by Galen Wolf
The mules are hauling big sleds full of rubble past me. I don't see Henry but John the Mule goes past looking pretty vacant. He's smiling though, showing his big mule teeth so I guess he's happy.
Jason stands talking to Thorvald, who's rubbing his grimy face and frowning.
I nod. 'How's it looking.'
Thorvald gives a weary smile. 'We're still digging.'
'You know what I'm going to ask...'
He nods then shrugs. 'We ran into a band of granite. Slowed us down.'
'Good for construction,' Jason says. He's trying to make things better.
'How long did that add?'
'I dunno. Half a day? Maybe slightly more.'
'You've excavated a long way under this hill now. Surely we should be there by now.'
Jason grunts. 'There was something wrong with the survey. I underestimated the distance. I don't know how.'
At least he's man enough to admit his mistake, even such a serious one. And he should know how serious it is. 'What's our stock looking like? How long can we keep feeding the NPCs?'
He grimaces. 'A day? Maybe a day and a half.'
Thorvald points at him. 'He's not taking any rations for himself.'
I frown at him. 'Jason, you need to keep yourself strong. I don't want you dying on me.' I try to smile, but it's a real possibility.
He shrugs. 'It's more important the miners get their rations. They're the ones doing the labor; it uses up the nutrition faster.'
I look up at the rough tunnel ceiling. 'What about if you dug straight up?'
Thorvald looks unsure. 'I don't know. Could be we're digging up into a two thousand foot mountain.' He attempts a grin. 'We might come out on the summit.'
Jason mutters, 'You'd starve to death long before that.'
I make an executive decision. 'Dig up. Start now. Straight up. Go up a hundred feet. Heck, two hundred. If you don't break out by then, continue digging north. How long will that take, to excavate up that far?'
Thorvald sighs. 'I don't know. If we all work at it, and we've got the mules now, so maybe a day?'
'We should have enough beer for that?' I'm looking at Jason.
He nods. 'Should do.'
I leave them to it. I next go to find Bernard. He's talking to Geraint. He's still excited about the dungeon. I can hear it.
'So if we put out loot, that's going to make it more attractive to adventurers...' He turns. 'Oh hi, Gorrow. We were just talking about the dungeon.'
He seems to forget the NPCs are going to starve to death then there won't be a settlement and we won't be able to finance the construction of the dungeon.
'Hey, listen. I know you're worried about the beer supply, but we can make money from the dungeon. I know we can.'
I don't want to always be walking around in a bad mood, though I am really worried about the future of Silver Drift Mine. I lost Silver Drift settlement above ground and the only thing that kept me going was the thought that somehow we could build this underground town and use that to resist the Evil One and his minions.
'Explain your ideas,' I say sitting on the bench in Bernard's chambers. Retorts and flasks bubble merrily full of weird looking liquids. I can smell mint for some reason. Must be one of the potions.
'So, I've been making some potions to stash around the dungeon as loot. I've made some Health 30s. They're pretty good loot for level ones. Geraint's been making some stuff too.'
The blacksmith clears his throat. For some reason he's nervous of me, then I realize it's because I'm his boss.
'Well,' he says, stops then starts again. 'Well, I've made some iron swords. Iron has 40 damage.'
'I know.'
'Oh yeah.' He rubs his forehead. 'I forgot you were a smith.'
'That's really good for level ones. Made some iron armor too. We can set it around the place.'
'If you let us in.'
Now the door's locked, they need to ask me to open it of course.
Bernard says, 'Or you could promise to promote me to mini-boss. You said you'd do that.'
We had discussed it. I was going to give him Level 2 of the dungeon, once we'd dug it out.
'How do I do that?'
'If you look on your dungeon management tab, you'll see you can invite people to your team? I think it's called collaboration.'
I see it. I put his name in and then I hear a little 'ding' and I see he's accepted.
'Thanks man, you won't regret it. Just gives me the freedom to come and go and make the place my own.' He blushes in the torchlight. 'Just my level obviously, but I can help with Level 1 too because that's not been allocated to a mini-boss yet.'
