Doyle looks over what he has carved so far and nods. The carving is almost done. There was one final addition and a question to answer. Who should it target? After all, even if someone could clear the floor on their own, they’ll likely have others along to carry things for them.
So, should the rest of a daring lumberjack’s team be targeted by the inclement weather?
Doyle settles on yes, but not to the full extent. They should never experience the lightning, but anything else is fair game. Which made his solution easy enough. Just downgrade what the others are experiencing by a stage.
Oh, and if anyone else starts cutting down the trees on the mountainside? They are upgraded to a full participant.
Err, well, that is Doyle’s intent. Which counts for a lot! But it isn’t like he is programming the challenge. He is literally carving a large-scale piece of art into the side of the mountain and hoping magic goes all the way with his nudges.
So Doyle focuses on wrapping up and putting that last bit of intent into things. Then, as he finished, the result was what he had been hoping for.
The various carvings around the mountain glow for a moment before fading into the background. They didn’t vanish or get covered. Rather, they aged. If someone was looking closely, they could see the lines.
Not that alone would do much for them. It isn’t like Doyle used a chisel to make the lines. Though even if he had, it wouldn’t mean anything. After all, the mines also have tool marks as that was the theme, the concept.
Admittedly, there was a big difference between finding tool marks in a mining tunnel and on a random part of a mountain slope. Chances are when first found, people would search for some kind of hidden treasure room. Without tool marks, though? It’s just an odd mark on the ground. Weathered as it is, the carving isn’t complete anymore.
Which is a shame. Doyle had put a decent amount of work into the design. Though he isn’t too disappointed. It was, admittedly, more of a geometric design of function. The most artistically free part has been the clouds. Everything else slotted into where it was meant to be. Nevermind the fact that things weren’t actually all that close together.
Doyle takes a mental step back and looks at the floor as a whole. The difference was shocking since when he had “finished” it. Though Doyle now felt it was truly finished.
That just left one last detail. More specifically, what were the details of the engraving? Doyle relaxed and let himself sense the entire mountain.
There it was. While the engraving had ended up weathered and broken, the intent behind it? The concepts of it were carved into the stone itself.
Oh, sure, if someone purposefully tried to file off an engraving the effect would break, but that wouldn’t be because of the physical damage. Rather, the intent to wipe away the engraving would be what did it.
This weathering? It didn’t intend to break the engraving. Even if the mountain was eroded smooth, the engravings effect would hold on. Not forever, the effect wears down with each use without the supporting engraving.
Anyway, this wouldn’t be a problem for the floor. After all, things like that would be reset whenever the floor emptied. And given how instances worked now? It would take a ton of effort for someone to even delve the original floor in the first place, instead of a copied instance.
Now Doyle simply has to figure out the details. Which begins with him taking in only the ephemeral web of conceptual weight over the mountain. Thicker on the slopes, but it does cover even parts of the mountain without engravings. After all, it would be hard to affect teammates if it stopped and didn’t go onto the ledges.
Though Doyle also had to admit to himself, they could escape everything but the cloud/fog effect by going into the tunnels. Except, he wouldn’t exactly call that safer? After all, the tunnels are where the wandering monsters live. So yeah, being blinded by fog isn’t going to help you fight said monsters.
Now the question is whether this is how it would actually work. After all, the engraving wasn’t just magic, but a more esoteric form of it. Would the clouds actually enter the tunnels? Or, on the opposite end, will the effect ignore the fact that tunnels have a roof and still rain down on people? Either is possible.
So, to get to the bottom of it, Doyle sinks his mind into the conceptual flow of this mountain-covering effect. The whole thing is a part of his floor and so a part of himself. Admittedly, it isn’t like as a human he had a full understanding of his body, but a dungeon was a bit different. Besides, this didn’t deal with souls or what not, so it should be within his remit to understand.
Still, it takes Doyle a month to figure out the details. And in the end, it mostly matched what he expected.
The engravings effect would lay dormant until someone stepped off the path. Doyle wasn’t 100% sure how it determined this, though it felt like the engraving was judging intent, so clouds would not come out of nowhere if someone accidentally stepped on the side of the mountain while fighting something.
Once someone does step off the path, fog ground cover would start to form and wispy clouds come into existence to block vision. Though not too much. You could still see the ground and the area around you. But your footing won’t be as sure and you won’t be able to see past the next ledge from where you are.
While this comes into being slowly, the vision blocking doesn’t keep growing. After all, the first tree is free. So the clouds will form to warn them, but that’s it.
Then the first tree is felled, and things change. The ground-covering fog stays the same, but the clouds will grow thicker. If before you could sort of see through it, that stops being the case at the extreme end.
