patch notice, there was a second notice.
[Notice: Contender, Avench Guiseppe, has been eliminated by another contender. Contender has been given a unique reward. Contenders remaining 7/35]
Leonard Boulevic, from the Republic of Neurim, became the sole dungeon remaining in the Southeast, and now only 20% of the original contenders remained. Apparently the guy had conquered the dungeon, but instead of destroying the core he had decided to try and force the dungeon to become subservient or the core would be destroyed. It was a devious and good idea. Units could come up from the lowest floor, but could not be summoned to the core room directly. Without the patch, Leonard would have been able to coerce compliance. Of course the other contender would be dealt with eventually anyways, but many would be willing to play along for no other reason than to live a bit longer.
Mark could only be thankful the tactic had not been allowed. The number 2 already had every advantage. If it was a lesser loophole, the battle managers might have allowed it, since Leonard was a contender from a major power. It would have tipped the scales too heavily. One dungeon doubling up on production would be almost impossible to deal with. The other major factions with a horse still in the race would never let such a thing pass.
The only good news over the developments over the last few months was that it was highly likely that neither of the top two contenders had been able to save enough MP to level up their dungeons since their resources had been moving towards conquering the other dungeons in their region. However, at best it only put the two a bit behind. It also meant that they had both collected a handful of unique rewards. However it also meant that now, the two had nothing standing in their way.
Mark dismissed the notices. Whether they were level 3 or not, it did not change the fact that Mark needed to eek out every advantage that he could. Despite having to save up as much MP as possible there was plenty for them to do. He redoubled his focus on his brewing. He was making the first enlightenment pills. Like the rest, the process would last for around two hours, and much of the time he just had to stand by till a more complex part of the process occurred.
After hundreds of rock skin pills he had become quite proficient in pill creation. The new enlightenment pill and soldier pill had differences from the rock skin pill, but without a essence as one of the ingredients they were actually easier. It was like he had been thrown into the deep end in order to learn to swim, now the shallow water would not offer much of a problem.
His first soldier pill had even been of average quality. It had only taken a handful to perfect the process where he could get a good quality every time. The higher qualities were still beyond him. The higher quality levels required rarer ingredients. Mark had attempted a couple of times, but the process had been more difficult so he had winded up with a lower quality anyways.
Higher level pill and potion making processes were just too intensive. Hopefully, the enlightenment pill would change that. It was a bit odd spending time to make one pill, only to turn around and use it to make a better version of another. Even funnier was that he would have to use a lower level enlightenment pill to make a higher enlightenment level pill. The amount of pills and potions he could make would decrease, but hopefully the payoffs would be well worth it. It was not like they had battles everyday. Exceptional or higher quality levels might make all the difference.
Truth was they already had quite a large stockpile of lower quality enchantments, pills, and potions since they had not had a battle for nearly two months. Mark was able to make at least 4 or 5 a day, and that was on top of working on other projects. The manna consumption for pill refining was negligible compared to inscribing enchantments. He could literally keep it going as long as was physically able to.
However, Mark had several other major projects he was overseeing. The first came after finishing their latest tech, intricate design. Now they could make sets of armor. Before they had been prevented from using the same enchantment on different pieces of armor for one individual unit. Now they could. Of course Mark had started with the defensive enchantment over every piece of armor.
Their dungeon currently was limited on what metalwork they were able to perform. It was not like they were using pure iron, which would have been a relatively soft material. They could just not work metal to the point where they could make steel or bronze. The techniques were hidden behind the advanced metallurgy tech. Once they were able to make steel, their weapons and armor would be lighter and more effective. Currently, only the stronger units were able to wear a full set of iron plate armor. Even the chain mail that had become possible after intricate design was on the heavier and weaker side. It all meant getting the advanced metallurgy tech was a priority, but then again so was everything else.
Still the results of the new sets of armor could not be looked down upon. Before they had been able to add about 3 to 4 to a unit's defensive stat with the plate breast and back plate with a good quality enchantment, but that was a little deceptive. While enchantments did affect the unit overall, they were strongest on the parts they were actually covering. It meant well placed shots could hit a more vulnerable area. The new full plate not only gave a greater combined defensive bonus, but also covered most of the body allowing far fewer vulnerable spots.
Henry had been the first equipped. A full set of heavy plate with good enchantments had increased the bugbear general’s defensive stat by 8. It brought his defense up to 11, but that had not been the end of the ensemble. Mark had made use of one of their new enchantments as well on the undershirt equipment slot units were allowed. Mark made a design for a leather undershirt for Henry. The leather would not only better insulate the bugbear from the rough, heavy armor, the fire resistance would also aid in protecting him from one of the most prominent damage types, fire.