'I think you were going to find a wizard...' Geraint says.
Suddenly everyone knows my business. 'We talked about it. We agreed it would be a good idea, but I've been busy. Anyway, you were going to look on the social tabs, Bernard.'
He frowns. 'Trouble with that is if we go on there and say, wizard wanted to help build new dungeon, the cat's out of the bag. It won't take much for the Minions of Satanus to put two and two together.'
'Yeah. Then Silver Drift is more or less blown. Let's scrap the wizard.'
Bernard looks disappointed. I think he's been building up the dungeon in his imagination. He coughs. 'But Geraint's been making jeweler.'
'I found some gold and I just worked it into a tiara and a couple of rings.'
'If we had a wizard, we could enchant the rings and make them even more valuable. We need to get the adventurers coming in.'
'Leave the wizard idea. For now at least. Can't we sell the jeweler to Simon?'
Geraint nods. 'Sure. But Bernard says it's better to deck out the dungeon and get the adventurers coming in. We can clone their stuff, he says.'
'We've got a 5% chance to clone any loot dropped by dead adventurers.'
'That'll increase as the dungeon levels,' Bernard says. 'We can get some really really good stuff this way. We can make a fortune.'
I sigh. There's no holding these guys back. 'Okay, okay. Plant your jeweler, plant your potions. Go ahead. Do you need me to open up?'
Bernard takes a brass key out of his inventory. 'No, when you invited me, I got my own key.'
I decide to invite Fitheach too. He's going to be the mini-boss of Level 3 eventually. I get a message back immediately.
Fitheach: Thanks Gorrow. I appreciate your trust in me.
Me: You're welcome. Just try to slow Bernard down before his excitement blows him up.
Fitheach: Lol. Will do. He's always been like that.
I decide to stroll through to the dungeon with them. I let Bernard use his own key because I know that'll please him. We go through and see the cave bear has re-spawned and stands silent in the corner, waiting to be activated. Same goes for the carrion crawlers and the two slimes. All present and correct.
I go to inspect the rest of the dungeon. So far we've only got the Ruined Chapel room and the Tapestry Room. There's the entrance passage behind the main door. The main door is a bit hacked, but that's fine. I don't care that it's not locked anymore. I don't want people not to come in after all.
The creepy corridor with the pit trap that looks like it goes somewhere but doesn't looks fine. The pit trap has reset. From my schematic I see that there is a gold dot representing a loot stash at the bottom of the pit and when I hover over it, I see it's the black lacquered armor and a Health 10 potion. I imagine adventurers will want to go get that loot.
I now see another three golden dots. One in the Tapestry Room behind the cave bear. That makes sense as a reward for slaying the bear, if they do. Another in the Ruined Chapel by the carrion crawler and a third one at the far end of the entrance passage. Currently it just goes up to a rock face, though we could extend from there. When I hover over the dot, I see it's a Health 30 potion and an Iron Sword (40). The loot behind the bear is a gold tiara (15 marks) and a gold ring (10 marks).
They're doing the right thing. We need something to pull them in. It needs to work like
a real game dungeon for all sorts of reasons. But if we can sell cloned gear, especially high level gear, that could be a nice little earner for us.
I'm wandering around the Tapestry Room when Bernard comes back. Geraint goes back to the forge and Bernard says, 'This is amazing. I wish I could have had my own dungeon.'
'Why didn't you?'
'I couldn't afford it. You were smart. You concentrated on getting income streams while we were just running around levelling skills.'
'Yeah well. I had my doubts at the time, but it seems it worked out financially.'
'If you hadn't done it, we would have no chance of fighting back against the Evil One. We'd be down in Caer with the King and the whole north would be covered in darkness.'
I don't know what to say. I feel uncomfortable when I get praised. Then he says, 'Do you know about tomes? They were just launched in the last game update.'
'I saw something on the release notes, but I was too busy with all of this.' I gesture around us.
Bernard clears his throat. 'So, you can create tomes, depending on your Level. '
'Who can? I can't, surely?'
