With all the monsters for the eleventh floor placed, Doyle mentally takes a step back and looks it over. The design plan he originally had was a little lost. While you could see that the ceiling was the cap of a giant mushroom, technical reasons forced him to make things less clear.
On the other hand, the planned fight for the floor should turn out exactly how Doyle wanted it. Except he wasn’t quite able to fit as many monsters as he wanted. An honestly wonderful feeling as before, he was starting to worry about even using all the points without having the monsters packed shoulder to shoulder.
That clearly isn’t a problem. Rather, his early monsters are just really cheap. Which makes sense. Most of them are normal animals.
Maybe a bit optimized, but a dungeon cow is just a well bred normal cow when it comes down to it. Even the more elemental varieties will become normal enough. Doyle’s only early stand outs for magical variety are the lesser shadow wolves and the wind cutter axebeak.
Both of which cost hundreds of points. Though even in his original monsters, the assassin vine cost hundreds of points. An amount that back then felt almost unusable.
Now? Not so much. However, it did point Doyle towards how he needs to work on his monsters. For his iconic goats, he has the grassen goat to work on.
The other monsters, though? Even the void kobolds? Doyle needed to add a “concept” to the element or use a “higher tier” element. He isn’t quite sure if either of those ideas are correct, He’ll ask Ally later, but for now it is a direction.
A direction that can wait as there is still one thing left on the eleventh floor to do. As is traditional, Doyle plans to add a carving. Better yet, he doesn’t have to ponder on the subject as he already knows what he wants.
An effect that will boost the myconids spore generation. As it is, even with all his work, people will notice there aren’t quite an overflowing amount of sprouts. Get all those myconid sprouts to puff out more spores?
Well, they might just make the smokescreen Doyle needs. After all, he had already adjusted the massive cap to put out more spores. The only thing stopping him from actively doing it to the myconids is that part of their ability is caught up in a skill and uses Mana.
So instead, Doyle begins to carve up the side wall that has developed for the area. Though he goes farther than just carving a design. He carved out literal bricks that are fully separated from the wall proper.
Why does Doyle bother with this? The atmosphere and because his vision of the design requires it. Sure, he could just make some shallow cuts to ape a giant brick design. This way, though, it allows his various plants and vines to take root.
Then, with the “brick retaining wall” in place, Doyle starts on the artistic part. From his time looking for the myconid boss, he has gathered some ideas of what a normal myconid civilization looks like. So with that in mind, he begins to carve out small scenes on each brick, representing a myconids life.
This doesn’t take too long, just a week, as he isn’t trying to make the most detailed carvings. Instead, going for a more tribal style. Though once that is done, nothing happens.
Why? Because he hasn’t yet added the intent to it. As it is right now, there would be a relatively low power and quite general buff for the myconids. After all, it has scenes of all aspects of a myconids life.
What Doyle needs is specifically the parts about spore production. His solution? Well, it is already meant to have a ruin feel to it, so through plants and accelerated weathering, the various pictures are rendered incomplete.
Whether it is from being worn down or a plant literally cracking the stone itself, all of Doyle’s works are reduced to a broken indispensable mess. That taken care of, he doubles back around and touches up the scenes depicting spore creation. Lines are dug a bit deeper, cracks closed, and roots removed.
With that done, Doyle’s conceptual reinforcement kicks in as even the normal mushrooms begin to put out just a few more spores. The only problem is that his touch up of those specific bricks has made them stand out. Good thing this is easy to fix as all he has to do is get more vines to grow over them.
Sure, if a delver blasts away all the vegetation, it would be revealed. Except Doyle is using his toughest, woodiest vines to do the job. Plus, they are putting out a ton of air roots to anchor themselves to the wall as a whole.
It would take a lot of work to clear things enough to notice the difference. Doyle is a bit worried still. Some of the people up top are a wee bit crazy about this kind of thing. For now, though, he has done what he can to make it seem in line with the kobold monument to obfuscate things.
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Though there is a downside, if you can call it that, to what he has done. Even with a skill, the spores that the myconids let off tend to spread out. Because Doyle carved the scenes on individual blocks and had the intent of those blocks being self contained, the effect was altered. The extra spores would not spread out like they used to.
Instead, they would have a tendency to remain in the area around the myconids. This was completely accidental, but the more Doyle observes it, the happier he is with it. While it does mean the entire place won’t fill up with magic spores.
He hadn’t really wanted that, anyway. Now, the spores will instead hang heavy around the monsters, further confusing the delvers. An excellent trade off as far as Doyle is concerned.
