[D'sP] She Found It - Chapter 396

Doyle takes some time to observe just what skills would likely be needed. The kobolds already had access to mining and smelting. Besides that, they needed woodworking, tanning, leatherworking, blacksmithing, charcoal burning, and of course a skill for carving runes. Though maybe that last one would need two skills. One for carving and the other for runes.

As Doyle ponders on the skills, Ally suddenly shouts. ‘I found it! Hahaha!’

Then she notices she said that out loud. ‘Uh, not anything important. So, you remember how we weren’t remembering the word for putting material into a carving or similar? I’m pretty certain the word we’re looking for is “inlay”. So you would inlay mithril into your runes.’

Doyle, ‘Huh, yep that would be it. Anyway, since I have your attention, should the rune kobolds just have a rune skill or that plus a carving skills? I can see the argument for it, but I’m not sure how important it will be.’

Ally nods, ‘Yep, that is the question. Not just for you, but anyone that gets into runes. Though for most people, the question is more about what kind of skill they should have for laying down the runes.

‘While carving is the traditional method, there isn’t really any limit. Calligraphy for writing them is a popular option, because even if they need to have the rune engraved, they can just draw it out and have someone else carve it. Though they lose some control.

‘However, you will always want some method of taking thought and putting it out into the world at large. At the high end, most rune work ends up being highly specialized and customized, if only because the pattern for the simple, replicable stuff is already done. After all, why bother figuring out how to carve a flashlight rune when you can go down to the local general store and buy a runic flashlight that has been optimized for its task hundreds of years ago?’

Doyle, ‘Hmm, yeah, I’m going with engraving. It’s a little more general, but allows them to lay runes in wood, stone, and metal.’

Ally nods, ‘A good general purpose skill. Though take the time to comb through the skill list a bit. You never know what you might find. However, I must admit you’re still probably going to end up with engraving. It isn’t like the skill list for your monsters has all the skills possible, so I doubt you’ll find the skill “Metallic Petrified Wood Engraving”.

‘Yes, that would be perfect, but going by the skills you’ve seen, they seem limited to either fully general or single material skills. You can see it in your weapon skills. There was either the specific sword skill or the generic slashing skill. No hint of a skill for pikes, spears, and halberds. Also, no specific school of swordsmanship.’

Doyle, ‘So is this one of those things I have to unlock for myself or just out of reach?’

Ally shrugs, ‘A little of column A, a little of column B. Your non-sapient monsters won’t ever be allowed to know something fancy like the “peach blossom sword dance” skill. However, you could get a combo skill on them.

‘If anything, it will probably become more and more important with time as it is a lot harder for you to increase the number of skills a monster can know than it would be for a person. After all, you and I can just buy a new class paths, while even the bosses will only have a single class, if that. 

‘Besides, it will get awfully costly to open up new skill slots. Much better to focus and since your monsters don’t have to have a life outside of their position, they can get away with it. A monster on a desert floor doesn’t need a survival skill to find water.’

Doyle, ‘But you don’t need a skill for that in the first place? Either you’re a species adapted for the desert or you can just learn how to find water. I guess some magic to create real water wouldn’t be amiss, but that would be a more general skill.’

Ally, ‘That was just the first thing I thought of. It should at least give you an idea of what I mean, right?’

Doyle, ‘Oh, yeah, it makes enough sense. Though I guess I have to ask, what do combo skills provide to regular people? I get the use in dungeons, but the saying jack of all trades, Master of none certainly has some teeth.’

Ally shrugs, ‘Multidisciplinary stuff for the most part. A person looking to train everyone in the basics of weapon use will be better at it if they have one highly leveled weapon use skill.

‘Same with crafting that combines multiple materials or techniques into one final product. In particular, making an item with two skills will tend to skew towards the lower skill in quality because of how the magic of crafting works. And it gets worse if you need multiple people to work on the same item.

‘The most common example of this is a sword. They, for the most part, aren’t completely metal. You’ll likely have a grip made of some other material. Use leather made by a worse crafter and any magic on the sword itself will work worse, especially if the leather used isn’t of masterwork quality.’

Doyle, ‘Ah, yeah, I can see that. If anything, just the fact the parts have the power from different people in them would cause interference. That would make my world’s idea of mass production a very low quality method of crafting.’

Ally, ‘But it is a method of mass production. Sometimes it is more important to get a shield in the hand of everyone in your army now than having a percentage of them being equipped with quality shields.’

Doyle, ‘Well, my kobolds are going to be a bit restricted as I need to have skills other than crafting on them.’

