Day 39
Lake report:
100% of shore claimed to two spaces and planted with grass. 48% of shore claimed out to three spaces and planted with grass. 6870 total spaces.
status Day 39, Mana: 8804/10,291, Water: 828/10,291, Ice: 473/10,291 Size: 20,583, core 40,
Fifty upgrades available
I can’t say I am happy about them seizing my trap core, but realistically, I was expecting to sacrifice it. While I am confident I could plant another core near it and take back control, it would be a bad idea to do so with the core killers so close. Also, would there be any purpose in doing so? Sure it was producing over a hundred and sixty mana, but just yesterday I increased my mana generation by nearly ten times that amount. It would probably be more mana-efficient to plant more grass instead.
I will want to keep an eye out for potential encroachment, but realistically, those couple miles are practically unpassable for most dungeons. Also, the core killers know about that location, so unless I have a good reason, I do not want to try to reclaim it. If they manage to capture Mountain 1, that would be a different matter, but then again, Mountain 1 has great strategic importance, and only produces about forty mana. Speaking of which, I wonder if it would be worthwhile to claim more territory either there or on a neighboring peak for more giant ice eagles. They make great scouts, and I have no doubt that they would make decent defenders as well.
Actually, I have an opportunity, why not have one eagle keep a distant eye on the core killers while another one tries to kill one of the staff-holders. That might be tipping my hand a bit, but I will want to be able to remove the ability to bypass my ice-water tunnels should they approach any of my other cores.
So let’s try that, and if it works, I’ll order other scouts to land on some mountain tops that would be suitable for giant ice eagle nests.
Speaking of giant ice eagles, I have been watching as they land during the second color-shift of the day, and there is no real mana reaction until they enter my territory, and even then it is all but identical to any other fast-moving ice creature.
If they are not sending out some sort of mana to detect the ground and other obstacles how do they avoid collisions, especially when moving at speed?
My own passive mana-sensor only extends a short way beyond my dungeon, perhaps as much as several inches?
I cannot imagine that the eagles can sense things hundreds of miles away using this technique.
Is it possible that they possess some sort of extra-mana perception? Something that allows sensing remote details without the use of mana?
It seems preposterous, but until I can find some other explanation, this mysterious EMP is my best guess for how eagles can scout as well as they do. This might well apply to my doves and possibly other scout units as well.
Perhaps that ability is what is purchased with the scout upgrade? I hope so. I would have no idea how to deal with widespread EMP abilities.
Well, with a few hundred mana below my max, I have plenty of buffer to wait for the first color change of the day when the birds can start their scouting duties. Hmm, on that kill-attempt, I think waiting until they are well clear of the spawn area and perhaps approaching my perimeter would be a good time for it.
That way the structures would not interfere, and I would not yet be tracking whichever one it hits.
Scouting alert
Invaders designated as core killers located approaching Trap Northwest, beginning stoop.
Attack Report
The designated invader was successfully snatched, but started to struggle while being carried. Invaders successfully forced attacker to drop the target, but the attacker managed to freeze the invader with a breath attack before their grip was completely lost. The invader shattered when it hit the ground, but the other invaders continued to target the attacker as it retreated. Attacker has successfully returned to the nest but it will be several hours before it is fully healed.
Well, that is good to know: an eagle can indeed take out one of the staff invaders, but probably not more than a couple per day per eagle.
No need to harry them further for the moment though, as I still want to see if I can follow them back to their nest…
Should I have directed the attacker to land on a different mountain to misdirect the core killers should they try to follow it?
I can do that next time.
Intruder Detected
Ah, they seem to be progressing again. Looks like they collected the thawing pieces of the staff-holder. Let's tag several of their mounts, including the one holding the melting former staff holder.
I wonder what that was for? One of the staff holders shot something large and fiery along my territory in both directions. One went straight for nearly half a mile before fading out, and the other turned the corner where the north and west sections joined somewhere in the last third of its flight. They seemed very concerned about this. Possibly not expecting a dungeon to have territory so far from its closest core?
In any case the other staff-holder was the last to leave my territory, but not before waving its staff at the ground and causing the earth and rocks there to shift and quake. I wonder what that was about? Perhaps it thought my core was underground there and it wanted to disrupt my dungeon?
Scouting Alert Core killers group is moving towards Trap 2 and should arrive in about 7 hours if they continue at this pace.
