[D'sP] The Basic Beasts - Chapter 457

Satisfied that he knew how the raid boss thing worked, Doyle turned back to populating the normal monsters of the floor. Most expensive and already planned was the windbreakers. They would be positioned at the very start and there wouldn’t be too many.

Doyle began to place down individual birds. Spacing them out so they aren’t grouped up. His reasoning being that delvers would be less likely to hunt them all down if they have to seek the axebeaks out. This ended up with 14 birds, ready to charge down at the delvers if ignored. Satisfied, he threw the numbers up on a blue screen, something he probably should have been doing since forever.

{

9 Windbreakers

120,000 - 12,600 = 107,400

}

Doyle hums to himself, spending only about a twelfth of his budget on the birds seemed alright. Though also a bit low? He decides that the birds should also be mixed into later fights. Not many, though.

Next, Doyle focused on the slopes. While he had talked himself into putting the major fights on the flats, the original idea was to use the slopes to up the difficulty. Which pointed towards one of his new monsters.

The razor foxes would be perfect to provide a challenge. They could run wild on the slopes, cutting any delvers and maybe knocking them over if they are careful. The slope isn’t too steep, but an unlucky fall could separate a party.

For this, instead of placing them first to figure out placement, Doyle just decides to spend 10k points on all four of the slopes. Though the 200 slots wouldn’t be entirely spent on razor foxes.

Some of those slots would be spent on void kobolds. Not too many, but enough that delvers wouldn’t be able to ignore the possibility of traps. Not sure about the exact ratio, Doyle started tossing out monsters.

The first and last slopes got 20 foxes and 5 kobolds. Then the middle two slopes split the remaining 150 slots, going 50 and 80 for the foxes and ten kobolds a piece.

{

107,400 - 10,000 = 97,400

}

Doyle nods upon seeing that he still has almost 100 thousand points left for the major fights. ‘Hmm. 20, 30, 40? 16, 30, 44? No. 17, 30, 43? That feels better. Now, how do I want to spend the 17 thousand points for the first flat?’

Doyle pops down a windcutter and slaps an elder voibold wind mage on it. A simple way to spend a thousand points and gives the mage mobility. Sure, it takes the bird away from melee, but a living mage is worth more. Besides, if a melee fighter wants to get close and personal with the mage, the bird could play defense for them. Even if it would likely interrupt spell casting.

‘Five? No, ten.’ and he places a small herd of cyclone goats and added two voibold goatherds. And of course, he already forgets his plan to use the blue screen, doing the math in his head. ‘17 minus the 1 and then 2 more. 14. Take off the 100 gets me 13,900.’

Still felt like a lot of points, so Doyle placed another five windcutters and added two more goats to the previous herd. Then split off the second goatherd to be a bird herder. Which left him with 9,000 points. Or as Doyle looked at it, 180 kobold equivalent slots. A bit much, but he figured he could make it work, though noted to himself that the other two flats would need more birds and goats.

Doyle juggles the spawns a bit and places ten elder kobolds, 100 kobolds, two more windcutters, and six more cyclone goats. Which uses up the entire 17,000 points he has budgeted for the first flat. Though it is at this point that he remembers to record it on the blue screen and used it as a chance to double check his math.

{

11 elder void kobolds, 102 void kobolds, 8 windcutter axebeaks, 18 cyclone goats

97,400 - 17,000 = 80,400

}

Which brought him to the second flat space, which was scheduled to have 30,000 points. Now, how was he going to spend it?

Doyle started with a pair of elders riding axebeaks. No, three of them, which left 27 thousand to spend. That he spent 10k of the amount on 50 cyclone goats, leaving 17 thousand.

So he tossed ten windcutters down to reduce it 8k remaining. And after he realized that was still 160ke, dropped another 10 goats into the mix. Bam, 6 thousand, 120ke. So he finished the middle flat with 100 kobolds and 10 elders, of which he put an elder in charge of the axebeaks and 3 kobolds to be goatherds.

{

13 elder void kobolds, 100 void kobolds, 13 windcutter axebeaks, 60 cyclone goats

80,400 - 30,000 = 50,400

}

And then there was the final flat space with the 50 thousand, or rather 50,400 if Doyle wanted to be specific. And right off the bat, he tosses down five elder mages riding five Axebeaks. A quick 5k reduction to 45 thousand.

Doyle then cut that by over half, placing 127 cyclone goats. Which left an even 20,000 including that hanging 400 it started with. Except, the math stopped mathing in his head. Ten axebeaks settled in just fine, but he wanted a smidge more points.

Looking at the previous flat spots and how he filled them, was what ended up giving Doyle the clue for why he wanted more and how much he needed. With a nod, he removes ten goats and adds 100 kobolds and 10 elders. There, that perfectly uses up the 50,400 points that were left. Though once again, he double checks his math.

