yrsillar
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Depends on the boss, but ones designed with adds in mind will probably have appropriate stats.
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Dungeon Delver Quest (Original Fantasy... again)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
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- adventure job system
Depends on the boss, but ones designed with adds in mind will probably have appropriate stats.
mrttao
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Vote Tally : Dungeon Delver Quest (Original Fantasy... again) | Page 12 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.5.0
[X] Through the Portcullis
No. of Votes: 11
[X] Down the Hall
No. of Votes: 4
Total No. of Voters: 15
##### NetTally 1.5.0
[X] Through the Portcullis
No. of Votes: 11
[X] Down the Hall
No. of Votes: 4
Total No. of Voters: 15
Day 2: Clash of Viridian Flame
yrsillar
Dapper Cthulhu
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You eye the imposing gateway and roll your shoulders, limbering up your muscles for some real exertion. "Back up a bit," you say lightly. "Not sure how big a mess this is gonna make."
Linnea looks curious but backs up as you ask, giving you a bit more space to work. Shadow seems like she almost wants to say something, but whatever it is she decides against it, getting out of the splash radius as well. You take a deep breath and a step back, lowering your shoulder as you activate the mental 'switch' that's been blinking at the edge of your thoughts since you tried to lift the gate and failed. Activating your new 'abilities' still feels weird, but the rush of heat and power that fills your muscles as you charge forward at the otherwise impassible barrier. Is it just you or are you actually glowing?
It only lasts for a second in any case as you smash into the gate as an utterly unstoppable force, the sound of stressed metal and crumbling stone rings in your ears as you rip through the metal barrier like it was a rice paper screen and came out on the other side, trailing debris. It takes a second to reorient yourself as the ability fades and you glance down at yourself and then back at the gate. Not a scratch on you, but entire chunks of the door frame are missing and the bars of the portcullis are snapped and bend at weird angles leaving an opening easily big enough for your companions to get through.
Then you notice something else, the cool air of the tower now seems to hold an omnipresent malevolence, a pressure that seems to rest on your shoulders and make your skin crawl as if you were being watched. It's creepy, even if Linnea peeking her head through the opening you left a few seconds later distracts you from it.
"Some people back home would love you," the short plant girl comments as she hops over the broken bars, "Can you do that to anything constructed?"
"Anything that counts as an 'obstacle', I guess," you respond simply, brushing a bit of stone dust off your clothes.
"Being a walking, talking battering ram does seem pretty useful," Shadow adds as she follows behind, glancing around the corridor beyond cautiously. "I guess you'll never have to worry about being locked up, huh?"
"S'pose not," you reply, wandering why that would be her first thought. On the other hand… that is a good point, barely started on the tower and you've already become literally impossible to contain. This place is pretty ridiculous. It makes you wonder how many of the old myths are exaggerations. "I wonder if I could just plow through the ceiling and skip to the next floor," you wonder aloud as the three of you continue on.
"Maybe you can try if it takes too long to find the stairs," Linnea says, "I think the floors are supposed to get a lot harder the higher you go though."
You simply nod, you're intending to go floor skipping yet, if it's even possible, a niggling feeling tells you that it probably isn't that easy. Silence falls again, as you traverse the hall with an eye out for traps. There aren't any though, but you suppose the next room makes up for it, a cavernous chamber with walls alight with flickering magical runes, and at it's far end, a raised dais holding a flickering brazier of green fire. That isn't what draws your attention though. No, that's probably the four armored giant zombies standing stiffly against the four pillars the hold up the long room. Unlike your previous enemies their sallow grey flesh is protected by iron plates bolted right down into their bodies in a caricature of half plate armor, and their gauntlet covered hands hold heavy executioners axes big enough to give you pause.
They also seem to awaken the moment you enter the room, turning to face the entrance in exact time with each other. You hear Shadow curse under her breath as you feel four sets of dead eyes lock on you. "Well. Looks like you might get a shot at using those heals today Lin," you say with a laugh though, ready for your first real rumble in the tower.
"Don't lose your head, I can't fix that," is her dry response even as roots erupt from beneath one of the two closer enemies, binding it in place.
"You're crazy," Shadow mutters already circling away from you. "I'm going to focus on the one close right."
That's all the time for chit chat you have before battle is joined, Shadow's little knife trick punches through armor just as easily as it does flesh you find, but there's an awful lot of zombie to carve. Your attack crumbles the things helmet inward in what would be a lethal blow on a living thing, but the zombie ignores the fact that it's own brains are pouring out of the seams in it's helmet and attacks you anyway. Although you don't have much problem dodging the slow attack… his two friends joining in is more of a problem.
