There was only one new attendant to the post congregation summit. Two, if Glenda’s new familiar counted, which Peter didn’t. The familiar could not speak. It looked like a little wolf pup, despite being an A rank unit it was small enough to nestle onto her lap. Michael sat right next to Glenda since the two would be closely associated.
Peter let the members talk for a good ten minutes before he brought things to order. “Anyone learn or see anything that we should discuss today?”
“Just that we need to pick our friends better. The red demoness is going to get us into trouble,” Khan grumbled. His play it safe attitude was in clear contention with most of Peter’s own moves let alone Elyra’s.
Most just ignored it. Boris was the next to speak. “Master, we will need to discuss our strategy for taking on the long leg spider core, but first I think it would be prudent. We need to discuss our dungeon’s capabilities in lieu of things we have witnessed in higher division battles. Seemingly there are thousands of different facets being used to gain strength. There are seemingly unique abilities to certain core types. Just look at our new vigil master. My subordinates witnessed a few instances of units using it for the holy core, but have not seen it in any of the other battles.”
“Then there are more regular abilities such as magic traps, formation magic, summoning…” Boris trailed off. He did not have to continue. Anyone who had watched more advanced dungeon battles knew that there were a lot of areas that their dungeon had either no capability or had just dipped their toes in the waters of.
It was not their fault. Glenda, even Khan, and others had all worked diligently, but it was hard to get the ball rolling when starting with literally nothing. Glenda had to discover magic symbols and then learn how to string them together. Khan was busy cataloging various plants and their potential uses. They had made little progress in using these building blocks to start developing their capabilities.
Khan’s subordinates had a few various potions, none of which were that impressive. Glenda and her subordinates had developed quite a few weaker spells for mages to learn, but they usually paled in comparison to a mage’s natural attack they started with. Glenda’s starfall ability was tier S. She used the attack and a version of it to form a starlight shield most of the time. Peter had only seen her use a weak flame ability to set alight a C tier who had charged at her. The flame attack did not even kill it despite her power.
The mood of the room had dimmed noticeably. They were all aware of how lacking they actually were. Greg, the tinkerer gnome, who was the dean of engineering as well as ran the forge, and the mine was the first to speak up. The ugly brown skinned gnome had actually a positive note to contribute.
“We do not need to feel so down. The treasure Tapir master summoned today has already proven its usefulness. For the last few years we have only found tier 1 metals and gems, other than a handful of dark crystal pockets that we have stumbled into. However, I guess we have just been unlucky. The Tapir found several more pockets of tier 3 dark crystal that our exploratory shaft only missed by a matter of feet.”
Glenda looked greedily over at the mention of the dark crystal as did Gearhead. Both were actively experimenting with their only tier 3 resource. They had not found enough to make too much progress since quite a bit got ruined as it exploded with each failure.
Peter himself sat up straighter. Up till now the only higher tier resource that they had been able to make use of was their unlimited supply of dark wood, that Khan had known how to grow intrinsically. It had proven quite useful. The tiers of resources were a little ambiguous. Obviously the higher the tier the better it was. In order to increase a shield made of steel defense you would just have to add more steel resulting in a heavier more sturdy shield. A tier 2 metal could potentially be just as strong with less material and weight. Or it could be weaker for the same amount of metal and have a completely different use, such as storing magical energy. Regardless, a tier 3 resource was a step above even the dark wood.
Still based on discussions with Emma and Fellette, tier 3 was at the bottom of the barrel in terms of resources. Tier 1 could be found readily, so it could be considered common. Tier 2 was a bit more unusual, but a dungeon could still have a lot of it. Just take the dark wood. Peter had only harvested a handful of the thousands of trees that were growing bigger each year. It was basically in infinite supply.
As far as tier 2 metals, Peter had been a bit surprised they had as of yet not found any of them. Greg and the subordinate gnomes had also failed to find any way to make tier 2 alloys off of base metals which had been indicated as possible through talks with the two older cores. Not that they shared how they actually did it.
Greg continued. “The treasure tapir also indicated a handful of other areas. We found a small vein of true silver about five feet off of one of our initial transit shafts. It seems pretty small, so I don’t expect to mine too much of it, but weapons made of it would have been invaluable against the undead in our last battle. There are quite a few other areas indicated that have not been mined yet. I expect the tapir can complete a walk through of all our shafts in the next few days. Which leads me to request some additional treasure tapir one offs. I think one should accompany all of our miners from here out. Then the B tier can make its rounds throughout the whole mine. It will likely change how we mine near completely.”
“Done,” Peter stated. He was not sure how effective the D tier one offs of the B tier tapir would be, but their cost was hardly worth noting anyways at 100 essence a piece. True silver was a tier 2 metal and would have been extremely effective against the undead. If they got to the point where they could enchant it with holy power it might literally turn weaker undead into dust and make it easy for someone like Delilah to kill higher tiers with a few hits.
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“Wow, it's a wonder we haven’t been able to find anything till now,” Khan grumbled. “Makes me wonder if our mining approach might have been wrong this whole time.” he added unhelpfully.
“I have never claimed to be an expert when it comes to mining. I just made slight adjustments to the methods put in place by the dark elves managing things before I took over,” Greg defended.
