Doyle turned to Ally to find an answer to his skill based problems and she sighs, ‘Do you remember how the skills that your monsters already have increase in level?’

Doyle shakes his core and Ally sighs harder, ‘I guess I did sort of sandwich the explanation in when I was explaining stampedes. Deeper floor equals higher world energy and the monsters in turn get increased skill levels. Oh, and that isn’t a system specific thing, but rather just how it works for dungeon monsters. The system side of things is that a higher starting skill level represents an affinity for the skill and so the skill will increase in level faster.

‘As for giving a monster a new skill? Incredibly easy, just have them train it. Now if you want to give a monster pattern a new skill? That is a bit more limited and yet there are more options. Well, right now “option” as you only have one choice. Those monster adjustment pattern points? They can be used to change almost an infinite number of things about a monster as long as the change doesn’t actually result in a new pattern.’

Doyle nods, ‘Tutorial screen?’

Ally, ‘I won’t deny that. Can you guess what comes up next?’

Doyle rolls to the side, ‘Why guess?’, and he pulls up the system message. Though after reading the dense text, his core grows dim and turns back towards Ally.

Ally laughs, ‘The system can really fit an essay worth of text into a paragraph? That ability will be of more use for simpler subjects and to confirm things. Anyway, a simple example of this is that you can give your goats a fire breath attack, but this won’t cause the goat to become a fiery goat or what have you. This sort of thing could make it easier to develop a variant.

‘In fact, since you have the elemental animal path all you’re missing now is more extreme environments. Get a lava environment? Pop heat resistance on your goats and it should only take somewhere between a month and a year to gain a fire-based variant.’

Doyle rolls back, ‘A month to a year?’

Ally shrugs, ‘You have forever, but even then, that is incredibly fast. Most of the time, it takes generations for a variant to actually come about. You’re basically got a couple of high quality shortcuts to that. First is that path. Sure, it only works on animals, but being able to increase the odds is worth its weight in gold. Even a percent of a percent makes it so much more likely to happen because this is spread out across all your animals.

‘The second is that being able to just give them a resistance skill as a part of their pattern is the height of cheats. Anyone can learn the heat resistance skill, that however doesn’t mean they have a greater chance to evolve. What your adjustment does is make it inherent to your monsters.

‘Otherwise, when you farm them, the newborn monsters wouldn’t have the skill. This is key because having an inherent resistance means they are naturally adapted to the environment. A natural adaptation will mean that they are already closer to the variant than a normal monster without the inherent skill and that does more than just add a greater chance.

‘It multiplies the chance because it is changing the base chance. That means bonuses from things like your elemental animal path get calculated after the inherent bonus has been calculated. Anytime you can let percent chances apply sequentially instead of all at once, things can get crazy.’

Doyle nods, ‘I can get behind that. Now, how do I use the points to give my monsters new skills?’

Ally pulls up a new blue screen. Well, Doyle thought it was a new screen, then she started to explain. ‘This should look familiar to you. If not, think back to when we were setting up the first floor, this was the screen you used to modify the clover and then promptly never touched it again. Not that it mattered much until now, as without the points, it can only change cosmetic stuff and not even all that efficiently.

‘Just look at your wheat farms. It took some effort, but you managed to create a good-looking species of wheat. That could have been a few hours of effort in the designer screen. The catch is that you don’t get any levels for your pattern if you do this.

‘With points? Everything changes. So like the best pay to win mobile games, it will allow you to spend your points which totally aren’t just a way to obfuscate how much quintessence you’re spending, because you can buy the points, on making your wolf’s claws 1% sharper or some other nonsense.’

Doyle pokes at the screen, ‘So how much do skills cost and is there a limit on what skills I can buy?’

Ally, ‘When you bring a monster into the screen there will be options that pop up. This includes being able to remove some of the skills already there as long as they aren’t required for the monster. For instance, I’m going to guess that the myconids need the paralysis spore skill, but you could probably remove the sleep spores.

‘As for skills? You’ll have a few available by default. Basic skills like your kobold’s heavy bash. That doesn’t mean you can use them, though. By being unlocked, it means you can buy them for your patterns and of course you have to buy them for each pattern. Yes, even the variants. The good news is that when you develop new variants, those variants will inherit the skills you unlocked for the base pattern.

