Dungeon's Path

Doyle sighs, 鈥業 really don鈥檛 have a reason not to. [System, put ten points into dungeon core three.]鈥?br>
{10 points applied to Dungeon Core III...

30/100 - You have earned 5 Stat points

35/100 - You have earned +50 World Energy/Hour and +1 Luck}

Doyle tilts to the side, 鈥楬uh, not technically the three wisdom points I wanted but it will work fine. Now where to put the two extra points?鈥?br>
He looks over at his status panel that he hadn鈥檛 closed yet. 鈥極kay, I have 29 constitution at the moment so one goes in there. Other than that, nothing stands out. Since I鈥檓 using wisdom so much, I might as well put the last point into it as well. [System, put four stat points into wisdom and one into constitution.]鈥?br>
{First constitution milestone reached...

Analyzing dungeon design up till this point...

Diverse Strange Caverns subtype, Massive use of kobolds leading goats, Recent focus on shifting layouts, Focus on monetary loot with an undercurrent of gear, Use of breeding farms...

Speeding up changes brought on by Constitution...

Kobold species shifted from generic dungeon kobold to variant dungeon kobold [3a32z.q5b82.m1e62:COMMUNAL_HERDERS]

Updating Kobold info: Kobolds now have the Animal Handling skill at level 1

Goat template gains +1 Wisdom across all variants

Spawning examples of lv20 Strange Dungeon Stone, Coin Plates, lv10 weapons, and lv10 armor

Early unlock of farm zone}

Doyle tilts to the other side, 鈥榃ell, I wasn鈥檛 expecting that. Hey Ally! Check this out, I have some questions.鈥?and he shares the screen with her.

