Legacy of the Forgotten Ground (Original)

[siflux]

Well, now that we know the planet is the same size as terra I could in theory calculate the island's size from knowing its 1/10th of the distance to the horizon. But I completely forgot how to. So how many KM or miles wide does it come out to?

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I used this calculator to estimate distance to horizon as roughly 100km. Island has a radius in the neighborhood of 10km. Neighboring islands are about 50km away each, to the North and to the East. MC doesn't have those exact numbers, though.

Partial repairs are better than no repairs at all. Even just repairing the walls to delay break ins by murder hobos would be welcome. How much mana would it cost to enact the repairs we can do?

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Walls are largely in good repair, except a series of doors wrecked by murderhobos. Emergency barricades would run about 1k mana. Proper replacements and cleaning up the rest of the superficial damage will run about 10k mana. Resurrecting Fido is currently impossible with your industrial base and spare parts.

Have we checked if the spare stockpile still there?

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Spare parts exist for a small amount of the electronics for lab computer systems, the mana tanks, and the biomass shaper. You might be able to recover from each of those being damaged once, but only as long as the damage isn't too severe. Apart from what's described in the text, most of the damage is to the thick, durable casing of various things. You had to use the biomass shaper to print a better printing head to print a better printing head. There are also some parts for the mana collector, but the sheer amount of physical destruction to it means that those parts can't get any of it working again.

 

[mrttao]

Thank you for the clarifications.

In that case I am dropping repairs for now.

I am thinking get dragon, then acquire the 1000 MP to make an emergency barricade, then work on building ourself up. With the 10k MP for whatever further repairs we can make being left for the future when we are richer in mana.

[x] Plan need answers 3
-[x] Upgrade adaptability to level 3. (costs 500 XP. 5562 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe regeneration with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 5392 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe wings with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 5222 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe flight with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 5052 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe venomous with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 4882 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe undead with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 4712 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe bug with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 4542 XP remaining)
-[x] Upgrade wings to level 3 on soul. (costs 500 XP. 4042 XP remaining)
-[x] Upgrade flight to level 3 on soul. (costs 500 XP. 3542 XP remaining)
-[x] Try to locate the vandals from before, you owe them.
-[x] Explore further now that you have wings and flight.
-[x] Transmigrate to Dragon when 1300 mana is accumulated (1000 for the transmigration, 300 to revive us if we get killed)

 

[kinglugia]

[x] Plan need answers 3

 

[siflux]

Spoiler: Plan need answers 3

[x] Plan need answers 3
-[x] Upgrade adaptability to level 3. (costs 500 XP. 5562 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe regeneration with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 5392 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe wings with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 5222 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe flight with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 5052 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe venomous with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 4882 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe undead with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 4712 XP remaining)
-[x] Scribe bug with XP immediately. (cost 170XP (adaptability 3). 4542 XP remaining)
-[x] Upgrade wings to level 3 on soul. (costs 500 XP. 4042 XP remaining)
-[x] Upgrade flight to level 3 on soul. (costs 500 XP. 3542 XP remaining)
-[x] Try to locate the vandals from before, you owe them.
-[x] Explore further now that you have wings and flight.
-[x] Transmigrate to Dragon when 1300 mana is accumulated (1000 for the transmigration, 300 to revive us if we get killed)

-2520 XP: <Adaptability 1 → 3>, <Regeneration 0 → 1>, <Winged 0 → 3>, <Flight 0 → 3>, <Venomous 0 → 1>, <Undead 0 → 1>, <Bug 0 → 1>

Soon, you will be a dragon once more. Not today, though. You don't have the Mana for it. It's a serious problem for you, and the local monster population forms a frustrating mix of just strong enough that you can't hunt them continuously and still weak enough not to give you as much Mana as you'd like.

So you'll deal with something else entirely. As a (former) dragon, you've always wanted to fly, but with the humans running the lab caring for you, you had no need to learn. You push with your soul, straining flesh until--

*CRUNCH*

New bones coalesce out of nothing. Skin creeps out of the holes on your back, coating the new handlike shapes. Muscles and tendons connect underneath. Nerves grow in, giving you sensation in your new limbs. Finally, your magical system extends through your wings, providing the lift that biology never could. You flap once, twice, and you're aloft.

Flying comes naturally enough to you. You spiral upwards, circling the lab, until you feel yourself straining to gain more height. Then, you unfurl your wings and glide across the island.

Well, you try to get across the island. By the time you're above the central ridge and the tallest hill, you're straining to keep yourself in the air. You're forced to come to a landing and rest your new organs. If you can't even make it across this island in one go, you don't like your odds of getting to another one altogether without being a stronger flier. Take the relative distances to the horizon of the edge of this island from the middle versus the neighboring islands, use some of the math the humans taught you… You should be able to make it safely across if you can circle the rim of this island. Which would involve flying more than six times as far as you currently can. Even splitting the cost between <Winged> and <Flight>, that'll be expensive.

