It takes Doyle a few hundred tries to get the ebony tree right. Mostly because he plans to only have one such tree, or rather one design copy and pasted across the floor. There is only so much space to put them so if they were all different people would notice soon enough. By making them all exact copies, people wouldn’t be able to easily figure it out. Even if they leave marks, all finding a tree that was already marked would do is make them think they went in circles or something.
But there is only so much work he can put into the tree before he starts to rehash stuff and so with a burning desire to burn it all down and try again, Doyle spreads copies of his tree across the levels as well as a couple backups on the outer shell. There aren’t too many, but when spread randomly across the rooms he is able to get a good spread of possibilities.
That finished, it is now time for the most complicated and mind numbing part of the floor. He isn’t even going to attempt to do all the work at once and rather is just doing the minimum. What is the least he can get away with at the moment you might ask? Why, of course it is connecting each side of every room to the opposite side of every room. Of course, the end goal is to have every side of every room connected to every side of every room but that would take too long right now.
The only room that doesn’t get this treatment is the core room, which is set up much like the other rooms except in the center is a stone cave with a small spiral staircase down to the core. Though this isn’t the end of the portals. No, he needs a way to bring in the monsters. As luck would have it, this doesn’t take as much work to set up as he can cheat.
All around the outer sphere Doyle places portals connected to one side of a single small room he quickly whipped up. From there, it is a simple matter of connecting the opposite side to all the places he wants monsters to be able to appear in. This shortcut cuts down on the actual number of portals by a fair bit. Enough so that it really saddens him to not be able to use the same trick on the room to room portals. It just isn’t an option as not only might multiple people try to go through multiple portals but the rules will be complex enough already without the extra step.
That finished Doyle mentally steps back to take a look before sheepishly adding in one more detail. He had forgotten to put in a sky and lighting. While he could see what is going on perfectly fine, no one else would have been happy.
The sky itself is just a clear blue expanse without a cloud in sight. Then, with a little bit of work, he spreads out a bunch of small lights with glass set up to diffuse it and create a decent indirect light. But that isn’t the end. He has one more fun little quirk for the sky. Doyle creates a ton of lights and sets them up as a pseudo-sun and sets a rule that it follows the largest group around the floor as if it was constantly noon. And just to mess with them more another rule is put in place to make the area within a decent radius be just a couple degrees hotter. Not much, but enough to be noticeable.
Then comes the rules to make the floor work. This step takes longer than making the tree and that is saying something. Though in the end the idea behind it is simple enough. Connect up the portals in a way that things look like an infinite field. With the use of line-of-sight blockers like the tall grass and trees, it allow the introduction of monsters near the delvers without them being able to notice them popping into existence. And of course smartly reusing rooms so no matter how far in a direction they go there will always be more to explore.
Of course, the system won’t let him make it so delvers can’t ever actually reach his core. So instead Doyle sets up the rules so all the assigned monsters on the floor have to be beaten and that they are spread out by quite a bit. While with this, the floor takes after the wolf floor; he feels the differences are big enough as this is more of an endurance challenge instead of a race.
And while the system might prevent Doyle from making it impossible that doesn’t mean he can’t have fun with the delvers. So once a group has beaten all the monsters needed they first will pass by the exit portal. Just a big stone arch filled in with ebony wood standing in the middle of its area with the portal on the side facing away from the group as they approach it.
Doyle isn’t too cruel about it, though. The distance to the portal will be just enough to reunite everyone on the floor. That way, they can decide to leave. Of course, the trick to it will be figured out eventually but until then Doyle can just tell there will be quite a few people who decide to finish their run right there. Of course, just a few rooms further would be his core room. The delvers just won’t be able to see it though because of strategically placed plants to block that line of sight.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Though they would have to travel carefully or they might miss the core. Just because it was in a place they can reach doesn’t mean he has to force them down the correct path. Still, once again, he isn’t too cruel. The exit portal will pop up for them every once in a while if they go the wrong way. If, however, they still wanted to find the core, well they would be out of luck. To reach it, they would have to perfectly backtrack to the original exit portal location that popped up after defeating the last monster and then go the right direction.