Mark was more than happy with the result. With a good quality rock skin pill, he would be able to get Henry’s defense all the way up to a 15. The fact that the general had more stamina, skills, and stats meant the heavy armor would not slow the general by much. The general did not only look like an iron encased juggernaut, he would effectively be one.
The other bugbears were only able to manage a lesser portion of the heavier armor. Chain mail was supplemented in many of the areas, and even then the units would tire faster and move noticeably slower. The defensive bonus could only get up to 6 before the adverse effects were not worth the extra defense, and that was for the higher rank bugbears. The base bugbear could only get to 5. Still Mark would also be able to outfit other units like arachne, scorpions, and eventually the level 3 units.
The second major project was manna imbuing. The project had an unexpected extra step, Mark had not anticipated. There were several important qualities for the imbued items. Most important was what material was used. Anything could be used, but gems far surpassed anything else. There was little point using something else when gems were available since gems could hold far more manna for their size. The amount of manna a material could hold was the first important factor. The second factor was the flow the material would allow per a second.
Gems were better in all regards. The flowrate and the amount of manna could still vary depending on the type of gem used. However, a larger size was always better for the same type of gem. However, both factors were also affected by the gems purity as well. There was one more thing to consider. Certain gems would be able to hold different types of energy more effectively. The example the encyclopedia had given was a ruby being more effective at holding fire types of energy. Of course they only had the basic manna embuement right now, so it was not a factor.
Mark loved to nerd over things like this, but even he was glad that the interface simplified everything by assigning ranks to the factors. Mark did not have to actually worry about the material type or its clarity, he could go based on the material’s rank in manna or flow rate potential.
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Mark had evaluated quite a few different substances. For the non gem materials, a piece of quarts rock had given the best values for both manna quantity and flowrate, and Mark had not seen it even get above a 0.3. A regular rock or a piece of wood did not even give a fraction of that. However, even the worst of the gems gave at least a 3 in both categories. However many of them had values into the low double digits.
Where the material type did come into play was due to the unexpected snag that he should have anticipated. Raw gems could of course be used for embuement, but if they were cut and polished they would be far more effective. The end result would of course follow the same quality types as everything else. The downside was that he needed at least a below average end result for a gem. A poor quality cut could at best degrade the effectiveness of the gem, but it also had a good chance to do something unexpected when manna was put in or during use.
Different uses and different gems would do better with different cuts. Suddenly the stockpile of raw gems they had stockpiled did not seem like it would be enough. It would also be difficult and resource costly to get a goblin up to speed on cutting gems. Instead, Mark had elected to just commission them all from the gnomes. It had taken the industrious gnome craftsmen only a matter of a week to get gems up to the good quality level, and a couple of those days had been expended as the gnomes built more suitable tools to undertake the endeavor.
So far Mark had only implemented the embued gems on the top level of the tower. It took seven good quality gems to form the energy shield to protect the first level. The amount of gems that could be used was of course based on their quality as well as other things. Seven seemed to be the limit for good quality gems working on one enchantment. Of course that was with how spread out the tower was. They could not use more than one with say a single unit piece of armor. Their outer wall on the other hand might be able to have a hundred or more working together. It meant Mark could not put a bunch of gems on one unit, or on units working together in close proximity. Just like enchantments they would interfere with each other. Of course their crafting house decreased interference, so other dungeons would be even more restricted at the various quality levels.
The gems would recharge by ambient manna in the environment, but they could also be charged from units imputing manna into them. Although it would take a dozen mages draining their manna to fill one gem.
The result was a translucent bubble. Mark had mages blast it with lances and fireballs. There was little concern whether the experiment ended with the tower getting damaged, since even if it was destroyed it would respawn in 24 hours. The shield prevented all incoming magical attacks including enchanted arrows. However, Mark noted that unenchanted arrows would pass right on through. The shield also would not prevent a unit from passing through unless they were wearing enchanted armor. The bright side was that outgoing attacks would not be affected.
Mark also noted how long it took for the energy shield to be depleted. The energy would deplete over time just by being used. Magic attacks would deplete it far faster. Enchanted items hardly depleted it at all. Enchanted items whose function occurred prior to hitting the shield such as the duplicate arrows were not blocked. A regular fire arrow would similarly pass through. Only things of magic would be stopped.