Right. Middle of island, back near the good vantage point. You didn't see any indication of civilization apart from your lab yesterday. That means those vandals who woke you up either came from some kind of hidden village or had a way to come from another island. And the only place to hide something like that on an island with so little cover would be underground. Which doesn't really help you, because you have no good way to search underground and you already failed to see any kind of surface entrance or other non-human, non-monster humanoid freaks running around. You still trek the rest of the way up the hill to take another look, eating what monsters you find on the way up and grazing as you go.

Yeah, if there's anything out here it's beyond your ability to find it right now. This plan's a bust. You can't find the jerks on this island and you can't yet get to another. There's still one area you can explore, though.

You launch off the hillside, heading back to the lab. You're forced land once more before you make it all the way back, but it still shaves off a lot of the travel time. Gives you the chance to rest up for what's next.

You jump off the edge of the world.

Rock, dirt, stone, boring… Finally, open air. You swoop under the bottom of the island, checking for anything of interest. All you find is confirmation that this definitely isn't a mesa. Bleah. You didn't expect to find anything down here, but you were hopeful. Today feels like an almost complete waste of time so far. You fly back up and land on a large, flat area on the lab roof. You can still get plenty more done today, you're just not sure what the most productive course of action is.

+317 Mana (some killing, some grazing)
+1411 XP (said killing)

If you can boost your derived Flight enough, you can make it to one of the neighboring islands. The XP or Mana cost is on that is prohibitive with just <Winged> and <Flight>, so you'll need to either farm for weeks or figure out some new traits that can boost your derived Flight or at least your range. Or just meet the minimum requirements for a body that's good enough at flight to make it across. Brown Raptors aren't strong enough, but they naturally have <Winged> and <Flight> so they likely can advance into something even better at flying. Or something flight-capable in another family altogether.
It's still day 4
[ ] Plan? (Write-in)

Secondary vote: While new stuff can still be added to the Bestiary by request, I also want to start adding entries to it regularly. You can vote the name of an existing monster in the Bestiary, in which case a new option for it to advance into will be added. You can describe a monster (with words, please don't stat new entries), in which case an entry will be added for either that monster or for something that an existing entry can become which can lead towards it (For example, you could vote for 'Ancient Dragon', in which case an entry for 'Very Young Dragon' would be added off of 'Wyrmling'). Finally, you can describe the effects of a trait you want to see made available. Again, either a new child node will be added to the existing bestiary for a monster whose body has that trait, or at least something leading towards such a monster
[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

 

[siflux]

Some stuff that has not come across in the text, but I want to make more clear for general planning purposes:

This world uses a 24-hour day. The protagonist has been spending 8 hours a day sleeping, 10 hours a day exploring/hunting/being generally active in interesting ways that gets posted about, and the remaining 6 hours doing other stuff that isn't relevant. Why not spend 16 hours a day killing stuff? Mental fatigue. A ten-hour working day is already rough enough.

Eight hours of rest is a full HP/MP heal. This is amortized down for smaller periods of rest. One round takes 6 seconds (10 rounds to the minute). The result of all this is that based on your current HP, adding 2 HP/round of regen (<Regeneration 1> and <Plant 1> basically tripled your heal rate, allowing more passive farming for XP/Mana. In the above post, two hours of monster killing happened, one hour at the end of each flight to and from the tallest hill on the island. At this point in time, the limiting factor on Mana farming speed is the need to recover between fights. In contrast, the first Floofball hunt was limited by the rate at which you could find monsters to eat. For back of the envelope Mana farming calculations, I'm assuming you can find ten fights per hour, and you just went from one Brown Raptor/Horned Bunny eaten per hour to three.

 

[mrttao]

It just occurred to me, the bioprinter can manufacture spare parts. and even barricades... so can they manufacture weapons and armor? what about some magitech gun? Reason I even thought about it is that devil trait gives bonus to equipment but not to natural weapons

I am happy with undead and bug, useful traits. I am thinking for best results with flight we want a body that can fly natively using a system other than wings. Our current derived flight stat is 6, and we need it to be 36. Price goes up on each level though, but having a 3rd trait allows us to spread it out more. Some innate floating like a beholder, genie, or a chinese dragon does would work well there.

Tripling our XP per hour is great. We need to work on cheap ways o f increasing our regen and improving our combat ability to further increase it. At quest start we were limited by encountering enemies, with current flight we can encounter 10 enemies per hour but only have the regen to fight 3 per hour. So we definitely want to increase combat and regen until we can fight 10 an hour

Eight hours of rest is a full HP/MP heal. This is amortized down for smaller periods of rest. One round takes 6 seconds (10 rounds to the minute). The result of all this is that based on your current HP, adding 2 HP/round of regen (<Regeneration 1> and <Plant 1> basically tripled your heal rate

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Looking at it. our current HP is 1660. Dividing by 8 hours is 207.5/hour. dividing by 60 minutes it 3.45833333 per minute. dividing by 10 rounds per minute it is 0.3458333 per round.
So going from 0.35 to 2.35 should be a 6.7x increase not just a tripling.

I am actually not quite sure how much damage we take per fight. although dragon should decrease it (dragon scales reduce damage, 2 attacks with higher damage kill quicker, more HP means better base regen although that doesn't matter much).... I am think we just start raising our regen using XP until we reach 10 fights an hour.