‘Oh, and speaking of unlocking, if there is a nifty skill you would like to use and don’t have? There is a cost to unlock it in the first place. So yes, you have to buy the skill and then once you own it, you have to pay again to put it on a pattern. The system really likes to double dip on this system as it is all fluff.

‘After all, dungeons that exist in dimensions without a system are capable of adjusting their monsters. It just normally takes decades or longer for a natural unawakened dungeon to modify even a single monster. With this fancy system provided UI, even those dungeons can make simple instinctual changes rapidly.’

Doyle tilts back, ‘You know what? I’m actually okay with that. Otherwise, I assume the skills themselves would end up being patterns and each change to a monster would likely result in a new pattern. Even as it is, I have way too many patterns and that giant list will only ever get bigger. Now let me pull in the kobold pattern and give it a look.’

Ally pushes the screen towards him and he grabs the kobold entry from another screen listing out his monster patterns before popping it in.

At first, things seemed to be normal enough. A nice little render of both genders is floating in the view box, the base stats at level zero are listed out on one side, and the skills on the other. Then the stats start flowing downward to show each level up while various options begin to appear around the two models. All dwarfed though by a massive and yet still rapidly filling list of potential skills. From obvious ones like “throwing”, simple ones such as “breathing”, all the way to very niche options which much to Doyles surprise includes “underwater basket weaving”. Yes, the joke skill.

Though the only reason he was able to even spot that was because by drawing his attention the skill list temporarily stopped on it before the list began to whiz by again as more got added. Doyle turns to Ally, ‘Well that’s a bit much.’

Ally chuckles, ‘Don’t worry, there are just a ton of unique options in the already unlocked section because most skills of this simplicity aren’t considered secrets or special so the system is able to slurp them right up out of your head to pass on to others. There are still a lot, but significantly fewer options when it comes to unlockable skills.’

Doyle nods, ‘I can see that. A common powered punch will probably be passed onto the system easily enough and so be available. A unique skill that took decades to develop and perfect? Not so much, especially if it ends up being a family inheritance or some such.

‘Besides, the list seems relatively reactive to my thoughts and so it shouldn’t be too hard to find a skill that matches what I want for my kobolds. Oh, and I should probably buy something for my regular myconids as well.’

Ally gestures back at the adjustment screen, ‘And though you didn’t ask, let me inform you that doing things like swapping out skills will allow you to basically save a new load out for that monster that you can choose to use when spawning them. That way, you don’t have to micromanage swapping in and out skills as you refill floors. Now take your time figuring out what you want to do with your kobolds, though I do advise not swapping out the eighth floor kobolds with ones that can actually use a bow. That would be a deadly surprise no one would be ready for.’

Doyle agrees before diving into the list of skills. Though it wasn’t even a half an hour before another question pops up when he notices that the heavy bash skill is still on the list of available skills he could add. Instead of running off to Ally though, he decides to take a quick look at what information he can pull up on his own.

And a good thing too, as the reason was simple enough and had to deal with something Ally had literally just reminded him of. The fact that the higher level a starting skill was, the more easily it advanced. Heavy bash was listed so you could buy it again and boost the skills level.

A useful if expensive option, especially since the system message hinted at the fact that the cost for leveling a skill in this way would increase after every purchase. Doyle knew enough about those classic pay to win games and so was expecting quite a hefty cost if he ever wanted to really pump a monster’s skill.

Still, his question was answered well enough, even if it took a few read throughs to extract the meaning. So, he moved onto playing with the adjustment screen. Things like coloration were easy enough to tweak, though not too far in either direction as apparently the system considers a solid color to be too much of a change.

More interesting to him though was what skills it would allow him to remove. The answer was all of them. This felt weird to him so Doyle pulled up the goats and found himself completely unable to remove the only skill they had, charge. He wasn’t certain what it meant that the kobolds didn’t have a signature move, but for now it meant it would cost less to modify them how he wanted.

Where did those savings come from you might ask? Well, both Doyle and Ally had missed another tricky bit of pay to win. You had to unlock skill slots for your monsters. So the kobold, amazing beings that they were, had three skill slots already unlocked and that meant he could easily switch out the heavy bash for something more Agility based.

Though as he looked closer, it looked like this option was more of a pay to progress form of pay to win as the patterns would naturally unlock more slots as the pattern itself leveled up. So for now Doyle puts aside any thoughts of adding extra skills and instead dives into the massive list of unlocked skills.

Akhier

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