Doyle turns back to the thirteenth floor and sighs. He had been distracting himself, but that was only delaying the inevitable. He needed to make a jungle and something inside him wasn’t going to let him do things by half measures.
Though Doyle was a little tempted to try and open another entrance for some resource gathering. In theory, all it would take is one tree nut or pinecone and he would get the tree pattern. If not for the fact that he felt a certain barrier inside himself preventing another entrance just yet, well, he certainly had enough time to give it a shot.
So here he was, metaphorically twiddling his thumbs again. The early trees weren’t all that hard. Except now he needed to make so many more! He sighed, this was going to take a while.
And it did. A month and more quickly passes for Doyle as he makes a literal jungle. Maybe if it was just trees, it wouldn’t have taken so long.
But no, there were so many different things to add. Vines, bushes, and flowers, just to name a few. In fact, spawning such a varied select of plants was enough to level his shrubbery pattern from 7 to 21.
Doyle hadn’t even realized that was possible! Though it made a certain amount of sense. Yes, you could level a pattern through increased quality, but for a more generic pattern like shrubbery? Stretching what it can be used for works just as well.
There had to be some limit to this, of course. Though maybe there wasn’t? Doyle dims for a moment as ideas bubble through his mind.
‘What if? What if there is a limit, but also not a limit? It works with shrubbery because of how generic it is. Increasing the level doesn’t magically make all my shrubs better as the effect is more diffuse.
‘So while this might not be an option, at least not for later levels, when it comes to more specific patterns like “sword” and what not. It might be an option that extends farther the more generic the pattern is? While that wouldn’t be too helpful, it is an interesting thought.’
Doyle turns back to the thirteenth floor and gives it a once over. Double wide cart path spiraling up a mountain of sorts, if you ignore the spatial shenanigans. Below and to the side of that was, of course the forest.
The place pretended to be full of life. The prey insect pattern had leveled a few times as well, though the place was missing quite a bit. After all, a jungle is more than just plants and bugs.
Still, once the bird monsters, which he really needed to get around to naming, were in place it should add more depth. Be nice to have some regular birds, though.
Doyle shakes his core and turns to the next matter. He had saved a lot of space by making the terrain hollow and so the mountain was more mountain than most would expect. That wasn’t exactly how he wanted to do things going forward as it removed options from the delvers.
Not every delver will be able to tunnel, but some will. So when possible, Doyle wasn’t going to block them like he had to with this floor. Though to be fair, he hadn’t really been paying attention to this sort of thing until now, anyway.
There wasn’t quite enough space. Plus, he very much did not want them cheesing the dungeon by going through walls. The third floor in particular might as well just be a straight shot if the walls could be broken.
All that aside, Doyle still had a few things to place before it was time to put down the monsters. In fact, he had a particularly clever plan for the mithril. Sure, he could just stick in a random wall and call it a day.
Instead, he was going to make the delvers work for it. So with a quick bit of shaping, Doyle put together a small cave and connected it to the top of the jungle section. Sort of. There was, of course, a twist.
Doyle made an entirely new end section for this cave and sort of stacked it on top of the current jungle section. That way, just arriving there, such as by climbing down from on top, would not reveal the cave. In fact, the cave would not exist.
Rather, to reach the cave you had to climb down to the forest at the very beginning and travel the entire way up through said jungle. The moment you climb up or down any other cliff, you cut yourself off from the cave. Now, in the normal swing of things, it would probably take way too long for the delvers to find the cave, but Doyle has a plan for that as well.
So far, he had figured on having a kobold camp at the ore vein and within the jungle. Now he added a third group of kobolds. Smaller, maybe only three of them with an equal amount of pack animals, but a group nonetheless.
As for what the group would do? Well, Doyle wasn’t certain it would work so he decided to skip right to placing his kobolds. Six in the mine, two being earth mages. Eight in a camp right below the entrance who would be getting some nonstandard equipment.
Then came the trick, the fancy little guide, and maybe hubris on Doyle’s part. Three kobolds and an equal number of goats to act as pack animals. Cattle could carry more, but having three goats who can travel through the jungle is better than one cow who can’t.
What would they be carrying? Why, of course, it would be mithril ore, what else? But the fancy part was going to involve their treck from the cave and down to the camp then back again.