<Regeneration 1>

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should say derived 2 because of plant

<Dragonscale 1>

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Should say derived 13 because of dragon

 

[mrttao]

[x] Plan killing machine
-[x] Increase Regeneration @soul to level 5. 1400 XP cost, 1753 remaining.
-[x] Increase Plant @soul to level 5. 1400 XP cost, 353 remaining.
-[x] Check what kind of weapons and armor you can make using the bioprinter
[x] [BESTIARY] Dragon evolution, if available then one with a type of wingless flight similar to the chinese lung

The above XP upgrades will increase our HP recovery rate from 2.35/round (6 seconds) to 10.35/round. Hopefully getting us closer to that 10 monsters/hour killed target. As well as increasing our damage reduction from 1 to 5.

Actually waiting on the switch to dragon. since we might be able to skip wyrmling entirely and go to a higher stage, thus saving some mana. Or depending on the magic items available for crafting, might want to upgrade to a humanoid demon to more easily use human designed equipment. Or just craft equipment first that can be used by both body types, because the bonus from it would be bigger than the transmigration bonus

 

[kinglugia]

[x] Plan killing machine

mrttao, possible to stockpile for the Dragon evolution instead? I mean, make it so that we get more photosynthesis, Regen, and Toughness would be a good idea for now.

 

[mrttao]

[x] Plan killing machine

mrttao, possible to stockpile for the Dragon evolution instead? I mean, make it so that we get more photosynthesis, Regen, and Toughness would be a good idea for now.

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We don't have photosynthesis. we have herbivore which lets us consume the souls of plants for mana.
Toughness is not a trait that we have available to us. We have Plant which gives damage reduction and regeneration increase. And we have dragonscale which boosts defense, and dragon which boosts anything trait with dragon in its name (like dragonscale).
So I am not sure what you are saying there.

When you say stockpile towards dragon evo, what do you mean? MP or XP?

With XP stockpiling towards dragon evolution we would be aiming to buy @soul trait levels that form the prereqs for the evolution of dragon. Potentially even skipping wyrmling entirely to go straight to a better body, thus saving some mana.
The thing is, we are currently killing 3 of 10 monsters we can an hour. with the limiting factor being entirely our regeneration rate. So upgrading regen will pay for itself very quickly (as well as increase our mana income) at the moment and make us become dragon evolution faster.

With stockpiling MP we would just be gathering up enough MP to transmigrate... it depends on how much the evolution would cost too. At the moment I am not spending any MP though, just checking to see what is available to buy in terms of weapons and armor. My main idea with buying weapons and armor is to increase our monsters killed per hour towards that 10 goal.

 

[siflux]

Our current derived flight stat is 6, and we need it to be 36.

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Flight also provides an island-hopping range of its derived level in km.

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Neighboring islands are about 50km away each, to the North and to the East. MC doesn't have those exact numbers, though.

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You need your derived flight stat to be 50, which is more than six times as much as six. Protagonist was lower-bounding by taking pi to be three. The circumference of a circle is 2πr, it's five times the radius of Lab Island to the neighboring island, and he can't quite make a radius yet. So he needs at least a 6x improvement. Turns out that more than 8x is more informative, but estimating things with no tools only goes so far.

math

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Dammit, I goofed on my numbers. Thanks for calling me out on it; that's part of why I posted it (just in case). The advantage of <Regeneration> over resting to heal is that <Regeneration> works in combat, and strenuous enough activity prevents natural recovery from resting. There are 600 rounds per hour, meaning you heal 1200 per hour from <Regeneration> + <Plant>. With the non-free fights currently costing roughly 200 HP, you should have added six fights per hour, septupling rather than tripling hourly farming rate. One more point of regeneration will move the limiting factor over to finding monsters to eat fast enough. Character sheet and numbers in chapter will be updated shortly have been updated.

<Regeneration 1> should say derived 2 because of plant

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I put [+2 HP/round] by the HP on the derived sheet to indicate that.

<Dragonscale 1> Should say derived 13 because of dragon

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That's not how <Dragon> and <Dragonscale> are intended to interact. In this case, each point of <Dragonscale> adds 2 Def and each point of <Dragon> adds 1 Def (iff <Dragonscale> is known). These values have been factored in to total def. If you have suggestions for better wording on those traits, I'll gladly consider it.

 

[mrttao]

That's not how <Dragon> and <Dragonscale> are intended to interact. In this case, each point of <Dragonscale> adds 2 Def and each point of <Dragon> adds 1 Def (iff <Dragonscale> is known). These values have been factored in to total def. If you have suggestions for better wording on those traits, I'll gladly consider it.

