Floor Menu.
What appeared in response to James's request was the biggest screen James had seen thus far. It's like sitting too close to a wide screen tv. At least it's not as bad as sitting in the front row in a movie theater. James mentally willed the screen a few inches away, finally realizing what he was looking at as he did so.
It's a map.
The majority of the screen was taken up by a birds-eye view of the entire first floor. On the left and right sides of the screen were dividing lines separating the map from a list of tabs. The left looks like I can toggle whether certain icons appear on the map, and a key for telling me what each icon or color represents, on the right is a list of options I can implement into the floor, but they're all grayed out.
"61-3, the options on the right for editing the floor, are they grayed out because I need the 'Create Event' ability first?"
[Affirmative. The options listed in the right column are options for editing a floor prior to initialization, but can be implemented on an existing floor through the event menu either temporarily or permanently.]
Got it, well, I don't need to worry about editing anything right now anyway. The whole point of this was to get access to the map, so let's see what we got.
A green oval represents the entrance portal/portal to a lower floor, and a blue one the exit portal/portal to a higher floor. A green circle represents a village, a yellow a safe zone that's been cleared, and an orange one a safe zone that hasn't been cleared. Red circles are spawn zones, and blue dots are climbers, with purple dots as monsters... There's also gray triangles for resources, but that's toggled off- James toggled the resource icons on, and watched as the map was nearly flooded with them. Oh, right. The trees each count as a resource. Wait! There's another tab within the tab below the icon to toggle specific resources, and a list of all of the resources on this floor!
{Floor Menu
Toggle Icons:
-Portals (Entrance, Exit)
-Safe Zones (Villages, Cleared, Uncleared)
-Spawn Points (Goblin, Large Bird, Horned Rabbit, Magic Deer, Wolf, Slime)
-Denizens (Climbers, Monsters)
-Resources (Healing Grass, Felix Grass, Wood, Stone, Water, Berries, Eggs)
Unavailable On Active Floor (Requires Management Skill “Create Event”):
-Move Spawn Point (Variable)
-Add Spawn Point (Variable)
-Remove Spawn Point (Variable)
-Add Monster Type (Variable)
-Remove Monster Type (Variable)
-Move Safe Zone (Variable)
-Add Safe Zone (Variable)
-Remove Safe Zone (Variable)
-Alter Landscape (Variable)
-Increase Existing Resource (Variable)
-Decrease Existing Resource (Variable)
-Add Resource (Variable)
-Remove Resource (Variable)}
It's a relief that I only have to wait a day to pick up the “create event” skill. A lot of these options are too useful not to use on the first and second floor. If I can erase spawn points or add a bunch of safe zones together to create a mock village, it could be a huge help to everyone. I doubt I can do anything too significant. The amount I can change is likely limited to my admin tier or requires a ton of points, to say nothing of attracting too much attention if I make it too easy, but hopefully enough small advantages will add up without being too obvious.
I should see about adding iron to the first floor as soon as I can. I doubt the weaponsmith can do much with stone alone. At least the armorsmith can likely do something with monster hides. Regardless, that's for later. Right now, I need to study the map itself.
The map's a giant circle, a large field surrounded by a ring of trees…
"61-3, the map says it's 250 kilometers in diameter, but it looks like there's another 50 kilometers of solid forest surrounding it that it isn't including?" Toggling the resource icon for wood, the icon appears around the innermost ring, but the outer ring of trees are left blank, with not even monster spawns reaching it.
[Affirmative. A natural barrier made of the floor's environment exists between the boundary of the floor's center and its walls, to help with the illusion of the environment and discourage attacks on the inner walls of the Tower.]
Discourage attacks? "Can the tower be damaged by skills or weapons, either from the outside or within?"
[Negative. The Tower is protected from all forms of damage.]
"But how?" Is it really impervious to attacks, or just programmed to convince everyone that it is?]
[Further details on this process require an Admin Tier of 4 or higher to access.]
