[D'sP] Coins And Stones - Chapter 512 (Patreon)

Having figured out the amount of coins to drop, at least for now, there was one last thing to add to the rule before setting it. Specifically, while Doyle didn’t want the previous Rule about making plates to upgrade the coin type, this natural progression should. Oh, and a bit of randomness for fun.

All packed into a single rule.

Which may be a little much, Doyle realized as he began to make a rough draft of the Rule. Then again, the Rule for plates was hefty as well. Though the biggest benefit and reason he was trying to pack it all into a single Rule? It would cost less Wisdom to upkeep.

A simple reason which would inevitably result in complex Rules. Though only to a point. Doyle got the distinct feeling when he idly tried expanding the plate Rule to include the coin drop Rule that doing so would make the Wisdom cost the same as two.

Which did end up wasting a day or two as Doyle tried to nail down the reasoning behind what increased the cost. He gave up on getting anything hard and fast as it seemed intent and circumstance played a role. However, a general rule of thumb seemed to be that it all needed to be focused on a single aspect. So coins turning into plates was an aspect around which he could add clauses, while how many coins would drop was a second aspect.

Maybe in the future there would be a reason to combine the two despite the cost not going down. Something to do with wanting the same clause to affect both aspects without making a third Rule for said clause. For now, though, Doyle felt multiple Rules were better for organization instead of trying to clump every single Rule about loot into one ungodly long run-on sentence.

So with all that in mind, Doyle could focus on the random element. After all, if every time a monster on a certain floor dropped coins, it would be the same number of coins? Well, that would be boring! Though it also wouldn’t make his plate thing obsolete because there was one important detail about it which meant Doyle couldn’t just bundle it in with the coin loot Rule. That is the fact that it wasn’t about what a single monster would drop, but how many coins are being dropped by every monster nearby that died recently.

Not that changing that made it so he could combine the rules for cheaper. Doyle had tried that.

So instead, Doyle fiddled with percentages. Because there was going to be a random element to coin drops, it was going to have to be through that, instead of any preset amount of coins. Starting place? 10%

Simple enough to do with mental math, though he wrote it out anyway using the existing blue screen. Along with a few other percentages. Oh, and Doyle decided to round down to the nearest copper.

{

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

—

5% - 10:±0cc, 11:±2cc, 20:±3cc, 21:±5cc

10% - 10:±1cc, 11:±4cc, 20:±7cc, 21:±10cc

15% - 10:±1cc, 11:±6cc, 20:±10cc, 21:±15cc

20% - 10:±2cc, 11:±8cc, 20:±14cc, 21:±20cc

}

‘Hmm’, Doyle puzzled over the amounts. They didn’t feel right like when he chose the amount to increase coins by. Though 5 and 20 percent were out of the running, maybe even 15%. He wanted some rewards, even on floor 10. Especially on floor ten. After all, that was his first boss floor. However, not too much. Just enough of a range to feel a little random.

{

8% - 10:±1cc, 11:±3cc, 20:±5cc, 21:±8cc

12% - 10:±1cc, 11:±5cc, 20:±8cc, 21:±12cc

}

Doyle looked back and forth between 8, 10, and 12 percent to get a general feel for the amounts. At ten, they were the same, and so he ignored that except for a feeling that a swing of a single coin was just about right. People wouldn’t curse their luck or praise the heavens over a single coin.

After that was where the differences appeared. 3, 4, and 5; 5, 7, and 8; and finally 8, 10, and 12. The last obviously matching the percentage given it was based on a reward of a hundred copper coins.

And without any particular reason, Doyle settled on 8% because the progression of 1, 3, 5, 8 was satisfying to him. Surely if in the future any delvers learned of how he ended up picking the amount, they would curse him for not being satisfied with the 20% progression. This wouldn’t change anything for Doyle, but oh, would they curse it!

Anyway, this resulted in the following Rule.

All monsters have added to their potential loot a minimum of 1 copper coin and starting with floor 7 the amount of coins added goes up by 3, or 30 if the previous floor was a boss floor, along with a 10% chance the number of coins is modified by a random amount in a range, that does not include 0, of ±8% rounded down to the nearest copper coin, and if the final amount of coins to be dropped can be upgraded to a higher coin type, do so.

It was a bit of a monster itself, though Doyle left it up to the imagination how many coins it would drop if defeated. Thankfully, despite that, he felt it was still only going to cost five Wisdom. Though it was a little strained, especially with the chance of a random bonus.

In fact, he had to record it a few times before the Rule finally felt right. The biggest change being the condensing of the random chance into a single clause. It had originally been a 5% chance of a bonus between 1cc and 8% as well as a 5% chance of a penalty, also between 1cc and 8%. Basically, a crit success or failure on a twenty-sided die. Getting that down to a ten percent chance of a random amount of whole coins between -8% and 8%, excluding 0, was the final straw of making the mess count as a single Rule.