That would be nice, let me refresh my tracking and perhaps find where in that spawn area they have their nest so I can find a way to destroy it and stop them from harassing me.
The doves have returned after visiting near-by peaks. Looks like they are in the corner-directions about three to five miles away, so that is a pretty good range. Huh, one of them is near the shore for Lake 1, about five hundred floors up and about a thousand spaces southwest. When I place that one, I should check if it can target the shores of Lake 1 directly, in case that becomes useful at some point.
Whale the Core Killers are heading towards Trap 2, I should go back and check on that tilting issue. I think I can use the water-levels around the shore of Lake 1 as a true-level for the area, and then compare that to my walls and floors to see how off they are.
How odd, the crooked parts of Mountain 1 and Lake 1 that I was worried about are now pretty much level. Lake 1 more than Mountain 1, but I suppose that makes sense, but now all of those other core rooms feel crooked. Surprisingly, the surface of the ponds for Origin, and the two expansions are exactly as crooked as the floors. What is more, from Trap 1W to Hazard 1A they all have roughly the same amount of north-south tilt, while the east-west portion of the tilt gets worse the further east they get from my core.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
If I look closely, I can even see a small amount of tilt for Mountain 1. So a distance-based tilt that gets bigger the farther away something is, but the east-west portions are magnified compared to the north-south portions? Yes, Trap 1N and Trap 1S are closer in slope than Trap 1W and Trap 1E.
What is more, water surfaces agree with this tilt. This suggests that it is not as much a ‘Me’ thing as it is a ‘World’ thing. Or, perhaps a thing where the world and I do not fully agree on something.
This suggests that the world is ‘uneven’ in a consistent and recurring fashion on a scale that dungeons are not normally required to deal with. But my architectural sense is able to deal with this unevenness and so I should trust my sense of what is stable and secure over my sense of what is flat and level.
I suppose that is a good thing, as I do not know how to develop a conscious assessment of what is stable and secure apart from my structural sense. For now I’ll just need to accept that ‘the world is wonky to my sensibilities’ and not fret too much about the details that it affects.
Ok, since that has been worked-through as well as I can manage, and the Core Killers are barely halfway to Trap 2, let’s assess what we discovered about our defenses from the assault on Trap 1.
Core Killers can handle water, with some difficulty, but deeper water, ice water, or both make things harder on them. To the point that they will just give up and dig for a depth of twelve floors. What if they are too far away to detect the location of the core though? Is digging even an option at that point? For the traps and the mountain areas, they have perhaps a one-in-four chance of digging in the correct direction to find anything more than the edge of the collection field. Although I suppose that should be enough to let them find that core.
I wonder if it is easier or harder for them to dig through stone? Stone is much more structurally sound, so it would make sense that there is a trade-off in not being as strong defensively. Until I know for sure, I may want to make anything buried in stone extra-deep if I can. Fortunately, Mountain 1 is already extra-deep just to keep the collection field under the surface. I should make the defender mountain areas similarly deep.
How about the eagle returning to the nest, if they track that back to Mountain 1, or one of the Defender Mountains, I will want to make sure it is easy to reclaim once they leave.
I will also want to minimize obvious defenders around Lake 1. Probably some wolves and bears if I can find some natural out-crops in the steeper parts around the shore, so I do not accidentally make the Dens look unnatural.
As far as reclaiming any of the Eagle Roosts that get captured, what if I plant enough elemental grass to put each area into zero or negative normal mana production?
Fire grass would probably make this even more effective as fire areas are supposed to take active up-keep costs in most places, and if I put fire-grass around thee eagle nests on the cold mountain tops, I should be able to zero out all of the local mana generation, not just the normal mana generation like I can for the ice and water sections.
That seems like a good plan, I will surround the defender mountain tops with a fire region sustained by fire grass. Except grass on the surface does not need maintenance. I do not know if fire alone will be as effective a deterrent as the combination of ice and water for the maze area, but perhaps lava would work? That is a combination of earth and fire. So lava tubes down to the core instead of ice tubes, supported by lava grass in the tube and on the surface combined with fire grass on the surface to support Giant Fire Eagles.
Having both fire and ice eagles may prove to be a good idea, as the Core Killers now know that there are Ice Eagles in this area and they may have special defenses to deal with them.
Sounds expensive both to build and to up-keep, but my mana will do me no good if I get killed.
