[D'sP] Figuring Out Monster Patterns - Chapter 504 (Patreon)

Doyle set aside the problem with Arrays and Enchantments as that seemed like something he could spin his wheels on till the end of time. Instead, focusing on a category he can easily pull out. The monster patterns.

Except once he got them sorted out, it felt like something was missing. Doyle wasn’t sure what at first and so organized the monsters alphabetically by their creature type. So bear, then bird, and so on.

{

Monster Patterns: brown bear lv34, axebeak lv30, permafrost lynx lv17, cattle lv42, razer fox lv24, myconid lv70, violet fungus lv26, shrieker lv27, goat lv97, golem lv33, kobold lv98, assassin vine lv46, udoroot lv21, wolf lv36

}

With the list thus sorted, it still takes Doyle a moment to go over all his monsters before he figured it out. There wasn’t an entry for his hexku. Not that this is the first time he felt that he should have had a pattern for something and didn’t. But this was a monster! ‘Hey Ally, I’m missing a pattern?’

Ally looks over the list, ‘Which one? The list seems to cover them.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘The hexku are missing. I don’t seem to have a pattern for them.’

Ally frowns, ‘Well, you certainly should have that. Let me enter a help ticket. I’ll bet this is a side effect from when it was unnamed. Not that you don’t have the pattern, but that it was hidden or some such.’

Doyle, ‘I could see that? It just feels weird to run into a second problem with a system made by a True Immortal. Aren’t they supposed to be above this kind of thing?’

Ally laughs, ‘They would like you to think that! And I will admit, things they make will tend to work quite well, but there are still blind spots. Especially when translating down from their perspective.

‘This could be a good example of that, depending on the actual problem. After all, whoever made the system doesn’t worry about having to name species, they just know. Then there’s the system, which isn’t a fourth-dimensional being, able to pull knowledge from across time to figure out what something is called.

‘And sent! Anyway, they do what they can to design these things. They even do quite the decent job. That whole time sight thing can help with figuring out such bugs, to some degree. Though they are limited.

‘It won’t see into other dimensions or other True Immortals. Also, it gets significantly less powerful in any dimension that has been temporally locked down from having been visited by multiple True Immortals. Then it is limited to surface level knowledge. Which, don’t get me wrong, is still powerful. But it is amazing how quickly they stop being planning masterminds when they can’t literally watch their plan happen and then go back and tweak things.’

Doyle, ‘Well, I can certainly—”

Ally interrupts, ‘Oh hey, should be fixed now. Was the hexku pattern added?’

Doyle checks, ‘Yeah, appears to be there with a level of 52.’

Ally smiles, ‘Wonderful! You should be able to complete the monster sub-table now.’

Doyle nods, ‘As soon as I figure out how I want it displayed.’

Which isn’t as straightforward as he would prefer. Right now, the actual patterns fit right in as a csv file. Just a bunch of values separated by commas. This isn’t a bad thing, but not the easiest to parse. Its main benefits being simplicity and compactness.

Doyle was willing to give up on the compactness part for something more legible. Besides that, at least for the monsters, Doyle doesn’t want to completely lose all the varieties.

Sure, he only wanted a single entry for the myconids. However, that didn’t mean he wanted to erase the fact that right now he had four specific forms of myconid. That included any level requirements that might be there.

So Doyle decides to mess around with the kobolds. After all, they cover a lot of what he needs to keep track of. After all, there are regular kobolds and void kobolds. Then there are kobolds who have no minimum level and elder kobolds who do. And those are mix and match so there can be a basic kobold or an elder void kobold and everything in-between. Which, admittedly, isn’t much right now, but the options could grow.

So Doyle took the level 98 kobold pattern and started playing with it. The most basic change was to break everything out with bullet points.

{

Monster Patterns:

Kobold lv98

Kobold

Void Kobold

Elder Kobold

Elder Void Kobold

}

Now, this obviously wasn’t going to be what he would go with. It didn’t say anything, rather; the method used a ton more space without any of the needed information. But it was a start.

The first change to it that Doyle added was the minimum level of the elders. Or rather, he copied how minimum levels were displayed elsewhere. This did a lot more than Doyle had expected it to do.

{

Monster Patterns:

Kobold lv98

Kobold (Elder lv10)

Void Kobold (Elder lv10)

}

Doyle figured it could even go further, since “void” was similar to “elder”. Though at that point it would simply be Kobold (Elder lv10, Void) lv98. Which isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t quite work because with, for instance, his metals? Only one of the options can be applied.

Maybe later on it will become possible, but right now Doyle can’t make fire water copper. The copper is either fire or water. And sure, you could maybe alloy the two together, but that would be an alloy of two metals and not a single metal. So going by that, the actual kobold entry would actually be Kobold (Void, Elder and Elder Void lv10) lv98.