That is easy enough, but it needed to be special. Doyle didn’t want people to just climb down and fight them. Instead, they would be visible from the road up top, but whenever someone tries to climb up or down to them, they vanish!
The question is, how to make that work? Sure, Doyle could just slap invisible portals behind every tree and hope for the best. But that won’t handle things like if delvers defeat them all with ranged attacks.
No, they need to only be accessible if you are on track to reach the cave. Even their bodies can’t be left if someone tries to cheat. People can watch them and there would be evidence of ore smelting in the camp at the entrance, but no cutting in line.
These three kobolds, if things work out, would be exactly the guide needed to have the delvers find the ore vein. The first camp with waste ore and scraps of mithril. A small group of kobolds with a pack of the raw ore. Then finally if they follow the trail properly, the actual vein.
Maybe on later floors it will be easier to access the stuff, but this is not just the first time mithril is appearing in his dungeon. It is likely the first time for the metal to appear on the entire planet! Oh, but one more trick.
Doyle realized that in the future people would just travel the jungle, grab the ore, and climb to the exit. That isn’t what he wants at all, so instead there would be even more warping. If you try to climb up or down any cliffs after traveling only in the jungle, it will deposit you back at the floor’s entrance.
That way, it will be just as convenient for those who simply want to leave with their ore. While at the same time, reveal who intends to delve deeper. And if someone wants to do both? Well, they can climb the mountain twice.
Now, all Doyle needed to do was figure out how to make it work. Well, to be fair, he already knew of a way to make it work. Just as he made the cave section and layered it on top of the pre-existing section, he could do the same with the rest of the jungle.
That, however, would use way too much space. Yes, he could limit things so only the path of the kobolds was duplicated, but at that point there was probably a better method. It was just a question of what that method was?
If only he didn’t also want to remove the kobolds when they died. It would be easy enough to provide them with some sort of thing to take them away. So with these limitations in mind, Doyle settles in to play with the problem.
Just a thin floor segment that is layered? Or maybe a portal that covers the entire jungle, but only moves the kobold caravan? It could also be as simple as having other monsters shadow the kobolds and have them do a bit of grab and go?
If not for how loot worked in a dungeon, it would be easier to figure out. Except the entire point of loot is to have delvers remove it from the dungeon, and thus methods to take it away isn’t really a thing.
If he was being honest with himself, Doyle would have to admit that he spent much too long trying to figure it out. This culminated in the most straightforward and stupid simple method presenting itself. He did want the kobolds to be there, but for them to not leave anything behind unless someone was playing by the rules.
Except, did he really? Did he really need them there if others weren’t following the rules? No, he didn’t. That meant the simplest answer was to use illusions.
No wonky teleportation. No dead monsters. Just some simple sleight of hand. Will it fool everyone? No, but it doesn’t have to.
All he needs is for people to realize they need to travel the full length of the jungle to get at the mithril ore vein. The kobold caravan is simply a visual medium through which Doyle plans to communicate this. So, all that needs to be there is a visual.
Sure, sound and other such things would help sell the situation. In fact, sound was going to be required, even if he doesn’t include anything else. But humans are a visual sort and so a decent illusion will get you 90% of the way there.
And how do you get a good illusion for something like this? Easy enough, you have the kobolds travel the path ten times and record that. Though Doyle is going to continue recording the trip.
It would take a while, but if there were only ten illusions of the trip, someone would eventually notice. Doyle isn’t certain if that being noticed actually matters? Still, he had the ability to make sure it isn’t and so might as well.
So with the kobolds and mithril mostly settled, Doyle turns to his other monsters for the floor. The bird monster and his hexape golems. Both are relatively cheap, with the birds costing the same as a kobold and the golem being only 20 points more.
Those costs, especially for the birds, were honestly a little low at this point. Doyle had already gone over the stat differences between kobolds and the birds, but now that he needs to fill the floor, it rears up again. Sure, flyers like birds are inherently a bit wonky when it comes to difficulty, anyway.
One lucky shot to a wing and they’re down, even with some minor magic trying to keep them in the air. Though if you don’t have a way to ground them? Well, the flyers are going to have the run of the fight as long as they are at least moderately good flyers.
The problem is that as it stands, Doyle could flood the floor with over twelve hundred of the birds. That is a simply crazy amount of enemies and while he does want to use the floor as a hard stop for those with malicious intentions. A murder with thousands of eagle sized birds was a little much.