I awoke for the first time in what felt like days, having ‘sat down’ and ‘closed my eyes’ to think of my moss farm design and execution. I hadn’t even realized i was tired, simply feeling no exhaustion nor fatigue. But it seems that, despite my new body needing no sleep, my mind still craved the stabilizing rest sleep would provide. Luckily i didn’t need a bed otherwise i was sure the stone floor would have done little for my back.

Making a note to figure out some sort of coffee moss in the future, I set out to check up on my slimes. I’d collected nearly two hundred biomatter in the short time I slept so I instantly started to pump out new slimes, before stopping at one and realizing I had enough to set up new stuff on the second floor. I practically skipped down the slope and had to stagger to a stop as I beheld what had been done in my absence.

My slimes had been hard at work carving out my second floor and hadn’t slowed when I checked out. I was standing at the entrance to a cavern nearly the size of a football stadium, rows of stone shaped like waves as my slimes dutifully moved back and forth along the floor that was nearly complete, requiring only smoothing now. It was now that I realized more time had passed than I thought, my metric of resource collection having been a bad choice. I must not have given my new slime any orders to keep collecting moss, something I rectified with both of my newest slimes.

I gazed out at my large floor and smiled, knowing i’d have plenty of room for new projects now. I quickly stopped my working slimes and sent them off to start a tunnel to a new floor, content with what I had for now, then I moved around the floor, smoothing the stone by hand until I was content with how it looked.

My second priority was setting up a second slime spawner, which I decided to set over by the new ramp area. While it might seem like a waste to set a second one up, the slimes just moved too slow to make dedicated mining slimes move from the first floor area so I just accepted the cost, setting it up and turning to start planting moss nodes on the ceiling and mushroom nodes on the edges. Then, with my nodes spent for the time being, I started planting my new general mineral nodes in the center area of the room. I was thinking I'd raise the center up like a hill but I could make it look nice later, I am a young dungeon so function comes before form.

Finally I moved to set up one of my insect spawners. While the idea of cave spiders was appealing, my slimes already provided enough mining potential for me and I'd soon have enough biomatter for a new spawner, assuming a second floor spawner cost twice as much as a first floor spawner. So, picking a spot off to the east of the cavern, I picked my cave hopper spawner and set it up, finding it did cost 100 biomatter.

The cave floor started to lift up slightly, making a small dome with a small entrance a little wider around than a two litre bottle, the stone taking on a rougher texture and darkening slightly. With the spawner built I selected it.

Cave hopper spawner

Spawns available:

Cave hopper: 20 Biomatter

Finding that the cave hopper was only 20 biomatter wasn’t too surprising, they were just a utility spawn so they shouldn’t be that expensive. I reached out with my mind and watched, a little grossed out, as a creature wiggled itself free of the hole in the stone. It was somewhat unremarkable, simply looking like a dull gray grasshopper scaled up to the size of a cat. The only notable difference I could see was the mouth, resembling something closer to a scorpion. It had two pointed pincer-like things close to the mouth, with two other mouth parts that looked suitable for crunching.

As unsettling as I found bugs, especially ones big enough to take fingers off, I still needed to test it. A quick order to cross the cavern was energetically followed, the powerful back legs proving to be exceptional at launching the hopper at breakneck speeds. While it was supposed to be a swarm attacker, I could imagine getting hit with one cat sized bug at speed wouldn’t be a fun time. The hopper also proved to be good at crawling, easily picking its way up the cavern wall, if at a more sedate walking pace. Finally I got around to setting the hopper to do its job, having it approach and start to process the minerals.

The two general mineral nodes had started out as fist sized rock chunks, slightly pointed and discolored. Now they had grown slightly and I was sure I could make out the metal in the ore, taking on a bismuth like quality in how its formations showed. The hopper approached at its walking speed and leaned in to take a bite, its pointed pincers clashing down on the rock with explosive strength, sending little chunks clattering all around it. It certainly was a messy eater but that could be forgiven so long as I set up a slime or two to keep things in order. I held off on ordering up a new slime though, as I wanted the hopper to get the lions share, sure that the slime would only get ore while the hopper would process it somewhat. So i sat back and watched the hopper work, occasionally spawning a new glow node around the cavern, or mineral node around the first two.

It didn’t take too long for the hopper to start ‘processing’ ore, the little machine eating as fast as its mouth could work, making me suddenly thirsty. I suffered through my thirst as the first processed materials appeared, or were shit out, leaving small square lumps of a dull gray metal in a trail behind the bug. The hopper was proving to be a tremendously poor eater, wasting almost two thirds of the nodes it was chewing through, so I decided to spawn in two more, just to have them follow hopper one around and clean up after him. I was already thinking of some sort of conveyor system, an after effect of too many hours spent in resource management games, as I knew having a slime follow them around would inevitably end with more ore than metal, even with the two cleaners.

At that thought I spawned one in and, instead of waiting for it to meander over, I tried something I'd almost forgotten about. I could spawn my forces in but I could also, supposedly, move them, according to the information I got. So, a quick ‘store’ command proved to work, storing it in my direct spawning pool. It was a simple matter to drop it right at the start of the metal trail, and giving him the order to follow the trio around at a short distance. Luckily for me the hoppers were moving slowly, stopping to chew on ore before hopping to another point to continue their meal, not outstripping the slime.

