So a bunch of stuff had happened, but finally Doyle had a bit of free time so he turned to something he had been putting off. Since just before the eight floor, he hadn’t really been looking at his skill levels and path points. It hadn’t mattered all that much since he was a little capped, but with a new level there was once again room to advance so he opens up his status panel to take a look.
{Name: Doyle Huxley
Race: Dungeon Core (Diverse Strange Caverns)
Soulbond: Ally Huxley
Paths: [187] Dungeon Core III 100/100, Kobold Community II 30/30, Goat Supremacy 20/20, Energy Well I 3/3, Commanding Subordinates 12/12, Ageless Queens 15/15, Earth’s First Home of the Limit Breakers I 1/1, Biomes Aplenty 5/5, Potion Dispensary 10/10, Elemental Animals 5/5, Cows for Milk 12/12, Vegetation Variety 20/20, Divine Border 1/1, Dungeon Core III 45/100, Know Your Enemies 10/10, Pathfinder, [UNIQUE] 1/1, Community Driven 10/10
Level: 4
S[48] A[60] C[67] I[54] W[89] P[43] D[78] K[84] L[59]
World Energy(/R per hour): 29600(420)
Skills [5/5 Class, 3/5+1 General]: Territory Control lv66, Dungeon Rules lv71, Universal Deconstruction lv59, Dungeon Pattern Database lv36, Creation(Energy Powered, Pattern Based) lv77, Conceptual Reinforcement lv49, Biosphere Balancing lv52, Psychology lv42}
{Points: 187
Class: Dungeon Core III 100/100
Location: Kobold Community II 30/30
Completed: Goat Supremacy 20/20, Energy Well I 3/3, Commanding Subordinates 12/12, Ageless Queens 15/15, Earth’s First Home of the Limit Breakers I 1/1, Biomes Aplenty 5/5, Potion Dispensary 10/10, Elemental Animals 5/5, Cows for Milk 12/12, Vegetation Variety 20/20, Divine Border 1/1, Know Your Enemies 10/10, Pathfinder, [UNIQUE] 1/1, Community Driven 10/10
Started [1/3]: [TRINITY] 5/1000
Available: Dungeon Core IV 0/1000, Diverse Dungeon Core I 0/1, Bovidae Dungeon Core I 0/1, Home Grown Dungeon Core I 0/1, Accommodating Dungeon Core I 0/1, Trapless Dungeon Core I 0/1, Environmental Dungeon Core I 0/1, Spatial Dungeon Core I 0/1, Awakened Dungeon Core I 0/1, Vine Warper 0/15, Kin Slayer 0/100, Voidborn 0/250, Axe Sharpener 0/5, Energy Well II 0/6, Expansionist 0/30, Fire’s Flying 0/7, Deal Broker 0/10, All the Potions 0/60, Community Builder 0/30, Boss Builder 0/50, Engraver 0/5, Godly Negotiator 0/500, Heavenly Gate 0/350, Clan Head 0/25, Five Cornered Square Initiate 0/100, Raising The Floor 0/100, Into The Infinite 0/60, Floors Within Floors 0/10, Monster Rancher 0/50, Phrenic Friend 0/120, PsiBane I 0/200, PsiBoon I 0/200, Deep Rules 0/500, Extra Accommodations 0/75, Time Will Wait 0/500, Spatial Prodigy 0/150}
Suffice it to say, things had grown by a bit more than he was expecting.
Doyle, ‘Hey Ally! Why do I have so many levels in my skills? Also, what is up with all the class paths?’
Ally sighs and invites him in where she has pulled the status panel up as well. ‘Both are easy enough to explain. The skills are because you managed to get over the early hump in difficulty. To put it simply, the system has a difficulty spike in leveling skills early on. From around level ten to somewhere between 25 and 50 depending on the skill, things slow down. This is mostly because it wants to keep people away from just jumping into a skill for easy path points.
‘As for the class paths? They’re some of the few paths that will just show up and go away depending. You’ll notice that the path Vine Warper is still on your list despite you showing no interest in it. Well, unless you become unable to gain said path, it isn’t ever going away, though you can hide it once you have over 50 paths.
‘Class paths on the other hand tend to only show up when you’re in the market for them. So since you decided you were going to likely take on instead of Dungeon Core IV, they showed up.’
Doyle tilts to the side, ‘Why would they be so different?’
Ally shrugs, ‘Class paths can only be taken one at a time and you have to finish the one you are currently working on. That means that if the system just always showed the class paths they would be popping in and out as you completed your current one and so on. It also doesn’t help that they tend to be even more personalized than normal paths. So right now you have the option to take “trapless dungeon core”, but that would obviously go away once you install a trap. And no, the traps from your kobolds don’t count.’
Doyle nods, ‘Fair enough, now do you have any opinion on the class paths I have available?’
Ally laughs, ‘You should really think about them yourself. Paths in general are pretty personal and class paths even more so. Though I can easily point out a couple you likely shouldn’t take. Not that I should have to tell you that trapless isn’t exactly a long term restriction you want to build around.’
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Doyle sighs, ‘fair enough.’
Ally holds up both her hands, ‘I’m not saying I won’t help. I’m just saying you should look over your options first and at the very least narrow it down on your own. After all, while I feel I have a pretty good feeling of what you like, I’m just guessing on the fact that you probably want to play with traps in the future.’