You have to bite back a scream as your block is a hair too slow to stop the third axe that comes your way from biting into your side. Luckily it catches on your ribs and doesn't go any deeper than that. Too make matters worse the brazier at the end of the room flares brightly, the flames briefly taking the appearance of a massive skull that spits out a bolt of green fire… at the wounded zombie. You curse as you see it's wounds knitting together.
Fairs fair though, because a second later warmth and comfort washes over your wounded side. You're almost distracted a moment later though when you hear Shadow snarl something guttural and ugly in a language you don't recognize and for an instant the room seems to grow darker before the air over your head warps and twists, tearing open to disgorge a writhing ball of shadows and eyes that fires like an arrow into the clearly animated brazier and explodes, sending broken bits of metal and glowing green coals everywhere as it's destroyed.
You don't know what the fuck that was, but your grateful for it anyway as you charge up an arc smash yourself your glowing club smashing all three zombies back with varying amounts of damage. The first axe you dodge, the second you catch on your club with a sound like a gong being struck, but once again, you can't entirely stop the third from getting under your guard. This time on your leg, you can also hear the sounds of the fourth zombie breaking free, which doesn't exactly make things better.
Still, the wound knits together almost as soon as it's made, so you don't pay it too much mind. You see Shadows knife-hand tear through most of the first zombies thigh, sending it tumbling to the ground in a wreck, and your own blow pulps the shoulder of the other, leaving the limb barely hanging on and sending it's axe tumbling to the floor. Even with the previously trapped zombie lumbering in to attack, you manage not to get wounded this time, helped along by one of your enemies lacking a weapon.
You find yourself grinning, that was a bit hairy for a second, but you feel like you've got this. Shadow puts down the one who's arm you took off a second later, and your follow up sends the other damaged zombie staggering. They're tough bastards, but between you and Shadow they go down pretty quick. You gotta give it to the girl, she is really good at killing things.
You take a deep breath when the last of the zombies falls, stepping back to avoid the things smelly guts landing on your sandles as it crumbles. Your poor gear is gonna need some… Huh, wait a second. You eye the bloody patch on the side of your armor incredulously, no tear at all. "Huh… didn't notice that before," you comment.
"What is it?" Shadow asks, you glance her way as she casts nervously around the room, is it just you or are the bags under her eyes a little darker?
"Looks like our stuff fixes itself," you respond, pointy to the places where blood stains your clothes, but no rip can be found.
She looks a bit incredulous herself, but your undamaged gear tells the truth of it. You glance down to see Linnea inspecting you as well. "This place really is weird. It tries to kill us, but fixes our stuff?" She sounds kind of bemused. She then glances up to meet your eyes, "Good job not losing your head."
"I'm pretty attached to it," you respond dryly in return. A glance to the side shows the glowing mist coalescing into your rewards is pretty big this time. As it solidifies you can see why. There are several pieces of gear as well as a veritable mountain of shards… at least in comparison to your previous hauls.
Giant Executioner's Axe: A heavy iron blade drowned in blood. If held close to the ear, one can hear the final screams of it's victims. Quality 2 10% chance to deal double damage on a successful hit. [Great Axe]
Green Skull Lantern: A clay facsimile in the shape of a skull, green fire dances in the eye sockets. Quality 2 [Talisman]
27 Shards
+25 XP
It's weird how you can apparently see short text descriptions just by looking at stuff. Still, that's a pretty darn good pile of shards. LInnea is the first to react, crouching down to scoop up the weird little skull in her hands, turning it over curiously to stare into the eyes, "I have a Talisman skill, and that's what it says this is, so what does it…" She mutters under her breath. She frowns eyes scanning over something you can't see and then smiles. "Oh, it makes my spells better." She seems pleased, and then almost drops the thing when it's jaw drops open and a short burst of green fire belches out.
"Good thing you turned it around," you say with some amusement as she fumbles with the thing. "Now if you can figure out how to do it on purpose you'll have a way to attack."
"I'll get the hang of it," she responds, with a pout. "Do you two mind if I take it? I can give up some shards from this fight."
"That sounds fair," Shadow responds. "Maybe we can split whatever we can sell the axe for. Unless you want it Yuuka."
You consider that for a second. Do you want it? You aren't any good with axes, but who knows what leveling up your job will give you.
[][Loot] Vote on Loot Allocation.
Once you've figured that out, the three of you search through the now empty room for an exit. It's Linnea that find it, being able to find the hollow space behind the false wall that conceals the next corridor. The next several hours are less exciting. The enemies here are stronger… zombies have armor and skeletons have proper weapons, but you don't run into any more truly dangerous groups, although you have a few close calls with dart and swinging blade traps. Linnea still uses up another heal and you another arc smash on the way though. You collect a decent number of shards and enough experience to gain a level but no further equipment. Who knew dungeon delving involved so much walking around in empty corridors?
