Doyle shakes his core and focuses on placing some giant mushroom stalks. Well, he has been calling them mushroom stalks and some are. However, some of them he made to be a web of fungal growth, stretching from one side to the other.
There was just one problem. As he was using fungus, Doyle included spores. They were honestly sort of his thing at this point, anyway. Except, there was now a layer of spores hanging out midway between the two sides. It was sort of inevitable with two opposing downs that there would be a point of neither being down. And so the spores collected there.
Not that Doyle was against this in theory. Rather, unlike the previous giant mushroom floor, he wanted this one to have an extended range of visibility. The giant mushroom stalks are supposed to be what is blocking sight and not a general haze in the air. And so he spends way too much time trying to perfect where the two gravity fields meet.
Except, the same problem persisted whether the fields had a gap or overlapped. It was just that one way, there was no gravity and the other, there were two opposing forces that cancel out. And so after all of that, Doyle turns to Ally to see if she knew how to fine tune his control even more.
Ally shrugged, ‘Seems like you’re wasting time on something you don’t need to. Just set up the slightest of breezes and the spores will naturally clear out.’
And that worked. It actually was quite the elegant solution. And as a side bonus, if any monster got stuck floating in the center, it would soon blow them to one side or another. The only downside being that any delver who got stuck would get the same benefit.
Then again, Doyle wasn’t exactly interested in seeing someone die from getting stuck. Besides, the area of zero gravity is so small, in theory someone could get out by throwing something up or down. So, as long as they aren’t stripped of all their stuff, they’ll be able to get out.
Satisfied with that, Doyle begins to decorate the opposing sides. One for the myconids and the other for the kobolds. Of course, with the mushroom theme, it isn’t like the basic landscape would change all that much. Though Doyle did try to use harmless mushrooms of yellow on one side and red on the other. Well, mostly harmless mushrooms. It isn’t advised that anyone randomly eats them, but you won’t die from touching them or their spores.
Anyway, this gives the two sides a bit of a color theme. Sure, there was a lot more than just red and yellow, but they were the dominant tones. Oh, and Doyle placed some mushroom trees on both sides, which took color really well. It was kind of strange and Doyle just assumed that they must be a specially bred variety to provide construction material and color was just one of features.
A view that Ally collaborated. While not universal, that type of mushroom tree likely started as a stalagmite mimic and the color was an adaptation to match the surrounding stone. Of course, at this point, they’ve been changed so much that they can look like just about any mushroom and if someone properly prepped the ground, be any color. Doyle just has the ability to skip prepping the ground by directly spawning them with the coloring agent already present in the mycelium.
The catch with the color? If he lets the mushroom trees grow back naturally, they’ll match the color of the ground or at least look like the ones used on previous floors. Good thing Doyle doesn’t plan to have the monsters be nomadic on this floor.
Once they’ve built their homes from the mushroom trees, Doyle can just make those homes a part of the floor. Then a quick respawn of the mushroom trees should be enough. Sure, one or two might get destroyed, but that will be quite different from them continually being harvested for new houses and such.
So with the major features placed, Doyle does a couple passes over the floor of both sides. He had already applied the cave theme, but wanted to alter a few things that will be important for the monsters. For the first couple passes, it was basically just the work of widening and deepening various divots, holes, and so on.
Any place where soil might get trapped, was expended. Doyle, in particular focused on raised areas of flat ground, carving out spaces that could serve as shallow pools. Not that he plans to put water in most of them. Rather, the later passes are to slowly fill them up with dungeon dirt. Nᴇw ɴovel chaptᴇrs are published on novｅlfire.net
This created an odd terraced look on both sides, interrupted by the giant stems that crossed over and the mushroom trees. There was a clear look of having been crafted, with the intent being that the kobolds and myconids had done so. Doyle simply skipped letting them do it themselves so he could also balance it as a dungeon floor.
After all, a bunch of terraced plots of land looks nice, but a few giant flat spaces is much more efficient. Anyway, Doyle was satisfied with the look and that is what matters. There was just one final touch to add, a pool of water in the center on both sides. Well, “center” to mean more along the lines of where a yolk would be positioned in an egg. And it was quite small, all things considered.
Doyle had to keep the size down so as to keep the exits hidden without over-saturating the central exits’ area with connecting stalks. Plus, it isn’t like he actually needs water on the floor. The two pools are more of an aesthetic thing. In fact, if he had a finer control over gravity, Doyle would have totally placed two “waterfalls” in the pools so the water would cycle between the two.