All that is left is to wait for delvers to finally make it here so Doyle can watch how they break it. There are a lot of moving parts involved on this floor and he is certain something won’t work right. That worry, though, is for the future.
At the moment, since he has the time, Doyle has a few questions for Ally. It had been a few days since he originally thought of the question, but it was still fresh in his mind. So he knocks on her door and waits to be invited in.
Ally tells him to enter and then asks, ‘The floor seems finished, do you want my opinion on it?’
Doyle tilts to the side, ‘Sure, though that isn’t what I came to ask. While working on it, I noticed something.’
Ally nods, ‘Well let’s get the floor out of the way first then. It is an interesting design and probably looks great as a drawing. Like one of those self-contained terrariums.
‘Of course whether it looks good or not is immaterial. The question is will it work? I’m leaning towards yes. You normally don’t see reverse floors where the monsters come to you, so it should at least be semi-unique.
‘If I was to change anything, it would be to figure out an aquatic kobold to handle the cattle. Wouldn’t cost too much and I know that just like with goblins and other similar low level humanoid monsters, they tend to have a water form. Got to fill all the niches after all.’
Doyle nods, ‘I will look into it. Though I kind of like them, so I don’t exactly want to make a kobold drowning machine or some such.’
Ally, ‘You probably won’t have to have. In the next water floor, just have a bunch of kobolds near the shore and make it so they retreat into the water when attacked. That might not result in fully aquatic kobolds, but you should at least manage something like those diving lizards your world has.’
Doyle, ‘Except that kobolds aren’t lizards, but I get what you mean. Besides, there are already platypuses kicking around so it shouldn’t be too hard. Anyway, onto my actual question.
‘Do monsters with intent based or complex element names make a better monster? The wind cutter axebeak and the lesser shadow wolves cost more than other elemental varieties I have.’
Ally, ‘Eh, yes and no? The shadow wolf thing is throwing you off a little. That one costs more because a full shadow wolf is automatically sapient. Shadows in and of themselves aren’t going to make a powerful monster.
‘There are some elements that tend to have some base level of power, but that has more to do with the fact that a creature that can live in Magma has a leg up on things that don’t. For every environment, there will be those weaker and stronger. You’re more looking for monster varieties that come from extreme environments like a never ending hurricane or a mountain peak that is constantly being struck by lightning.
‘Your void kobolds are a good example of this. Space is one of the more extreme environments out there and yet kobolds aren’t that much more powerful. This is because they’re adapted to living in space stations and such, not the hard vacuum of space. On the other side, you have space whales. Those suckers are Powerful!’
Doyle, ‘That does make some sense. Though does that mean there is a more powerful version of kobold out there that is adapted to hard vacuum?’
Ally shrugs, ‘Anything is possible, however, none are known to me at the moment. With that, you’re coming up against the problem most nearly sapient monsters tend to have when adapting to other environments. After a certain point, they stop changing.
‘Well, okay, sometimes they do keep changing, but at that point they stop being what they used to be. You can only change them so much before they aren’t what they were anymore. What tends to happen instead is that their elders gain skills and stats so they can venture into those extreme environments.
‘After all, most humans can’t touch lava without being hurt. However, a strong enough adventurer or one with the right skills can swim in the stuff. The same would happen with the void kobolds.
‘A powerful elder of a clan will become able to exist out in space for limited periods of time. Those that manage this serve a very important role in their community. After all, they’re living on what is likely an abandoned space station. Someone needs to be able to go out and repair things. The only kobold’s of similar importance will be the gardeners and the air mages.’
Doyle nods, ‘You seem to know a good bit about void kobolds.’
Ally shrugs, ‘You ever look something up on the internet only to end up deep down a rabbit hole hours later after following link after link? That’s what I did when you first got them. There are entire day time television level dramas that follow non-sapient void kobold clans. It is like some unholy mix of a soap opera and an animal documentary.’
Doyle can’t help but laugh. ‘That sounds amazing! Anyway, what about the intent name thing?’
Ally shrugs again, ‘Another yes, but no sort of thing. Those names do represent more powerful varieties. However, it is because those monsters got named after their powers. Now, if it was the system naming them, you could predict more from it. However, the names are just whatever is the most commonly recognized name for the things so you have to be careful.
‘A monster with something like “magma swimmer” in its name will likely be able to swim in magma. However, you got semi-lucky with the wind cutter axebeak. It actually has some ability as a wind cutter instead of just being named for running really fast and having an axe for a face.’