+9 Shards
+8 XP
It's probably around mid afternoon, when you arrive at another contentious crossroads. One path goes dry returning the base state of the tower and the other is lit by eerie, floating will' o' wisps.
[] Dry Hall
[] Wispy Hall
(Hope folks don't mind the way I'm doing things in this one, but something that wore on me a bit in other quests was writing out the more trivial fights, so I'm going to stick with glossing over fights that aren't particularly tense or introduce something new and compiling their rewards in one blob.)
-2 Arc Smashes, -1 Annoying!
Linnea looks curious but backs up as you ask, giving you a bit more space to work. Shadow seems like she almost wants to say something, but whatever it is she decides against it, getting out of the splash radius as well. You take a deep breath and a step back, lowering your shoulder as you activate the mental 'switch' that's been blinking at the edge of your thoughts since you tried to lift the gate and failed. Activating your new 'abilities' still feels weird, but the rush of heat and power that fills your muscles as you charge forward at the otherwise impassible barrier. Is it just you or are you actually glowing?
It only lasts for a second in any case as you smash into the gate as an utterly unstoppable force, the sound of stressed metal and crumbling stone rings in your ears as you rip through the metal barrier like it was a rice paper screen and came out on the other side, trailing debris. It takes a second to reorient yourself as the ability fades and you glance down at yourself and then back at the gate. Not a scratch on you, but entire chunks of the door frame are missing and the bars of the portcullis are snapped and bend at weird angles leaving an opening easily big enough for your companions to get through.
Then you notice something else, the cool air of the tower now seems to hold an omnipresent malevolence, a pressure that seems to rest on your shoulders and make your skin crawl as if you were being watched. It's creepy, even if Linnea peeking her head through the opening you left a few seconds later distracts you from it.
"Some people back home would love you," the short plant girl comments as she hops over the broken bars, "Can you do that to anything constructed?"
"Anything that counts as an 'obstacle', I guess," you respond simply, brushing a bit of stone dust off your clothes.
"Being a walking, talking battering ram does seem pretty useful," Shadow adds as she follows behind, glancing around the corridor beyond cautiously. "I guess you'll never have to worry about being locked up, huh?"
"S'pose not," you reply, wandering why that would be her first thought. On the other hand… that is a good point, barely started on the tower and you've already become literally impossible to contain. This place is pretty ridiculous. It makes you wonder how many of the old myths are exaggerations. "I wonder if I could just plow through the ceiling and skip to the next floor," you wonder aloud as the three of you continue on.
"Maybe you can try if it takes too long to find the stairs," Linnea says, "I think the floors are supposed to get a lot harder the higher you go though."
You simply nod, you're intending to go floor skipping yet, if it's even possible, a niggling feeling tells you that it probably isn't that easy. Silence falls again, as you traverse the hall with an eye out for traps. There aren't any though, but you suppose the next room makes up for it, a cavernous chamber with walls alight with flickering magical runes, and at it's far end, a raised dais holding a flickering brazier of green fire. That isn't what draws your attention though. No, that's probably the four armored giant zombies standing stiffly against the four pillars the hold up the long room. Unlike your previous enemies their sallow grey flesh is protected by iron plates bolted right down into their bodies in a caricature of half plate armor, and their gauntlet covered hands hold heavy executioners axes big enough to give you pause.
They also seem to awaken the moment you enter the room, turning to face the entrance in exact time with each other. You hear Shadow curse under her breath as you feel four sets of dead eyes lock on you. "Well. Looks like you might get a shot at using those heals today Lin," you say with a laugh though, ready for your first real rumble in the tower.
"Don't lose your head, I can't fix that," is her dry response even as roots erupt from beneath one of the two closer enemies, binding it in place.
"You're crazy," Shadow mutters already circling away from you. "I'm going to focus on the one close right."
That's all the time for chit chat you have before battle is joined, Shadow's little knife trick punches through armor just as easily as it does flesh you find, but there's an awful lot of zombie to carve. Your attack crumbles the things helmet inward in what would be a lethal blow on a living thing, but the zombie ignores the fact that it's own brains are pouring out of the seams in it's helmet and attacks you anyway. Although you don't have much problem dodging the slow attack… his two friends joining in is more of a problem.
You have to bite back a scream as your block is a hair too slow to stop the third axe that comes your way from biting into your side. Luckily it catches on your ribs and doesn't go any deeper than that. Too make matters worse the brazier at the end of the room flares brightly, the flames briefly taking the appearance of a massive skull that spits out a bolt of green fire… at the wounded zombie. You curse as you see it's wounds knitting together.
Fairs fair though, because a second later warmth and comfort washes over your wounded side. You're almost distracted a moment later though when you hear Shadow snarl something guttural and ugly in a language you don't recognize and for an instant the room seems to grow darker before the air over your head warps and twists, tearing open to disgorge a writhing ball of shadows and eyes that fires like an arrow into the clearly animated brazier and explodes, sending broken bits of metal and glowing green coals everywhere as it's destroyed.
