The answer was not many at all. The way Doyle had learned to draw four dots in a square. Then draw a plus sign inside that square. You can make it bigger by extending lines from the dots and the plus then adding more dots at the new corner and so on. Or that is how he remembers it. But once you have that, start at one end of the plus and connect it to the next line or dot over. Either way will work, but you need to remember the direction. Then go to the next line or dot over from the original plus line and connect that to the next one going in the same direction. After that repeat it until everything is connected, leaving only a single way in.

Doyle tried this several times with the lines spaced out different amounts. In the end, though, he wanted enough space to have the rooms move around and vary so he needed five small rooms worth of space. That in mind, he could only fit the basic plus and dots. Still, when he looked over the lines of stone he had used to rough it out, he was satisfied. While a more proper labyrinth should be bigger, this will do fine. Now to fill in the rooms and halls.

Though the overview gave him an idea. At the edges, the rooms will have low ceilings. But as it gets closer to the center, the ceiling will get higher. Not just the ceiling, though. The floor will angle downward as well. That way, if the delvers want to retreat, it will be an uphill affair.

Plan in mind, Doyle places down rooms. It takes a while with him jostling every room around before he is happy. In the end, the basic outline of the floor ends up with many blind corners and alcoves to hide his wolves in. Though it looks quite artificial with all the sharp edges and flat walls. That, however, will be fixed when he applies the room patterns.

‘Speaking of room patterns, didn’t I just get a bunch of them at a high level? I must have been distracted at the time or I would have asked what it does for me. I guess instead of running off to Ally, I can try to figure it out myself. [System, show me my room patterns please.]’

{Room Patterns: cave room lv20, plains room lv20, vine room lv20, farm room lv20, camp room lv20, boulder plains room lv20, mystical mountain valley room lv20, pasture room lv20, mountain side room lv20, cliff room lv20, forest room lv20, and herb garden room lv20}

A quick look over the list and Doyle focuses on one of the larger rooms and applies the cave room to it. As he watches, things are normal enough at first. However, the changes just don’t stop. The room reaches a point that would have counted as finished, but details keep forming. 

What is important to Doyle though is the fact that none of the changes are shocking. Every single one of them is something he could have thought of. That is, if he had the time to focus on every detail of the room. Still, the changes stop before everything he can think of has been done. Beyond that, it doesn’t include any special features.

Every change is cosmetic. The walls have small cracks and rock layers visible. The floor has the look of being worn down over years. Even the stalagmites and stalactites have moisture on them with the occasional drip of water.

‘This will make room design a lot easier. Now I just need to figure out how to get more patterns. Though with what Ally said about making my own weapons, I can probably get my own room patterns. Actually, now that I think about it, I got the plain room pattern by making the room. Why haven’t I been getting the pattern for all the rest of the stuff I’ve done?’

‘Once again, Ally should know. Hell, she should have told me about this already. Meh, just need to figure it out. Though looking at the way the pattern formed the room, I have a clue. Maybe I didn’t go into enough detail before. Next time I plan to make a new room design, I should focus on a single room, starting from a blank room and filling in all the details. Might even get higher level patterns for it if I spend enough time on it. Though that is the rub, isn’t it? Once I have the time to focus on a single room to the exclusion of all else, it will be a fun project. But I don’t see that happening any time soon.’

All that aside, Doyle is quite satisfied with the cave room pattern and so spreads it to the entire floor. While this makes the floor seem empty, that is kind of the point. He isn’t going to throw up a sign telling any divers that faster clears are better. Instead, he is just going to push them towards the end with constant harassment and nothing else to do.

Sure, it will disappoint people with harvesting skills. Then again, it could almost be said that he had been catering too much to them. By having the monsters drop herbs and stuff, at least anyone has a chance to get them. But that brings Doyle back to the monsters and the 7800 points he can spend.

A dungeon wolf costs 50, while the wind and stone wolves only cost 75. The pricing is a bit confusing for Doyle. The elemental wolves are both level four monsters to begin with, so he would expect them to cost a good bit more. Still, he won’t complain about it and instead settles down to figure out how he wants the wolves to attack.

As the dungeon stands, he isn’t able to have attacks come from behind. Yes, there are side rooms that will allow ambushes, but once the floor is mapped out, all the dangers will be known. Doyle sighs to himself, ‘I was pretty cocky when telling my plan to Ally. Sure, I could use hidden passages to bring in wolves behind a party, but that feels too much like cheating at this point.’

