Akhier

Heyo! New month again and hopefully it will be less hectic for me than last month. I don't see that as an option, but hope springs eternal. In particular, I didn't manage to get my Ko-Fi fully set up, so that will be a focus. Nevermind that February is already a couple days shorter to begin with. Anyway, Patreon is still the place to go if you want to help support me!

There were a lot of strange skills. Some of them even seemed a little too powerful to be just a free skill, but that was only if you think about it from the perspective of being used in the right situation. Most of them were like the old roleplaying move of bracing a spear against a charge. They do a lot of damage if the enemy actually uses the charge action. Except, of course, most of the time things didn’t use the charge action.

These strange skills? Just like that, except somehow even more specific. Some of them even started to sound more like run-on sentences instead of skill names. The scary thing is that Doyle could see how they could be used if a dungeon stuck too closely to a particular monster type. As it is, while he has been using the same monsters, they’re a very diverse selection of monsters.

If he had ended up using only fire elementals of varying power, there were some skills on the list that would trivialize any sense of challenge. Plus, with the skills being so specific, they’re heads and tails more powerful than more general skills. Doyle had even seen a skill that was basically called “Immunity to the attacks of any fire elemental of equal or smaller size to the user” though in more technical terms.

That sort of thing wasn’t what Doyle wanted, especially not this early. Because while powerful, those skills were limiting, especially for the non-sapient dungeon monsters, as they only have five skill slots total. So instead Doyle searched up several general skills for the kobolds as a test. Simple enough things that very much followed the pattern of their “Heavy Bash” skill.

Of those skills Doyle picked out a handful to focus on and those were Precise Stab, Smooth Slash, Forceful Bullet, Accurate Arrow, and Combat Casting. All combat skills, all very basic, and all needing to be actively used. There were, of course, defensive skills and other fun things like Efficient Counter Casting, but Doyle wanted to keep things on a level playing field. Besides, his selection basically picked out a skill for the direct damage types as he understood things. Piercing, slashing, bashing was already there, ranged, and spells. Of course, spells can double dip a bit as a simple stone bullet spell not only would benefit from combat casting but also from forceful bullet.

Also, Doyle was certain he had missed something, but this was all he could think of at the moment and it covered what he wanted the kobolds to do in the first place, anyway. Though the forceful bullet and accurate arrow skills in particular interested him, as after diving deep into the tutorial prompts he could access, it appeared they worked with quite the range of attacks. In fact, they both covered every form of ranged attack that didn’t have an innate form of course correction, with one being for damage and the other for accuracy.

Though in a way both worked for damage and accuracy? It took a while but the best example Doyle could find in all the dense text used a sling bullet as an example. The forceful bullet skill would increase the sling bullet’s damage by guiding the user such that the bullet will hit harder. It will also be more accurate as this extra force also allows it to cut through stuff like wind. So what you aim at, you will hit. On the other hand, the skill accurate arrow will guide the user to take those things into account and allow the user to aim more precisely. This will also increase damage as it allows you to better hit weak points and less force will be used to get to the target, so more will be left over when the bullet hits.

In the end, the best Doyle can figure out is that the two are basically two sides of the same coin. The more blunt the ranged attack is, the better one skill will be for it and the more sharp the ranged attack is, the better the other skill. Thus why one is called “forceful bullet” and the other “accurate arrow”.

Though after this little discovery, Doyle takes a closer look at the three melee damage skills of precise stab, smooth slash, and heavy bash. And guess what? They all follow a similar pattern. Every melee attack will have aspects of the three skills, with the big difference being which will be more helpful.

These two discoveries led Doyle to look deeper into the skill list and into the locked skills before finding something interesting. Two locked skills, one called Melee Strike, and the other called Ranged Strike. Skills that just happened to combine the other skills and below those two was a third skill, [Strike]. That one perfectly combined all five skills!

This just left combat casting as the odd one out, though Doyle suspected that if he searched around a little there would be an even more basic skill combining it with other power types or some other similar bit of nonsense. Well, he thinks “basic”, but Doyle gets a feeling that basic doesn’t have anything to do with it, especially with how he can’t accurately think of the melee skill. He tries, but it always comes out as “Strike” and not “[Strike]” as it was shown on the list.

Not that Doyle got any sense that [Strike] was more powerful than a more specialized skill. In fact, once he got into skills that mentioned specific weapon models or even specific makers, of which there was an ungodly amount, Doyle could tell the skills were starting to extracting more power than the user had to give.