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I guess "<Dragonscale 1> [Derived 7]" would work, since effectively each point in dragon gives 0.5 points of dragonscale. Or it can just be left off since dragonscale itself is a trait that boosts the effective trait of DEF instead of providing a unique status like flight or regeneration does?
Alternatively do away with the [derived X] in the traits and go with

Actually why not just add a few secondary stats like so

Spoiler: char sheet suggestions

HP: 1660/1660 [+2/round]
MP: 760/760
Atk: 70
Def: 49

Horn Gore: Damage 80

Flying: 6
Venom: Deal ATK damage per round for 1 round
Damage Reduction: 1
DoT Reduction: 1
Grazing: 2 MP/hour

<Bug 1>
<Beast 1>
<Devil 2>
<Dragon 12>
<Plant 1>
<Slime 1>
<Undead 1>

<Adaptability 3>
<Bioweapon 1>
<Cultivore 2>
<Dragonscale 1>
<Flight 3>
<Herbivore 1>
<Regeneration 1>
<Venomous 1>
<Winged 3>

 

[mrttao]

One more point of regeneration will move the limiting factor over to finding monsters to eat fast enough. Character sheet and numbers in chapter will be updated shortly have been updated.

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Alright then... on the one hand, tempted to reallocate XP expenditure so we can explore faster. on the other hand I like the life saving security of faster regeneration... And the wasted XP can be recovered in a few hours at our new 10/hour consumption rate... On the other hand if we can increase exploration rate we will get more targets this next turn. So how about

[x] Plan killing machine 2
-[x] Increase Regeneration @soul to level 3. 500 XP cost, 2653 remaining.
-[x] Increase Plant @soul to level 3. 500 XP cost, 2153 remaining.
-[x] Increase Wings @soul to level 5. 900 XP cost, 1253 remaining.
-[x] Increase Flight @soul to level 5. 900 XP cost, 353 remaining.
-[x] Check what kind of weapons and armor you can make using the bioprinter
[x] [BESTIARY] Dragon evolution, if available then one with a type of wingless flight similar to the chinese lung

There, double the increase to regen than what we need to reach 10/hour.
While also giving a +4 to flying to hopefully find more targets per hour. Also, once we go dragon we can spend mana on improving our body's flight and wings. further ameliorating the cost increases per level

 

[LeoAbogos]

I'm tempted to use mana to make a Floofball boosted to Beast 5, so that with a bit more farming we can make the jump to Brown Raptor. Then we can buy Winged and Beast at a pretty substantial discount. Beast only improves Dragonscale at the moment, but it gets stronger the more traits we pick up.

Dragon is in a weird place where the only one we have access to (and will be able to afford any time soon anyway) doesn't give us any advantage in developing our traits. Also less offensive output than Brown Raptor, but a lot more sustainable between the increased health and health-steal attack.

 

[mrttao]

I'm tempted to use mana to make a Floofball boosted to Beast 5, so that with a bit more farming we can make the jump to Brown Raptor. Then we can buy Winged and Beast at a pretty substantial discount. Beast only improves Dragonscale at the moment, but it gets stronger the more traits we pick up.

Dragon is in a weird place where the only one we have access to (and will be able to afford any time soon anyway) doesn't give us any advantage in developing our traits. Also less offensive output than Brown Raptor, but a lot more sustainable between the increased health and health-steal attack.

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We can go straight to brown raptor. no need to stop at foofball on the way.
Dragon will let us kill better than brown raptor so it would let us earn more XP/MP and develop that way. we can also transplant traits unto a body. for example we can add wings to a dragon by spending MP. If it weren't for the ability to spend MP to develop things like a dragon's body wings trait then raptor would indeed let us earn more XP/hour

As for whether its worth to go dragon or raptor... i would like to see what evolutions they have first. Dragon seem to be the best combat chasis though which means most XP and MP income

 

[mrttao]

Weapons:
Claw Swipe: Damage 200
Nibble: Damage 150. Heals one-quarter damage dealt.

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Does the fact the dragon has 2 weapons means it attacks twice per turn?

 

[LeoAbogos]

siflux How does the exp cost for HP/MP/Atk/Def progress? At the moment, direct Def investment is twice as efficient as increasing Dragonscale, and only gets more efficient as Dragonscale increases in level. Beast requires another 3 traits that increase either Atk or Def (less one for each trait that increases both) to match the efficiency of direct investment, plus 2 more traits per level. This is really good, so I'm expecting that it scales fairly aggressively, like maybe +25 or +50 exp per point bought.

 

[siflux]

We can go straight to brown raptor. no need to stop at foofball on the way.

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You can spend 750 Mana to be a Brown Raptor, or you can invest 900XP to get <Beast 4> on soul, Transmigrate to Floofball for 100 Mana, and then immediately advance into Brown Raptor. The latter method has the advantage that going to Brown Raptor at any point in the future will only cost 100 Mana.

Or you can Transmigrate to Floofball for 100 Mana, spend 90 Mana to get <Beast 4> on that body, and go to Brown Raptor like that. Since Mana/XP costs for traits are quadratic (triangle numbers), it's probably going to eventually become more expensive at higher tiers to buy advancement from the monster below than Transmigrating directly into a body. I'll have to keep an eye on the numbers in the future.

Or you can do some other mix of buying improvements to <Beast> on body and soul to advance into Brown Raptor by stopping through Floofball. Any way you cut it, not going through Floofball to hit Brown Raptor is just wasting Mana on the margin. Sorry.