You don't know what the fuck that was, but your grateful for it anyway as you charge up an arc smash yourself your glowing club smashing all three zombies back with varying amounts of damage. The first axe you dodge, the second you catch on your club with a sound like a gong being struck, but once again, you can't entirely stop the third from getting under your guard. This time on your leg, you can also hear the sounds of the fourth zombie breaking free, which doesn't exactly make things better.
Still, the wound knits together almost as soon as it's made, so you don't pay it too much mind. You see Shadows knife-hand tear through most of the first zombies thigh, sending it tumbling to the ground in a wreck, and your own blow pulps the shoulder of the other, leaving the limb barely hanging on and sending it's axe tumbling to the floor. Even with the previously trapped zombie lumbering in to attack, you manage not to get wounded this time, helped along by one of your enemies lacking a weapon.
You find yourself grinning, that was a bit hairy for a second, but you feel like you've got this. Shadow puts down the one who's arm you took off a second later, and your follow up sends the other damaged zombie staggering. They're tough bastards, but between you and Shadow they go down pretty quick. You gotta give it to the girl, she is really good at killing things.
You take a deep breath when the last of the zombies falls, stepping back to avoid the things smelly guts landing on your sandles as it crumbles. Your poor gear is gonna need some… Huh, wait a second. You eye the bloody patch on the side of your armor incredulously, no tear at all. "Huh… didn't notice that before," you comment.
"What is it?" Shadow asks, you glance her way as she casts nervously around the room, is it just you or are the bags under her eyes a little darker?
"Looks like our stuff fixes itself," you respond, pointy to the places where blood stains your clothes, but no rip can be found.
She looks a bit incredulous herself, but your undamaged gear tells the truth of it. You glance down to see Linnea inspecting you as well. "This place really is weird. It tries to kill us, but fixes our stuff?" She sounds kind of bemused. She then glances up to meet your eyes, "Good job not losing your head."
"I'm pretty attached to it," you respond dryly in return. A glance to the side shows the glowing mist coalescing into your rewards is pretty big this time. As it solidifies you can see why. There are several pieces of gear as well as a veritable mountain of shards… at least in comparison to your previous hauls.
Giant Executioner's Axe: A heavy iron blade drowned in blood. If held close to the ear, one can hear the final screams of it's victims. Quality 2 10% chance to deal double damage on a successful hit. [Great Axe]
Green Skull Lantern: A clay facsimile in the shape of a skull, green fire dances in the eye sockets. Quality 2 [Talisman]
27 Shards
+25 XP
It's weird how you can apparently see short text descriptions just by looking at stuff. Still, that's a pretty darn good pile of shards. LInnea is the first to react, crouching down to scoop up the weird little skull in her hands, turning it over curiously to stare into the eyes, "I have a Talisman skill, and that's what it says this is, so what does it…" She mutters under her breath. She frowns eyes scanning over something you can't see and then smiles. "Oh, it makes my spells better." She seems pleased, and then almost drops the thing when it's jaw drops open and a short burst of green fire belches out.
"Good thing you turned it around," you say with some amusement as she fumbles with the thing. "Now if you can figure out how to do it on purpose you'll have a way to attack."
"I'll get the hang of it," she responds, with a pout. "Do you two mind if I take it? I can give up some shards from this fight."
"That sounds fair," Shadow responds. "Maybe we can split whatever we can sell the axe for. Unless you want it Yuuka."
You consider that for a second. Do you want it? You aren't any good with axes, but who knows what leveling up your job will give you.
[][Loot] Vote on Loot Allocation.
Once you've figured that out, the three of you search through the now empty room for an exit. It's Linnea that find it, being able to find the hollow space behind the false wall that conceals the next corridor. The next several hours are less exciting. The enemies here are stronger… zombies have armor and skeletons have proper weapons, but you don't run into any more truly dangerous groups, although you have a few close calls with dart and swinging blade traps. Linnea still uses up another heal and you another arc smash on the way though. You collect a decent number of shards and enough experience to gain a level but no further equipment. Who knew dungeon delving involved so much walking around in empty corridors?
+9 Shards
+8 XP
It's probably around mid afternoon, when you arrive at another contentious crossroads. One path goes dry returning the base state of the tower and the other is lit by eerie, floating will' o' wisps.
[] Dry Hall
[] Wispy Hall
(Hope folks don't mind the way I'm doing things in this one, but something that wore on me a bit in other quests was writing out the more trivial fights, so I'm going to stick with glossing over fights that aren't particularly tense or introduce something new and compiling their rewards in one blob.)