It was basically that old saying about working on a project. Getting 90% done will take 10% of the effort, while getting the last 10% will end up taking 90% of the effort. At least it went something like that. He couldn’t quite remember, but it felt correct enough. So [Strike] would let you get to 90% with using any melee weapon, while the more specific skills got you the full 100% with that very specific weapon quite early on.

Doyle even suspected there were even more specific skills meant to use with one specific weapon and the system didn’t bother showing them. Though being fair, that might be to restrict the power curve of dungeons. After all, while every crafted weapon will be different, as long as it wasn’t some sort of sapient magic weapon Doyle could summon up exact duplicates for all his monsters. With that in mind, it was easy to see how stupid powerful it could be if Doyle got access to weapon specific skills when he could just buy one and give that exact weapon to all his monsters.

For now, though, Doyle decides to limit himself to just the basic skills. They aren’t too specific, but are not too broad and would allow him to cater the skills to the kobold. Plus, he took a quick look at the prices, and that sort of scared him away. The basic skills he had been picking out were all cheap as dirt.

Doyle even suspected that the only reason they all cost a single point each was because the system rounded up. In fact, he plans to buy them all at once for the kobolds just to see if there is a “discount” from the system, adding the pre-rounded numbers together instead of the post-rounded numbers. However, going in either direction, more specific or more general, all ended up costing more.

While most of the basic skills had already been unlocked, Doyle found a few that were still locked. Those being for special power types that the kobolds didn’t innately have and to unlock, they also cost only a single point. More specific, like a skill for axes, or more general like the skill, Melee Strike, would end up costing between ten and 100 points, depending on how far it goes. Then the [Strike] skill cost so much the system wouldn’t even let Doyle see the price. That or maybe it required other things besides customization points to unlock it.

Anyway, with the skills he wanted to test picked out, Doyle bought them all at once and then checked his customization point total. And what do you know? Buying the five skills for his kobolds ended up costing less than five points, a lot less even. He had started with 220 points and now had 218. So not only weren’t the skills worth a full point, they weren’t even worth half a point. Though it is possible that some cost more than others, Doyle was going to ignore that for now.

Instead, he summoned a group of kobolds on his last floor, each equipped with a weapon and matching skill, then had them one by one use those skills. This resulted in an interesting series of flashing lights. So interesting, in fact, that Doyle had them redo the test using different weapons and skills to see how that would affect things.

For instance, when the mage used combat casting, the tip of his wand would glow, but if he used forceful bullet, the stone bullet would glow. Then the melee weapons ended up with some interesting results. First being the club, something you would consider a purely blunt weapon.

Despite that, each of the three melee skills worked with it, and the club glowed differently each time. Heavy bash of course just made the entire head of the club glow, as usual. However, precise stab and smooth slash did not. Instead, with precise stab, the tip of the club and any section that stuck out a bit on the rough club glowed. While with smooth slash, only the side of the club facing in the swing's direction glowed.

This caused Doyle to think back on the skill use he had seen the founders use. Though that was a somewhat futile action, as they seemed to use more passive skills. So instead Doyle shifted his attention to his first floor and watched for a short amount of time, only a few hours. This revealed that the kobolds on the tenth floor have a high enough skill level to focus the power.

Doyle can see various delvers use the same skills and the weapons all end up covered in a glow, even the handles. Though even among the first floor farmers, there are some showing signs of being better where the handle no longer glows when using their skill. It makes some sense. Why waste so much power making the entire thing glow if you don’t have to?

That brought up some questions such as, with a high enough level, would the weapon stop glowing? Also, why does providing an active skill like accurate arrow make it so the kobolds can use a bow even when not using the skill? Though no matter how he asked, the system didn’t seem to want to give him a straight answer. Good thing Ally wasn’t so shy about telling him what was up.

She laughed when he informed him about the system’s unwillingness to answer. ‘All this info is meant to be like a tutorial, which means it won’t ever tell you the full story, instead giving you enough to start out with. Just think of any game you’ve played that had a tutorial. Did they break down the end game builds for you? Give you tips on how to beat the final boss? No, that is the stuff you’re meant to find out on your own.

‘Thankfully, just like your world pre-system, I have access to the internet and I don’t care about spoilers. Anyway, you can never conceal the glow of them activating. Though precise stab is easiest to hide because the end goal there is to have only the very point of your weapon glow. With the slash, the entire edge of the blade is always going to light up and the bash skill is the worst off as the entire head of the weapon will glow, since it also does some stuff with mass and momentum. If you want to hide the fact you’re using a skill, you will need to go looking for skills with words like concealed or hidden in their name.’

Akhier

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