[D'sP] What Does Everything Drop? - Chapter 513 (Patreon)

Doyle settled in for what would likely be a frustrating time. Oh, sure, the first few floors were pretty organized, but the later floors? Well, he did assign loot, but it was more haphazard and not exactly well-noted, leaning heavily on what was expected over specific loot being assigned with a purpose.

There is nothing he can do about that now, or rather, this is him doing something about it. So no reason to delay any further. What’s on the first floor for loot?

‘Okay, first four goats can drop a wooden shield. Then the vine room has three goats dropping slings and a couple kobolds dropping a helmet and a singular dagger, one each.

‘Oh, that’s fun. I did originally specify how much tin and copper was in my bronze, didn’t I? Stopped doing that at some point. Hmm. Not sure why, but it does seem that just letting my instincts handle the mix works out better. I bet the reason I don’t have a pattern from alloys is because they’re just the base metals combined in specific ratios. There’s probably a skill for it, though.

‘Anyway, the two long rooms after the vine room have goats, each dropping basically one piece from a full set of gear. A bronze mace, wooden shield, and leather greaves, gauntlets, helmet, and tunic.

‘Then we have the big room with all the goats and they’re a bit of a mess. All of them can drop a leather helmet with bronze horn covers which the goats are all specifically wearing. Oh, and I guess I should make a note that the earlier kobolds are both wearing helmets and wielding daggers, it is just one drops one and the other, the other.

‘Now, besides the fancy helmets, each of the nine goats can drop something different. The strong goat dropped a wooden wand. While all the rest are dropping a bronze mace, wooden shield, leather greaves, leather gauntlets, leather helmet, leather tunic, a bronze dagger, and one money bags goat who can drop a silver coin for some reason.

‘Remembering that is there makes me feel a little shocked that more people don’t farm the floor for that chance. Though it must be quite the rare drop, all things considered.

‘Well, now for the kobold gang. Two of the ladies are wielding a mace and greaves with the caveat that one is dropping a mace and the other greaves.. Then there are two more ladies going shield and mace, once again one drops one and the other, the other. Finally, you have the lone guy attuned to healing magic. He’s wearing a wand and shield that can both drop along with being able to drop the first potion of the dungeon, even if he doesn’t get to actually use it himself. Oh, and to note, it is a minor cure all potion.

‘Then finally we have the not-a-boss leader with her five goats. She’s decked out in a mace, gauntlets, and tunic as well as carrying three copper coins. All of which can drop. As well as a shield and helmet that don’t drop. The coins are an interesting decision I made. Is there a good reason for her to be carrying them?

‘Eh, whatever. More strange that she is dropping coppers when a goat a few rooms before can drop a silver. Though once again, the fact that this floor isn’t being farmed to death likely means that silver practically never drops.

‘Now, as for her goats. I seem to have them in two groups? They are all wearing collars that don’t drop. Maybe I should change that? After all, magical necklaces are a popular trope and you have to start somewhere.

‘Anyway, the main divide seems to be that three of them have and can drop the basic helmet with horn covers. While the other two have an extra bonus from somewhere and their helmets they are wearing and can drop not only have bronze horn covers, but also bronze spikes on them. Fair enough.

‘Now, let’s tidy all this up and note it down.’ And after saying that to himself, Doyle goes quiet as he transcribes the whole mess down, using an asterisk to mark the items that actually get dropped. With the loot that is worn getting the asterisk on the end and the stuff that is just loot and not actually carried marked at the beginning.

{

4 goats (shield), 2 female kobolds (helmet, dagger), 3 goats (sling), 2 goats (mace), 2 goats (shield), 2 goats (greaves), 2 goats (gauntlets), 2 goats (helmet), 2 goats (tunic), 1 goat (helmet w/ horn covers, wand), 1 goat (helmet w/ horn covers, mace), 1 goat (helmet w/ horn covers, shield), 1 goat (helmet w/ horn covers, greaves), 1 goat (helmet w/ horn covers, gauntlets), 1 goat (helmet w/ horn covers, helmet) 1 goat (helmet w/ horn covers, tunic), 1 goat (helmet w/ horn covers, dagger), 1 goat (helmet w/ horn covers, 1 silver coin), 1 female kobold (mace, greaves), 1 female kobold (mace, greaves), 2 female kobold (mace shield), 1 male kobold (wand, shield, minor cure all potion), 3 goats (collar, helmet w/ horn covers & spikes), 2 goats(collar, helmet w/ horn covers), 1 female kobold (mace, shield, gauntlets, helmet, tunic, 3 copper coins)

}

‘Welp, that’s still a bit of a mess’, Doyle admits to himself. And that is even after he strips out all the materials and what not. Otherwise it would be so much longer with leather and bronze being repeated over and over.

‘Yeah, I can’t keep doing this for each floor. It is simply unmanageable. Nevermind the fact I’m pretty sure later floors I just either slapped a loot template on everything or went with exactly what they’re wearing. Which, thinking about it, is basically the same thing since the gear is basically a template as well.’

And he wasn’t wrong. Early on, when there were only a few monsters and it felt like any random delver off the street could reach his core, Doyle focused a lot more on how to equip his monsters. Whether it was actually equipment or the loot, they would drop. Now? There were simply too many monsters.