Does the fact the dragon has 2 weapons means it attacks twice per turn?

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No. Current action economy is entirely one action per round. Once you start using it, magic will be used to improve your attacks rather than replace them.

siflux How does the exp cost for HP/MP/Atk/Def progress? At the moment, direct Def investment is twice as efficient as increasing Dragonscale, and only gets more efficient as Dragonscale increases in level. Beast requires another 3 traits that increase either Atk or Def (less one for each trait that increases both) to match the efficiency of direct investment, plus 2 more traits per level. This is really good, so I'm expecting that it scales fairly aggressively, like maybe +25 or +50 exp per point bought.

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Nope, unlike traits those are flat costs. The intended balance is the opportunity cost of not spending XP on traits and not spending Mana on better bodies. I expect the increases to those scores from having a better body to outstrip the effects of having a large starting amount there from soul. The flip side is that traits like <Dragonscale> don't just improve those scores, but are also necessary to unlock better bodies.

 

[siflux]

Spoiler: Plan Killing Machine

[x] Plan killing machine
-[x] Increase Regeneration @soul to level 5. 1400 XP cost, 1753 remaining.
-[x] Increase Plant @soul to level 5. 1400 XP cost, 353 remaining.
-[x] Check what kind of weapons and armor you can make using the bioprinter

[BESTIARY] Dragon: Heavenly Hatchling

-2800 XP: <Regeneration 1 → 5>, <Plant 1 → 5>

You've been an Imp all morning, and your body's instincts are telling you something. They're telling you that you really ought to be using equipment. This body can headbutt things ably enough, but it can be so much more damaging with a little artifice. And artificer you may not be, but how hard could it be to make the Biomass Printer output a sharpened slab of metal or a pole with a pointy end?

Harder than you expected, it turns out. Your lab's computers don't have premade designs for any weapons or armor, and while you have instinctual knowledge telling you how to use simple gear, you don't have instinctual visualizations of them like you do for most kinds of monsters. There's probably some kind of trait to make this easier.

Sword and spear transfer from your mind into blueprints, but the pictures onscreen look, well, lame. Not sharp enough. Kind of off. You try again, using what the screen shows as a visual aid. It's an improvement, but you think you can do better. And that shaped tin can you imagined a stronger Devil wearing looks like it needs joints. And...

Gained <Bladesmith 1>, <Armourer 1>. Refer to Mechanics post for Mana cost of equipment creation on the Biomass Shaper.

...And you don't realize how much time has passed until you notice that it's getting dimmer out. You think you can print off some equipment for a humanoid body plan that'll be better than just goring things. You'll need to put a lot more thought into shaping armor for anything non-humanoid, or how to make weaponry fit for anything other than a human's hand with opposable thumb, but that's fine for most Devil monsters. Probably a lot of Undead too, come to think of it.

You're definitely not going to be able to make any of the really cool human weapons, though. You're not even entirely sure how their non-magical energy beams work, and while you understand the idea of 'explosion propels slug', you don't know how to make that into a viable weapon with the kind of excruciating detail these systems need. Likewise, you know humans had amazing designs for armor, but your limit is 'physical barrier material cannot be cut because it's stronger than skin or scale'. Too bad you don't have any human textbooks on the subject. Or even just premade blueprints to directly print off some of the stuff.

END DAY 4

[ ] Plan? (Write-in)

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

 

[LeoAbogos]

That reminds me, total brain blank for me there, can we just use the battleaxe that got left stuck in a wall? It's probably not in pristine condition, but wouldn't surprise me if it were still superior to the 1000 mana hunk of metal we can make ourselves.

 

[mrttao]

Alright, no blueprints is a problem... well then, I guess we will be going dragon after all.

You can spend 750 Mana to be a Brown Raptor, or you can invest 900XP to get <Beast 4> on soul, Transmigrate to Floofball for 100 Mana, and then immediately advance into Brown Raptor. The latter method has the advantage that going to Brown Raptor at any point in the future will only cost 750 Mana.

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should that not have been 100 mana?

 

[mrttao]

[x] Plan Dragon
-[x] Buy dragonflight @soul and upgrade it to level 4. 1070 XP used.
-[x] Hunt until you have 1150 mp and then transmigrate into dragon wyrmling (keep 150 mp in reserve in case we die and need a replacement body)
-[x] At that point you should have enough XP to get all remaining traits at level 1. (6 elements, dragonbreath, and hopefully some sort of scent tracking).
[x] [BESTIARY] Something with scent tracking trait

Right, it's time to become a dragon again. Scent will hopefully help us track food. It's probably been too long to track down the vandals sadly. Maybe if we really go full bore on scent upgrades?

Switching to dragon for the extra power. From there we will just have our monster body evolve.

That dragon evo is a nice source of dragonflight and unlocked magic for us (yay!), but I am not sure it is the right path for us. Maybe a more physical dragon body with magic coming from our soul? we will see what other kinds of dragon evolutions are available.

 

[mrttao]

<Dragon>Increases the effects of all traits with Dragon in the name by X.

