Queen and Honey are working on analyzing the new mana potion while Thing and Slimy work on the new enchanting method. Jello is just happy to be included, burbling brightly as she makes more sheets for my enchanters. While the enchantment will definitely be important for when we eventually attack, I’m having a think about the new potion, and my mana generation in general.
I almost fell into an economic trap with my mana, and I’m glad Jondar and Karn pointed it out to me. I’ve just about reached market saturation, and it’s important to recognize it before I go do something silly. I bet that’s another reason dungeons tend to die out: chasing infinite growth.
I heard it described with fridges once. When refrigerators first came out, people were buying them left, right, and center. But eventually, everyone who wanted one already had one. The market was saturated, and no matter how fancy the fridge, or how good the deal gets, there’s only so many people who are even considering buying a new one.
I found a new market with the civilian delvers, but if I don’t find a way to pivot, I’ll be like a gaming company releasing yet another live service game, not understanding why it doesn’t make as much money as the first one did. In short, I need to adjust to the changing market. Luckily, I have a few ideas.
First is to overhaul my areas a bit. Since the start, my manor area and yard have been for the rank newbies, but with everyone delving, there are fewer raw newcomers than before. I might retool to focus more on the people who’ve gotten a few levels under their belts, and leave the pure newbies to Violet.
It’ll give her a bit more mana, I think, and also encourage more people to delve in her starting area, before going to either the sewers or coming to the manor and yard proper. I’ll still leave the front yard and porch basically free, so people can easily get quests, but it wouldn’t be the worst idea to bump up the difficulty a bit around the manor.
I’ll also increase the difficulty in the caverns, and maybe even do some slight expanding to get more herbalism nodes. I have a lot of low tier spots with the manor, and high tier ones in the Forest, but not much in the middle. The labyrinth has some, but I think people want more than what it has to offer.
I also might change my plans a bit with the spheres, too. I had been building them with delvers like Olander in mind, but after the meeting, I’m pretty sure I’m aiming a bit too high. I figured there’d be a lot of people like him that would want a challenge, without considering that he’s literally considered the strongest delver in the country, maybe the continent, possibly the world. Yeah, he’d make a lot of mana if he were to have a challenging delve, but how many people are there on his level?
Around here… not many, and I get the feeling that, even if I got all of them within a month’s journey, I’d still be lucky to get enough to fill a standard classroom. So I might be better served making sure I have enough room for all the mid tier delvers that are starting to come into their own after all the booming delving.
Because while the manor and caverns have been kinda tapering off, the labyrinth is booming. While that’s great, some groups really struggle in there. If that’s the only option for their level range, it becomes a bottleneck for their growth and my mana gain. So if I set up the spheres to be more for the middle delvers, they should be able to delve a lot easier.
Not to mention that I expect a lot of my dwellers will be starting in about that tier. I also think the spheres will be pretty simple to adjust as I need. I might even be able to effectively mothball one and bring out another, making it even easier to change to demand.
My other idea is a lot more experimental, and in a field I’m not inclined to play around in. I can shift the faith energy from my deity half over to my dungeon side at a steady exchange, which means one potential avenue for mana would be to spread my worship further. I’m uncomfortable with that happening organically, let alone me encouraging it, especially for something that feels pretty selfish!
There is an option that might ease my guilt, though. The blessed paths Teemo made to the cathedral and the enclaves all give me a bit of mana and some faith, and I don’t feel bad about converting that particular faith over. I don’t want to go making paths all over the place, though. If they get seen as common, they produce less, and if I were to make a blessed path to the Southwood or something, I might step on the toes of some god of travel or whatever.
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I’d rather avoid drama. I have the Betrayer to worry about, I don’t need to go borrowing trouble from more people.
But I still haven’t tried to bless my scions yet. I promised to give Order the time to check the system, and I have to hope he’s not as forgetful as I am. If he hasn’t told me to stay away from that idea, it’s probably alright?
Still, I’m not gonna risk breaking things on a probably. I mentally reach out and poke where the popups come from, and nudge Teemo to head to the Secret Sanctum. My core is back on display, but we should be able to get up to potential shenanigans without anyone noticing in the Secret Sanctum, instead of goofing around where everyone can see.
Teemo takes a seat in the middle of the depression where my core would go, looking mostly confident. I’ve only fried his brain once, so I probably won’t be able to do it again, right?
Teemo chuckles and shakes his head. “If you say so, Boss. Is Order fine with this?”
I check on the popups, and though I don't get a reply, I do get the feeling he’s watching.
“Alright. Do it, Boss, before either of us chickens out.”
I laugh and try to bless him, and immediately see why Order didn’t seem too concerned. It looks like being my Herald already counts as being blessed. I bet I could bless you harder, though. I can feel Order paying even more attention, but he’s still not telling me to stop. You wanna try, Teemo?
“Sure. I came in here expecting to explode. I’ll almost be disappointed if I don’t.”
With his permission, I focus and try to categorize what I’m trying to do. I focus on his Herald title, tracing the thin connection back to me. The basic theory of what to do is simple: reinforce the connection. But how?
I try something simple at first, and try to recreate the feeling of a Conduit, just with my divine side, but I stop that quickly. It’s technically an option, but it feels like it’d be like trying to run a two-stroke engine on rocket fuel. Teemo’s just not built to handle all that, and that’s just the idle state. If he tried to actually draw faith energy through it, he would definitely explode.
Alright, so I need to throttle it. How about, instead of all the energy available, we focus on the Change domain I seem to have? That doesn’t narrow it near as much as I was hoping, but I think it’s a good direction to go in. Change in totality is a lot, after all. So I need to narrow it down to the kind of Change that fits Teemo.
I can feel the faith energy resonate with that idea, of using it to enhance the fraction of Change he personally resonates with. I can feel it, but I can also feel I need to be able to put it into words for this to work properly.
Which isn’t to say I don’t know what Change he focuses on. He’s been doing it from day one. He challenges preconceptions and does his best to make people reexamine themselves. He keeps me grounded, he greets a commoner or a noble in the same way. He’ll happily chat with anyone, no matter their status. But I need to condense that into something succinct enough for a title.
Innovator comes to mind, but that’s closer to Thing or Queen… or most of the nerd squad, honestly. Rebel is close, but it implies a bit more ability to fight than Teemo has. He’s no slouch, but his victories in combat are more from trickery than actual rebellious fighting. Non-conformist is also close, but there’s still things he conforms to. He’s not out to deliberately make someone upset, he’s just not especially bothered if someone doesn’t like what he has to say.
I pause as a word comes to mind that’s almost perfect for him. Iconoclast. It’s harsher than how Teemo usually operates, but he’s definitely one to break the long-held iconic beliefs to prove how hollow they are. While it’d be ironically fitting for his version of iconoclast to even break the mold of what an iconoclast itself is, I come up with a word to accompany it that makes it harmonize perfectly. I smile to myself as I appreciate the resonance for a few moments, then spend the faith to bless Teemo properly.
Aspect of the Gentle Iconoclast
Teemo gasps as orange mist billows out from him like a fuzzy little fog machine, and it takes him a few moments to get it back under control. “Ok, wow…” he mutters as we both adjust to the feeling that his existence just got a tiny bit deeper.
I take a moment to look at my mana generation, and can see it unchanged, but I also get the feeling that won’t always be the case. When he acts in accordance to that new title, I’ll get mana, and faith, too. I can feel Order examining things, but he doesn’t have anything to say, so I figure it’s probably like the last experiment with the paths: not quite intended, but far too complicated, politically and logically, to fix.
So I don’t quite have his blessing to bless my scions, but he’s not going to stop me. Who else should I try to give this boost?