Oh, sure, he could spend days on end tweaking every single monster. Doyle simply didn’t want to. Customize every bird on Bird Mountain? Tweak each cow in the Slaughterhouse? Maybe some day when the days pass like hours or minutes, he might look back. More likely, though, is that this will be the last time he touches any floor below ten.

Doyle can feel it. While the instinct to lock in earlier floors is partly like pressure, there’s more to it than that. Even now, looking back on them and considering a change, he can feel the edges of a creeping malaise. Despite his rhetoric, even now Doyle doesn’t really want to bother with the floors.

They’re fine as is!

And if Doyle had been born a dungeon core? That would be it. This is just how his mind works!

Except he wasn’t born a core and while Doyle doesn’t think he can resist this. The feeling comes not from the “software”, but the “hardware”. Being a core inherently seems to crystalize earlier floors after a certain point.

Though Doyle suspects he won’t ever be fully trapped by this and end up like that example dungeon Ally told him about way back when. Had it been a fire dungeon that ended up focusing on earth, or the opposite? Either way, Doyle figures he will always be able to go back and change an earlier floor given some pressing problem like them costing too much.

Not that Doyle would ever get into that problem all that easily. Maybe not directly, but that story certainly helped in the background when he decided to focus so heavily on always setting up the farms for each floor. It doesn’t matter how expensive a monster is to spawn if you never need to respawn them!

That thought over, Doyle turns to the second floor. Though this time his plans are different. In fact, he goes back to the first floor and implements the change.

{

4 goats (shield), 3 goats (sling), 12 goats ((mace, shield, greaves, gauntlets, helmet, tunic)), 9 goats ((wand, mace, shield, greaves, gauntlets, helmet, tunic, dagger, 1 silver coin)), 1 male kobold (minor cure all potion)

}

Much shorter! All it took was removing all the entries for stuff that is self-evident. Which meant the list only had things which had an asterisk before the entry and thus no longer needed said asterisk. Oh, and he also combined the set goats. Sure, each goat only dropped one of those pieces, but they were meant to be a set, which Doyle represented by using parentheses around the entries. Admittedly, for this it just ended up double parents, but later it would be a useful distinction.

After all, a shorthand of sorts to indicate only one of a selection of loot would drop from a monster, not all of them would be useful. Though admittedly, he had originally used this elsewhere to show when a single monster could drop multiple things, but only one of those options. Whereas in this case, each goat dropped one specifically every time they did drop something.

Satisfied with this, Doyle begins to grind through the rest of the floors.

{

Floor 2: 2 female kobolds (1sc, antidote potion), 11 axebeak (axe), 2 male kobolds (1sc, (potion of coagulation, flesh mending, regeneration)), 1 female kobold (antidote potion)

Floor 3: 4 male kobolds (1sc, (potion of climbing, jumping, invisibility to animals, or oil of magic weapon)), 4 female kobolds (potion of antidote), 1 goat (bag of holding (x3 space, -99% chance)), 4 earthen cattle (1sc), 6 assassin vines and 3 brown bears ((greaves, gauntlets, helmet, tunic)), 10 sprout swarms (each sprout has 2cc)

Floor 4: 12 kobolds (1sc)

Floor 5: 4 kobolds (5sc, (potion of coagulant, flesh mending, regeneration, healing, antidote, cure disease, Moota’s coagulant, minor cure all, pauper’s fix)), 5 female kobolds (1sc)

Floor 6: 1 herb cow ((any potion)), 10 earthen cattle (earthen cattle leather gear), 40 grassen goats (1gc)

Floor 7 & 8: N/A

Floor 9: 30 kobolds (3sc)

Floor 10 to 20: N/A

}

Doyle is a little stunned at the result. Though admittedly, some drops are missing from the list. For instance, the bosses all seem to have their own special loot tables. Oh, and of course all those loot rules that were floor-specific don’t show up here.

Except even then, Doyle really hadn’t played around with loot distribution since floor 10. Oh sure, the rules had stuff for a few later floors, but that was almost an afterthought. Like, oh yeah, floors 13 to 15? The kobolds can drop polymers.

Not to say that there wasn’t loot for the floors. Or even that there wasn’t interesting loot. On some floors, animals would have barding that could drop as the human equivalent armor pieces. Add on the fact that every kobold was armed and armored in some way? There was more than enough loot!

Also, another thing Doyle notices is that he really needed to get the change to coin drops in place. Floors 1 through five had silver coins all over the place and floor 6 even had the potential for the grassen goats to drop an entire gold coin!

That’s just crazy and it is likely only the fact that the place is farmed non-stop for meat and people didn’t target the grassen goats that no one had really struck it rich yet. All the excess energy was going towards making sure every cow they killed dropped a steak instead of boosting the doubly ignored grassen goats.

Not that their meat wasn’t edible or anything. It is simply that people prefer beef and even if they do want goat meat? They prefer other goats as the grassen goats have tough roots growing through their entire body.

These roots are not only super tough. After all, they have to survive the goat moving around and fighting. They also don’t taste that good, giving a more medicinal flavor without an actual benefit.

Coins And Stones - Chapter 512

Monster Specific Loot Rules - Chapter 514