[D'sP] Oh, Maybe It Won't Be That Easy - Chapter 497 (Patreon)

Doyle settles in and pulls up his pattern database, giving it a once-over to get a feel for things.

{

Dungeon Patterns: creature patterns lv100, mystic energy storage patterns lv99, bricks lv99, vines lv99, material patterns lv78, food patterns lv70, shrubbery lv62, grass lv54, weapon patterns lv52, gem patterns lv50, vial lv34, quartz synced polymer lv32, potion patterns lv30, trap patterns lv30, array patterns lv21, wooden hinged box of preservation lv21, cart lv20, armor patterns lv11, clothes lv11, seaweed lv1

Weapon Patterns: axe lv50, sword lv50, dagger lv50, bow lv50, arrow lv50, mace lv50, staff lv50, wand lv50, spear lv50, pickaxe lv10

Armor Patterns: gauntlets lv10, greaves lv10, boots lv10, tunic lv10, helmet lv10, shield lv10, cloak lv10

Material Patterns: tree (earth [-20lv]) lv77, strange dungeon stone lv62, charcoal lv58, Earth standard air mix lv56, clay lv55, glass lv50, metal patterns lv43, water lv42, dungeon soil lv42, cloth lv27, leather lv12, wax lv6, volcanic rock lv4

Metal Patterns: iron (crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv43, copper (earth, water, air, and fire [-5lv]; crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv31, tin (earth, water, air, and fire [-5lv]; crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv29, gold (crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv22, silver (crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv22, mithril (lv20) lv20, lead (crystal lv10 [-10lv]) lv17

Food Patterns: sugar lv70, herb patterns lv55, wheat lv48, sunflower lv42, olive lv40, salt lv32, bread lv16, lemon lv14, strawberry lv14

Herb Patterns: clover lv54, mint lv51, tea lv49, sage lv47, aloe lv45, pepper lv44, peppermint lv44, rosemary lv44, lavender lv44, maiden’s tear lv40, mage’s delight lv40, springleaf lv40, meditation lotus lv40, royal lingzhi lv40

Potion Patterns: coagulant lv27, flesh mending lv27, regeneration lv27, healing lv27, antidote lv27, cure disease lv27, fire resistance lv27, cold resistance lv27, wind resistance lv27, poison resistance lv27, lightning resistance lv27, thunder resistance lv27, blunt trauma resistance lv27, stab resistance lv27, cut resistance lv27, climbing lv27, jumping lv27, invisibility to animals lv27, invisibility to non-sapient undead lv27, oil of magic weapon lv27, oil of silver weapon lv27, Moota’s coagulant lv27, minor cure all lv27, pauper’s fix lv27

Gem Patterns: pure quartz pattern lv99, amethyst pattern lv99, blue quartz pattern lv99, citrine pattern lv99, milky quartz pattern lv99, rose quartz pattern lv99, smoky quartz pattern lv99, green amethyst pattern lv99, quartz polymer lv43

Mystic Energy Storage Patterns: sealed quartz mana cable lv99, quartz mana cable lv99, mana stone lv30, spirit stone lv30, monster stone lv30, psicrystal lv30, karma star lv30, luck stone lv30, elementally energized crystal lv30, prana lotus lv30, bloodstone lv30

Trap Patterns: kobold dart trap lv30, kobold rock fall lv24, kobold trip wire lv20, kobold pitfall lv16, kobold murder hole lv16, mineshaft rock fall lv10, mineshaft pitfall lv10, mineshaft dart trap lv10

Array Patterns: simple world energy gathering array for individuals [lv14] lv21, tiny area right angle gravity array [lv1] lv3

Enchantments: Preservation [lv12], Unbreaking [lv10, 12, 20], Sharpness [lv10, 20], Impact [lv10, 20], Piercing [lv10, 20], Magical Efficiency [lv10, 20]

Creature Patterns: goat patterns lv100, ant lv99, kobold lv99, elder kobold lv79, plant and fungus monster patterns lv74, cattle patterns lv45, wolf patterns lv38, brown bear lv34, golem patterns lv33, windcutter axebeak lv31, axebeak lv28, razer fox lv24, insects lv23, horned rabbits lv17, permafrost lynx lv17, horned lizard lv13, squirrel lv12

Wolf Patterns: lesser shadow wolf lv38, wind wolf lv23, dungeon wolf lv23, stone wolf lv23

