[D'sP] Looking Over Loot - Chapter 511 (Patreon)

Jay walks over to where Jim had been standing, and the floor opens up to him. Sure, there are some trees blocking his view and the terrain means you can’t actually see everything, but this is the most open a floor has been.

The area where the portal comes out is flat enough, but just past a screening layer of trees, the ground slopes down. It isn’t a steep affair, even if seeing it, Jay feels less than enthused about fighting on it. However, it isn’t just that they were on top of some small hill leading to the rest of the floor.

Jay can see that this slope might as well be the floor. Sure, a distance away he can see there is some sort of flat space, but even that isn’t a good thing as Jay can just make out what is probably a kobold town. Worse, given he can see the tops of trees beyond there? The town isn’t the end of the floor, but some midway point.

Jim walks up next to him, “Yeah, this floor looks like a pain to deal with. I’ve got Jeremy checking along the ridge we’ve found ourselves on, but I’m expecting the worst. This is the literal edge of the floor as behind us and the entrance portal stands the floor wall.

“So, I’m guessing despite how it looks this floor is more akin to one of the cave floors. We likely won’t have a choice on whether we fight the town we can see. Nevermind the chance of more such places hidden behind it.”

With that said, the two fall into silence as the rest of the group make their way over to see what they can see as well. At this point, there isn’t anything to do, but wait for Jeremy.

Though the wait isn’t long and Jeremy is back much sooner than Jim expected, which causes him to frown.

Jeremy nods his head, “Yeah, going off to the left? There isn’t much space before you hit an invisible wall. Not sure about the other direction, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was more of the same. In fact, I’d bet the portal is right smack dab in the middle.”

Jim sighs, “How’s the monster presence? We obviously know there are kobolds around, what with the trap.”

Jeremy shrugs, “I’m not sure if this is good or bad, but there aren’t any kobolds up in this flat area. Though there are windcutter axebeaks. Which is worse because they weren’t out hunting for us.”

Kellinger frowns, “Why is it worse that they aren’t actively seeking us out?”

Jim sighs, “They’re watching down the slope, aren’t they?”

Jeremy nods, “Yep. If we had simply walked down this slope? Chances are we would end up attacked from behind by them charging down at us. Which given running down prey from high ground seems to be their preferred style of hunting? Wouldn’t be good for us. Though I really do wish we could get more than just the names of the various monsters from the system.”

Kelly shrugs, “We’re working on it. The system obviously has all the information we could ever want. There are simply a lot of limits in place and actual privacy seems to be respected.”

Kellinger snorts, “Yeah, feels odd given how things were before this all happened. Not having all of my information shared? How novel!”

Kelly, “Eh, I wouldn’t go that far. Clearly, the system knows a lot more about us than anyone ever could before it showed up. So I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if there are people who can access said information.”

Jim shakes his head, “At the very least, the Adventurers Guild doesn’t have access to that information. Though on the other hand, since the system can analyze and detect everything it can, presumably there are people who through their own abilities can do the same or similar. And for them? I wouldn’t be surprised if the system hooks in and provides a nice way of viewing said information in the same way it hooks in and provides us a view of our own statuses.”

Jess claps her hands, “Welp! Nothing we can do about it. Let’s blow this pop stand and plan for our next delve! I’m sure we can set up an area to train fighting at an angle. Shouldn’t be as death-defying with all our stats and skills.”

The others look at each other and shrug. There really isn’t anything else to do here, and so they grab the plate armor off the ground and leave the dungeon.

With them gone, Doyle and Ally get into a bit of a discussion.

Ally, ‘I think things are fine right now. There isn’t much point to adjust things. After all, you can provide everything for everyone.’

Doyle shakes his core, ‘I feel updating the loot drops is in order. If only because my patterns are different now. It would have been hard before to set things up, but now I have everything I need to make the rules properly. And yes, also give a chance to people. Add that slight chance something they want drops over just another goat leather sling.’

Ally shrugs, ‘Changing the earlier floors isn’t easy on you. If you want to take the burden, I won’t stop you.’

Doyle, ‘I am not trying for perfection. It just doesn’t feel right to not have my patterns match my loot in a way that makes sense to me.’

Ally sighs, ‘Okay. Go wild.’

Doyle literally glowed with excitement as he turned to his very first floor. What did the loot look like? No, seriously, what did it look like? He hadn’t looked at the loot in a long while. In fact, after a bit of confusion, Doyle was forced to first pull up the more universal loot rules.

{

Default Loot:

All Floors, Every Creature: 1cc

All Floors, All Wolves and All Grassen Goats: 1cp, 5 (sage, aloe, pepper, mint, rosemary, lavender, peppermint, or tea), 1 (coagulant, flesh mending, blunt trauma resistance, stab resistance, cut resistance, or invisibility to animals)

Floors ten and up, Every Monster with a level equal to or less than the level of the monster stone pattern: Some of the power used to turn them real goes towards a Monster Stone

Floors 13 to 15, All Kobolds: quartz polymer

Floor 7; All Assassin Vines, Elder Assassin Vines, and Lesser Shadow Wolves: Insulated Quartz Mana Cable and Runic Cooling Plates

All Myconids and higher: Runic Heating Plates

Floors 2, 13, and 16; All Kobolds: Charcoal

Adventurers Guild Loot Rules

}

Doyle sighed, the screen was complete, but it wasn’t actually a blue screen he could simply pull up. Each loot rule was an actual rule created using the “Dungeon Rules” skill. He had to go and seek each out, so besides the Guild loot which was in the core room, Doyle was going to cancel them all and start fresh.

