“-GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE RIGHT N- oh, hello!”
“I can hear you, y’know.”
“Then why did it take you thirty minutes to respond?”
“I was designing monsters.”
“Well, we have land to sort out. Where do you reckon your land butts up to mine?”
“OUR land, you stupid cat!” the dwarf interjected.
“I know that holefreak!”
“Don’t call me a holefreak!”
“Don’t call me a cat!”
I took back the conversation. “Well, kitten-”
She swiped at me and hissed. I ignored her.
“I reckon that my land encompasses just about this ramp structure. This is about the tax station?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll make an entrance room when I make the respawn crystals. Don’t build on this side of the river, I need to put side entrances somewhere, but the bridge for weak people can go right at the base of the ramp.”
Then I walked back inside. I have a boss to design.
—
The labyrinth would have the ability to raise and lower walls on a grid to make an entirely random layout every day, all I had to do was make some simple logic (simple because of magic, programming this would be rather difficult, I imagine) to make the labyrinth each day and a timer to keep track of said day. I put a simple brass key at the “center” of the labyrinth, and made it unlock the boss room door via magic signature, so it couldn’t be picked. Then, the boss. I started with a Gearshift Spider, sized up to twice its original, with five duelist torsos where they would be on a normal drider. The leftmost head would spear fight, the second-to-left would support cast, the middle would have two massive tower shields, the second-to-right would attack cast, and the rightmost would swordfight. The legs were tipped with Blackwarp, the mouth (where a normal spider’s would be) would be able to reel in webs in order to charge the Blackwarp, and none of the normal leg weaknesses would allow access to the interior. You could still rip off the legs with the normal tactics, but the only way to get into the main chassis would be through the tank head.
I will call it, *Chosen Name*, the Hammerforged Hydrider
The floor would be covered in moving platforms, spinning and sliding all over in patterns, and if you left the boss alone for more than thirty seconds, a few random adds would spawn. If the adds were hammerfrogs, and if the boss was missing legs, they would spawn with legs for the boss to reattach. These would not spawn new torsos. It was a lot of rather complicated logic, that I won’t go into because of the old adage: “When I made this code, only I and God knew how it worked. Now, only God knows.” At least I know that it’s already fully optimized, I spent half a night on just streamlining.
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Two more things: a list of enhanced materials that I've found so far, and fixing some problems on the first floor.
Alder needs some better defenses; he’s currently made of regular wood. Fortunately, I can go with a classic. I got the recipe for livingwood from the high/wood elf merc, it’s just enhanced wood, but grown in a special soil that makes it possible for humanoids with the druid class to actually enhance it. If I combine livingwood with Pyre Iron, and enhance (doesn’t that have interesting implications) I get Ironwood. This will be Alder’s new body.
Interestingly, when I made the EntThrall branches an Alder’s body out of livingwood, it took on a new glow. For a few seconds, it was burnt orange, golden, and a vibrant green, which would match with Aeld trees that I’ve read about (interesting that Aeldwood is possessed livingwood, I need to experiment with fae) but then it faded to a sickly grey, a dark, toxic green, and… still a burnt orange, I guess that is consistent. Must be to do with his status as technically undead, since I made the Undead Ents out of, well, a dead stump.
I need loot. The first floor is easy enough, livingwood for the mobs and Wraithwood for Alder. I was scared of the second, until I realized I could just make the mobs drop the metal they’re made of. Simple storage pace shenanigans make it easy to manifest the mobs and manifest loot instantly.
The Hydrider has chosen its name: Tickfreeze. Weird that it retrieved a minecraft command from my thoughts about engineering, but oh well, it likes it, and it should be sufficiently intimidating to any adventurer that doesn’t know the context, which should be everyone.
—
I need to experiment with enhanced materials. Ironwood showed that alloys of enhanced materials can be enhanced which could open the door to many, MANY new and powerful materials. Maybe even ones that shouldn’t be released to the world. Which means I need to take some precautions.
[Marcy, I have an idea that you’re not gonna like.]
[You know how I was experimenting with making Alder stronger?]
[Well, if I combine Pyre Iron and Livingwood, and enhance again, I get Ironwood. Doesn’t that have some ]
[Let’s do it!]
We experimented for the next few days. I don’t have time to go over all of the materials, but some of the most interesting were thus:
A complicated combination of lots of various materials made a material that I call Quadruple Down. 5 pounds can level twenty miles with heat, radiation, and . The only reason I and the town still exist is because I did all of these experiments in a blackwarp subspace reinforced with ten feet of Rearden metal, the toughest substance I can make. Marcy was very upset.
Adamantine, Mythril, Orichalcum (which is actually a basic material for Rearden metal), Magnesis, Tempter’s gold, and apex platinum.
Adamantine channels water, Mythril Pure, Orichalcum Earth, Magnesis lightning (and is also very magnetic), Tempter’s Gold gives you levelups based on how much you can absorb into your pool at once, and Apex Plat gives dangersense and x-ray vision.
Every one of these materials made Marcy more and more panicked, ranting and raving about how the guild would destroy or enslave us to get them, until I reminded her that I have a magically binding contract that states that they can’t do that.
I also dedicated about an hour of pittance attention to making the respawn crystals. The same went for the second floor, which got a theming of Victorian steampunk red velvet and brass. Very easy decoration.