Doyle starts with the simplest representation of what he intends. Around each of the cliff-side trees, he carves a circle. Because each tree is equal and separate.
He isn’t playing favorites or valuing one tree over another. The first tree isn’t free, but they all cost the same. Even if a delver decides to climb halfway around the mountain to get whatever they consider the best.
Doyle nods; they all mattered just as much as the other. Though in turn, each one lost isn’t just a linear loss, a linear increase to the cost of the next one. For a delver to clear-cut the floor? They are going to Work for it.
‘Okay, so while not directly connected, I want to imply connections. Hmm. Simple tailless arrows could point the way? Just two lines meeting at a point, and that point is directed at a nearby tree. But what counts as nearby?’
Doyle plots out the distances between the trees in his mind. Some places have a bunch of the trees close together. Other sections end up with only a handful, if that.
‘Well, if I don’t care about whether a tree is pointed to, then every tree will be pointing at another tree. So how many trees should a tree point at? I don’t want to just spam out a bunch of arrows because one tree happened to be close to a bunch of other trees.’
On his mental model of the mountain, Doyle marks in a bunch of arrows to test things. This ended up solving things for him. All because he preferred that they didn’t overlap. Which when he limited it to three arrows, was the case.
If each tree pointed at the four nearest trees? At least five trees right away stood out as having overlapping arrows, likely more once Doyle got down to actually carving them. His mental model could only do so much.
Now, admittedly, some of the arrows, especially with the more lonely trees, were close to overlapping. They didn’t! And by enough that there was a discernible gap between where one arrow stopped and the next started.
‘Looks a little plain.’
Doyle goes back over the arrows and carves a few more lines at each. Specifically, three straight lines, one from the top and two from the sides. Not connected, but close enough. Like rays of light coming off the arrows or something.
Which looked nice, but now how to properly make it one engraving as well as imbuing it with the idea of a cost? Also, the connections have to include some sort of resistance.
An idea strikes, ‘Weather?’
This is a mountain after all. Low-hanging clouds, storms, and what not are on theme. So, clouds are a good base. Or fog. Either works.
Doyle gives the mountain another look and nods to himself. Clouds. Not only are they a harmless way to start putting on the pressure by limiting a delvers line of sight. They were also a platform from which to send more direct challenges. Freezing rain, hail, and maybe even lightning if someone gets cocky enough.
After all, while it was meant to be a trial, it was for people harvesting trees, not fighting monsters. Yes, they had to get there in the first place, but that doesn’t mean they’ll always be the cream of the crop. At some point, the 21st floor isn’t going to be the realm of Ace and his people.
There would come a time when regular people get to the floor. And since it was a floor directly after a boss? Well, you just had to get lucky to get to the floor the first time. Then you can skip.
Which turned Doyle’s mind back to that old chestnut. Many of his problems at the moment stem from the easy shortcuts. Now on floor 21, another method of adjusting the shortcuts comes to mind.
‘What if the shortcut isn’t to the floor after the boss, but the floor after the previous boss? So to skip to the slaughterhouse, you will have to have beaten floor ten.
‘Oh, sure, people will still farm the floor and I won’t change things retroactively. That would be cruel. However, by making it so they have to beat the tenth-floor boss, they’ll be over-leveled for the sixth floor. So, uh, maybe they’ll keep delving deeper floors.
‘Hmm, yeah, no. It might work on some, but those are the ones already likely to try and go deeper in the first place. The change would provide a temporary rush as they work to beat the tenth floor. Then they’ll simply go back to farming the cattle, except they’ll have an even easier time.
‘At least right now most of them still struggle if too many cattle attack them at once. It wasn’t even a week ago that someone died from a stampede they accidentally triggered by aggroing too many at once.’
Doyle sets aside that change for now. Maybe later it can be something, but for now the early floors are balanced in a way that works for everyone involved. Even if it does mean fewer people, try to push deeper.
It isn’t Doyle’s job to make sure people get stronger. All he needs to do is make sure people keep coming in and bringing loot out. And even that is more because that’s how he eats than any reasoning connected to the other people involved.
To distract himself, Doyle turns his mind to carving clouds. ‘Happy little clouds’, and he laughs to himself at the reference. Though he is also very careful to Not think of them as happy or little.
In fact, Doyle focuses on thinking of them as oppressive, gloomy, and potentially even spooky. After all, the clouds are meant as a challenge. Though just the first layer.
A layer that slowly takes shape across the entire mountain. Well, not quite to the bottom or top, but a significant proportion for sure. Though as clouds, they aren’t the densest of things, which Doyle includes into the carvings with a lot of blank space within and between the lines.