Doyle shakes his core and moves onto placing the monsters. He has 13900 points to spend and still no heavy hitters as far as cost is concerned so the farm should be able to keep the floor stocked. And with that in mind, he creates the monsters most likely to need a personal touch to respawn. A group of kobolds consisting of a couple sneaky club and shield users, a couple animal handlers wielding whips, a mage focused on buffs, and a leader with a bow. All of them decked out in leather gear and weapons made of ebon wood because why not. Oh, and it’s all loot.
Of course, with animal handlers, they can’t be alone so besides the eventual pack of wind wolves, the kobold group also gets two to hang out with. Ignoring the wolves Doyle places ten more kobolds with no specific roles in the farm area to raise the future generations. Then he decides to not ignore the wolves after all and places a pack of 15. Six of which are an encounter, and another two to accompany the kobolds.
Next up, Doyle places some cattle. Three herb to allow for a single one to be roaming around on the floor. An optional discovery as it won’t be counted towards the monsters needed to be beaten. That out of the way, Doyle cuts loose with the cows. 150 regular, 150 dungeon, 150 mad, 150 longhorn, and 150 earthen cattle. Of course, only 100 of each would be roaming around the floor with the other 50 mostly being cows so as to repopulate the farm as needed.
Still, 100 of anything is going to be a bit extreme so Doyles splits it up into random groups with 10 to 20 animals each. Adding it all together the kobolds cost 800, the wolves 1,125, and the herb cattle only 78 so all of that spent only 2,003 points. The cows are the big spenders, with every single group costing more than a thousand points. 1,200 for regular, 1,500 for dungeon, 1,800 for mad, 1,650 for longhorn, and 2,700 for earthen cattle.
Those together total 8850 points and added to the other stuff makes 10,853 points spent overall leaving 3,047 points for his goats. To start with, he tried to fit 100 of the three types but strangely enough, the grassen goats cost more than any of the cattle and Doyle didn’t have enough points left over for that. From there it took some shuffling but the numbers settled on 100 goats, 75 wooden goats, and 60 grassen goats. With 75, 50, and 40 of each respective type being available for the floor. And like with the cows, they would be grouped randomly together with between 10 and 20 to a herd.
Though after seeing how beautiful the wooden goats are with ebony armor, he is mighty tempted to shift things more towards them. Still, he holds on and double checks the numbers for the goats. Though in the end, the final total came in under the floor’s limit. Regular goats together only cost 400 points, wooden goats came in at 1,050, and grassen despite having the least racked up a total of 1500.
Together that makes 2,950 points spent on goats, almost 100 points less than his limit of 3,047. Sure, he could try and spend it all but that didn’t really get to him, so Doyle left it as it was. Better to be under than over after all. Though now he would have to think on how to deal out the loot.
The wolves already had some loot because of the rule he put in place for the wolf floor. While a little stingy for the sixth floor, it should be fine for now. Though thinking about it, after the level up there are 16 points of wisdom not being used to automate anything. Not that he plans to use it on the sixth floor.
While some automation would be fine, the monsters should take care of respawning all on their own. The floor would be a waste to fully automate at the moment so Doyle puts that on the back burner and starts to throw loot at the animals. First is the herb cow, which gets to drop up to five of his current healing and resistance potions randomly including Moota’s three special potions.
After that, all the cattle besides the earthen and the regular goats are left alone. Their natural drops and the general coin drop everything gets should be fine for them. Though of course the special varieties get a personal touch.
The earthen cows get to be a bit of a mixed bag. 90 of them are left alone like the other cows. Those remaining ten however get some more expensive loot to drop. Specifically, they can drop any piece of leather gear except made using the earthen cows on hide. While the leather is a bit stiffer, it makes up with how sturdy it is.
After that, the wooden goats are in a similar situation with ten of them dropping an ebony weapon or shield. This leaves the grassen goats. After thinking on them for a while, Doyle is half tempted to add them onto the wolves drop table and be done with. Mind you, he does add them to the auto loot, but that isn’t the end of it.
They’re supposed to have some awesome ancestors and Doyle would like to see how far he can get. To encourage them, he adds his first gold coin drops to them. A little pricey and he can’t afford to do them all at once making it another background project. But after the first gold coin drops people will go crazy hunting them.