Boris picked up the defense. “Less than a tenth of the rock in a given area is removed. Then it has to be brought to the entrance antechamber where it is either obliterated in the well or is brought out as useful ore. Our miners have basically just been mining until they discover a vein, having a unit that can sense resources missed by a few feet would increase our chances of finding something in an area by at least double depending on the tapir’s range.”
“Anything else…?” After no one spoke up, Peter took back over. “Our dungeon is progressing well. We have all seen what a steep learning curve dungeons entering the intermediate division face in terms of capabilities, but we are just entering our fifth year. As long as we continue to work hard there is no reason we should not be able to close the gap significantly, and we can worry about the actual integration more as it gets closer. Since there is nothing else, let's discuss what preparations we need to make for our next upcoming battle.”
Boris once again took the helm. “Master, based on the specializations you noted and the insect faction battles we have witnessed it would be safe to say that we will be facing a never ending army of insects. Also of note, the confirmed guide of the long leg spider core is the wasp core, 104. Reportedly the wasp core is one of the main reasons that there were only 8 new centurions this year.”
“That will mean a lot of potential flying units,” the great Gnther spoke up. “Which means we will need to rebuild our own air division. Of course that would have been a good idea regardless of things,” the sky gnome added, rubbing his hands together.
“Or build anti air weapons,” Greg added.
“We have never really used physical traps, but since we are not at the point of using magical traps, we should consider it,” Glenda said looking at Greg, who only shrugged in response. It was clear from his expression, that he was doubtful on how much good that would actually do.
Peter thought about the potential specializations the long leg spider could have, as the others continued to voice ideas. For most cores it was not something that needed to be worried about since their benefits were behind the scenes, but thanks to Elyra he had taken notes on what all 58 specializations gave including what support cards they started with if they did not get the standard mix. It was likely her just passing on what she had first received from Helen, but Peter was extremely thankful.
There were two specializations almost made for the insect core types. Almost all of them picked one of the two, although pack hunter was also a good choice since it increased the power of like type units as long as they were near each other. However most insect cores went for numbers, which meant they went with the swarm or infest specializations.
Both specializations made it easier to field higher numbers of units for battle, however infest took it to the next level. Infest made it significantly cheaper to build lower tier spawners and maelstroms, which made it extremely easy to feed a host of higher tiers for far less. It also allowed the dungeons to build one offs at any tier below the original. If they had a useful living A tier, they could summon any tier from B down off of it.
It played into how most insect cores operated. Both swarm and infest did not start with combination cards as part of their 5 determined cards. Some did not get 1 at all for their other 5 random cards. Still it was hardly a concern for them. It was hard for them to get S tiers of their type regardless, so most just summoned units using 1 card. When they traded with each other they often traded 10 original cards or more, so they could all accumulate vast quantities of each other’s type cards. The ability to summon one offs at any tier below the original would allow them to build armies of units with useful abilities. Infest was the specialization the insect millennial was known to have gone with.
The swarm specialization was similar. It made the uncommon replicator support card common, making it easy for its dungeons to spam useful high tier insect units. Since they generally used only one type card in their summons anyways it was easy for them to meet the cards conditions. It also added some less tangible effects such as giving a slight 5% boost to like type units fighting together although it was worse then pack hunter’s 10% boost to like units.
The difference between the two specializations was easy to determine. Generally swarm meant a lower number of units at least for an insect core, but it meant bands of the same higher tier units with extremely useful abilities. The infest specialization would generally have more units, most of which would be weaker copies of one of the core’s more powerful high tiers. If Agatha had bands of the same kind of A tier she would be a swarm specialized core. If she had hundreds of mini-mes' based off of A tiers she was an infest specialization.
The meeting was winding down as all his various staff noted down areas to work on by the next congregation. In order to instill some gravity to their next battle, Peter decided to end the meeting with something he had asked Boris to work on. “Boris, have you run the numbers? How many enemies should we expect to face?”
“Depending on the specialization the long leg spider chose to go with and the cores history, having only participated in one other battle other than the tutorial. I think we should expect at least 200 A tiers, up to 300 if the opponent chose the swarm specialization. Then even with a more conservative estimate I would say there would be at least 2,000 B tiers up to 3,000 if the opponent chose infest. As far as C tiers I would estimate at least 20,000 for either. These estimates are only based on the expected essence collected and what they will have used up in battle or for their dungeon. They could have any combination of units including fielding 100,000 C tiers and sending out far fewer B and A tiers.”
Gasps from around the room were audible with each estimate. Tombstone, who had burnt through all his original A cards, had only fielded about 75 A tiers in total. Even conservatively, Agatha would likely be able to field double that on top of fielding more B and C tiers than they had ever seen. It was almost guaranteed that the enemy would be unable to field S tiers, but what did it matter. His armageddon dragon could likely kill anything it shot its void blast at, but it would run out of void energy pretty quickly. The same was true for Glenda even with the addition of her new familiar.
Hopefully his forces could hold the line maintaining a battle front, to give his forces opportunities to rest, but that was not something easy to accomplish when faced against an endless tides of insectoids. Agatha would likely have things to break the lines since her strategy would be to continually swarm his army without rest. Her forces might rely on swarming, but it did not mean they were not also working on expanding her dungeon’s capabilities the same as them. If she could use some special technique or ability to break lines or kill in mass then she would.