Okay, so if it's wanting me to prove my worth first, then it's probably not completely invincible. Nothing I can do about it now though. Probably not ever, considering that getting four promotions without anyone checking on who I am is likely impossible. Something to consider for later, at least.
Back to the map... The village and entrance portal are both in the center, and there are... 24 other Safe Zones scattered throughout the map, spread out in six directions from the village. Going from one end of the map to the other, it kind of looks like three lightning bolts zigzagging across the map, all crossing over the village. The exit portal is to the... I think it's called north-northeast, when it's between north and northeast, right? The exit portal has its own safe zone that's bigger than the others, but smaller than the village safe zone.
The distance between the village and the safe zone that one party cleared yesterday is... 24 kilometers, and it took them nearly six hours to get there... So they were moving at 4 kilometers an hour... Faster, actually, since they had to slow down or stop completely whenever they were in a fight, and couldn't walk a straight line with the occasional trees or bushes blocking them... I never really cared about how fast or slow I walked, or how fast professional athletes can run, so I don't know how fast or slow that really is, but I imagine the power from leveling up is helping them surpass the average human anyway.
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Regardless, the distance between that safe zone, and between each safe zone further along the chain, are about the same. None of the distances exceed 40 kilometers, so they should be able to reach a new safe zone each day within the same lightning bolt. Going from one lightning bolt to another would take longer, significantly so the closer to the edge of the map you get, to the point where some are further apart than the village is to the exit portal!
Unfortunately, the safe zone they found is in a different lightning bolt from the ones leading to the exit portal, but the first ring of safe zones are all about the same distance from each other as it takes to get from them to the village, so this could still work. We have three days to get to... Or, wait... We have four days, don't we?
The quest to get to the next floor comes in for each group of climbers at the end of their first day, and so with the fifth wave having just arrived, they should have four days left, including today... Right?
James asked 61-3 to show him the timed quest that was issued to the first wave of climbers.
{Complete the Tutorial! (Tier 1)
Quest Type: Mandatory Single-Participant
Quest Recipient(s): All Climbers of wave 1
Description: You have survived the First Battle and your first day within the tower has now concluded. Don't get too comfortable, however, you aren't meant to enjoy your time here, you're meant to grow strong enough to leave! Defeat the Boss of Floor 3 within three weeks, or else!
Current Progress: Floor 1/3
Time Remaining: 430:55
Reward(s): Escape from the Tower.
WARNING: Failure to complete this quest may result in termination. Good luck!}
James let out a grunt of frustration as he reread the text of the quest. I still don't like the mocking tone it's taking. I don't need any more reminders that this is just a game to the assholes in charge... Still, it's nice to know I was right, they still have four days before the end of their first week, so even with four safe zones between them and the exit, they should still make it on time!
The biggest problem would be them not knowing in which direction the next safe zone is, but I should be able to create a quest each day to guide them to the next one.
The safe zone they already cleared is a bit too far to the west, so…
{You have activated Create Quest. -10 Tower Points. 1703 Tower Points remaining.}
{Portal March #1
Quest Type: Mandatory Multi Participant
Quest Recipient(s): All Climbers on Floor 1
Description: You have found your first Safe Zone outside of your Village, and now know the road to the next Floor is several days away! Head east-north-east from the most recently cleared Safe Zone to find the next one between you and the portal to the second Floor!
Specified Safe Zone Cleared: 0/1
Reward(s): Another Quest directing you to the next Safe Zone
Confirm Quest?}
Not yet, I'll confirm it when it's closer to morning. "61-3, how many Tower Points could I spend in rewards for this quest?"
[Due to the quest type as multi participant, and the number of recipients encompassing every climber on the floor, no Tower Points may be rewarded.]
"No Tower Points? Not even one?" Even a single unit of wood or a dozen berries would be better than nothing. "Is it because I'm offering another quest as a reward?"
[Negative, the presence of another quest mentioned in the reward has no influence on the number of Tower Points that may be allocated for a reward. However, due to the likelihood of many participants having little to no influence over the quest, and the quest being given to so many participants, the amount of Tower Points that may be allocated to the reward has been reduced to none.]