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siflux just to be clear.
Dragon breath deals 50X damage. So level 1 dragon breath with level 12 dragon will mean our dragon breath deals 50*1+12 = 62 damage?

How would it affect dragonflight though?

----

Spoiler: some math

So... wyrmling starts with
<Dragon 1>
<Dragonscale 1>
And our current soul has the following relevant traits
<Dragon 12>

for heavenly hatching evolution (at no mana cost) we need the following prereqs (the sum of body and soul)
<Dragon 15>
<Dragonbreath 5>
<Fire 10>
<Light 5>
<Dark 5>

Step 1: upgrade dragon@body to level 3 for 50 MP
Theoretically we could upgrade soul but it would be insanely expensive and impractical at this point.

Step 2:
Buy dragonbreath, fire, light, dark@soul for 170MP each, allowing us to add them to body for 10MP each.
OR
buy the above for body @20MP each (allowing us to scribe them into soul for 90XP each)

Step 3:
Spend 1400XP and 140MP to get fire to 5 on body and soul.

Step 4:
spend 500XP and 20MP OR 200XP and 50MP to raise dragonbreath, light, and dark

Now, the above is if we want to reach heavenly hatchling the soonest. However, all the MP used to upgrade the body for it is wasted. since it will automatically raise those traits much higher than they show up here... on the other hand, wasting that mana saves us XP, since after this upgrade occurs the big boost to all those traits will give us XP discount for upgrading said stats. Actually for long term growth it might be better to spend only MP to jump to said higher dragon form, and then spend all our XP to buy those traits at discount and make them permanent (thus if our body dies, next time we would only spend the base 1000 MP for a dragon wyrmling and immediately evolve to higher tier dragon).

If we are going for only MP spent to evolve.
50MP for dragon prereq
160MP for dragonbreath 5
160MP for light 5
160MP for dark 5
560MP for fire 10
Total MP to evolve = 1090 MP
Total MP cost for body = 2090 (a huge discount from the 10,000 needed to just get it outright without bothering with evolution)

Once we do evolve to a heavenly hatchling we will get those body stats
<Dragon 50> (currently at 12, 40% discount until 20, 30% discount until 30, 20% discount until 40, 10% discount until 50)
<Dragonbreath 25> (currently at 0, 30% discount until level 5, 20% discount until level 15, then 10% discount until level 25)
<Dragonflight 15> (currently at 0... but will be at 4 if plan dragon wins)
<Dragonscale 10> (currently at 0)
<Fire 25> (currently at 0)
<Light 15> (currently at 0)
<Dark 15> (currently at 0)

Then once we did that, we could spend the XP to get the prerequisites permanently at a hefty discount.
1620XP (1080XP discount) for dragon 14 (wyrmling gives +1 by default)
1050XP (450XP discount) for dragonbreath 5
1200XP (300XP discount) for light 5
1200XP (300XP discount) for dark 5
3850XP (1650XP discount) for fire 10

This means in the future to return to heavenly hatchling we just need 1000MP for wyrmling and can instantly evolve to it. Also, effectively doubles our score for all of the above giving us more combat powers.

 

[siflux]

That reminds me, total brain blank for me there, can we just use the battleaxe that got left stuck in a wall? It's probably not in pristine condition, but wouldn't surprise me if it were still superior to the 1000 mana hunk of metal we can make ourselves.

Click to shrink...

Nice eye. I'd actually forgotten about that too. Damage 350. Wood shaft, steel head. Can't be too old, because the wood is still in good condition.

should that not have been 100 mana?

Click to shrink...

Thank you, fixed.

Dragon breath deals 50X damage. So level 1 dragon breath with level 12 dragon will mean our dragon breath deals 50*1+12 = 62 damage?

How would it affect dragonflight though?

Click to shrink...

Yes, that is correct. <Dragonbreath 1> with <Dragon 12> yields a Damage 62 weapon.

<Dragonflight 1> with <Dragon 12> results in 13 points of derived flight from <Dragonflight>. As that's currently more than what you're getting out of <Winged>, you'd get that full amount, but only half of <Winged>. Assuming you buy <Dragonflight 1> and nothing else, this would put your total flight at 3 base from <Flight 3> + 13 from <Dragonflight> + (1​/2​) 3 from Winged = 17.5. In combat, this would truncate down to 17; in the field, the half-klick of flight range may or may not be useful.

 

[mrttao]

Yes, that is correct. <Dragonbreath 1> with <Dragon 12> yields a Damage 62 weapon.

<Dragonflight 1> with <Dragon 12> results in 13 points of derived flight from <Dragonflight>. As that's currently more than what you're getting out of <Winged>, you'd get that full amount, but only half of <Winged>. Assuming you buy <Dragonflight 1> and nothing else, this would put your total flight at 3 base from <Flight 3> + 13 from <Dragonflight> + (1/2) 3 from Winged = 17.5. In combat, this would truncate down to 17; in the field, the half-klick of flight range may or may not be useful.

Click to shrink...

Would it increase our encounters per hour above 10? or would we need something else like scent tracking for that?