{

15 elder void kobolds, 100 void kobolds, 15 windcutter axebeaks, 117 cyclone goats

50,400 - 50,400 = 0

}

And then Doyle quickly reassigns one of the free elders to look after the windcutters and three voibolds to handle the goats. Which left him with one last monster to set. The boss. Though this would require a little set up on his part, especially with some of the info he recently got from Ally.

Of course, the first step was getting the base to work with. That was simple enough and he spawned on a single cyclone goat upon which he threw the 3 free level ups. Doyle paused and took a moment to consider how he hadn’t bothered with the levels at all.

Though he realized why that was the case. His dungeon was focused on incrementally tougher floors. If instead Doyle had fewer tougher floors with a larger difference between minimum and max level, there would be more utility in it. There was just a path or three between his current set up and a world where adjusting the level of his monsters was a critical feature.

Whatever the case, Doyle now has the base for his boss, a goat. Though even to him, it felt a bit odd that it took him this long to make a goat boss.

Doyle pulls over one elder who are currently free, not to herd this new goat, but to train them. He goes so far as to respawn the elder voibold with Primitive Leadership, Animal Handling, and the mage skills. Which while they would help the elder in handling the future boss, they are actually there to help train the goat to lead other goats.

With the training aspect taken care of, Doyle turns towards another aspect that might help, placing down a mithril mine in the final clearing, a tin vein in the middle, with a copper vein rounding it out at the first. Ore veins which the kobolds are set to mining right away. Though at the minimum the copper or tin would have to be moved to make bronze, so Doyle has them gather it all in the final clearing.

Now, Doyle doesn’t need the bronze as he can spawn armor made of it just fine. In fact, he can do the same with mithril. There was just one thing he needed that didn’t quite have an analog in the equipment patterns available. See, Doyle wanted a special bit of headgear for his boss, besides just armoring it up in general.

His current helmet options were fine enough and had some leeway in how they were designed. But Doyle wanted more. The cyclone goat’s spiral horns are where their signature cyclone blast comes from and not because there haven’t been attempts to get them to send the attack from somewhere else.

There is something about those horns that facilitates the use of the skill. So Doyle wants to add a bit on top with mithril. The key being a test to see whether casting implements could assist with this.

After all, the implements weren’t simple modifiers. They worked when you channeled a spell through them and cyclone blast isn’t technically a spell. Or rather, spells tended not to get skills for themselves, rather being an outgrowth of a manipulation skill.

From the most basic mana manipulation skills to the more specialized that gave bonuses. Though of course, you don’t need the system recognized skill to cast a spell, as shown by every one of Doyle’s mage kobolds.

Given a simple wooden wand, they gain the knowledge, if not the Skill, from the system to cast a few things. Of course, Doyle could see this only went so far and he should probably invest in getting them a proper manipulation skill soon. It was almost embarrassing how easy it was for delvers to counter the spells of his kobold mages.

Now Doyle just had to figure out how to implement “implements” through the medium of horn sheaths. Coverings? Caps? He wasn’t sure what to call them, but the basic idea was to cover the bosses horns on mithril that was worked to hopefully enhance the cyclone blast skill.

Or rather, since the skill didn’t seem like a spell in and of itself, enhance the results of the skill after the goat was trained to manipulate it some. While there were spells as skills, skills that had a set of spells, and spells based on manipulation. Those in town also seemed to accept as spells any skill being used where the user alters the results.

So, while a regular cyclone blast would be simple skill use. If the cyclone blast was controlled to be sharp at the top, the sharp blasts would be a spell. Though this realization made Doyle also realize his foxes had been casting spells all along.

In fact, in something of an ironic twist, his foxes don’t cast spells anymore. They did back when they needed to manipulate things, but now that the skill is a built in thing? It isn’t a spell anymore.

Though that was more of an academic aside. Since Doyle was working with just a single goat being trained by an elder voibold wind mage, the future boss would easily meet the requirements given a little time. So instead, Doyle focuses on what kind of casting implement would work best.

Now, the goat does use Mana so the basics were already known and didn’t need to change. Even if Doyle obviously couldn’t just stick a book on one of the goat’s horns and call it a day. Okay, that is a lie. A tiny bit of testing showed doing so would work, but Doyle wanted regular horn coverings and not to stick a literal book on them.

Doyle is certain that with time, he could figure out a form for any of the four implements. After all, the key to them is how they alter the magic flowing through them and not the shape. However, there is also a reason that the classic image of a wand, staff, orb, or tome were seen used by wizards more and more the closer the system got to the planet.

Those forms were simply the easiest for the implements to take. Which also meant adapting them to his horn covering idea would be less than easy. In particular, the tome was thrown out right away. While increasing the difficulty to dispel the goat’s cyclone blast would be nice, the easiest adaptation Doyle could see at the moment would be to make mithril scrolls and wrap the goat’s horns in them.

And at the end of this rabbit hole lay the stave. The implement that was a weapon in and of itself, as well as providing a boost to raw power and accuracy. Which seeing as the horn coverings were already a weapon for the goats, slotted into place easily enough.

Two Or A Double - Chapter 456

No Goat Shoes - Chapter 458