After figuring things out. The town might get a little feisty if suddenly things started dropping less money. Plus, he had to figure out what he meant with the rules in the first place.

Also, wolves and grassen goats drop copper plates? Since when? Why weren’t there more plates kicking about? Which really confused him, so Doyle did a little preemptive digging to figure that out.

Though the answer was somewhat silly. Basically, neither wolves nor grassen goats are the most common of enemies. And the one floor that had a lot of wolves? It was the rush floor and had special loot rules that seemed to conflict with the more general rule.

Which to be fair, was how Doyle would want it to work. Specific rules should take precedence over broader rules. But whatever, Doyle could fix this all right now and introduce a bunch of special rules related to this. About the only downside would probably be in Wisdom. Which right now was at 5 wisdom per a loot rule, except for the Guild’s rule package which cost a cool 40.

Doyle could only be thankful that he now had 396 Wisdom to work with. Of which, as already noted, 75 was taken up by loot rules and another 160 by floor automation. What with each floor costing 10 a piece.

Though thinking of that, Doyle ended up on a side tangent and raised it to an even 200 as he automated floors 17 to 20.

Anyway, the first step was how much cash should drop. Also, Doyle decided more aggressive use of plates was needed. Which he fixed thusly.

If the number of a coin type is set to drop, but have not yet is 20 or more, instead drop the equivalent in plates minus 1 with any left over still dropping as coins

Doyle was quite satisfied with that as it did a few things. Firstly, is would increase the number of plates of all types dropped, now and going forward. However, what it wouldn’t do is upgrade the type of cash being dropped. This wasn’t cents turning into bills, it was a cent becoming a ten-cent piece.

Also, while it wasn’t planned, Doyle did notice a side effect. Groups that worked hard to kill only a couple monsters at a time or slowly ground down monsters in a large fight, would not get plates. While it does take a moment for monster corpses to despawn and drop their loot, they didn’t last until the fight ended or you finished the floor. So unless you killed a bunch of monsters quickly, you were just going to get coins.

So next Doyle was going to update how many coins would be dropping. Which brought up the question of how many coins should be dropping? Because right now the answer to how many were dropping, is not a whole lot. The only reason the town isn’t suffering from a lack of coins is partly that much still works on barter. Though the bigger reason was those damn cows.

Yep, because so many people are farming cattle on floor six, basically the entire economy is being propped up. Which is impressive in and of itself. Though it also explains part of why people aren’t being tempted to delve deeper. There isn’t enough profit in doing so. Why fight tougher monsters when you’re getting about as many coppers per monster as whacking cattle on six?

So, with the idea of keeping the cash drops on six the same, that meant it was the start. Doyle also didn’t want it as simple as “floor minus six”. Or rather, he didn’t want every monster on floor 16 dropping a plate’s worth of coins.

Or did he?

It was at this point that Doyle realized he had accidentally fallen into thinking of a copper being worth a single bill, not a single cent. His cattle were basically dropping a single cent each and people were happy about it because the economy was like ye olde times where they’d cut a cent into pieces to make smaller change.

Now, this wasn’t inherently a problem. If a single cent is worth a lot? Well, that’s what it is worth. Except this wasn’t like traditional money, not even fiat currency. The system literally pegs how much a coin is worth because they’re valued by the quintessence they contain. There is no inflation or deflation.

So no matter how sheltered everything is on the planet right now, a copper will be worth a copper and it will only hurt the planet if the perceived value is depressed compared to the universal standard.

With that in mind, Doyle recalibrated how he thought of the scaling. The cattle could still drop pocket change. It was early enough and right after a boss.

And thinking about the boss thing lit a lightbulb in his mind. Bosses were milestones. Floor six would be set to 1 coin, add 1 coin every floor after until the boss floor. Then the floor after the boss goes up by 10cc. So floor ten would be at 5cc, eleven at 15cc, twenty at 24cc, and twenty-one at 34cc.

Though even that felt a little light? As far as Doyle understood it, most common goods went by the silver standard. Which meant monsters on the twenty-first floor wouldn’t even be dropping a single bill.

Doyle was frustrated. Even after mentally wrapping his head around how much a copper was worth, he was having a hard time emotionally coming to terms with it.

Fine! Time to throw numbers at the wall and see what sticks.

{

+1/floor +10/boss: 10:5cc, 11:15cc, 20:24cc, 21:34cc

+2/floor +20/boss: 10:9cc, 11:29cc, 20:47cc, 21:60cc

+3/floor +30/boss: 10:13cc, 11:43cc, 20:70cc, 21:100cc

}

Doyle stops. He had intended to write out a bunch of options. Juggle different amounts per floor and per boss. Instead? Upon hitting 3 and 30, the numbers worked out that on floor twenty-one, it would be dropping enough coppers to make a single silver coin. It felt right.

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