Doyle turns to Ally after having watched the settlement’s meeting and asks, ‘Can they do that?’

Ally shrugs, ‘Well, if they live long enough to be here when the sun goes kablooey there is nothing stopping them. Of course, there are all sorts of caveats like them deciding to not leave. At the moment they feel trapped on the planet, but well before that time people should be able to just abandon ship.’

Doyle levels his core and does a good impression of a stare. ‘You forget why they are going to try so hard to keep charge of my dungeon entrance. I never really got a good feel for it, but how rare is my energy well again?’

Ally grimaces, ‘Rare-ish? It depends on how your energy well works. All it said was that sapients get an increased recharge rate. It gave you a static increase, but that doesn’t say much about others. It might be as simple as plus one an hour. It could instead be either a scaling bonus or even rarer a percentile increase.’

‘A static plus? Semi-rare for an area, but only good for the low levels. You can easily get equipment that does this, though the price for any passive recharge is always much more than someone who needs it can afford. Basically, rich clans will have such a bauble for their top talents. The other two on the other hand are near impossible to find, even for powerful groups. They are extra important for people of all levels.’

Doyle tilts to the side, ‘What is the difference between scaling and percentile? Also, could you find a place that gave a silly large static bonus?’

Ally nods, ‘That last question? Easy enough to find, but not as useful as you would think. Mostly because if the static bonus exceeds a person’s natural recharge, it can damage them. In fact, at a big enough of a difference, people will just explode. If your energy well gives a static plus one, it is safe. Even if someone doesn’t have a recharge rate, a single point is low enough that at most it will strain them a little.’

‘I, I suspect your path doesn’t provide a static bonus. And I guess I should rephrase it when I say a static bonus is buyable with cash. What I am referring to is when an item or place gives a plus one to mana regen or a plus one to qi regen. You give a flat bonus to all energy types, which is why I don’t think it is static. After all, not all energy types are made equal. How crazy would it be if someone could get plus one to quintessence regen? Not that anyone besides another dungeon and the system are likely to have quintessence, but the point stands.’

‘My guess is that you provide a scaling bonus, though a little different from most cases. Which brings us to your first question. What is the difference? Percentile is easy enough to explain and debunk on your path providing. An example of such a bonus would be one percent to mana regen. That means that for someone with a mana pool that can contain 100 mana, that bonus would let you recharge an extra point of mana.’

‘This is the rarest type of bonus, and you won’t ever find one. Why? Because for someone with 100 mana, it doesn’t mean all that much. For those with thousands of levels and over a million mana, this bonus suddenly provides more mana recharge than that guy with 100 mana has by more than a magnitude. Even an item with a percent of a percent recharge bonus will draw out the oldest beings in the universe. More common though not by much are items that provide a percentile bonus based on your recharge rate, which while less powerful is just as silly on high level beings.’

‘This is not the type of bonus that energy well provides. They wouldn’t have noticed it yet if you did. The chances of someone in the settlement having enough of any energy type to be able to get a per an hour bonus is non existent. Plus, I have never heard of any location providing this type of bonus. There are two known items with this type of bonus in the entire universe at the moment and not even my mom has a hope to see them.’

‘Sure there are some percentile items out there with caps on the recharge rate, but people don’t count them. If the recharge per an hour is capped at 100, then people call it a finicky plus 100 item. The only real use is to give to young geniuses as the percent provide tends to be much higher.’

‘Anyway, the other type is scaling. This is a much broader category, so I’m only going to go over what you probably have. Your path is likely providing a static bonus that increases based level. So say at level one to nine it provides a plus one. Then from level ten to some higher number it gives plus two. Step by step it increases, but there are limits and is never a direct connection.’

‘Still very rare to find though, as once again, it doesn’t count if there is an upper limit. They are not, however, fought over by the super powerful. The number of known scaling items is much higher, in the hundreds of thousands. Beyond that, there are locations that provide a scaling bonus as well. Much fewer of course and lining up with your situation as most of the locations are around dungeons. Though they tend to be limited to ten or less power types, I would have to guess any unlimited areas like your dungeon are the secret ones.’

‘My bet is you have the most common scaling regen rate. Plus one at level one, plus ten at level ten, plus 100 at level 100, and so on. Powerful when you are close to the break point, but it quickly loses its shine. Especially when you can buy a ring of plus 200 to mana regen for less than a ring that scales. Locations are more important though, as it provides this bonus to a large number of people. One more mana an hour to youths first learning magic is super important. Especially when it goes up to ten.’

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Doyle nods, ‘Another info dump there. Was that tutorial driven?’

Ally laughs, ‘This one was all me! Or I guess I should say mostly me. I might have searched up a few encyclopedia entries on the subject recently. There isn’t exactly going to be tutorial entries on such niche subjects.’