Ally takes a look, 鈥楾hat鈥檚 handy. Except for the change to kobolds, none of this gives you something you couldn鈥檛 get. Rather, like with the farm zone, this is all about getting things early. Especially those spawned items. You will eventually get all your weapons and armor up to level ten, but these shortcut it by letting you eat some examples.鈥?br>
鈥楢s for your questions? I can probably pre-empt a few of them. First of all is the thing about your kobold species and that number. As you should already know from your experience with goats, nothing is new under the sun and the system has a large catalog of variants. Here, the system decided the generic kobolds everyone gets to start don鈥檛 quite fit you. Because you did not change them yet, so the system found it easier to change the type you summon to one of the many variants. In this case, one like the old kobolds, except for an inborn knack for handling animals. The scary number is just how it identifies which variant it is using, and normally you wouldn鈥檛 see it. For instance, your pattern will still be called kobold.鈥?br>
鈥楾hen we have the goats. With them you already know a few variant patterns, so instead it changed them to be a bit wiser so they can more easily follow instructions. This is an interesting change as it is to the pattern template itself and not a bonus to the stat. The difference there is that even without levels or paths your goats are up that plus one. Or rather, it would be more appropriate to say your goats are now at three wisdom instead of two. Likely if you didn鈥檛 have the variants it would instead of switched your goat pattern out for another like it did with the kobolds.鈥?br>
鈥楩inally is the early unlock of the farm zone. I honestly didn鈥檛 know this was a thing, but it will be very useful for you. Right now you have those goat farms and while they are useful, it takes up points on the floor. Farm zones don鈥檛 completely relieve that burden, but it reduces it to a tenth. Though of course with some caveats.鈥?br>
鈥榊ou can designate an area as a farm zone as long as adventurers can鈥檛 get to it ever. Once set as such you somehow portion off a section so when adventurers are delving the floor proper it doesn鈥檛 prevent you from doing stuff in the farm zone. More useful because this means the rapid breeding and growth doesn鈥檛 stop either. Besides that, any monsters in the area only count for a tenth of their point value rounded up. So not quite useful for you goats, but your kobolds would only count as five towards the floor total. Of course this doesn鈥檛 change the cost to summon them, but that isn鈥檛 really the point.鈥?br>
鈥楴ow the downsides to this. First, the reason they only count as a tenth is that they aren鈥檛 absorbing any world energy beyond what they need to survive after becoming an adult. That means every single one of them is like a newly spawned monster. Not too important for you but prevents other dungeons from flooding the surface even if being dived regularly.鈥?br>
鈥楾he next downside is you can鈥檛 send them out willy nilly. Monsters in a farm zone can only leave if there is a vacancy for them on the floor proper, and no one is currently on the floor. Right now your farms act as a sort of hidden source of power you can call out if you really want to take down a group and that would no longer be an option.鈥?br>
鈥楲ast but not least, monsters can鈥檛 learn anything in a farm. Not too important for your goats, but kobolds will miss it. In fact, it is more like they are automatons when in the zone instead of living monsters. While your kobolds get little time to train or forge bonds normally, they won鈥檛 even get a quick shakedown of how they will get along. Deeper floors in particular are heavily prone to swings in difficulty because of the monster鈥檚 learning. Group after group may die on the steel wall of spear and shield your kobolds perfect until the one time they all get killed. Then suddenly that room becomes a lot easier than even if you order them to do the same thing, the new kobolds won鈥檛 do it as smoothly as the old group.鈥?br>
Doyle nods, 鈥業 can understand the learning thing. Bosses would get around this trouble because they are literally the same monster. Though that does bring up a quick question about learning and bosses before I ask my other questions on the message. How does an early floor boss not become an absolute killer for anyone near it in strength? Immortal fighters end up learning quite a bit about how to fight.鈥?br>
Ally laughs, 鈥榊eah, you aren鈥檛 the first to ask that and the answer might cause a bit of skeeviness for you. During normal times, sapient monsters will just be doing whatever and living a normal life with memories of all the past fights and what not. When an adventurer enters the floor, though, a change happens. Based on the floor and their level, their connection to your dungeon will restrict their memories to make them an appropriate fight.鈥?br>
鈥榃hile you have a little control over this, you are very restricted in what you can do. This means even with thousands of years of fighting experience, a dungeon鈥檚 fifth floor boss will be just as dense as it has been since the start. About the only upside to this is the memories from such periods don鈥檛 transcribe quite like a personal experience. Though that might be to prevent bosses from falling one after another to the trauma, so some see even this as a gray area.鈥?br>
Doyle鈥檚 core dims as he thinks about this revelation. 鈥榊eah, I鈥檓 not exactly all that happy about that, but I can understand the need. Can鈥檛 have a level five goat boss with a charge skill at level 1000. It would be a bit of a glass cannon, but it would be a nuclear glass cannon. Anyway, I also wanted to ask about the strange dungeon stone and the coin plates I just got. No clue what makes them special.鈥?br>
Ally shrugs, 鈥楽trange dungeon stone is just that, strange. Like most of these rewards, you would get it eventually as it partly comes from your dungeon type being strange caverns. My guess is that it unlocked for you because of your use of shifting rooms and monsters. You can think of it like putty for covering over the cracks in your dungeon design. Maybe you haven鈥檛 noticed yet, but when your rooms move around, they don鈥檛 perfectly seal up the connection points. At the moment the gaps aren鈥檛 big enough for even a bug to fit through, but with weirder designs that could change. Now you can fix that by slapping some strange stone on at any point where the dungeon stone could be open to the area outside of the floor proper.鈥?br>
鈥楢s for the coin plates? While not rare, they aren鈥檛 common and count for ten times the cost of the coin it is based on. A copper plate for instance is worth ten copper coins. So yeah, just filling in that gap between one copper and the one hundred copper you need for a silver. The biggest benefit of a coin plate is the fact that because the value of coins comes from the quintessence, the plate itself can be small. Without needing the material value to mean anything, each plate, while bigger than a coin, isn鈥檛 all that big. In fact, a coin plate is only twice the size of a coin. Oh, and they鈥檙e square. An important detail, I guess, though at twice the size I would hope everyone can figure it out.鈥?br>
Doyle rolls his core, 鈥業f I had to guess, size doesn鈥檛 mean everything. Like you can鈥檛 expect a fairy small enough to sit on a human鈥檚 finger to handle human sized coins. You also can鈥檛 expect some giant to fumble around with coins that might as well be dust. Likely a coin鈥檚 size depends on who gets it, rather than any intent to focus on humans. It is just that humans apparently make up the majority of sapient life in this dimension so most coins would be human sized.鈥?br>
Ally kicks back and stairs at the ceiling for a moment of introspection. 鈥楬uh, I guess that would make sense. Plus, even if the smaller fae around the court had gotten smaller coins, it isn鈥檛 like I would have seen it. Being human sized is almost like a sign of nobility to start with. The only reason I鈥檓 so small right now is because that is how dungeon fairies are and really about the only fae able to get around the discrimination.鈥?br>
Doyle tilts to the side, 鈥榃hy would being human sized be important? I would think being bigger would mean something or other. And do you mean in this dimension or in general?鈥?br>
Ally laughs, 鈥榊ou would think that, wouldn鈥檛 you? It would make some sense. The bigger you are, the more energy you can hold. Of course, that isn鈥檛 how things shake out for the fae. Most fae are small things with the bigger ones coming up to an adult human鈥檚 knee. They are where all the stories of fairy cobblers and housekeepers come from and they have about the same social standing.鈥?br>
鈥楢s fae get bigger, their minds grow as well until about chest height. Then all the gradual increases in size drops away. At that point you skip right to fae of human height or at most a head taller. This is where I fit in, fae royalty. Beyond that size, though, things get weird. Fae royalty grow with time and power, so technically my mother would be the size of a moon or small planet if she let herself go. Sort of like how dragons never stop growing.鈥?br>
鈥楬owever, fae royalty see it as a badge of honor and a showing of their control to remain human sized. That means the only time you will see old royalty be bigger than humans is for a battle where they can鈥檛 focus on controlling their size or if something is wrong with them. That doesn鈥檛 mean there aren鈥檛 fae that are bigger, though.鈥?br>
鈥業t is just that all the big fae are more like animals than folk. Not necessarily in shape, but in mental ability. A white doe maiden of human size is as much royalty as the part of the court that looks like actual humans. On the other hand there could be a giant fae that looks like the exact copy of some human but they won鈥檛 have a mind beyond base instincts. Not that they aren鈥檛 powerful, they are. Rather, they are seen more like forces of nature.鈥?br>
Doyle nods, 鈥楾hat is interesting and I can see why remaining human size is important socially. Even the smaller fae would likely use human sized coins to look special.鈥?br>
Akhier

Also if you want to read more, my Patreon ( https://www.patreon.com/dragonheartednovels ) has two free chapters, two more chapters for only a dollar, and even more beyond that for the early access tiers.