Day 45
Attack 1
image [https://imgur.com/WNeAMXf.jpg]
Attack 1
image [https://imgur.com/GrodSWm.jpg]
Lake report:
35% of shore claimed out to Twenty Four spaces and planted with grass. 42,319 total shore spaces.
71812 total underwater spaces, 9285 with grass (64% of lake floor claimed)
status Day 45, Size: 139,748, One hundred sixty three upgrades available
Mana: 47,803/69,874, Water: 9485, Ice: 916 Fire: 3 Lava: 726
I was so busy watching how the invaders at MDef NW12 were dealing with the magma chamber, I did not even notice when the invaders at MDef NW13 started dealing with theirs. Looks like they are about half way through the floor, and they are using the same ice-frame method as the invaders at MDef NW12, more or less as expected.
Although now that the first set of invaders are through their magma floor, they seem to be moving little more slowly. Perhaps instead of all of them working on digging, one of them is keeping the ice in place against the hardened but still hot magma.
Not a bad thing, by the time they get through the second chamber, they may well be down to half speed. Unless they manage to bring in reinforcements to counter the slow-down.
Today feels like a long day of watching the interlopers dig towards my sub-cores, they will likely both be at the second magma chamber by the end of the day, with the invaders at MDeg NW12 at least a third of the way through it while the others will probably only just barely reach it today after spending a good chunk of the day finishing up the first magma chamber then digging down through the four additional floors to reach the second chamber.
Perhaps one or both groups will go down and visit the second chamber, but so far they have been pretty reluctant to go below the first chamber, even if it gets slower the farther they are from the stone they are pulling out of the hole.
I’ll go ahead and expand on the lake shore with most of my mana, as there is no doubt that destroying the core killer nest as soon as I can is a priority, especially as I have hundreds of lava mana that I can use should there be an opportunity to catch some core killers in a lava bath.
Intruder Detected
What is this? Ah, just the grass harvester of MTravel 7 showing back up, presumably looking for more grass to harvest, but the trees do not yet have any fruit, so I am afraid they must leave empty handed. Tomorrow they can start harvesting fire fruit.
Yep, there they go, spent some time looking at my trees but eventually went away.
Intruder Detected
Oh, are they back? Hmm, nope, looks like a new invader, this time at MTravel 13. I suppose that makes sense as those last few MTravel locations are all lower than MTravel 7, so they are probably easier to access for most invaders.
They seem interested in the grass again, but I am not going to set any defenders on them for just stealing my grass. Grass is much easier to replace than having mob come after a location, even if the lava would likely stop most or all of them.
Intruder Detected
Another one? Is there something about the fire grass or the fire aspected area that pulls in invaders some how? Perhaps they favor the fire element for some reason? For the defensive locations, I thought it was because they were the lowest altitude, and that may be the case here as well, but I know that the Core Killers at least know where the acid aspected areas are as well, since they attacked them, but they seem much less keen on attacking those.
Then again, there are lots of nice tall MTravel locations that are topped with fire, and those have not been visited yet, so it is probably just altitude. Let me check the Travel locations and see how many of those are getting visited, as I only have alerts for invaders opening the secret door under the first floor of water.
Oh, yes, lots of them have been visited, and Travel 6 even has some invaders actively trying to erase the evidence of my presence. Digging up the dirt where I placed my tower to place Travel 7, and trying to fill the water chimney with other dirt. I wonder if it has anything to do with the neatly ordered rows of tall grasses in the area? Perhaps I damaged the highly ordered aesthetic they were going for? Well, easy enough to fix, just throw a secret door on top of the water chimney the next time the invader goes to get more dirt, and that should satisfy them that the hole has been filled. I am a little sorry about messing up their row of grasses, but I do not have any ideas on how to fix that unless I plant dungeon grasses there, but those are different enough in both shape and color that it probably would not help.
Ok, clearly the invaders like low areas, and only seem to be targeting the fire aspected areas because they are at lower altitudes. Good thing my MTravel locations are as high as I had available, so most off them should remain undisturbed.
Let me turn down the sensitivity of the MTravel locations to only alert for grass harvesting, digging or attempts to mess with my lava.
Huh, with all my pondering on how to tear down the support towers all at the same time, I never considered getting an upgrade for the purpose. I can currently afford at least three upgrades, and I have lots available, so why not give it a try.
I want a trap that can destroy stone structures or supports near the trap.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Upgrade Complete, New Trap: Architectural Mine
That sounds promising. Yes, when I consider placing it close to a wall or support I can tell how much of it would be destroyed if the mine goes off. It seems to have two modes, an area mode that clears anything in the same space or the eight adjacent spaces, and the penetration mode that clears one adjacent space and the space behind it. This should work very well, especially if I make the tunnels just large enough to hold the mines, providing lots of support so long as I need it, but then none at all when it comes time for the collapse.
I suppose that is just about it for today. Wait, what? Oh, those interlopers took the grass from MTravel 13 and 15, so I guess I should replace those with trees, anything else needed before the end of the day? I guess I can throw down another sixteen hundred grass around the lake, but that should be about it.
Day 46
MTravel 13, 15
image [https://imgur.com/1JdMMOA.jpg]
Lake report: (1621/1736 for ring 42)
93% of shore claimed out to forty two spaces and planted with grass. 73,919 total shore spaces.