Cattle Patterns: dungeon cattle lv43, mad cattle lv40, longhorn cattle lv40, earthen cattle lv40, sea cattle lv40, ashen cattle lv37, herb cattle lv27, cattle lv5

Plant and Fungus Monster Patterns: myconid patterns lv73, Assassin Vine lv46, Shrieker lv27, Violet Fungus lv26, Udoroot lv21

Myconid Patterns: myconid sprout lv72, myconid lv66, lesser myconid lv62, lesser myconid troop guard lv53

Golem Patterns: plated crystal core crystal clay hexape golem lv33

Goat Patterns: goat lv100, grassen goat lv57, wooden goat lv52

}

Eugh, it was a mess. To Doyle it felt less like a database or even a spreadsheet. Rather, the display made it seem like someone had recorded everything on a simple text document. Not even using rtf to jazz it up.

So, the first thing he tries to do is move things around. In particular, in the main table, creature patterns come first, and yet the sub-table for creature patterns is right at the bottom. Doyle isn’t even sure how that happened, since creatures are just about the first thing he had patterns for!

Nevermind the fact that the tables seem perfectly capable of moving entries around within themselves based on level. And speaking of levels, not much leveling seems to have been going on. Which now that Doyle looks at it closer, doesn’t make sense.

He isn’t going to claim that the equipment being made by the town is going to match his level 50 weapons. But his armor patterns? Those are just level 10! Surely someone has brought something nicer into the dungeon.

‘Hey Ally! What’s up with the low levels on the equipment patterns? Shouldn’t someone have dropped something better by now? Like, I understand the pick pattern not going up. Miners aren’t exactly throwing themselves into danger or anything, but my shield pattern is still at level 10!’

Ally looks over and nods, ‘Ah, well, you’re facing a bottleneck that dungeons on worlds that have already integrated, don’t face. It is a combo of reasons caused by a lack of resources.

‘There aren’t many resources and so smiths aren’t able to train as much as they need. Much of that training is also done by re-smelting old equipment. Nevermind the fact that the better stuff ends up being worth way more than it should be. All of which comes together to make it so most delvers using armor, are wearing level 5 stuff, give or take a level.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘No, that still doesn’t make sense. Better gear means you are safer.’

Ally shrugs, ‘For what? Level 5 armor is more than enough to farm your sixth floor with. And anyone who is trying to reach the sixth floor? They can’t afford better gear! Prices are all out of whack with level 7 stuff occasionally selling for a gold.

‘That’s Nonsense! Well into level 25 and you should still be on the silver standard for plate armor, let alone the simpler gear. It is generally accepted that something simple like a leather tunic shouldn’t be worth a gold piece until level 100!

‘This isn’t an exact thing, but 100 is an accepted breakpoint because people like round numbers.’

Doyle, ‘I know they are pulling out a good bit of ore every day. Sure, it is going to be mostly copper and tin, but bronze is a perfectly workable alloy! If I remember history right, the only reason bronze comes before iron is because it is easier to work with, but tin was hard to find. So once they could work iron, which was practically everywhere, they moved to that.’

Ally, ‘They don’t need good gear here. Maybe if you could take down another of the inner circle, your patterns would jump significantly? But the reality of it is, any good gear? The smiths are selling it to merchants to get the best price. And those merchants? They aren’t keeping it around here where they’re already paying what is locally the high price for the stuff. They’re shipping it out to the other border settlements who will pay through the nose for it!

‘Here? There are a bunch of powerful people who can handle threats from the wilds even without armor. Our dungeon allows them to level up and increase their stats.

‘Even a single settlement over and the people there have a hard time leveling. Though at least those close by can set up rotations to delve into our dungeon. Those further away? They need the better armor to survive when a random level 20 boar snuffles around the edge of their settlement.

‘So yeah, you aren’t going to be leveling armor for a while. I mean, armor drops are considered one of the most valuable drops in your dungeon right now! And that is over your level 50 weapons.’

Doyle, ‘Hmm, I guess I can see the cause and effect going on there. Maybe I should include more armor drops?’

Ally shrugs, ‘More like increase the available ore on floor seven.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘I just looked over the floors and seven doesn’t have ore, it has drops related to the Mana cabling.’

Ally, ‘Then add some. Floor 8 and its many designs in a single floor thing is a bit of a bottleneck. People can manage it, but the mental fatigue builds up quickly.’