"Damn. Alright then, thanks anyway, 61-3." Getting them to the next floor in time will be its own reward, so I'll have to be satisfied with that. While I have the time, I should consider what repeating quests I'm going to make. Now that I know it's going to take a while for anyone to reach the next floor... I can either try to split my points and spend them on the 1st or 2nd floor depending on whenever I have enough points mentally assigned to one of them for the type of quest I want to make, or I can just focus on the first floor for now, get the five or more Repeating Quests I want to make to get them out of the way, and then I can focus almost solely on the second floor once climbers get there…
Considering they won't even get to the third floor for three more days, I'm going to focus on setting up the first floor.
So what items does every climber need? The Basic Travel Kit comes to mind, but that costs 200 gold, which would require 1,000 Tower Points just to reward for a non-repeating quest. To say nothing of the difficulty requirement…
"Hey, 61-3, is there a specific equation used to determine how many monsters have to be killed for a reward? Like, the amount of monsters increases depending on how expensive the reward is, right? How many “Tower Points” of a reward is a monster worth?"
[The Tower Value of a first floor monster is 10, with the value increasing by five on each subsequent floor. Each reward dispensed for a combat quest must be less than or equal to the Tower Value of monsters the quest requires. For quests that don't require a specific monster type, but allow any monster on a certain floor to apply to the quest, the Tower Value required is increased another 20%.]
"Oh, okay, so a quest that rewarded a Basic Travel Kit would require you to kill... 120 monsters?"
[Affirmative.]
"Thank you."
[You are welcome, James.]
That's actually not bad, considering every climber only needs one travel kit, and I think each party kills at least 20 monsters a day on average. I've never followed one specific group for the entire day, but I think it's safe to say they could reach this goal within their first week on this floor.
It'd still cost me 10,000 Tower Points to make a repeating quest of it, though. It might be a better idea to give out multiple quests for less monsters that reward less expensive but still useful items. Even if every individual person needs only one of it, we're not going to stop having new climbers any time soon, and if they can sell the excess they earn, it could still be worthwhile to make it a repeating reward.
"61-3, how much is an item worth when it's being sold to the General Store? Half the price the store sells it at?"
[Negative. Items and resources can be sold to the general store for 5% of its Tower Value, however certain skills can increase this to 10%.]
"Oh, Thank you anyway." Five percent of its tower value, the tower value is five times its cost in gold, so... Items are sold for a quarter of their sale price, up to potentially half of its sale price.
[You are welcome, James.]
So if I hand out buckets every day, they'd only get like, 6 gold for each one they sell. Not terrible, but for the same amount of Tower Points I could reward twice as much gold. Unless I spend several days worth of tower points on something really big, it might be better to just make a bunch of small exclusive quests for harvesting tools, buckets, wood, and gold. Maybe not wood, it's not too hard to chop down, they really only need the hundreds I've given as a quest reward because of the buildings they need to make, but once the village has everything built…
Well, I suppose they could just sell the wood, but it'd take 20 units for just one gold... Actually, it might be better not to give them wood for a whole other reason. With crafting classes now a thing, learning how to work together to protect someone while they harvest a resource could be a vital skill, and the nearly constant need for firewood will help with that. Actually, that might not be a great idea. Even if a single unit of firewood is enough for hours of fire, with hundreds of climbers on a single floor, scarcity, or fighting over the closest trees, could still become an issue. Just 10 units of wood should be enough for a low level daily request that nevertheless ensures no one has trouble building a fire, as long as they have a firestarter or a skill to substitute for it.
I can save that for later though, until we've finished building all of the buildings and expanding the village at least once, I'll keep making a quest each day to hand out 50 wood.
Harvesting tools and buckets are the next repeating quests. With five different types of harvesting tools, and water never something you want to run out of, they'll be more useful than redundant, and they can still be sold for gold afterwards.
I only have enough Tower Points for one of them, though... The question is, what should I pick first?