90782 total underwater spaces, 9285 with grass (81% of lake floor claimed)
status Day 46, Size: 171,349, core 43, One hundred ninety four upgrades available
Mana: 78,779/95,159, Water: 9485, Ice: 1082 Fire: 7 Lava: 1604
Well, the intruders in MDef NW12 will reach the mana field of the sub-core soon, perhaps that will provide enough of an incentive to put a bunch of people where I can bury them with lava.
I have a huge pile of mana available, but I need to reinvest almost all of it into mana generation both today and tomorrow so I can dig out the pit under the Core Killer spawn point and then collapse it before they have a chance to do anything about it.
Sure I could start digging it out now, but the less opportunity they have to notice something is happening the less chance they will have to counter it. It seems to take them a good chunk of a day to prepare a counter for anything new I do, so if I dig and collapse in less time than that, they should not be able to come up with a way to stop me before I finish.
There they go, they just dug out some of the rock inside the mana collection field, and they seem to have noticed that. I do not know if the rock is different, or they can see the sudden change in the mana currents at the surface of the hole, but they noticed something.
Yep. looks like a bunch of them are heading down those narrow looking stairs around the sides, then the ice ladder, more stairs, the second ice ladder, and finally collecting down where they can touch the mana field. Two more, one more, ok, all six of them are down there, so no better time to flood it with lava!
They notice almost right away when I put the lava grass in overdrive to melt their ice, but they barely get to the stairs before the lava starts pouring in from both reservoirs above them. Looks like I got all of them, and… where did they go?
Once they could see the lava pouring in above them, they reached out to each other, and pop-pop-pop the three pairs all vanished at nearly the same time.
That is kind of disappointing that I did not get any of them. Do I need to give up on MDef NW 12 and 13 just before I destroy the spawner? Sure I could rebuild them once they are gone, but I do not really like the idea of letting them destroy any more of my sub-cores. Am I being greedy? I’ll have plenty of mana to make dozens of new defensive locations the day after I take out the spawner.
Or will I? If they have spawners, they may have a core that will let them rebuild the spawner, and if they can just pop out of a trap like that, they might be able to take that core with them, then I would need to find them all over again.
Hopefully I would not need to travel quite so far to find them the second time, but if they know I am coming for them, they can make defenses against me doing the same thing again.
How can I stop them from escaping with their core?
Perhaps if I dropped them into lava? No, rocks sink slowly into lava, so they would have plenty of time to pop out. They even had time to pop out with lava pouring down towards them, so I clearly need something faster than lava. Water moves a lot faster than lava, even icy water, and I know that they would rather dig than swim through icy water, so that must be very bad for them.
As an added bonus, I can add some of those poisonous ice-water snakes to the water, and perhaps even some of those giant sharks. Except, right now, I do not even have enough daily water mana to fill three floors. Sure I could save up until time for the giant pit, but that would give me perhaps eight floors worth of water, and they have buildings nearly half that tall that might protect them, especially if it has a big chunk of rock or dirt under it to prop it up after it lands.
Would this be a good time to try for another upgrade? Something to allow me to quickly fill an area with a large amount of water?
Upgrade Complete, New Feature: Fluid transport
That gave me… a resizable circular structure? With a link?
If it is supposed to handle water, I’ll try putting one in the bottom of my lake and see what it does.
Not a lot, so it probably needs that link. So a second one on the other side of the lake, and link them.
It seems like… water is going into the deeper one and coming out of the shallower one? While my water mana slowly ticks down. Ok, let us stop that. What if I put one up on the lake shore?
Oh, that is going much faster, and eating up my water mana a lot faster too. OK, stopped. But that was a lot of water flow in a short period of time.
Was it fast enough? Probably, I do have a big part of a day to get everything done before they can stop me. It would take about a third of the water in my lake to fill the non-pillar part of the pit though, so a different source of water might be a good idea. Perhaps one of those large bodies of water I had to cross? Travel 11 should be pretty close to the edge of that second body, and if my lake has enough water to fill the pit, then one a hundred times larger should have plenty, even if it is not as deep.
I hope the water traveling almost ninety miles further does not make it too much more expensive to move it.
Speaking of mana, I have spent nearly two hundred mana on putting the magma chambers on overdrive, so I should probably turn that off now. Nice, looks like it not only managed to fill the hole up to the top of the upper chamber, but also managed to push nearly a half-dozen floors higher up as well. If getting through the magma chambers slows them down the same amount again, I may have bought myself three or four days worth of lee-way.
I should probably do the same thing in Mdef NW 13 before they figure out how to stop me. No real opportunity to try and trap staff-holders in the hole again, but that does not seem to work anyway, so I’ll just set them back a few days while I still can.
Yes, yes, lots of yelling and gesticulating, but unless you speed up your progress, you have at least three days to make up now to get down to the mana collection field, so that should be enough time to destroy your spawn point so that once you leave your dome I can pick you off and not have you come back.
I may even be able to take an extra day to have enough mana to make the water icy before I collapse the supports.
In any case, I should go ahead and spend most of my mana pool to plant another fifty one thousand grass around the lake. That grassy area is getting to be quite large, even stretched around the entire lake. Oh, that actually took it over some of the ridges, it even extends past MDef SE now. I suppose it is good to have a back-up core connected to my largest source of mana.