Scouting Alert Core Killers are now approaching Trap 2
Good timing, I have a defensive plan and once I have tracked the Core Killers back to their spawn point, I can use any mana left over from undermining that spawn point to start implementing it.
Intruder Detected
There they are, now to Follow as many of the non-armored non-staff holders as I can while they pass through, Following mounts as a secondary choice.
Wow, they were moving pretty rapidly. I only managed to Follow a few mounts, but I got all of the riders that I was targeting, including the short one that went into the water. It reacted when I did so, but the Follow has not been removed, so perhaps they do not realize what it was.
Ok, after entering the spawn area, they went to a structure near the center where two of the riders, and all of the mounts except for the ones ridden by the armor wearers are separating and going to a smaller building near-by. That might be the mount spawner. A good target, but secondary to the Core Killer spawner.
Ok, it feels like the remaining riders and the mounts that carried the armor are all gathered together in the middle of the structure. So I guess that is it, now I just need to determine if it would be faster to create new areas to approach, or if Trap 2 is close enough to suffice for…
What? They de-spawned? Why would they? No, they moved. A long long way. Perhaps a thousand miles north and a hundred or so miles east?
They are now in a new building, but it feels similar to the one they were in before, sort of like how a bat nest and a rat nest feel similar but not quite the same.
The short one and the heavy mounts are all there, along with the other non-distinct core killers.
And now they are leaving the building, in perhaps a different spawn area?
It is hard to tell just what is going on, but clearly the building I was going to target is just another type of mount that moves invaders around. Useful to get rid of, but not the main target.
Perhaps the ones that were left behind were local defenders that they brought along for some reason? Caretakers for the mounts perhaps?
Well whatever the reason, it looks like my primary goal is not anywhere nearby. I am going to need to hop between mountain peaks to help minimize the number of areas needed to cover that much distance. Just using towers would take hundreds of areas, leaving a trail of small dungeons right back to my main core.
Ok, I already have the defensive mountains located, and it is not yet second color change, so there is still time to locate the first travel target. Send out the doves north and north east to find peaks that can be targeted from Mountain 1 or one of the defensive mountains, then tomorrow I can send them out to find multiple areas in a chain heading the correct direction.
They have returned, let me see what they found. Nothing useful to the north, but there is a peak a good hundred miles to the north east that should be targetable. Good work, I’ll establish M Travel 1, MDef NE, MDef NW, MDef SE, and MDef SW.
Well that is novel, I have nearly five thousand mana left after establishing the four defensive outposts and MTravel 1. Giving them a standard core room with all those trees is probably counter-productive as far as making them easy to re-capture, but even fifty mana a day does not seem like a particular threat.
Hmm, while I was distracted, it looks like those two carriers stopped walking together. I wonder if the place where they split up is where the cursed hammer is kept. That could be important when it comes to stopping their activities. They would not be nearly as threatening if they did not have that or the core enslavement devices.
As the Core Killers that made the thousand mile jump all seem to have gone quiescent in the same structure, I can only guess that that would be their spawning structure. If I can destroy that, then kill them before it is rebuilt, that should stop them from being able to come after me any more. Hopefully that is their only nest, but considering how far they traveled to get to Trap 1, that seems plausible.
Now I suppose it is time to spend the rest of that mana expanding the lake area. I did expand my territory by nearly seven hundred spaces without corresponding mana generation after all, not to mention being a good twelve hundred mana below my max at the start of the day. About forty-five hundred mana should be enough to increase my mana generation by fifteen hundred more than my mana capacity, so what else?
You know, with all that water mana, I wonder if that can be used to claim territory like normal mana. It would hardly be cost-effective for dry areas, but if it can claim water areas and still benefit from the doubled efficiency when dealing with water, that could be a very mana efficient for trying to claim the lake.
That seems to work, so I was able to use the last four hundred fifty mana for planting water plants in the newly claimed area on the water side of the shore.
Scouting Report
The group designated Core killers was tracked from the vicinity of Trap 1 to the collection of structures sixty miles northwest of the starting point. They were then followed through a discontinuity to an area roughly a thousand miles further north.
The scouting party consisted of twenty doves, twelve bats, twelve coyotes, four ice doves, and four Giant Ice Eagles.
Twenty doves, ten bats, twelve coyotes, four ice doves and four giant ice eagles returned. One Giant Ice Eagle was badly injured.
There was one invader killed and no resources harvested.