The Crafter's Dilemma: A Dungeon Core Novel (Dungeon Crafting Book 3) by Jonathan Brooks (english readers txt) 📗

Winxa, do you have any idea how much the cost will increase if I choose to reduce the Mana Cost of my Dungeon Monsters?

“…hmm…if I remember correctly – and keep in mind that it’s been quite a while since the last time I worked with a dungeon that had access to the Advancement system – the cost doubles each time.  So, if it costs 15 points now, it’ll cost 30 next time, then 60, then 120—”

Ok, I understand – thanks, Winxa.  If that was indeed how it worked, then Sandra didn’t have enough to make it worthwhile – she was 8 AP short of obtaining the Advancement twice.

At least…she was currently 8 AP short.

Looking at the possible ways she might obtain more AP, there were a few options to acquire additional Points – though only a few were obtainable at the moment.

Advancement Points (AP)

Source

Criteria

Point Value

Lifetime Earned Points

Lifetime Spent Points

Core Size

Receive AP upon Core Size upgrade (does not count for Core Size 1 nor upgrade stages)

1 per Core Size upgrade

19 AP

(19X Core Size Upgrades)

19/19 AP

Number of Rooms

Receive AP for each distinct dungeon room at least 4,000 cubic feet in size (20ftx20ftx10ft minimum)

1 AP per qualified room

25 AP

(25X Qualifying Rooms)

25/25 AP

Unique Dungeon Fixtures

Receive AP for each never-before-seen fixture in your dungeon

2 AP per fixture

26 AP

(13X Crafting Stations)

26/26 AP

Creature Eradication

Eradicate sources of nearby creatures (i.e. lairs and spawning areas)

3 AP per eradication

6 AP

(1X Territory Ant Colony, 1X Bearling Lair)

6/6 AP

Sentient Race Elimination

Eliminate members of sentient races

1 AP per 10 eliminations

8 AP (12X Orc, 71X Gnome)

8/8 AP

Sentient Race Bonding

Form a new Dungeon Visitor Bond with a member of a sentient race

1 AP per 2 Bonds

8 AP (1X Orc/Dwarf, 6X Elf, 9X Gnome)

1/8 AP

Dungeon Core Destruction

Receive AP for eliminating another Dungeon Core

30 AP per Core

30 AP (1X Reptile Classification Core)

0/30 AP

?????

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

(?????) Denotes an unknown, unique Source of Advancement Points.  Perform this unknown action to unlock more information.

Total Advancement Points Earned and Spent

122 AP

85 AP

Total Advancement Points Available

37 AP

Again, upgrading her Core Size was out of the question, so that option was ignored.  Creating Unique Dungeon Fixtures seemed easy enough, but at the moment there wasn’t anything that she could think of to build that hadn’t been built already; she knew of a few other crafting stations that she could potentially create, but most of them were variations of what she had already set up.  The one thing that she thought should’ve been unique enough to qualify was the Enchantment Repository Room she had set up, but she suspected that because it wasn’t necessarily “finished”, it didn’t count yet.

Adding another eight rooms to the Number of Rooms in her dungeon was also a possibility, but that would take both Mana and time to complete; it wasn’t much of a hardship, however, so Sandra put a portion of her attention to work on adding rooms behind her Home that led deeper underground.  She had no distinct purpose for them, and it would most likely take a day and a half to make rooms and tunnels that would meet the minimum size required by the Advancement criteria; despite that, it was a simple way to earn Points that didn’t require much effort.

As for the other options, Sentient Race Bonding as Visitors was always a possibility but wouldn’t likely happen anytime soon.  The same went with destroying another Core; she was still recovering from losing all of her constructs during the assault on the Reptile-Classification dungeon and the defense of her own – she wasn’t prepared to attack another dungeon anytime soon, nor was she inclined to unless there was no other choice.

Sentient Race Elimination was along those same lines, but she was even more reluctant to kill people unless they were attacking her dungeon – and even then, she would work towards a different solution.  She wasn’t entirely against killing them if they proved to be a threat that couldn’t be persuaded to focus their energies elsewhere, but for her it would be a last resort; she wanted to ultimately help the people all survive, not do the nearby dungeons’ jobs for them.  Sure, it was ultimately for selfish reasons – like she had told her Visitors earlier – but that still couldn’t change the fact that she didn’t want to see any more of them die if it was preventable.

Therefore, the last option she had was Creature Eradication.  Sandra was reluctant to specifically go out and hunt living creatures for her own benefit, however; it was one thing to defend her Home and dungeon from Territory Ants and Bearlings that were trying to destroy her Core, it was something else entirely actually seeking them out and killing them all in their homes.  Even though she had just participated in killing thousands of reptilian Dungeon Monsters, she also knew that they were all relatively mindless forms of Mana that were given a shape – so it wasn’t quite the same thing in her mind.

When she considered it further – and looked around her AOI to search out the three Bearling lairs and half-a-dozen Territory Ant colonies she identified earlier – she realized that eliminating them might actually be beneficial.  If she really was planning on creating some sort of…distribution network…that involved delivering crafted goods to the different races, then anything traveling through the barren wasteland was walking through dangerous territory.  The route towards the Elven and Gnome villages that her constructs and others had taken previously had gotten lucky; none of them had strayed too close to one of the creatures’ homes, so they weren’t attacked.  If they had taken a slightly different route, though, things might have been quite a bit