Doyle, ‘I consider it. As much as it pains me, I think I might need to go and change all the loot tables. Though after I get the database skill organized.’

Ally nods, ‘Given what you want to do with the skill, I can understand that. Well, good luck! I’ll keep an ear to the ground to see if I can find anything to help.’

Doyle, ‘Right now, just a method to organize the database skill would be quite useful.’

Ally gives him a thumbs up, ‘I’ll get on that! Though make sure to tell me if you figure it out beforehand.’

Doyle nods, ‘Will do, thank you for the help.’ And he turns back to looking at the patterns.

Doyle sighs to himself, realizing a truth that had eluded him till now. A dungeon is a passive entity. They guide those who delve their halls.

No. That isn’t quite true. A dungeon core is a creative force! They build wonders and create incredible things. However, what they don’t do is uplift people. The push for strength does not automatically mean a push for better gear, more complicated magic, or technological wonders.

The dungeon is a collaborative effort between the core and those who delve it. With the core building the dungeon out of what delvers provide and locking in advancements.

If a local smith manages to break through and create high-quality swords? Eventually, the dungeon will be able to drop similar swords even long after that smith has moved on or passed on. So while Doyle can level some patterns, he can’t go and push too far past what Wolf’s Rest is capable of. Things like his weapon patterns are already more of a head start than would normally be available.

Doyle sighs again. While all that was fine fodder for future pondering. He really did need to figure out the database skill. Because here he was, with what pre-system would have been considered a super high-tech AR display and yet it was working more like he had a piece of printer paper and the person with control over the printer was as stingy as the librarian in high school.

And honestly? This really should be exactly its namesake. A database. And maybe it was! Doyle’s difficulty could be entirely based on the display sucking instead of how it was stored. 

Except that wasn’t really true.

Doyle knew how skills and such worked, to some degree. It was like one of those dust simulation games he used to play during school because the firewall didn’t block them. Each skill and pattern a different kind of dust being dropped on his soul core.

So of course the database skill wouldn’t reorganize stuff easily! The underlying structure wasn’t changing. Only with new levels did more get added to the soul and thus rise to the top of the pile it was in. The sub-tables were already beyond the norm. Calling it a database was likely the system using a similar word to describe something more complex.

But that wouldn’t stop Doyle! It could be reorganized. Changes can happen. That could be seen from how he could change up monster patterns. The question wasn’t “if”, but “how”.

So Doyle sat there and poked at his skill for a bit. This wasn’t anything complex. Just simple stuff like trying to drag and drop the entries and sub-tables. Plus a few other common things you could do on a touchscreen device.

This would have been quicker, but there was a large range of optional stuff to tack on. For instance, what if you tried to drag and drop a sub-table while thinking the intent to reorganize at the screen? Or if he did it while trying to carve the concept of change?

Yeah, there was practically infinite numbers of ways to play around with the screen and none that he tried over the first few days ended up working. Then Ally came by with some of what she had found out.

Ally, ‘So, wanting to reorganize things isn’t the rarest thing. Your problem is going to be figuring out how to do it early. Seems from the five instances I’ve read about, it always happened north of skill level 1,000. Which yeah, you’re a bit far away from, to say the least.’

Doyle, ‘Fair enough. Now, how did they manage it?’

Ally shrugs, ‘In the most unhelpful of ways.

‘They wanted it to happen, so it did. And only three of them got the ability to do so from a path. Which all things considered? Pretty good ratio. Changing up stuff in your status generally comes from paths.’

Doyle, ‘Hmm, the system almost seems allergic to moving around information. The reason the status would change with a path likely isn’t because the system is moving around information. Rather, the path must have fundamentally changed things and that is simply reflected on the status. Like how your level goes up on the status when you level up. The status being purely a visualization of what lies underneath.’

Ally, ‘Huh, I can see that. The system probably does as little as possible to save energy. I mean, reorganizing a single person’s status is one thing. Doing so for everyone because they at one time tried it on a lark and never switched things back? That’s a lot to keep track of.’

Doyle groans, ‘And probably means I need to actually figure out how to manipulate my patterns and the skill itself on a fundamental level. You know, instead of simply reorganizing some stuff on a spreadsheet. This would have been so much easier if it had actually been a database! I took a class once on them and while I don’t remember much, I know enough for something as simple as this.’

Ally shrugs, ‘No one ever claimed something like this would be easy.’

Why The Secrecy - Chapter 496

Ace Finds Some Scum - Chapter 498