-2 Arc Smashes, -1 Annoying!
Xicree
Destroy and Rejoice!
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[X] Take the axe
[X] Give Llnnea the Staff
[X] Dry Hall
[X] Give Llnnea the Staff
[X] Dry Hall
I approve.
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
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You mean the Talisman?
[X]Give Linnea the Talisman
[X] Sell the GreatAxe.
It's just not good enough to be worth switching to (same quality, and 10% chance is too low to really depend on it) even if we do switch to Axes.
[X] Dry Hall
Sirrocco
Tiny but ambitious squid
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[X]Give Linnea the Talisman
[X] Sell the Great Axe.
[X] Dry Hall
The talisman is a significant upgrade for Linnea. The axe does... very little for us. Beyond that, we've blown 2/3 roots, 2/5 heals, 2/3 arc smashes, and 1/? of whatever it is that Shadow has. Best to turn back while we still have some reserves so that if we run into anything on the way back we can handle it.
Wispy hall sounds like the banshee place. Perhaps best to be prepared for that one. Earplugs?
As far as fight acceleration, I'm perfectly happy with treating trivial fights as trivial - especially with this system, where they don't actually cost any resources.
[X] Sell the Great Axe.
[X] Dry Hall
The talisman is a significant upgrade for Linnea. The axe does... very little for us. Beyond that, we've blown 2/3 roots, 2/5 heals, 2/3 arc smashes, and 1/? of whatever it is that Shadow has. Best to turn back while we still have some reserves so that if we run into anything on the way back we can handle it.
Wispy hall sounds like the banshee place. Perhaps best to be prepared for that one. Earplugs?
As far as fight acceleration, I'm perfectly happy with treating trivial fights as trivial - especially with this system, where they don't actually cost any resources.
mrttao
Gone for Good
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10% chance for double damage is statistically an average of dealing x1.1 of current damage. which is nice, but not nice enough to compensate for the fact we actually have skill with club and no skill with axe so overall we would be worse with it. Yes we could learn the axe skill, but opportunity cost
[x] arkeus
[x] arkeus
mrttao
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i thought we are doing that automatically. and if someone "keeps" an item they pay some shards for it?
Kinematics
Well worn.
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Kinematics
Well worn.
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Ah, thought it was already split, since we seem to get a shard count that's pretty close to our XP count, per fight (or sum of background fights). For example, the remainder of the run gave us 9 shards and 8 xp. I guess the items make up the difference.
Anyway, I agree with selling the axe. We're already working on greatclub skill, and I like greatclub better as a weapon, anyway.
Since selling it will get us less than what it would cost us to buy it from a merchant, I'd guess we could get maybe 9 shards for it (based on 10 shards for the armor we got, perhaps retail value of ~12 for the axe, but mostly to get it to an even 3-way split; might be just 6, though). That'd give us another 3 each, for 36 total.
Looking at the Linnea offer, and the likely sales value of items, probably set the pay-in at just 1 shard per other party member. That would cost her 2, for something we might be able to sell for maybe 6-9 (since it's still just a Q2 item). At 2 shards each, it gets rather close to no longer being a 'prize' for the one who gets it (assuming my guess on sales value is accurate), and the differential between party members starts skewing out rather badly.
For example, if we got 9 for the axe, for a total of 36 shards to split, if Linnea paid in 1 shard each, overall split would be 13/13/10. If she paid in 2 shards each, overall split would be 14/14/8. Even though she's only paying 4 shards in the latter example, the perceived differential of 6 between her and both of the other two doesn't look very good. It depends on the perceived fairness of the transaction.
Overall, it depends on the general perceived value of the item, and what Linnea's views are of the rest of the party. That will be a GM call.
On exploring.. well, we did reckless once. Guess we can save our next bout of recklessness for tomorrow.
[X][Loot] Give Linnea the Talisman
[X][Loot] Sell the Great Axe
[X] Dry Hall
Sirrocco
Tiny but ambitious squid
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I'm guessing that 2 shards is probably about right. Remember that 6 shards (not so much "perceived differential" as "effective cost") was the cost for a Q1 armor, this is a Q2 talisman, and talismans aren't necessarily going to be commonly available for sale. It's also a pretty immediate upgrade for her in effectiveness - it gives her an at-will attack that works against the current monsters.
On loot totals... huh. Let's assume a fairly generous effective value of 10 for each if the items (the price of buying Q2 armor). that's 47 shards total. Divide by three adventurers and round up and it's 16 shards each. That's four times the shard total we got for the immediately preceding zombie room. If we instead assume a somewhat miserly 6 per item, we're looking at 13 shards per person - still just over three times the zombie room. Okay. That actually seems pretty fair - especially given the mass of exp that came with it.