 

[siflux]

Would it increase our encounters per hour above 10? or would we need something else like scent tracking for that?

Click to shrink...

For the time being I'm going to be hard capping farm rate at 10 encounters/hour. You're going to need to find stronger monsters to eat or get them to start appearing in groups if you want more Mana from generalized local slaughter.

Something like scent tracking would probably be useful for finding specific encounters. Right now, Lab Island's encounter chart is basically equal parts birbs and bunnies, with a small basically irrelevant number of Floofballs left (mostly fresh spawns, most of the fuzzies who were around a few days ago aren't Floofballs anymore).

 

[mrttao]

Ok so, in light new data. If we evolve to Heavenly Hatchling Dragon our derived flight stat from body alone would be 65, more than the 50 needed to leave the island. then there would be +12 from our soul's dragon ability, +3 from our souls flight ability, and +1.5 from wings.... so, plenty.
And since we are going that direction anyways, might as well use mana to unlock it and then XP to upgrade with the discounts.

so...

[x] Plan Dragon 2
-[x] Hunt until you have 1150 mp and then transmigrate into dragon wyrmling (keep 150 mp in reserve in case we die and need a replacement body)
-[x] Continue hunting for an additional 1090 mp is acquired (1240 total MP if you consider that we always keep 150 MP in reserve), spend them on:
--[x] 50MP for dragon@body to level 3
--[x] 160MP for dragonbreath@body to level 5
--[x] 160MP for light@body to level 5
--[x] 160MP for dark@body to level 5
--[x] 560MP for fire@body to level 10
-[x] Once all of the above purchases are made, we meet the prerequisites for heavenly hatchling, evolve to Heavenly Hatchling.
-[x] Once evolved to heavenly hatchling, spend XP to buy
--[x] dragonbreath@soul to level 5
--[x] light@soul to level 5
--[x] dark@soul to level 5
--[x] fire@soul to level 10
--[x] dragon@soul to level 14
--[x] dragonflight@soul to level 5
--[x] earth, ice, and air @soul to level 1
[x] [BESTIARY] Something with scent tracking trait

except dragonflight, earth, ice, and air, the rest of the XP expenditures will use the heavy discount from being a heavenly hatchling to permanently meet the prereqs of heavenly hatchling. reducing its cost to 1000mp only (for the wyrmling body)

Damage Reduction: 1

Click to shrink...

siflux in our derived sheet damage reduction should be 5 (because of plant 5)

 

[LeoAbogos]

Sure I'll go in for it

[x] Plan Dragon 2

 

[kinglugia]

[x] Plan Dragon 2

 

[siflux]

Spoiler: Plan Dragon 2

[x] Plan Dragon 2
-[x] Hunt until you have 1150 mp and then transmigrate into dragon wyrmling (keep 150 mp in reserve in case we die and need a replacement body)
-[x] Continue hunting for an additional 1090 mp is acquired (1240 total MP if you consider that we always keep 150 MP in reserve), spend them on:
--[x] 50MP for dragon@body to level 3
--[x] 160MP for dragonbreath@body to level 5
--[x] 160MP for light@body to level 5
--[x] 160MP for dark@body to level 5
--[x] 560MP for fire@body to level 10
-[x] Once all of the above purchases are made, we meet the prerequisites for heavenly hatchling, evolve to Heavenly Hatchling.
-[x] Once evolved to heavenly hatchling, spend XP to buy
--[x] dragonbreath@soul to level 5
--[x] light@soul to level 5
--[x] dark@soul to level 5
--[x] fire@soul to level 10
--[x] dragon@soul to level 14
--[x] dragonflight@soul to level 5
--[x] earth, ice, and air @soul to level 1

[BESTIARY] Beast: Fluffy Fox

Yesterday was not the day to finally be a dragon once more. Today, on the other hand, is. You've gotten a lot stronger in a hurry, and you're going to use that to hunt your way back to the top of the food chain. Maybe even become an even better dragon. You'll see how much you can kill today.

First up, time to be clever. You don't have the Mana to burn on actually printing out a weapon, but there is that battleaxe you pulled out of the wall when you were fixing things. It's serviceable, and if unremarkable compared to the kind of quality you know is possible, it's at least sharper than any horns, teeth, or claws you can bring to bear right now. Trace amounts of Devilish instinct flow through you as you step outside and give the weapon a practice swing. It's huge compared to your Imp body, but you have the raw strength to control it anyway.

Spoiler: Vs Horned Bunny

Deal 352 Dmg * 70 Atk / 15 Def = 1642 Damage.
Horned Bunny is killed with no chance to attack!

Spoiler: Vs Brown Raptor

Deal 352 Dmg * 70 Atk / 20 Def = 1232 Damage.
Brown Raptor is killed with no chance to attack!

Your vorpal axe goes snicker-snack. Your prey doesn't stand a chance. Ah, it's like hunting Floofballs all over again. You eat on the move, munching leaves as you search for prey to slaughter and then promptly do so.