Though it did annoy Doyle a little bit that it couldn’t be reduced to a simple math formula. After all, there wasn’t an actual pattern to which floors were boss floors. Oh well, the Rule works, and that’s all he can ask.

Which brought him to a failure of a loot Rule. The monster stone Rule. Doyle wasn’t sure exactly what had gone wrong, but the number of monster stones was abysmal!

Except as he looked deeper, the answer came to him. The rule siphoned off of energy being used to realize them. Which was a nice sentiment, but it seemed that if there was energy going towards that, even though it wasn’t part of the points? There was a minimum amount that couldn’t be siphoned away.

So unless delvers were on a floor, the cores didn’t develop. And if there were delvers on a floor? Well, a monster can’t exactly develop a core when they’re dead. While not every delve would involve a full clear of every floor.

In fact, most don’t. However, that just meant there was less energy being released by the delvers and so there wouldn’t be any monster cores by the time a group decides to go through and clear the floor properly.

Which does happen under Jim’s orders. It seems the Guild has internal rules about making sure floors are cleared semi-regularly no matter the dungeon. Which, to be fair, is a smart thing to do. After all, a dungeon break can’t happen if they make sure to kill all the monsters before they become real enough to break out in the first place.

So with that in mind, if he wanted monster stones to show up? He’d have to make them proper loot. To Doyle, that meant a generalized rule that rewarded those the closer they are to a boss floor.

Or rather, the closer they are to a boss floor by way of advancing. Doyle wasn’t going to quibble over those deciding to farm earlier floors, but he wasn’t going to have someone pop out on floor 11 and backtrack to floor 10 for an easy monster stone. This sadly would require two rules because he had something special planned for bosses. And so, after some workshopping, he came up with the following.

Starting on floor 10, non-boss monsters have a chance to have a monster stone that starts at a 1% chance which resets to that on every floor directly after a boss floor and if every delver in the instance entered the dungeon from a floor lower than the current floor that chance gradually increases to 10% on the next boss floor or the deepest floor.

Every boss has a 1% chance of dropping a monster stone and if every delver in the instance entered from a lower floor, this chance increases to 25%.

Doyle was quite happy with that first Rule, and a little frustrated with the second. He had originally intended for bosses to have a 100% chance of dropping a stone if this was the first time everyone in the instance had beaten the boss and all of their levels were below the bosses level. Except that was apparently too much for a single Rule. Too much for even multiple Rules!

Seems like even though the system undoubtedly keeps track, a dungeon doesn’t keep a record of firsts. Which is odd, given the fact that somewhere is a record for who has made it past which boss floor. After all, there must be something allowing his entrance portal to recognize when people should be allowed to skip to a deeper floor.

Well, at least this gives even beginners a chance to snag monster stones down on floor five. Admittedly, only a single stone from specifically the kobold boss and realistically only if they start on floor 1. But the chance is there!

And also meant it was time for the more annoying rules. The nonstandard rules.

All wolves and grassen goats dropping herbs and potions. Kobolds on floors 13 to 15 dropping quartz polymer and overlapping with that, those on 2, 13, and 16 dropping coal. Oh, and of course on floor seven all assassin vines and their elders as well as the lesser shadow wolves will drop insulated quartz Mana cable and runic cooling plates. With all of that capped off by adult myconids and higher dropping runic heating plates.

It was kind of annoying. Partly because the floor-specific rules could have easily been regular loot distribution if he hadn’t been lazy. And more to the point, it split up his understanding of what loot dropped where!

Oh sure, the money and the stone rules were truly universal, and so having them be external was fine. Even if some monsters had their own specified coin drops. At least, he remembered that being the case?

Doyle hadn’t yet checked on the floor by floor loot distribution and now sort of dreaded it.

Oh, and also! There was loot that could be reduced to a universal rule. Most obvious was if a monster is wearing gear? Well, that seems like loot. How hard would it be to make a simple rule that “Monsters can drop as loot what they’re wearing”?

Now, admittedly, Doyle also somewhat remembered early on not spamming literally everything they wore as potential loot. By this point, though? It seemed like so much less of a problem!

Loot inflation seemed to not just hit coin drops. When everyone could get some basic dungeon drops as gear, what reason was there to make it so that not every kobold mage dropped a wand?

Except maybe there was a reason? So Doyle held back on that potentially drastic change. And honestly? All those specialized and specific drops could wait until after he got a good overview of what was being dropped.

Looking Over Loot - Chapter 511

What Does Everything Drop? - Chapter 513