Mr. Stansible stands toward the back of the group as one of the two ladies is field stripping a goat with her kukri. The rest of the goats in the room start to fade away, but the one being worked on sticks around until she has finished with the current cut of meat. She packs the meat into a container. Mr. Stansible nods, “So what is your opinion on the drops?”
The lady stands up and stretches before answering him. “The monsters can of course drop things that aren’t available normally by just taking them apart. The couple of copper coins we’ve netted are a good example of that. As for the food drops? That is a little more up in the air.”
“Of course, you can still let them fade away. That will leave behind a perfect portion of meat or hide. Though by perfect, I mean perfectly normal. This is a useful feature for any group that has over aggressive methods of attack. Roast the goat a little too much with a fireball? Just let the things drop through dungeon shenanigans, and suddenly you could have an unburnt hide. In fact, if you don’t have the skill for butchering the monsters in the first place, that is your only option.”
“Once you have the skill for it, though? You can get a lot more by harvesting it yourself. The downside as I’ve already hinted at is that you get the drops in exactly the condition they were on the monsters. Used poison to kill the goat? Well now, the goat meat is poisoned.”
“There is another problem though, and I almost missed it. Using the skill normally costs some stamina. Here, though? To a certain point the skill worked like normal, but after that point the cost ramped up. My guess is it is free for as much of the monster as would have dropped normally. This isn’t much of a problem right now. Harvesting these goats even with the increased cost is well within my ability. The problem is that more powerful monsters will probably cost proportionally more to harvest .”
“That and the fact that you can only grab as much time will allow, limits this sort of thing. My guess is that for this early on, they just focus on killing things faster for their food. Not only will that get them better quality food than some noobs hacking at the goats. It will also allow them to grow their skills faster.”
Mr. Stansible sighs, “If bone carving wasn’t such a niche skill, this sort of thing would almost make me regret giving the book to them. Though give them a few years and they might corner the nicknacks market. Well, let’s continue deeper. And remember, ” He starts to say.
Jamie however interrupts him and mimics his voice, “Safety is top priority.”
The others laugh at this, as even Mr. Stansible can admit he has been saying that line way too much. Still, he holds up his hand, “I know it’s fun to laugh at me parroting that over and over. This doesn’t change how important it is. I don’t want a single missing limb when we leave. And that includes temporarily missing limbs. I know that we have the healing backup to reattach a recently removed thumb, but I will count having to resort to consumables like that as a failure.”
The others nod and the group moves onto the next room. As their guide had called it, this was the big goat room. Inside of it are nine goats, with one being clearly much tougher than the others. Mr. Stansible stands back with Jamie as the others charge into the room.
The Lady who did the butchering leads them with a long-handled axe. Hands gripped near the end of the weapon, she takes one more step forward and leans into a swing. The axe glows ocean blue as it cuts through the air and subsequently through the throats of two of the goats in the room. As the axe leaves the goats, a trail of blood is pulled along with it. Not just from momentum but from the axe literally drawing the blood out of them.
Next to her a guy uses a pair of brass knuckles to blast through another goat and on her other side what can only be described as a dude keeps his hand in his pockets as he kicks a goat. The final frontliner has a short spear that she thrusts to the sides, preventing flank attempts by the other goats.
In the back row, Jamie is the first to finish preparing his ability. His horn glows and the higher level goat stops its charge and goes back to grazing. Next up is Mr. Stansible, who releases a white light. Across the room, three of the undamaged goats light up as well. However, unlike Mr. Stansible, the goats start to bleat in pain.
It doesn’t take long before the three goats fall over dead. Long enough though for the melee fighters to finish up their side of the fight. Then all that is left is the goat that Jamie has locked down. Perfect for the lady with the axe to finish it with her kukri. Even before it can finish twitching, she starts on skinning it. Luckily this counts as a single piece so she has all the time she needs to remove it all.
She finishes up and nods, “Okay, I think I have it figured out. Part of how the dungeon decides what is a single piece for harvesting is how long you pause. The first goat ended up fading away because I had stopped for too long when working on the hide. Also, levels or at least the increased stats that come with it will improve the base quality of the parts.”
“We are all going to need better quality weapons if we go too deep in the dungeon. At least for the goats and any other constitution heavy monsters. Though I guess weapons will scale some with strength. There will be a hard stop, eventually. It is already a bit hard to cut the hide. Too much more and we won’t be able to pierce the goats skin and anymore than that will even have a chance to break our weapons.”