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With metal production creeping right along I pushed myself to keep spawning nodes as quick as they would come, their timers on a continuous burn, lighting up the cavern more and more. My mind wandered slightly as I kept my work up, wondering if I'd eventually get a stone node, as i’d eventually slow my expansion stage down and I might burn through my reserves. Though metal might be the gimmick of this world, or just my flavor of dungeon in particular.

With a little time to spare between node spawns I moved back up to the first floor and put my scant collection of metal to work, kneeling by the first slime spawner and trying my hand at manipulating it. I made a thin strip between the marks I had made and started to work on it, carefully making smaller and smaller marks to indicate centimeters, and a botched attempt at millimeters that proved my control wasn’t fine enough. Finally I stepped back and looked at my creation, the worlds least accurate meter stick. I decided to use info on it, both to see if i had created some new item and to take a look at the information metal would provide, getting a pleasant shock.

Crude measurement device:

Made with all the finesse of a shivering caveman, able to measure small objects.

Simple measurements discovered.

Simple measurement ability granted, no cooldown.

Simple measurement:

The ability to accurately measure small objects and short distances:

Limited to one centimeter up to 100 meters.

The sudden influx of new windows was a little startling but it certainly had, mostly, good news. I was a bit annoyed that the system felt the need to be snarky about my measuring stick, however I quickly got over it as I tried out my new ability and discovered just how poor of a job I had done. I only had to apply my focus to an object and a red line, with marks for centimeters and meters, would slide across the wall from wherever I had started my measurement from. It reminded me of laser levels carpenters might use when working. While the new ability was neat I still had other things i wanted to know so, after figuring out how to scrap my stick, I moved back down to the second floor and tried my luck on one of the gray lumps on the ground.

General Metal

A lightweight metal that resists corrosion but lacks durability.

That was about what I got from the ore description, if a slight change in title. So, nothing groundbreaking but I didn't know just how durable the metal was, or how corrosion resistant as my slime seemed to dissolve it just as easily as stone or moss. However it could lead to some neat ideas for construction.

I moved away a bit, still shooting out the occasional node as I tried my hand at some metal crafting, my first idea being a metal walkway. I was thinking of putting ore nodes on the ceiling so the idea of a walkway was a simple one, a nice way for adventurers to collect from every point in my cavern, and offer a different level of danger. The metal walkways would be just wide enough for two burly men to walk past each other but that would leave little room for maneuvering, locking down dexterous adventurers and making them rely on brute force or a stout defense.

I started with a metal sheet then slowly started to adjust it, adding thickness as more and more metal became available to me. The first iteration was just plain sheet metal held up by a box frame that I thought I could use for the steps, but just looking at it made it seem flimsy and dangerous, a slipping nightmare if one had to traverse it when covered in blood or other fluids. So I adjusted it, trying a few techniques until I landed on separating the metal into strips, then lining those up in the frame and merging them together. While it didn’t add anything in the way of materials it allowed for more strength, especially as I added a few perpendicular bars to keep them all from shifting when weight or force is applied to them. As for the frame it was a simple box shape, a bit wasteful on materials but I wanted to be confident it wouldn’t come apart. The finishing touch was serrations on the bars, giving them a toothy appearance and more than enough grip. I was sure it was a bit dangerous but a dungeon wasn’t a safe place.

Now came the hard part, moving the step. Currently it was just a plank of metal laying on the ground completely uselessly, and I wasn't sure how to move it. I could take it into my inventory but I was sure that would just scrap it, so I tried a few commands until I hit on one. ‘Adjust.’

Mark building location.

That was a new window but helpful. I moved out and, just like the spawner, I had an outline of where I could put my step. So I sauntered over to the first floor ramp and set it on the ground beside it, still unable to intersect with the walls.

Simple construction discovered.

Granted ability to save and recreate simple structures.

I felt a wide grin coming on as I read those words. I had hoped this would be the case, after getting my measuring ability, but I didn't want to jinx myself so I fought against thinking about it and cursing myself. Though it did make me wonder why I hadn't gotten some kind of natural building ability from my stalactite. Surely I'd done enough to at least get some decorations going. I ran through what I'd done for the step, building it out and moving it seemed to be all it took so, after planting a couple more nodes, I moved up to move my stalactite. No dice.So that left one more thing, I lacked some fundamental knowledge about them to create them, something simple as i knew they were formed by minerals and such dripping from the ceiling to the ground. Then it hit me, something from grade school came back. Stalactites went on the ceiling because they have a C in their name and stalagmites went on the ground because they have a G in their name.

Simple cave decorations discovered.

Grants the ability to adjust the look of your dungeon to a more natural state.

I cursed. Something so boneheadedly simple had kept me from discovering a way to make new skills pop up out of nowhere, something a fourth grader might correct me on. I ignored my stalagmite and headed back down to the second floor, too frustrated with myself to attempt to beautify my interior. I pulled up a new sheet of metal and started to inscribe marks on it, planning out my idea for a farm with newfound laser precision, hoping i’d be able to just point a slime at this ‘blueprint’ and have them make what i want. It would be a long time coming but i hoped it would be worth it.