A day went by, where he just did nothing. He just left the floor to its own devices observing how it functioned, seeing if it needed any finetuning on the creature side of things. He was happy to know that it wasn’t necessary, all seemed to have worked out. The Kobolds had decided on a hierarchy, and they were sending scouting teams out to find food and map out their surroundings. They have so far kept away from the other monsters, preferring to hunt the small animals that came with the floor theme.
The badgers had started breeding. It turns out that just being a dungeon increased the rate at which creatures reproduce. He found it fascinating, how the mana in his dungeon changes their biology in such ways.
The Centipedes were happy just digging through the dungeon, at least right now. He was kind of just waiting for them to happen upon some of the others on the floor, and that would kind of spark, the beginning of the hunt.
But then again it had only been one day, or at least he thought so. He did have a weird, sort of instinctual knowledge on when it was day or not. Wait how did he know that? It was weird he had never experienced a sunset or rise so how could he fell it? It was while he was in the middle of this train of thought that the Tutorial deemed it time to continue.
Are you done relaxing? You still have a floor to finish you know.
“wait am I not done?” He asked.
“But I’ve got everything done, a nicely dugout floor, a variety of monsters and some of those are digging new tunnels. What more could it need?” He asked.
While you are correct, about everything you said. You are still missing one piece every dungeon has. Treasure, or loot for the adventures to seek after in your halls. They need a good reason to dive into your halls, they wouldn’t want to risk their lives without some sort of reward. If you don’t have that, no one is going to fight in your dungeon. Meaning your growth will slow to a halt, or worse they may decide that it is not worth it to keep you alive and instead harvest your crystal, killing you in the process.
“Wait do I even have to have adventures in my hall, I’m sure I could handle it if I grew a little slower I’ve got time, what if I don’t open myself to the surface and just keep myself underground?” he asked hopeful.
Wouldn’t work, you may not have noticed but the mana in your dungeon is slowly building up. Once it has reached the threshold your dungeon will implode in on itself. That the reason you must be open to the outside world, it will release all the mana in dungeon you can’t use out to the outside world.
“Fine, what kind of loot would you recommend that I get?” He grumbly asked the Tutorial.
There are quite a lot of things I would recommend, let’s start with how the adventures would get the loot. Though there exists an ability that automatically gives loot to adventures every time they defeat a monster, it is a little bit outside your price range for the moment. I would instead suggest you get the (uncommon) ability “Restocking chests” and spread them out on the floor.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Looking under [Abilities/Traits] he quickly found it and bought it.
Ability: Restocking chests (uncommon) 20 dp
Tired of always having to refill your chest with loot after adventures leave. Then this is the ability for you.
This ability creates a chest that after a selected amount of times uses your mana to fill itself back up, with random items from a drop list you create.
Effect: Restocking chests
He could already fell how useful this ability would be in the future.
Now that adventures can get loot, it is time to decide what they will get. In this, there are a lot of possibilities. One that never fails is coinage, giving them a few of the local currency is a surefire way to make them happy, but there needs to be more than that. Another suggestion is armaments, weapons, and armor are also solid choices.
You need not concern yourself with currency as of now. It is almost guaranteed that you will be given money to produce by the adventures. I recommend that you go into items and buy the blueprint for some weapons. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just something so that you can form it with whatever material you have available.
Thinking it over, he did have some metal patterns that he had gotten when digging out the floor. So, making some weapons could be a good idea, he could arm his kobolds with this, enabling them to more easily hunt. With that realization, he immediately purchased 3 weapon blueprints for swords, hammers, spears, and axes for the low price of 15 dp.
Having done that, he assigned copper weapons to the chest loot table and began placing them across the floor. He placed in total 15 chest and spread them across the entire floor, some were placed in corners some in plain sight while others were hidden away.
Great, now there’s just one thing I would recommend you get next, normally this isn’t something you would get until way later, but I think that it will be a good purchase for you, sadly you will have to use your free rare purchase to get it. it’s the “Infused Regenerating Ore Vein” (rare), you can see for yourself why.
Feeling intrigued he looked under [Abilities/Traits] for it.
Ability: Infused Regenerating Ore Vein (rare) 100 dp
Where the normal Regenerating Ore Vein only grows the metal, the dungeon assigns to it. This ability allows the dungeon to plant normal none infused metals and let them, while growing, become infused with ambient mana.
Effect: Produces infused metals
Infused metals are highly sought after. This would not only attract adventures but also craftsmen who would pay adventures highly to mine the metals.
Looking at it he could understand the appeal of it, almost immediately. This would enable him too to get his hands on, expensive materials, for no cost other then their none infused counterpart which were way less expensive. He was a little unhappy with having to use his free rare purchase, but he understood how useful it would be to him and purchased it.
Using his new ability, he immediately planted 5 copper ore veins spread out across the floor. One of them he placed together with a few weapons relatively close to the kobold camp, just to see what would happen.
With that done, he finally felt the satisfaction of finishing a floor. It was a combination of pride and anticipation. He couldn’t wait to see how I held up against adventures and other invaders.
Great, with that out of the way, you can finally open an entrance to the outside world and with that comes the end of the tutorial. From then on you are on your own. You can still ask me about things, but I will no longer actively guide you. I am sure you will become one of the greatest dungeons in the world. Good luck.
And with those last words from the Tutorial, he breached the surface.