On party member strategy... Shadow is a solid contributer. Linnea doesn't bring all that much on the lighter fights, but we can very nearly solo those anyway - if all want to do is grind weak mobs for shards, we don't really need any other party members at this point. On the flip side, for the tougher fights, Linnea is really very useful.
On overall strategy... we're not likely to see any worthwhile gear upgrades with a cost in shards. We have a total of 70 we can spend on currently visible personal upgrades (10 for greatclub, then 15 each for Class, Warrior's Challenge, Breaker, and Steel Stomach). Additionally, we're going to have other skills that we unlock on class up that may cost shards to unlock, and then will cost 15 shards each to get to C. After we've done all that, the only use we have for shards will be potions and other services back in town. We've gotten 25 shards this day just on the even split, before counting in anything we get from the items or anything we pick up moving out. Overall, we'll probably walk out of the dungeon today with enough to shardmax class and greatclub, crank Warrior's Challenge up to D, and have enough left over for food, safe sleeping, and possibly a couple of lesser healing potions. Once we do that... well, shards aren't worthless, exactly, but our ability to turn shards into personal power upgrades goes way down.
So then we start looking at efficiency. In particular, we want to pay attention to how much real improvement we can pull down per day. Right now, shards are getting less useful pretty quickly, and we should get plenty of them no matter what we do. Exp is always good. Dungeon-droppable loot is still going to have a value measured in shards and is unlikely to be significantly better than what we have already. The next step, then, is to progress as fast as we can to the point where we can take on the monsters that drop chunks and T3 loot, while trying to not die. At the moment, that means maximizing exp gain and also building a party to work with while not letting people die. I'm seeing a plan more or less like the following...
- Stage 1: Figure out if there's anyone else worth partying with (by looking around, and partying with them for a day). Deliberately go for challenging rooms (like that iron door, if it's still there, and the grate), backing off once you start dropping below 50% daily resources Keep Linnea with you - she's useful against challenge rooms, she'll be even more useful long-term, and she has problems levelling when not in a party. If you spot a piece of loot that someone you like might want, go ahead and buy it from the loot pile with shards. You can give/sell it to them later (or sell it off if they've managed to get something better)
- Stage 2: Having worked through your potential party members, figure out the group you want, and bring them in on the overall plan. Objective is to make a party who will work well together, and who can work up to facing more difficult challenges relatively quickly. Actively seek out the most dangerous areas you can find, and start sharing shards around a bit - try to get everyone to softcap shardmax relatively quickly, so that you all can start hitting the big targets at less risk.
- Stage 3: Shards (and shard-only fights) become effectively meaningless except to pay for services in town and replenish potion stores. Daily progress is measured in bosses and minibosses per day. Clear each floor and move on to the next.
Sirrocco
Tiny but ambitious squid
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Worth looking into what other folks are doing. There are going to be a lot of strategies out there, some slower than others. The massive mob of sell-swords, for example, aren't even trying to make it to the top. They're looking to grind safely on trash mobs basically forever, pick up some nice loot, and head out as a mercenary company composed of raging badasses with straight C-rank skills and gear of Q2 or higher. Of course, that means that they'll pretty much flatten any fighting force of equivalent size that *hasn't* hit a tower. It's not a terrible plan.
There are going to be some folks that never intend to go into the tower. They'll have largely crafter-oriented or support-oriented classes, and they'll trade mostly for shards. They'll shard up to C, but they're going to have real problems breaking that Q2 barrier - getting to skill B takes a chunk, and if they can't produce anything of higher than Q2 before they get that first chunk, they're going to be hard-pressed to convince anyone to trade it to them until well after else is past the point where it matters. Getting that first slab is going to be even harder. It'd be easier for the alchemist - at some point someone will trade her a chunk just so they can upgrade the quality of potions available for sale, but anyone who's here as a smith will likely have to go into the tower and earn it the old-fashioned way, if at all (or get lucky trading shards for a weapon/armor they can sell for a chunk).
The shard inflation is going to have some *interesting* effects on the town - as the market gluts with the things, it's going to be more and more worthwhile for people to show up and set up shop as, say, a masseuse. Get a 15 shard loan to kickstart your skill, and suddenly you have a high-quality product that few others can offer, in a place where there are some ridiculously wealthy folks looking for almost anything to throw money at. Max out your skills on shards, bribe a few of those shard economy sellswords to walk you through trash mob encounters long enough to pick up a few levels, and you are very much set for life.
Of course, there's a matter of where the food and raw materials come from, long term. There's the obvious possibility of shard economy farmers, and the shard economy crafters can make stuff for export, but shard tourism is also likely to be a thing. There are plenty of wealthy folks out there who would hate the idea of actually risking their lives in a place like this, but wouldn't mind the power-up at all. They lay down some pretty heavy coin for a nice, well-guarded caravan (run by those same C-ranked sellswords) into the tower. They arrive, and if they survive the experience, they can hand over a pile of cash in exchange for a nice healthy handful of shards and a few twink runs to get them up to level 3 or so. They head home with lighter wallets and dramatically increased skills... or stay and set up shop. Whichever.