Perfect for the next step.
Right now, if Doyle had to guess, the carving would cause a cloud to cover the mountain. Then, with each cliff-side tree that fell, the cloud would grow thicker. Definitely a problem for delvers and potentially dangerous. After all, it only takes one misplaced foot to send someone tumbling down the mountain. Which, at the very least, would inconvenience them.
Now for the damage!
First up being some rain. Freezing. Though not just regular freezing, but that special kind where it is still liquid while falling, but freezes when it hits the ground. Oh, sure, this isn’t because the water is literally freezing and just waiting to crystalize. It is simply so close to freezing that if the ground is cold enough; it freezes.
But guess what? The ground would be cold and get colder as they cut down more trees.
So, the rain will be dangerous to begin with. Wet and cold is a good combo to get hypothermia. Which, admittedly, people will be somewhat more resistant to by this floor. However, resistant doesn’t mean immune.
Though it doesn’t have to be too dangerous. It is only the second step, after all. And so after Doyle puts the finishing touches on the rain coming from all his clouds, he turns to the next deterrent. The hail.
Now, this one has some real potential! There are so many parameters to adjust. Sure, normal hail tends to be blob shaped and while it can get pretty big, there is a limit. Doyle is working under no such thing!
So at the edges of each cloud, he starts with carvings of regular hail. Small things the size of the frozen rain, set to replace it. Then, spiraling inward each carved cloud has the hail turn deadly. Some grow to ridiculous sizes. Others end up more like icicles.
Doyle isn’t particularly sure which will be the most dangerous. In fact, he is pretty certain that each type will have those strong and weak against it. So he doesn’t bother trying. Part of this is that the intent is what matters.
If larger hail isn’t that dangerous, it will be thrown out first before progressing to sharper, more pointed hail. Maybe small but fast is the answer? And how compressed can ice get when you’re using dungeon magic? All things Doyle presumes he will learn with time as people tempt the slopes.
Which leaves the last challenge. The tribulation of the slopes. Lightning. Except Doyle isn’t going to be normal with it. This Is the earth floor after all. So far, the weather was fine as it was thematic to the location, and some saw “earth” to instead mean a solid as compared to a liquid, gas, or plasma. Which when taken that way shifts ice and cold magic away from water to earth.
Lightning? No way to justify that! Air and fire all the way. Though if you’re picking a single element, fire would be it. Even if some customs around the world place it as either air or even an element of its own outside of the normal cycle of elements.
But there is a secret option. Regular lightning is well known and lightning where it just bounces around in the cloud or to another cloud isn’t unknown. You have a third option.
Well, a fourth option as many people know about ball lightning. Anyway, ground to cloud lightning exists. Doyle had ended up looking into it a little at one point after being curious. Now, the way it normally happens is from some tall building to the clouds after a rapid change such as a nearby regular strike.
Still lightning, but it comes from the Earth, which is important for the intent Doyle intends. Though he isn’t going to try and copy realistic ground to cloud lightning. For one, the plan is for the ground to already be in the cloud.
Also, Doyle isn’t so cruel as to have a completely un-dodgable attack. Normal lightning is already bad enough and it comes from the sky! Now it just spawns right underneath you?
No, there needs to be some kind of warning or mechanic to this. Sort of like an MMO boss fight mechanic. As in, instead of just zapping the lightning, have some visible phenomena happen first.
Sparks on the ground, for instance. Or maybe have regular lightning strike first to warn of the coming danger. Except that isn’t much of a warning if they don’t know what it is supposed to mean. So a bit of visible static on the ground with a glow to it. All to make the area you want to be out of or else a bolt of lightning is going to come up underneath you.
Which brings Doyle around to how to carve this. Well, not quite. He already has the start to the plan. Jagged fingers of lightning would come off of the circles around the tree. All of them striking “upward” towards the clouds.
As for how to scale this? Doyle had to sit back and think about it. After all, lightning is lightning. He is pretty certain it is amperage that is dangerous? Not that he knows the details and so can’t exactly play around with it.
Well, he can. That’s the point of intent being used, after all, and once again. However, Doyle doesn’t want to handle it that way. At least not yet. Instead, this was going to be a matter of timing and dodging.
When the lightning is first coming online, there will be a ton of warning. Only someone truly unobservant will miss the signs. And hopefully, “don’t stand in the glowing circle” will be respected. Though given some of his experiences with MMOs, that won’t be the case even once the mechanic is a known quantity. Some people just seem attracted to glowing spots on the ground. At least, that is the only explanation Doyle can think of for such nonsense.