Ally shrugs, ‘We’ll have to test it, but I doubt the regular monsters will have much of a problem. It would be like saying an item made with a person’s left hand will have different energies from their right hand. It is possible if they’ve done something that would result in that. You haven’t done that with your monsters.’

Doyle nods, ‘Well, back to the skill list.’

From there, he spent a little time and found most of what he wanted. After all, basic crafting skills aren’t going to be hidden or anything. Want to have a monster that can work with wood? Have a few skills right away that are general enough that even an unawakened dungeon can probably stumble their way into it.

And it really was easy enough that a dungeon could accidentally purchase them. Or rather, the system has simply inserted itself between dungeons and something that would come naturally to them. Feel like a monster needs to do something and keep dreaming on it? After a bit of resistance, the skill will be imbued on the monster.

The system codifies stuff into specific skills and also puts a number on how much juice a dungeon has to modify stuff. In the end though, that is helpful as it prevents half bought skills. After all, it would suck for a monster to know how to carve wood, but not how to do so in a way that makes something. Or worse, having the instincts to bring out a shape from wood, but not knowing enough about how to carve to actually manage it. At least the first one can do simple things.

Doyle finally settled in most of the skills.

Rustic Tanning, Leatherworking, Clawed Woodworking, Charcoal Burner, and Engraving.

You might notice a couple special skills and a certain special skill which was missing. Rustic Tanning gave Doyle the feeling of using “on site” materials to tan. After all, it isn’t like the kobolds have professional tanning chemicals. So instead, it used brains and what not.

Then there was Clawed Woodworking. It was basically what it said on the tin. Instead of being purely a tool-based endeavor, this skill seemed to be a more general skill that included techniques to use one’s own claws to carve as well. And uh, Doyle mostly chose it because it was cheaper than regular Woodworking. Seems there was some sort of discount because of kobolds being innately skilled at this. Likely in connection to their trap instincts.

And then there was the missing rune skill. Well, not missing, so much as hidden in plain sight. There were too many rune skills. The only one Doyle even knew what it was for, was the “Common Runes” skill. That one represented what had become this universe’s equivalent of a trade tongue, but for runes.

Now, given how Doyle could get something of a feeling of what the other two strange skills were about, he shouldn’t have a problem here, right? Except, there were truly too many rune skills. Some are for specific rune collections, others are for the use of runes like Doyle’s own, and still others that represented a small focused selection of runes. The last one is sort of like a color palette, except for runes.

‘Hey Ally, I need a bit of help finding the right rune skill. Even after I filter it down as much as possible, I can’t find what I want.’

Ally takes a glance at the skill selection and grimaces. ‘Gah, I knew it would be bad, but that is something else! And you know what? I bet that if we didn’t have the monument, a skill for the local runic system would likely be right at the top of the list. Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but are you sure that you filtered it as much as you can?’

Doyle nods, ‘The system really does not want cores to have an easy time finding super specific skills for our monsters. I’m guessing that is partly to prevent a dungeon getting too specific of a skill. After all, giving your monsters resistance to a specific poison might make them practically immune to that poison. Except then the delvers will simply switch to another poison that the skill does basically nothing against.’

Ally sighs, ‘Okay, I can see that. Let me play with these restrictions a little. I should be able to refine it at least a little bit more. Maybe remove the hyper specific collections?’

Ally begins to play with the filters, though Doyle had done a decent job and most changes she tried ended up letting more skills through. After half an hour, though, she hits on something. While it isn’t perfect, she manages to remove the collections, at least partly.

How she did this was a bit backwards to what most would try. If you’re looking for a single runic system skill, most would try removing collections with multiple contributing runic languages involved. Except, what Doyle had done was be inclusive and so the planet’s runic system had runes from so many cultures.

After that, though, it was a matter of searching through each entry without judging the entries based on their names. Because only the major systems had their own unique name. Most of the skills had the exact same name, “Runic Knowledge”, unless you focused on it. At which point it would show up as “Runic Knowledge of Rune System a123b456”. Doyle also got the distinct feeling that once someone actually gets the skills, it drops that extra bit and starts to also include any runes they learn, even if from a different runic system.

The only good news is that while they can’t filter it more, Ally can remove skills from the list. So, in a team effort, they eventually find the Runic Knowledge skill for the runes Doyle had been using. Ally waded through the list, striking off all the skills for mixed libraries and rune palettes. Then Doyle simply had to go down the list, one by one, until he found the one that felt like his runes. This took a couple days of constant searching and would have taken so much longer if done by anyone else. It is only with the timeless mindset that creatures like fae and dungeon cores have that allowed them to lose themselves in the task.

The Lakes Are Too Small - Chapter 395

Cheating Themselves - Chapter 397