There may also be folks who can generate raw materials out of thin air via daily powers or in exchange for shards.
Oooh - just realized something. Murdan has a lot of value in a long-run campaign. With the raw mass of skills he has available, he's going to take a lot longer than most to hit shard soft-cap. There's probably a balancing factor that says that each individual skill isn't as effective as the skills of others, but there will probably be a point where he'll happily trade chunk-shares for shards, to the benefit of all involved.
eh... running out of think, a bit. We have to assume that there are at least some who'll follow a strategy more or less like the one I laid out. Ansom is just there to charge in and kill and have fun, driven mostly by boredom and joy. She's not going to be all that *efficient*, but she'll also cut things closer, so if she lives, she's likely to progress pretty quickly. There are some folks who went in for night runs. Either night runs are special in some way or they're burnign the candle at both ends in an attempt to win the race. If it's just the latter, the tower is likely to kill them eventually. If it's the former... that would be good to know about. At some point, we might want to start making night runs too.
thoughts/insights/speculations of others welcome.
There are going to be some folks that never intend to go into the tower. They'll have largely crafter-oriented or support-oriented classes, and they'll trade mostly for shards. They'll shard up to C, but they're going to have real problems breaking that Q2 barrier - getting to skill B takes a chunk, and if they can't produce anything of higher than Q2 before they get that first chunk, they're going to be hard-pressed to convince anyone to trade it to them until well after else is past the point where it matters. Getting that first slab is going to be even harder. It'd be easier for the alchemist - at some point someone will trade her a chunk just so they can upgrade the quality of potions available for sale, but anyone who's here as a smith will likely have to go into the tower and earn it the old-fashioned way, if at all (or get lucky trading shards for a weapon/armor they can sell for a chunk).
The shard inflation is going to have some *interesting* effects on the town - as the market gluts with the things, it's going to be more and more worthwhile for people to show up and set up shop as, say, a masseuse. Get a 15 shard loan to kickstart your skill, and suddenly you have a high-quality product that few others can offer, in a place where there are some ridiculously wealthy folks looking for almost anything to throw money at. Max out your skills on shards, bribe a few of those shard economy sellswords to walk you through trash mob encounters long enough to pick up a few levels, and you are very much set for life.
Of course, there's a matter of where the food and raw materials come from, long term. There's the obvious possibility of shard economy farmers, and the shard economy crafters can make stuff for export, but shard tourism is also likely to be a thing. There are plenty of wealthy folks out there who would hate the idea of actually risking their lives in a place like this, but wouldn't mind the power-up at all. They lay down some pretty heavy coin for a nice, well-guarded caravan (run by those same C-ranked sellswords) into the tower. They arrive, and if they survive the experience, they can hand over a pile of cash in exchange for a nice healthy handful of shards and a few twink runs to get them up to level 3 or so. They head home with lighter wallets and dramatically increased skills... or stay and set up shop. Whichever.
There may also be folks who can generate raw materials out of thin air via daily powers or in exchange for shards.
Oooh - just realized something. Murdan has a lot of value in a long-run campaign. With the raw mass of skills he has available, he's going to take a lot longer than most to hit shard soft-cap. There's probably a balancing factor that says that each individual skill isn't as effective as the skills of others, but there will probably be a point where he'll happily trade chunk-shares for shards, to the benefit of all involved.
eh... running out of think, a bit. We have to assume that there are at least some who'll follow a strategy more or less like the one I laid out. Ansom is just there to charge in and kill and have fun, driven mostly by boredom and joy. She's not going to be all that *efficient*, but she'll also cut things closer, so if she lives, she's likely to progress pretty quickly. There are some folks who went in for night runs. Either night runs are special in some way or they're burnign the candle at both ends in an attempt to win the race. If it's just the latter, the tower is likely to kill them eventually. If it's the former... that would be good to know about. At some point, we might want to start making night runs too.
thoughts/insights/speculations of others welcome.
Kinematics
Well worn.
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Well, each rank up in the job class will unlock skills, and each skill will take probably 25-35 shards to buy and take up to rank C. I don't think we'll be short of ways to use shards for a while, yet.
Even aside from that, being able to freely buy and use the various potions available will be a pretty nice boon. Refresh potions, to recover ability uses, drastically increases our longevity per run, particularly as we start taking on harder fights. All three of the stat potions are quite nice, too. I could easily see spending 40-50 shards on consumables per serious run.