He shakes his head. 'No, only alchemists can.'
'A handy class.'
He smiles. 'What do you know about my class?'
'You make potions, I know that.'
He adopts the air of a teacher with a pupil. 'Not just that. We are the artificer class. We get skills to make potions, sure. But also magic items. Though we need wizards to infuse them...'
I sigh. 'Wizards again.'
'We can make runes, and of course now we can make tomes. So a tome is a skill boost. It's a book. They cost a lot of resources to make. Leather for the binding, parchment for the pages, ink of course.'
'And where do you get that?'
'I could make it. Well, I don't have the skills yet, but I can have them soon. Anyway, I bought some materials on the Auction House, just to try it out.'
'And did you?'
He shakes his head. 'They cost a lot to make. Money wise.'
'How much?' I check my account balance. We've been selling Geraint's weapons to Simon the Vendor. I'm relatively flush.
'Ten thousand marks.'
'And what does that buy?'
'With the comms I mentioned, the leather and stuff, and I've only started putting skill points into this new skill tree. I can make a 100 + boost to hit. It's a stacking boost, so it adds to whatever you have to hit from any other source.'
It sounds okay but, to be honest, it would be a lot cheaper just to invest the skill points. I rub my chin. Still it is stacking. But 10k!
'I wasn't thinking of it for us, but it could be the major loot for Level 1, once we extend the level of course. They can't just walk in the entrance and get it. They have to delve.'
'Yeah but the first adventurer who gets it will take it away and that's ten thousand marks down the drain.'
Bernard squeezes both fists tight. I think he's going to explode. He smiles all over this face. 'But if you put it as dungeon loot, it re-spawns!'
'It re-spawns? Seriously? What's to stop the same guy just getting it again and again?'
'One use per player.'
This actually could be good loot. We could have a tome on every level. I guess they get more expensive the higher level tomes they are. Bernard tells me they do.
'Okay, I say. I need to go to the forge.'
'Can I stay here? I just love it.'
'Fine. Don't put too much loot out though, you'll just devalue the place.'
He was going to do that. He looks disappointed then says, 'Okay, boss. I won't.'
I wanted to ask Geraint this before but got side-tracked with the dungeon stocking. I find him in his forge, yellow flames painting the rock walls eerie reds and golds. He's hammering out some iron plate armor. The sound reverberates around the forge.
'Can I use your forge, Geraint?'
He steps back. 'Sure, Sir Gorrow. Of course.'
I invested more skills in my smithing after I resurrected at Croglin and I haven't improved my armor and sword yet. I take off all my armor piece by piece, helmet, greaves, gauntlets, plate and shield and I use the Reinforce skill. That gives me 3x the base armor value of the metal. The base metal is Meteoric Iron, which is 300 durability. With my previous reworking with Double-Fold, I took that up to 600 an item. Now with Reinforce, I get it to 900 for each item.
That gives me a base armor of 4500. Add to that the Holy Armor bonus I got from St Gwynnan, which takes me to 4900. Then my 30% bonus for being knighted takes me to 6370. I've also got 50% resistance to Fire, Cold, Electric, Acid and Unholy Damage from minerals I've worked into my armor, and then on top of that I've got 20% chance to block enemy physical attacks with my shield.
That leaves me feeling pretty tanky.
I then Reinforce my meteoric iron sword, taking it to 900 base damage plus 50 cold damage from St Ninian, 150 fire damage from St Herbert and 300 holy damage from St Gwynnan, and of course the anti-shapeshifter properties of the Star Silver I imbued it with. Then I get 30% bonus because of the skill points I put into Divinity, making my blessings 30% better. Add to that my 30% knight bonus and then a 20% mounted bonus and my total damage is now 2100.
Yes, it all makes me feel more confident.
Then my Dungeon Tab on the HUD starts flashing. I look to it and see we have two adventurers entered. When I hover over them, I see it's WarEagle the Level 1 Warrior come back and a guy called Drakhnar. It seems Drakhnar's a rogue. WarEagle must want Drakhnar to disarm the pesky pit trap that killed him.