That sort of water feature would have to wait, though. So for now, Doyle turns towards populating the area. He had already decided to have kobolds and myconids. With the plan being, they would each take a side. However, that led to the question of how to convince delvers to not just focus on clearing a single side and ignoring the other. There was obviously the fact that Doyle had set up the area so the kobolds could jump from one side to the other. Though thankfully, the myconids actually have a little bit more Strength on the fourteenth floor so they can do so as well.
So yes, one side could reinforce the other as needed, but that didn’t have quite the oomph that Doyle wanted. After all, the previous floor, once the delvers actually tried their hand at the proper path, is all about constant aggression. And yes, a nice “take it at your own pace” floor afterwards wouldn’t be the end of the world, but Doyle wanted that view to be a trap.
Then it hit him, the punishment for not taking care of both sides should be to face the side they didn’t fight at the end. Which was actually quite easy to set up. All he needed to do was get any monsters opposite the delvers to follow below them. Of course, once they get close to the open exit, half the monsters would rush ahead to block the way. That acting as a sort of last minute “are you sure you don’t want to fight them?” moment. Because if the delvers do continue on to the exit, they’ll have to fight them all at once.
Doyle was satisfied with this and now everything was down to how many of each to spawn in the floor and if he wanted to add anything else. After all, the hexku would have a fun time on the floor and with the small ponds, he could add something in there. Plus, he had over 70k points to spend on the floor and unless he went pure myconid on the one side, the kobolds would be lacking in variety. Though as he thinks about it, while the sprouts have their uses, the floor wouldn’t suffer from just using plain myconids.
Of course, he wasn’t going to completely abandon the other varieties. While the “civilized” monsters would be kobolds and myconids, that didn’t mean there couldn’t be “wild” monsters. In particular, Doyle was thinking of placing a few troop guards on the connecting stalks and some assassin vines in the fungal web connections.
And since the troop guards cost 600 points, he decided on matching the three of them with three pairs of regular assassin vines for a matching price. Even the elder assassin vines are a little too targeted to be effective against most parties of delvers so maybe a pair of them work better.
With those random encounters placed, there was just the matter of kobolds and myconids. On one hand, the myconids cost six times as many points. On the other hand, kobolds have almost twice the stat points total of the myconids. The only place the myconids excelled at was Constitution and that was only by 14 points.
The most effective use of his points would be to just spam kobolds everywhere. Even goats wouldn’t be as efficient. While Doyle could spam in over fifteen thousand of them on this floor alone. After a certain point, sometimes the thing about quantity having a quality all of its own also applies to stats. The thousand some kobolds spawned with those points would likely win.
In the end, what is the biggest limiting factor in plan “flood the floor with kobolds” is finding the space for them all. However, if you look at the myconids which he can only fit a bit more than 200? While it would be a little crowded if they were just on one side, his floors had gotten big enough to handle such crowds. More to the point, if he used an equal number of kobolds, he could still fit in 170-ish of both.
And these numbers had all been done with really rough math, using 60k instead of calculating the exact amount needed to be held back for the farm section of the floor. Though as he does the math, it hits home how important those farms are.
Sure, every killed monster is a net positive when it comes to world energy, even if you include in the loot. However, that net amount, while positive, isn’t always even a full number. Doyle would have nowhere near enough power to be creating floors so rapidly without the farms.
Though it also explains why his natural world energy regen hasn’t been boosted all that much. Which as Doyle thinks about it, could be a problem. Right now, his dungeon would be super easy to starve out. While his pool of world energy is large enough that he could fully respawn whatever he puts on this floor, it would take him over 30 hours to do so off of just his natural regen.
In fact, if it wasn’t for the Awakened Dungeon Core II path, it would take double that time. Sure, compared to his first floor, gaining a little over 2k world energy an hour is a lot, but without his farms, most of it would be used on the upkeep of certain non-monster related fixes to the floors. The process of creating new floors, which was already getting up there, would expand exponentially. Especially if no one is delving the deeper floors, because those are the ones that gain the most profit.
At this point, the first floor barely breaks even except against the newest of delvers. They don’t even need to be in a particularly well thought out team as long as they all have some weapons training. Which to be fair, is normal for the first floor of a normal dungeon.
Doyle sighs and makes a mental note to try and up both his regen of world energy and the pool it is stored in. Even if that does mean buying another rank of the Energy Well path.