From there, each extra tree cut down has the clouds pressing in even more. Though more importantly, the effect on the teammates comes into play at this point. Seems the engraving didn’t exactly copy his intent. Instead of a step-by-step increase based on the stage of difficulty, it seems the curve of difficulty would be smoother.
In particular, wisps of fog would start to be everywhere, including in the tunnels.
Then, once the clouds have surrounded the lumberjack so that they have a hard time even seeing the next tree, rain begins to fall as a mist at first. Advancing through stages until it is a decent downpour with fat raindrops. Though this is where Doyle has to do a little guessing.
The weather effects can be figured out as they are being directly caused by the engraving. So while Doyle knows that the rain will be falling and the ground is going to be cold, the intersection of the two? That requires consideration, the result is not set in stone, especially since it adjusts itself so the difficulty ramps up.
It is entirely possible that if ice on the ground was immaterial to a lumberjack, that it either goes right to that or the rain never starts freezing on the ground.
Which wasn’t really how Doyle had planned it. He hadn’t included the adaptation stuff until the hail, after all. Still, this wasn’t against his plan, so much as an adaptation of his plan. This felt on theme despite the floor being an Earth floor and so, in theory, less aligned to change.
Either way, he couldn’t change it now without redoing everything and likely weakening the effect or some such.
So, moving on, the hail seems basically unchanged from what he had laid out. It starts small and can get bigger, denser, and sharper. With that, it focuses on being based on how the lumberjack can handle it. All to promote a difficulty curve that grows steeper with each tree cut down.
Though looking closer, this might be the source of the change to how teammates are handled. Doyle had seen it as distinct states. Cloud, to rain, to hail, and ending with lightning. The actual result of this was that the rain and hail got combined.
It seems that icy ground would be harder than hail? Then it was possible for it to switch to hail, only to swing back and include some rain in with the hail. And the engraving compensated for this change by making the ramp up for the teammates to be gradual instead of step by step.
Though Doyle also noted that difficulty is all based on those who are cutting down the trees. If the lumberjack is highly susceptible to hail, it will come later for everyone, even if all of the teammates are practically immune to the stuff.
Which actually leaves an interesting strategy open. If a team is made up of a lumberjack who is weaker to hail than not while their teammates aren’t bothered by it. They can proceed farther as a team because the lumberjack won’t have to worry. Would suck to cut down a bunch of trees, only for your haulers to have all escaped the floor to survive.
And speaking of surviving, lightning isn’t very survivable if you aren’t prepared for it. Though it seems the whole adaptation thing was added on to the lightning as well. The caveat being that it didn’t mess with the lightning itself.
Rather, there are three parameters that seem to be up for change. The delay, visibility, and area.
That first one is simple enough. When the lightning effect appears on the ground, the time till the lightning actually fires from the ground is the delay.
Visibility isn’t quite as straightforward. Or rather, it has two parameters to play with. How bright the visual effect on the ground is and how much the effect tingles. So does it feel like someone is shocking you with static electricity over and over, or does it barely make an impression at all.
And last was the area. Another simple one as it represented how big a space gets the visual effect. So yeah, if you’re still standing in the visual effect, the ground lightning will hit you.
All together, it made the lightning a lot more dynamic than Doyle had originally planned. The lightning was sort of meant to be all or nothing. Either you dodge it or you don’t. Admittedly, that is still the case. Except, how much effort it takes to dodge is a much wider range.
And in the end, Doyle is fine with that.
Which means that really, truly, this time for sure, the 21st floor is finished!
Doyle let that thought sit for a moment before nervously going back over the entire floor with a fine-toothed comb. And it was fine, so he relaxes. The floor hadn’t been stressful, so much as it simply had a bunch of uncontrollable delays. First, the wait for an earth bear and then the false finish caused by a bit of a block. ‘Hey Ally, I’m finally finished.’
Ally yawns on her bed and gets up. ‘It’s been a good bit? Admittedly, you can take your time while engraving.’
Doyle, ‘Well, I’ve got it all set up. Though despite it seemingly going that direction, I don’t think it will have anything to do with limit breaking.’
Ally, ‘What? I don’t think that was the point in the first place?’
Doyle, ‘Well, true, but I have the difficulty slowly ramping up. There is an end, based on how many trees there are, but someone level-appropriate should be pushed past their limits with this setup.’
Ally, ‘But that isn’t how it actually works. While someone might break their own limits by accident, the lumberjack challenge you have there isn’t innately going to cause it. Though even when people design things to literally cause it, they tend not to work because by making it to break limits, the creator tends to add in their own concept of what a limit is and that ruins it for others.’