Yesterday, had been a rough day on their dungeon magi. They had refilled the gems over and over, but Mark was glad he had taken the time to test every aspect he could think of. For one, their archers exclusively carried enchanted arrows that would not be able to pass through such a shield. If they came across an opponent using energy shields, it would prevent them from utilizing their dungeon’s greatest strengths. Second, he was more aware of the limits of imbued items. Mark expected that embuing would be one of the focuses in almost every dungeon.
The final project that Mark had underway involved their resident mad scientist and also intricate design. Every three or four days or so, Ezekial made some new small implement. The items would have various functions. Mark could see the use in all of them. Problem was that they were small scale, and the inventor never made the same item more than once, so they were one off minor advantages. While it might make a difference for a unit or group of units, even burning through a dozen of the creations would not make too big of a difference in a large scale battle.
That is where the tech intricate design came in. Crafters could literally create new items and make templates that could be used to mass produce the creations. The goblins were not overly creative, but there was nothing preventing the gnomes and them from disassembling Ezekial’s creations and hopefully creating a template.
Mark had almost scrapped the idea as item after item were themselves scraped in the process with nothing to show. An electric disintegrating ray among others never got their time in the spotlight. How effective they would have been would never be known. Even Ezekial did not seem to know how effective his creations would be. He just gave each a simple description of what he thought it would do. However, the inventor was definitely capable; his wooden battle puppet was proof of that.
It was when the eighth item was disassembled that the gnomes working the project finally had their first success. Most of Ezekial’s creations used one type of essence or another, usually it was lightning. The eighth item, the golem ball so named by Mark, just happened to use two different types. The stone and lightning essence would pull some golem humanoids from the surface the ball landed on. From dirt they would create a handful of dirt golems. On stone it would create a stone golem.
The template had first been reproduced at the poor quality level, but it had only taken a couple of days for the gnomes to move the quality up to below average. Future quality levels would hopefully follow. At poor quality the golem ball could summon around a 1.5 power rating worth of golems. For dirt golems, they got 3 or 4, each with a power rating or around 0.4. However if the ball was formed on stone, it might only get a single 1.0 power rating stone golem.
The poor quality golem balls might not have been worth the essence expenditure, but the below average version had doubled the power rating of units that could be created. It would then summon around six earthen golems, with a power rating of 0.5. The stone golem would give 2 golems at around 1.5 power rating each.
The possibilities of stronger versions of the item were too good to give up. Mark half expected for there to be another patch, but apparently the expenditure of precious resources was balance enough. Mark could see a point of time, where hundreds of such balls could be used at once to build an entire golem army. It offered opportunities for surprised attacks on other dungeons as well as stretching the adventure party unit cap a bit. The first idea seemed to have been accepted by the battle managers, however he had a feeling the second might bring about another patch. They might only be able to utilize that idea once. Luckily, the patches never seemed to deal with the benefits already gained by utilizing exploitative methods, so as long as he hid the thought before its actual use it might give them a real edge.
The golem ball was still the only item to have been successfully duplicated. A half dozen other items had since been wasted. Mark wished he could get the eccentric inventor to make templates himself, but that would definitely be a balance breaker.
The new use for the electric essence drastically increased the need for the resource. It would set them back a couple days in getting Magic energy production III, but Mark knew it would be worth it. The mining division was brought to regiment size of a thousand units for a bit over 40,000 MP. Tripling the amount of miners would hopefully triple the amount of electric essence and other resources gathered from the mine.
Mark expected it might, well at least for a little bit, but as the mine became more developed units would have to travel farther and farther in the tunnels already dug. Mark was waiting on steel and probably the level 2 siege engine tech to build rail lines and carts that could remove ore or loose rock far quicker. Until then a greater work force would have to do.
It was in that moment of thought, when Amelia opened the door. “Are you able to chat for just a minute?” she asked.
“Yeah, I have a bit before the process becomes more intensive. What’s up?”
The girl smiled. “Avery made us offer…”
Mark listened intently to the proposed plan. He told Amelia, he would have to think on it after she was finished. The girl immediately after. Mark tried to shift his focus back to his first enlightenment pill, but he nearly failed entirely. The result was a poor quality pill. Mark examined it. It would increase brain function and processing speed by 8% for up to 41 minutes. It did not sound like much, but even this poor quality pill could mean the difference of a quality level for another enchantment or pill. Still a better quality enhancement pill would make it near a sure thing. Mark wanted to refine another pill, but he knew despite his ability to compartmentalize things that the result likely would not end up much better.
Instead, he secured the poor quality pill and made his way for the door. He would need more details from Avery, that Amelia had not thought to ask. The details were not for him to decide on whether to accept the proposal. Mark had already made that decision. After all, another unique reward was quite a tantalizing prize.