In fact, as Doyle considers the available points, he realizes he could probably just divide everything by 100 and have an easier time doing the mental math. Not that it was hard, but seeing that sprout swarms take 1 from 301 is a lot easier to parse than 100 from 30,100. It also puts the various types of myconids into better perspective. One troop guard is equal to two myconids, four lesser myconids, and six sprout swarms.
Though breaking it down like this makes Doyle groan to himself. He tried to keep the size of the floor down a little, but there is still probably too much space to fully populate it. If he wanted to put a small tribe with a guard in each of the places where the tunnel expands outward, the guards alone would cost almost half his points. That meant cutting back and to cut back, he needed to analyze what the point of the floor was.
The shape was a single large tunnel leading to a large cavern. Monsters would obviously be all four forms of myconid. Doyle decided against any other type of monster. While having goats running around would be interesting, this was going to be the fungus floor.
And by thinking that Doyle feels like facepalming. He figured out all that stuff with the myconids and completely left out his other fungus monsters. Doyle pulls up the status panels for the two.
{Shrieker
S[1] A[1] C[18]
Max 1 skill
Required Skills: Shriek
Available Skills: Shriek lv3
Cost: World Energy[10]}
{Violet Fungus (Lv10)
S[40] A[25] C[12]
Max 1 skill
Available Skills: Bash lv15
Cost: World Energy[300]}
First thing that stands out to Doyle, is the fact that the violet fungus doesn’t have any required skills. Not the most useful thing, but interesting nonetheless. Though it does cost a decent chunk of points. The same as a myconid, in fact. Good thing the shrieker made up for the violet’s cost by being so cheap.
Even if Doyle used as many points as possible on the myconids, he would still be able to place three shriekers around the floor. Not that he plans to have so few. Since they are so cheap, they will be a perfect early warning system for the myconid villages, he is going to be putting up.
Doyle stops himself and focuses back on the current task. Cavern floor, fungus mushrooms, small villages, and mushrooms everywhere. In fact, he can kit out a few myconids with the fungal farming skill and the synergistic fungal construction skill. From there, they should be able to add some interesting bits and pieces of terrain.
Sure, the construction skill had sounded quite short term, but Doyle could read between the lines. It was compared to elven wood products, things grown from trees! How could a mushroom ever compete with the lifespan of a tree and since stuff constructed with the skill are still technically alive, of course the wooden products would win out. Nevermind the fact that in general wood is going to last longer than mycelium, anyway.
That, however, didn’t mean the fungal constructs had to be short-lived, especially those still rooted to the ground. No, a fungal house might not live for hundreds of years, but it could easily last a decade or more with the right skills. One of which is certainly fungal farming as it will clue the myconids in on what the constructs need to survive.
What Doyle isn’t going to do is make a myconid at each village with those skills. No, there will probably be a three myconid group that travels between all the towns. That way there won’t be too many with that skill layout as it basically restricts them to having one free skill to choose.
Yes, the summon spore skill will be nice no matter what the fourth skill ends up being. It is just that depending on how a certain other skill interacts with the two fungal skills, even the free slot might not be free. In fact, the information is going to be pretty important going forward and so Doyle summons in a myconid with sleeping spore, both fungal skills, and the wild card; spore magic with healing spores selected.
The test is easy enough, Doyle has the myconid use the two fungal skills to grow a cube of mushroom. Partly because it didn’t need to be any specific shape, but mostly because we all know what game he was remembering. So of course he then has the myconid punch the meter cubed of mushroom.
Though instead of vanishing or popping off into a small block, it is damaged. Just what Doyle wanted for the test. So, for the final step, he has the myconid use his healing spore magic on the damaged mushroom cube. This was the moment of truth.
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Doyle isn’t certain which outcome he would prefer and so when the mushroom starts to heal, he almost feels a bit down about it. Sure, he wanted the magic to work on the structures. On the other hand, it locks in the fourth skill for his builders. There isn’t even enough room for teamwork, which was honestly his second choice.
After all, while the myconids could each build separate things and likely would be doing so. Doyle wanted to find out what teamwork would do to a group project. Sure, most of the bigger structures weren’t going to be left up to the builders, but enough work would need to be done.
That just left fine tuning where they would go and the placement of the monsters. Except for this floor, Doyle wanted something more. His fifth floor boss had a town and he could very well go with a similar setup here, but he wanted to grow and not just repeat the same thing over and over. This was going to take a while and so Doyle settled in.