For the remaining party/meet-ups, I think Du and Lona are definitely around somewhere (having been mentioned in previous updates). Not sure of the other proposed characters, but we're already up to a fairly decent selection.
As long as we keep going at the harder targets, Linnea is almost guaranteed a spot. However it's awkward to keep her with us while also trying to expand on the number of people we have a chance to party up with. For the next three-person run, Du can probably fill in her spot for support, and then get another offense type like Lona. (Given Lona's background, Du's equipment enhancement might work very well when paired with her.)
Du will almost certainly need support in the same way that Linnea does, but, like Linnea, isn't in as high a demand right now while things are easy.
Possible party layout at the moment looks like:
Yuuka - lead/tank
Linnea - healer
Shadow or Ansom - physical damage
Murdan or Lona - magical damage
Du - general support
Any combination of Shadow/Ansom/Murdan/Lona is possible for the two DD slots (barring personality conflicts), depending on what we need for a given challenge.
Murdan and Du are both going to take much longer to level up than the others, but their flexibility and force-multiplying factors can put them in high demand at later levels. We want to help them now, so they can help us later.
Interesting ideas in there. And yes, while there will still be value in having shards, inflation will gradually lower their value. Thus the smart plan is always to spend as much as possible now, rather than try to horde and collect. Ideally, end each day with just enough to buy food and potions for the next day's run.
Same thing for gear. The faster you can upgrade, the more valuable the stuff you can then sell off will still be.
mrttao
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will we actually experience shard inflation? remember anyone can eat shards for power. and when someone dies the shards they ate don't come back, and new people walk into town all the time
Sirrocco
Tiny but ambitious squid
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These things are true, I suppose, and they ameliorate the situation to a degree I'm also guessing that once the alchemist gets a chunk or two, we'll see some more powerful and thus more expensive potions. A lot about the timetable is going to depend on how many shard-only skills will unlock for purchase when we rank class up to C, and how much they cost for unlock. Chunk-unlock skills and skills for ranks above C are still going to be pertinent, but they'll come a fair bit slower. It's also goign to depend on whether they're core skills (like Greatclub/Warrior's Challenge/Breaker) or useful-but-secondary (like Steel Stomach)
I'd personally be more inclined to make the next run a four-person run than to leave Linnea behind. She'll make us a lot more effective at hitting the hard targets we want to go after anyway, and if we don't take her, she's reasonably likely to stagnate for a day (...unlike Murdan and Shadow, both of whom can handle themselves well enough to at least solo). Given that today was Linnea's first day in the dungeon, getting her in for another day will still help her out quite a bit. She'll also save us personally a fair number of shards on healing potions. Then once we're done with tomorrow, we'll likely have a pretty clear idea of who we want to bring, and it'll be time to try to deliberately form a group.
Du's support, but I'm not currently convinced that he should be a lock-in for the final group. It depends on how useful he is. That's what pulling him in for a day is for. We also don't really know what slot Lona fills. She might be direct damage, she might be more of a support character. She's a mage, but we don't know what kind of mage. Finally, whie five isn't a bad number, we might only want to go four. At some point, the economy is going to be about chunks, which will come relatively rarely. That fifth person might not be worth the slowdown.
/concurs/
As people get more powerful, they're going to be getting more shards per visit. At the same time, they'll have less need of the things themselves. Once they buy all of their skills up to C, they'll be in a situation where shards are *only* useful for money, and their effective shard output will jump up significantly. Given that adventurers get their income *in* shards, new adventurers aren't generally going to drain any shards out of the economy regardless of if or when they die - they're shard producers from day 1 (even if they're not producing all that many at first). That just leaves the merchant class. Those folks do consume shards, but each of them consumes a lot more shards at first (when they need them for upgrades) than they do later (when they're just raw materials, if that). There's likely to be a steady influx of people, adding to the services available and taking their static draw in shards, but yes, there will most certainly be inflation.
mrttao
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You forget that people can destroy the low level spawn points and as things progress new adventurers will be locked out of shard producing, only consuming
By the point in time where what you describe happens (and it will happen to a degree) the difficulty will be too high for most new adventurers. Peoples coming into town will instead mostly be forced to act as a normal economy, eating shards as they earn them (which will happen since yes there will be some shard inflation) in a hope of getting strong enough to "Break in" to the tower and actually reach higher. Also the increased lethality will kill more adventurers thus wasting more shards. On top of that, those people who do have a fuckton of shards have an incentive to NOT spread them around since it creates competitors (by letting people level up to catch up)
Also, it assumes that higher level enemies will drop massively more shards instead of dropping a little more shards and also bigger fragments
Another thing is using shards for non core skills. I mean, "club" and "axe" are two different skills. So when you start having extra shards you want to get all the weapon skills and many utility skills
So yea, there will be some inflation, but a lot of countering influences