Let's see how they get on. I switch on my observe mode and make my way into the dungeon.
11
THE CAVE BEAR AND THE PALADIN
Drakhnar and WarEagle are in the entrance to our Forgotten Chapel Dungeon. I'm in the Tapestry Room and I've got observe mode on so I'm invisible. So is Bernard. I know he's right by me but because he's got invisible on too, I can't see him. I can't hear him either so we have to communicate via party speech even though we're side by side.
Bernard: They're being very cautious.
Me: He died last time.
I know Bernard and Geraint laid out the extra loot. The first challenge is the carrion crawler in the Ruined Chapel. I have my schematic up and I can see their red dots cautiously exploring. Then I see the carrion crawler activate. It moves over and is one-on-one with WarEagle's dot. They both blink side by side for a minute and I see Drakhnar's dot approach the carrion crawler from behind then the carrion crawler stops blinking. When I hover over it, it says:
Bernard: They killed that pretty easy.
Me: The rogue must've backstabbed it.
I watch as the dots approach the golden dot. That's loot that Geraint stashed, as I hover over it, I see it's an iron sword and twenty groats.
Me: Hey, who's giving away money? My money!
Bernard: It's not your money, it's mine. Anyway it's only twenty groats. I just put it there to enhance the loot. We want word to get around that this place is good.
Me: This dungeon is a business Bernard. We've got to earn more than we give out. Think of it like a Las Vegas slot machine. Random rewards, set at about 70% of what the player puts in. He thinks he's winning, but we're really taking money off him. Plus the xp we get from killing him, naturally.
Bernard: You have a fantastic business brain, boss.
Me: Yeah right. By the way when did you start calling me boss? You've done it a few times.
Bernard: Everyone else does. Anyway, I'm destined to be mini-boss Level 2 and you are big boss Level 4.
The gold dot disappears. Unlike with the mobs, the loot doesn't respawn, we have to restock it. We're still watching on the schematic.
Me: Let's go watch up close.
We wander through from the Tapestry Room into the entrance corridor. We're tiptoeing even though we're completely undetectable. I see WarEagle's torch suddenly emerge from the Ruined Chapel
and we jump back into the shadows.
Bernard: Lol. We can't be seen but we both jumped!
The two adventurers come toward us, WarEagle holding up the torch. Drakhnar has no torch. I wonder if he's got some low light vision skill. I don't know much about the skills rogues use as I've never really bothered with stealth in this game. Drakhnar is also wearing the insignia of the Fangs of Koth. He has studded leather armor and I see two daggers on his belt, he probably dual-wields.
WarEagle is still wearing the copper helmet he got here on his last trip. I see he's swapped out his old sword and replaced it with the iron one he's just looted. We're really equipping this guy.
They come closer.
Bernard: Can they walk through us?
Me: I don't know. Let's see.
It would break the observe mode if they were able to detect us in any way, so I'm guessing they won't be able to touch us either. If they can, then there'll be a fight. We stand stock still, or at least I do, I guess Bernard's doing the same though I can't see him. WarEagle and Drakhnar are talking in a low whisper.
'So this dungeon just appeared?' Drakhnar says.
'Yeah. It popped up and I'm based at Carrionburg with Maligon so its real close to us.'
'Who's in charge of it?'
'Dunno. That's why I brought you. There's a corridor that I was going to explore but I fell into a pit trap.'
'Bummer.'
WarEagle laughs. 'That's why you're here. If you disarm the trap, we can see what's down that corridor. I've got a hunch that's the way to the boss on this level.'
He's wrong, but what he says makes sense. It could well be the way to the level boss when we extend the dungeon.
Then they walk through us. I know it's a game, but I just had the experience of someone stepping through me. It gives me heartburn.
Bernard: That was weird. I want to avoid that in future.
Me: It didn't hurt you.
Bernard: No, but it's not natural having someone walk through you.
Me: Nothing about this place is natural, pal.
I turn to see them go to the end of the entrance corridor. At the end of there is the loot Geraint placed — another iron sword and a Health 30 potion.