This is not inherently bad. The problem comes from later on down the line. After all, Doyle only has two age stages and one template for his kobolds. Later on, though? Who knows what other templates he might pick up and other stages of growth are certainly out there.

Doyle simply has to look at his myconids to see the problem. If he had a void template for them? Well, their pattern would look something like, Myconid (Swarm and Swarm Void lv3, Lesser and Lesser Void lv6, Lesser Troop Guard and Lesser Troop Guard Void lv9, Myconid and Void Myconid lv12). Except even that isn’t totally accurate.

While Doyle hadn’t tried it yet. Chances are? The whole “troop guard” thing could apply to the fully grown myconids as well. Which would make it a template instead of a form or stage of growth. Though he isn’t certain it can be used by the sprouts.

Doyle takes a step back and looks at the kobolds and myconids. The goats and the cattle. They all have a variety of forms. Some age, a number of elemental variants, and a template or two. How do they stack?

Well, Doyle is certain that the stage of growth can’t stack. You can’t have a butterfly that is also a caterpillar. Or rather, if there was such a creature, that would be a unique stage for that creature and not a mix of two stages.

Doyle tilts to the side as he considers the issue. Out in nature, there are halfway points all the time. Things don’t pop between forms. So technically you can be part way to being a new stage of growth. 

However! This wasn’t out in nature. While it is possible for him to grow a creature and get it to some halfway point. He doesn’t currently have the option to spawn in monsters like that. And even if he does gain that ability at some point? Doyle highly doubts that would show up as a separate pattern.

After all, down that path there are infinite variations. And not in a good way. Doyle couldn’t remember the name of the paradox, maybe it was Zeno’s? But basically the problem with halfway points is that once you reach halfway, you can go halfway again and again, ad infinitum.

Doyle had first heard of this paradox being described with someone painting road lines between two cities. The painter paints half way to between where he is and the second city every day and never reaches the second city.

Doyle sighs, that wasn’t exactly the best recounting of the tale, but it got the point across. And more to the point, if he could get a pattern halfway between a sprout and a lesser myconid, then he could get a pattern halfway between that new pattern and a lesser myconid. And once again, you can keep going from there.

Besides, with magic the various stages of growth are more concrete. Creatures can even “evolve” in a manner similar to a certain monster collection game. From what Doyle understands, this isn’t even limited to specific creatures. It is now entirely possible out in nature for a caterpillar to evolve directly into a butterfly given the right conditions or enough magic.

So with that in mind, Doyle decides that the age category would be separate. Leaving elemental and templates. Except are those actually all that different? Or rather, why wouldn’t they be the same? What made them different such that he had automatically separated the two?

It takes Doyle a while to get his thoughts in order, but eventually one particular difference comes to mind. There isn’t one. Or rather, they’re all templates, but how they stack is different. A void kobold could also be a fiery kobold. However, it couldn’t be a fiery wooden kobold.

Rather, the kobold could end up with a third element, an ashen kobold or some such. Doyle isn’t certain how he knows this, but here we are. Except there’s a catch?

Doyle sighs and settles back. This was clearly some sort of instinctual knowledge that a dungeon core comes with. So what was the catch? There didn’t seem to be one with his current creatures, so it must be related to something his monsters don’t have yet.

Then it clicks into place. It isn’t elemental, though that is the most common form for this sort of thing to take. Rather, it was related to the supernatural power they have.

If a creature uses Mana and aligns their Mana pool with fire? They gain benefits with fire magic and other similar magics, while water magic and similar are harder to cast. And with monsters? Aligning one of their sources of power with a concept, because it isn’t limited to elements, has a chance to cause an evolution.

Which is also why most– Doyle pauses when he thinks “most”. There must be special creatures who can do it. Anyway, once a Mana pool is aligned with something, they can’t gain a second alignment. You can only change the current alignment.

However, if they have multiple types of power? Those powers can also be aligned. So a monster could have fire Mana and water Qi. Though Doyle didn’t doubt that there would still be some catch to it.

That didn’t explain the void kobolds or the lesser troop guard myconids. Those? They were also connected to a power, but Mana or Qi, though likely something that could be connected to that second. Rather, it was the body.

So there were the age categories, body templates that could situationally stack, and power templates that could sit side by side. Which makes designing the way things would be displayed a little difficult. If there had only been two categories, that would be so much easier.

Doyle spends some time doodling various ways to manage this. He needed something both decently compact and is able to display what stacks. For that, the main way to organize would be age categories. So Kobold (Kobold, Elder lv10) and Myconid (Sprout lv3, Lesser lv6, Myconid lv12). Though that only works while there are only age categories. So this setup was going to have expand a bit to add in the other templates that can stack.

{

Monster Patterns:

Kobold lv98

Kobold (Void)

Elder (lv10, Void)

Myconid lv70

Sprout (lv3)

Lesser (lv6, Troop Guard lv9)

Myconid (lv12)

}

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