+2230 Mana
+10,970 XP

It takes you all day, but by the time you retire back to your lab you have enough Mana to outgrow your brief home. Ordinary this axe may be, but it was still a vital tool in your ascendancy. Gently, almost reverently, you lean it against a sturdy metal… something. It's solid, so you're not sure what's inside it. Doesn't look structural. Lab system casing?

Whatever. Time to become better.

Like you have so many times these past few days, you let your soul drift out of your body. With no more ontological force maintaining it, the Imp shell rapidly breaks down. Meanwhilst, the Biomass Shaper is already hard at work solidifying Mana into a glorious shape, clawed and scaled. For all that you can be anything, this is what you truly are.

You are a dragon.

-1000 Mana (Transmigration to Wyrmling)
+10,000 XP (Achievement: Wyrmling Reborn)

But that's not enough. When you were young, before you first Transmigrated with the help of humans, you thought that the part of you that would outlast your bodies was more important than improving any individual body. You have since come to realize that while that isn't wrong, it's a lot easier to improve quickly when you go for the easy prey. A trivial amount of Mana lends your body the understanding it needs to continue growing. More reinforces your lungs, letting you draw forth raw power into devastating blasts. A primal understanding of Fire, hot and destructive infuses your claws, your lungs, your fangs. Following it, Light, dazzling and brilliant. And in antipodal lockstep, gnawing and blinding Dark.

-1080 Mana (Dragon, Dragonbreath, Fire, Light, Dark)

Your body stretches, elongating as it struggles to contain the new and exciting powers with which you're infusing it. And you let it, until you're as long as your Imp-self was tall, but so much bulkier. And dense with might.

Finally, a body worthy of your glory. Like this, you could fly all the way to those other islands. You could track down those vandals, assuming they were on one of those islands. See if there's some kind of civilization out there. Maybe learn their language and start a cult. Find more human artifacts like your lab.

Can't get too full of yourself, though. You aren't even one percent of one percent of the way to completing your great task. To living up to what humanity thought you were capable of accomplishing, and begged you to do even if they wouldn't survive to see it.

Tomorrow. It's late now, and you're tired. Tomorrow, you leave the nest that is this island.

-1200 XP <Dragonbreath 0 → 5>
-1620 XP <Dragon 12 → 14>
-1350 XP <Dragonflight 0 → 5>
-3600 XP <Fire 0 → 10>
-1090 XP <Light 0 → 5>
-190 XP <Air 0 → 1>
-218 XP <Ice 0 → 1>
-1234 XP <Dark 0 → 5>
-192 XP <Earth 0 → 1>

END DAY 5

[ ] Plan? (Write-in)

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

 

[mrttao]

A vorpal axe sounds quite valuable... why leave it? My guess is that, we found it embedded in the power line from the mana storage device. whomever used it must have been vaporized by the mana discharge when they broke it? Or maybe it only became vorpal from absorbing all that mana?

Those fox monsters having magic talent... do they evolve into multi tailed humanoid foxes?

Scent Tracker can also be used out of combat to find enemy encounters identical to those you have previously faced, or to follow the trails of specific individuals who have been present no more than X hours prior.

Click to shrink...

well, it's been 5 days already. so we would need a scent level of 120 to catch up... not viable.

Anyways, I am leaning towards doing a bit more hunting to fix the lab as much as we can (10k mana) and barricade it (1K MP) for peace of mind, then go out exploring.
siflux you mentioned before emergency barricades are 1k MP. and fixing everything we can 10k. Does fully fixing make the emergency barricades obsolete? Also, would we be able to tell what is going on in the lab? (that is, sense someone is trying to break down the door and run back to defend it?).

If we drop a body far from the lab, how long does it take our soul to travel back? and how long does it take to print a new wyrm body? and how long does it take it to evolve? (since we our soul + wyrm body will now meet the prerequisites of heavenly hatchling right off the bat without any further upgrades needed)

Ice Resist: -33 (Vulnerable!)

Click to shrink...

How does vulnerability and resistance works? Is it a % of the attack that is reduced/increased?
If not a percentage than how does vulnerability work? For resistance you could go "5 damage taken - 69 resistance to fire = 0 damage taken (or does it = heal?)"
But what of vulnerability? 1 damage taken +33 from vulnerability = 34 damage taken?

Here are the batch costs to go from 0 to a certain level. Those values all assume you have a starting score of 0, no level 1 penalty, no discounts.
Level 5: 150 MP / 1500 XP
Level 10: 550 MP / 5500 XP
Level 15: 1200 MP / 12000 XP
Level 20: 2100 MP / 21000 XP
Level 25: 3250 MP / 32500 XP
Level 30: 4650 MP / 46500 XP
Level 35: 6300 MP / 63000 XP
Level 40: 8200 MP / 82000 XP
Level 45: 10350 MP / 103500 XP
Level 50: 12750 MP / 127500 XP

Here are the differential costs of only the last 5 levels
Level 5: 150 MP / 1500 XP
Level 10: 400 MP / 4000 XP
Level 15: 650 MP / 6500 XP
Level 20: 900 MP / 9000 XP
Level 25: 1150 MP / 11500 XP
Level 30: 1400 MP / 14000 XP