Doyle nods again and hovers off to a corner where he pulls up a list of only the available class paths minus the repeated text so it was easier to take it in..
{Dungeon Core IV, Diverse, Bovidae, Home Grown, Accommodating, Trapless, Environmental, Spatial, Awakened}
A few got chopped off right away. For instance, Ally wasn’t wrong about him wanting to play with traps at some point and of course the fourth installment of generic dungeon core was off the table. Besides that though, he took his time considering why he had the various options.
Diverse was obvious enough in theory. His type included diverse, some of his paths were about being diverse, and even if he didn’t use every monster on every floor there was a good bit of changing things up, barring the goats of course.
Which brought his attention to the next one in line, Bovidae. Doyle wasn’t certain, but his guess was that it probably represents the taxonomic family that includes goats and cows. A safe enough assumption when one of his main monsters was the goat and he even had dealings with a literal cow goddess.
Home Grown, Accommodating, Environmental on the other hand was likely just the result of how he built his floors. They all tended to have farm zones to restock the monsters from and he had created environments fitting for them. He even had a skill for getting the environment right. Though accommodating confused Doyle a little.
Spatial on the other hand made perfect sense to him. Doyle had been making spatially messed up floors ever since the boss floor. To not get a class based on it would have been shocking. Sure, he didn’t have to struggle with it like most sapients did, but that was just an advantage his race gave him. Though of course his people’s look into the subject from a purely physical standpoint helped. Magic messed up all kinds of “rules” and so having some idea of how the world actually worked without mystical interference was a big help.
Then lastly was Awakened. Cut and dry, a simple path that Doyle put on the same level of his original “Dungeon Core” path. All it did was designate that yes, he was in fact awakened. Though on the other hand, that very simplicity tempted him.
All the other class paths have glimmers of possibility that he understood. Better goats and cows, greater spatial abilities, and so on. The simple Awakened Dungeon Core path however had a different kind of promise. It promised a mystery box. Doyle checked with Ally, but she didn’t have a better idea so he felt his thoughts on it likely had some weight to them.
In simple terms, the path would likely unlock or grant special features meant for an awakened dungeon. Sounds simple enough, but consider the fact that when a dungeon was unaware they would easily be able to handle their entire dungeon like a computer.
Doyle’s Wisdom was creeping up there, but it was still a good way off from being able to automate all of his floors. Right now it wasn’t as much of a problem, but as more and more outsiders came in to actually try and delve deeper, the easy days were coming to an end.
Besides that though, there were any number of other possibilities of what the class path could help with. So taking the sheer usefulness the path would likely involve, Doyle began to cut other paths that didn’t live up to that potential. That resulted in a much smaller list.
{Bovidae, Home Grown, Spatial, Awakened}
Just four class paths. Though Doyle admitted to himself that it was really just three. While better goats and cows were interesting, he wasn’t willing to use his class on it. He also ended up axing home grown. It felt to him like a path that would help with his farming, both the dungeon area and the pattern leveling. However, he just had no way to really tell.
That meant it was a choice between Spatial and Awakened. Both very strong contenders and technically he could choose to eventually have picked up both. He just would have to be careful about which one to take first. Either one could be seen as having a lot of potential and yet if he did eventually have both, one would end up cut off.
This thought in the end was what really helped him narrow it down. While the Awakened path was interesting, Doyle just didn’t feel like it had the same potential as the Spatial path did. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more it felt like the last class path he should take. After all, his entire existence was based around literally being his own dimension and so a class path based on the fabric of reality sounded pretty important.
So after taking a moment to confer with Ally, she ended up agreeing with his conclusion, Doyle settled back to put a few points into the Awakened Dungeon Core path. Technically he could even buy all the way up to the third path, but felt that just the first two would be enough for now. After all, there were a lot of interesting normal paths to choose from. So with a thought he tells the system to buy the first path.
{1 point applied to Awakened Dungeon Core path...
1/1 - Path Complete, You have earned +10 Wisdom and +3 Wisdom/Level, You have been granted the hidden perk Planetary Polyglot, Mental Analysis skill already present in the form of Psychology, Instead granting +20 Monster Pattern Adjustment Points}
Reading over what it did, gave Doyle a slightly cramped smile. While the Wisdom was quite a boon, the other two felt a little lackluster. After all, he could already speak the local language and if he didn’t already have Psychology, who knows what kind of skill it would have given him?
Though Ally quickly changed his opinion on the polyglot bonus as she explained what it actually meant. ‘That there is probably going to be one of the most beneficial things you could have gotten. Simple enough in theory, the polyglot perk gives you knowledge on one or more languages, both spoken and written. This knowledge is generally on the level of either native speaker if you already spoke it, or damn near it otherwise.
‘More important for you though, is the “Planetary” modifier. What that means is that the system just granted you the knowledge for every normal language on the planet. Normal in this case meaning those used by sapients to communicate in an open fashion. So nothing like some obscure thieves cant or any dead languages.
‘Maybe that doesn’t seem too important, but look out there in the town. Ace is in a meeting with Camila Sela, a wolfkin, and there are a few other non-human species in the outer ring. Do you honestly think their native language is the language you knew? Sure, give it enough time and everyone is likely to pick up some variant of the trade tongue, generally just referred to as common. For now though, you have a bunch of what to your world are alien languages.’