Doyle sighs, ‘I could understand it with the tutorial entries. But please, be a little more succinct? I feel like half of what you say to me is an info dump.’

Ally shrugs, ‘You just keep asking for info so info I give. Anyway, you’ve done the drops, so are you going to work on your next floor?’

Doyle rolls his core, ‘Not much else to do at the moment.’

Ally rests her chin on her hands and leans forward, ‘So what design are you going for? You now have access to the stone and wind wolves on it after all.’

Doyle rolls back, ‘While I was never one for making too many friends, I wasn’t always so lonely. Sometimes you can join a group by osmosis. I hung out at a local game shop for card games and such. For a while there was a group of pen and paper roleplayers that would run their campaign at the shop. Because they did it between the two tournaments I would play in that gave me a chance to hang around them and watch.’

‘Long story short, they invited me after a while. And a while after I was able to run a couple of sessions. The favorite thing I did was a wolf cave. Instead of a bunch of encounters, it was a running battle. The players had to make their way through the wolves’ den while constantly being attacked. Not giving them a chance to rest. I want a similar experience on the fourth floor. Not a tough floor, but a tiring floor. After all, number five is going to be the boss floor. Have to make them sweat a little for it.’

Ally frowns, ‘How do you plan to make them move around instead of bunkering down?’

Doyle tilts to the side, ‘Well I can’t force them to move, but I can encourage them. Overall, I play fair. More than fair, really. In fact, I keep making the floors easier. So what happens if I don’t keep the gloves on? Though I have one question. I can’t remember if I asked this before, but can I change where drops, well, drop? Can I make it so whatever would be dropped instead appears in a treasure chest?’

Ally shrugs, ‘There are some limits but as long as you have it drop in an accessible place you should be fine. About the only problem with your running battle idea is that if you spawn the chest at the end, they can’t really reach it. At least not fairly. The system doesn’t always take kindly to that kind of trickery.’

Doyle shakes his core and scoffs, ‘Just having a chest at the end of the floor is too simple. The entrance room and the room before the core will be safe rooms. Once a team enters the floor proper, everything they kill goes on their tally and a chest will spawn when they once again enter one of the two safe rooms. At least that is how I plan for it to work.’

Ally frowns as she thinks it over. ‘That could work. Since a party can always elect to retreat to retrieve a fight’s loot, I don’t see why it wouldn’t. Though if there is the possibility to always retreat to the safe room that doesn’t exactly scream forcing them forward.’

Doyle brightens, ‘They might just try that, but they would lose out. Now I don’t have all that much control over the real loot. However, I get the feeling the same isn’t true for regular drops and the coins. I’m going to make it so the more they fight continuously, the more they get with a nice bonus for completing the floor in one go.’

‘Sure, I can’t force them to do it. Hell, it will take them noticing the increase in rewards before it even occurs to them. But still, once the settlement notices? Then we will be good. Anyone capable of fighting on the fourth floor should be able to continue through at least a few non-stop fights. And you know what this will net me? A whole lot of energy! All that effort to continue pushing forward at a decent clip will be able to offset the increased rewards. Or at least I plan to make it so the increased rewards do scale with that.’

‘The only thing is that the fourth floor will be one of the more boring ones. After all, just wolves to fight? Not much variety there, even including the two elemental wolves. There isn’t even all that much room for other stuff. I can’t exactly add herbs when picking them would be counter to the point of the floor. Well I could, it just wouldn’t be fair or at the very least cause annoying backtracking.’

Ally shrugs, ‘You can just add the herbs as a part of your wolve’s drop table. Besides that, you don’t need to be stuck with only wolves. The stone wolves are big enough to comfortably seat a kobold on. Too bad we didn’t get one of those dire wolves.’

Doyle tilts to the side, ‘Yeah, that could work. If anything, the stone wolves can shape their rocky exterior to provide a better seating arrangement for the kobolds. Too bad I don’t have spears for the kobolds to wield.’

Ally laughs, ‘What is a spear if not a pointy stick? Sure you might face some troubles if you wanted a proper metal tip on it, but you should be fine for an extra large toothpick.’

Doyle brightens, ‘I thought I had to absorb a weapon to be able to make it?’

Ally shrugs, ‘Not particularly. There is just a limit when it comes to gaining a pattern. You can turn out simple wooden spears from dawn till dusk and the system won’t care. You would have to personally improve them to get something better than a level one spear. It is like your attempt at a pick. Not bad, but if you keep working on it, you might eventually get a pick pattern. Though the thing holding you back is the fact you don’t actually make the things. You aren’t smithing metal or carving wood. Forming something whole cloth or using your territory to shape it makes the system a lot less likely to give you the pattern for it.’

Doyle sighs, ‘Fair enough.’