Because of this focus, he missed a development that happened about a week into his work. Regular people in Wolf’s Rest figured out the fifth floor. Sure, the core had long ago managed to win and they did with actual skill. In fact, given a few more decades of growth, the fifth floor would likely be considered a normal enough boss even if the setting is a bit weird for how early it is.
Right now though, very few people grew up with any kind of combat training and besides maybe a couple veterans, no one had been in the military. If it wasn’t for skills spoon feeding combat knowledge to them, it would be questionable on whether it was the dungeon monsters or themselves that would end up hurting them the most. This meant that without really being noticed, the fifth floor had acted as a skill check. Though not as in skills provided by the system, but rather a person’s ability to fight skillfully.
Of course, humans being humans, they figured out a way to cheat. Not like when Ace and company first beat the floor by flooding it with people. Rather, they went with depending fully upon the Barrais’ work.
For a while now, Susan and Jeremy had been working on those spore drops. They had figured out an antidote, but their real passion was in turning them into a weapon. Suffice to say, they succeeded and started selling packets of paralysis and sleep spores that would burst apart when thrown against something.
The two even managed to specialize the products even more than the myconids did. While there was some difference between the two, these new products really shined. Paralysis acted quicker, left the victim aware of their surroundings, and could partially affect their target; but in exchange, the paralysis lasted only a short time.
Sleep wasn’t quite a complete opposite of it. The sleep packets still acted faster than the sleep spores, though definitely slower than the paralysis packets. Besides that, though, the victim would obviously be asleep and not aware of what was going on, was basically all or nothing, and could technically last indefinitely. After all, while the spores did basically force the victim to sleep, that part only lasted about half again as long as the paralysis packets did. The catch was it actually put the victim to sleep, which means once the effect wears off, they’ll still be asleep.
If someone was tired and got hit by the sleep packet, in all likelihood they would end up sleeping like normal as long as you don’t disturb them. So for all this utility, the Barais obviously weren’t selling the packets cheaply. Once people realize the value of coins, people will look back and realize just how much they were ripped off, but for now, most visitors didn’t really put much stock into the coins earned in the dungeon.
Now with the knowledge of those packets, you might be thinking they used them to just steamroll the fifth floor. That, in fact, did happen the first few times. However, you have to remember that the boss and twelve of the other kobolds all got to remember what has happened. It took a few attempts, but eventually the boss and friends figured out a design for their town that inhibited the use of those packets.
It was technically still possible for someone to cheese most of the floor. The only thing holding them back is the cost and supply of the packets. Instead, people were using them to strategically take out large groupings of enemies. That combined with the boss quickly figuring out an effective way to hop out of the area of effect, meant the floor stabilized.
Sure, one in three parties could now beat the fifth floor if they had the coin, but it wasn’t a walk in the park. Though there were quite a few merchants with green eyes upon learning just what was waiting for them on the sixth floor. Sure, rumors of a warped cityscape on the seventh floor were a nice tale to tell, but an unending supply of beef? Well, that was the meat of choice!
All the goat meat provided substance for a meal, sure, but beef was what many grew up on. So, many of the first floor farmers suddenly found their product worth a lot less. Not just because most of the nearby settlements preferred beef, but because of how abundant meat in general was on the sixth floor. Even if you did want goat meat, the sixth floor had well over a hundred and fifty goats!
For people who had been scraping by on the 25 easier to farm goats, the first floor had, most not even bothering to pick up goats 26 to 30 since they were in with the kobolds. The discovery of a floor where each run could in theory bring back meat from not just 165 goats, but Five Hundred cattle. Well, suffice it to say those farmers would soon be out of a job if they couldn’t manage to beat the fifth floor.
Sure, they wouldn’t starve as the soup kitchen was always welcoming, but a lot of the farmers had actually been getting relatively wealthy. Well, maybe not compared to most others in wolf’s rest, but if they went to the place up river or any of the settlements connected to it, they would be rich.
This left them with a choice to make. Some of them didn’t want to give up on the gravy train and so attempted to beat the fifth floor. Not just that, but the various merchants would constantly support groups in attempting the floor so as to have more beef to sell. If Doyle hadn’t been so focused, he would have definitely noticed this change as the number of deaths in his dungeon has taken a steep upswing.
Others choose to sign on as porters and guards for those merchants. A decent choice since they had the money for some proper protective gear. Of the three main paths those farmers took, this was the most consistent. Their experience with fighting and the boredom of repeating the same task over and over made them excellent guards. Then there was the last group.