‘I guess I have to depend on their greed to push them forward. Or more properly, I can depend on the greed of any newcomers. Anyone still with the settlement out there should have themselves under control at this point. Though I guess I can’t know for certain. Once there are system stores available to use their money, that might change. After all, no matter how much a coin might be worth, if you can’t spend it then it has no value to you.’

Doyle shakes his core and focuses back on the floor. There are 14 side rooms meant for ambushes. While not evenly spread out, they are along the entire path. Of course, even if the ambush location is set, that doesn’t mean the encounter has to be set. On the previous floor he had played with randomized rooms. For the fourth floor, why not play with randomized encounters?

‘I guess technically I had it on the previous floor. It is pretty random how you encounter the monsters, after all. But for this I mean for it to be more of a set piece sort of thing. So maybe the ambush location has an extra three wolves, a single stone wolf, or no extra monsters at all. Keep the adventurers on their toes. Still, I need to fill out the normal encounters.’

With that in mind, Doyle goes through the floor, marking where he planned to put normal wolves. After having worked through all the rooms, he does a quick count and finds over a hundred markers. That was too many if he planned to have stone wolves and kobolds around as well. Another pass has him removing markers, sometimes just one or two from a group. Other times he would remove entire groups. This brings the number down below 90 normal wolves.

Happy with that, Doyle places markers to represent the stone wolves. Not too many early on and some of them just replaced the normal wolves he had removed. This time though, he has a better feel for the floor and ends up with just under 20 of them. And a last pass for the regular monster places a dozen kobold markers.

The result is 87 wolves, 19 stone wolves, and 12 kobolds placed normally. That leaves him a good bit of space for the random ambushes. The question is how to randomize it? Though this doesn’t stump him for long. If having the rooms pre-placed lets him randomize them, he can place the wolves ahead of time and then have them sent out. That in mind Doyle creates several empty rooms not connected to the rest of the floor to hold the wolves.

Done with that, Doyle tilts back and considers the 14 ambush locations. ‘How do I want to do this? There should be a few empty locations, but besides that, I just need to use up the rest of my points. Wait, follow kiss. Keep it simple, stupid. With 14 locations I can get a good variety by having seven encounters and double them.’

‘That means an empty room, doubled turns that into two empty encounters, about what I wanted. Now for the normal wolves how about a group of one, two, and three wolves. Then a group with a single stone wolf. Besides that, a mixed group would be nice, so one stone wolf and two normal wolves. Finally, a tough encounter with three stone wolves. Now how do the numbers line up?’

After counting it up, Doyle sighs. He had overshot by a few hundred points. With a sigh, he removes one of the triple stone wolf groups so there are now three empty rooms. This still is enough to take the points below 7800 by a 100 points. Since he doesn’t plan to have any farms on this level, he wants to use it all up so increases the three wolf random encounters to four wolves.

‘There we go, every point accounted for. I think. Okay, so there are 12 kobolds which counts for 600 points. Now how many total wolves are there? The non-random ones add up to 87. Two, four, eight, and another four there. That means 18 random wolves plus the 87 set wolves adds up to 105 total normal wolves or rather an impressive 5,250 points. And finally, the stone wolves. 19 of them placed normally and seven random. So 26 stone wolves which adds up to 1,950 points. Altogether they add to exactly 7800 points, just like I thought. Not going to go into debt again.’

‘Now I need to equip them or more specifically, figure out what in the world they will be dropping. It would be a lot easier if I could just set up a loot rule for it. For that, though, I would need another three points of wisdom. Now that I think about it and If I remember correctly, my class path gave me some wisdom. How many path points do I have?’

Doyle checks real quick and nods. ‘Okay, my territory control went up by one to 20 so I have ten path points to play with.’ He turns his attention back to Ally, ‘Hey, what are the chances that ten more points into my class path would give me at least three more points of wisdom? My fourth floor would be a lot easier with a loot rule for all my wolves.’

Ally stretches and yawns, ‘Huh, if it is going to give any it should give enough. You can always put the points in one at a time. Though honestly, all ten wouldn’t be a terrible decision. You’re going to need to complete it at some point anyway, so why not now?’

Akhier

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