Mr. Stansible grimaces, “And that means that if their claims of tin and copper ore on the third floor is true, this dungeon will be even more important. We need our smiths to level up quickly to make the best use of whatever ore we can extract before they try to clamp down on the export of the stuff.”
The group moves onto the berry bush room and Mr. Stansible turns to look at Jamie. He smiles, “Yeah, I can sense the kobolds and there is only one magic user. The healer is all the way to the back with one guard, while the other three kobolds are in the middle of the room.”
Mr. Stansible nods, “Then we should be able to take the group out without too much planning. Melee fighters go first, I’ll run support, and Jamie can lock down the healer. In fact, Jamie goes first, I don’t want the enemy to heal themselves. Now let’s go.”
Of course, with the plan to let Jamie lock down the healer first, they don’t literally start right away. Instead, the group waits for him to finish activating his psionic skill. Once that is fired off, the melee fighters enter the room with Mr. Stansible right behind them. Only Jamie is left back in the previous room as to lock down the enemy he himself can’t move around either.
Still, this is enough to completely upset the balance of the fight. Without the healer providing even basic counter-spelling, Mr. Stansible can fire off multiple low powered spells without worry. Distracted by this the melee kobolds are unable to fend off the front lines charge.
All this combined results in the group clearing the room even faster than they had the last room. From there Jamie locks down the kobold leader and another easy victory is gained. The goats in the last room are just unable to show their true capabilities without the head kobold’s commands.
With the floor finished, the melee guy with the brass knuckles stretches and yawns, “Well, this floor was easy enough. Going by how they described it, I have to wonder if they are weak. After all, dungeons get harder with time, not easier.”
Jamie shakes his head, “They didn’t lie about anything when describing the dungeon. I don’t know why it would be so hard for them and not us, but they aren’t weak.”
The brass knuckles guy shrugs, “Difficulty is subjective. What is easy for us might be hard for them. I figure we should be able to breeze through the first two floors, no problem. Only the whole earth mage thing on the third floor feels like it would cause us trouble.”
The butcher lady laughs, “What is the point of arguing this? We will know what is up after we experience the floors for ourselves. This first floor is beyond easy, but maybe they judged the difficulty going by the second and third floor. If they can just walk through this floor, they might not count it as part of the challenge.”
Mr. Stansible nods, “And we have to keep in mind that we are all the top fighters from our settlement. They have less than fifty people total. Their claim of the others leaving isn’t a lie, but their belief of being the most powerful in their group might not be strictly true. While I trust their opinion of that healer, the real power behind them might have avoided showing off. But yeah, we’ll know more once we actually finish this delve. Now let’s go through the portal to the next floor.” Read complete version only at novel~fire~net
With Mr. Stansible putting down his foot on the conversation, the group makes their way through to the second floor. Once there, Jamie nods to confirm the next room matches what they had been told. Knowing that the group moves right on through, putting down the knife kobolds before they can even attack. Unfortunate for the kobolds, but when your enemy can pinpoint your exact location, sneak attacks completely lack any power.
As the group moves towards the first goatherd room Mr. Stansible nods toward Jamie, “Another commander type monster up ahead so I leave it to you.”
And of course this decision makes the fight way too easy. Without a leader, the goats lose their buffs, not that the delvers notice this. Seeing as they haven’t fought a goat being commanded by another monster, this oversight is easy enough to understand. This accidental countering of what could almost be seen as a core component of Doyle’s tougher fights continues to warp their opinion of the settlement just outside.
Even the axebeaks don’t provide much of a challenge. Jamie really is about the best counter for everything in the dungeon. While he isn’t able to freeze more than a single monster at once, it isn’t hard for him to trip up the charging birds. They don’t fall down, but the axebeaks lose their chance to build up speed. This leaves them with no chance against the party.
It takes until the ramp room before they face any kind of real challenge. There are too many monsters for Jamie’s lockdown to be of much use, and so the group actually has to fight. This still doesn’t make it a tough fight. The monsters just end up attacking in small groups that allows the party to wipe them.
Only the rocks being rained down by the sling kobolds cause any kind of real trouble. Even then, Mr. Stansible is given enough time to charge his magic attack. After a couple pillars of light to toast those ranged kobolds, the room gets cleared. Not the fastest time, but they aren’t focused on speed either, so impressive.