Chapter Two-Hundred Seventy-Three

As easy as it is to focus on a shiny new expansion, I can’t go forgetting everything else I've built up.  As my friends and denizens make their way back home, I take the time to ensure I haven’t let anything fall apart while I was distracted with the Maw.

The Manor is still running like a dream, with encounters designed for newer delvers.  I think I’ve raised the average level of Fourdock quite a bit since I’ve come here, since it seems like even the dedicated craftspeople don’t have too much trouble with the Manor encounters.  It’s a little tempting to try to mix things up, maybe make the attic encounter tougher or even add in a rooftop boss before they can get to the belfry garden, but I don’t think it’s really needed.  The encounters are my easiest, but the loot there is also the simplest.  Besides, it still makes me a tidy sum of mana.

Similarly, the manor grounds are pretty easy, with the Hedgemaze being the standout attraction for the area.  While I’ve opened up a bit of it for more lumber nodes, I might absorb it into the maze again once I expand into the forest.  I’ll have plenty of room for lumber nodes out there.  On the other hand, I could leave the industrial lumber production to the Southwood.  I’m pretty sure he has those kinds of nodes, and with the shortcut getting shorter every time Teemo travels it, people should have a pretty easy time going there to stock up.

The tunnels underneath the Manor might could use some love, now I look at them.  They’re not really a maze, but they’re also not exactly simple to navigate.  While I have the two challenge Gauntlets in there to help draw delvers, the tunnels are really more to get people to other sections, rather than being their own place for encounters.  I have a lot of stronger spiders, snakes, and sometimes bats to fight down there, as well as some metal and gem nodes, but with the caverns and the lava labyrinth, I should try to brainstorm some better ways to use the space.

I wonder if I could dig out classrooms or something?  Thing, Honey, Queen, and Coda all have pretty big brains, and I don't doubt that people would love to learn from them.  I have a lecture hall room from the fast tracking, along with a few other ones I don’t know what to do with yet like a kitchen and a gallery.  The main problem with them teaching is that they’d need Teemo to interpret… right?  Considering I’d be using a lecture hall instead of a normal room for it, maybe it will actually let them lecture?  Who knows.  I’ll let that one percolate for a bit more before I try it.  The tunnels do their job well enough for now, and it’s not like basically having an underground roadway to my other sections is a bad thing.

The caverns are another section where things are fairly simple, but I don’t plan to change much with them, at least for now.  The huge caverns have plenty of room for stronger encounters, not to mention my limestone quarry.  I might put in a couple ore veins instead of just the scattered nodes, too.  The tunnels have nodes, but the caverns should be able to support mining on a more industrial rather than individual scale.  I’ll float the idea to Rezlar once Teemo gets home.  After the disruption the nodes in the labyrinth made, I want to make sure I don’t go crashing the steel market or something with a rich iron vein.

I might make a smaller iron vein even if he doesn’t want it for the town, just for my dwellers.  The caverns are near the spiderkin, but my ratkin still frequent my ore nodes for their own crafting, and the two enclaves have been working very well together.  The threat of the Maw got them even more coordinated than before, and with the threat in the past, they don’t seem to see any reason to cease or even slow down that cooperation.

Past the spiderkin enclave lay the underswamps, which I haven’t expanded into yet.  When we first found them, I was going to mostly ignore them, since the spiderkin like to hunt there.  But Coda dug out what was supposed to be a bypass tunnel for the scythemaws when we were worried about their mating migration.  The crazy reptiles never took the thing, but it could give me a good route to expand a bit into the underswamps without messing up the hunting of my spiderkin.  Maybe I’ll look into it after the forest of four seasons is done.  I want to do some stuff on the surface for a change.

Back to the tunnels, they also lead toward Violet, though my territory ends well before hers.  They additionally lead to the crypt complex where my ratkin live in their enclave.  My library and enchanting lab are in there, too, as well as my various undead encounters.  My zombies and skeletons are both specialized for resources, which for them makes them walking herbalism nodes, with the skeletons having more normal herbs and my zombies taking a fungal theme.  The Shield followers love to fight them, since they’re apparently pretty resistant to typical turning methods, and my undead are behaved enough that failing to defeat them doesn’t mean joining the undead legions.

The complex then leads up to the surface, where the cemetery is, and where Grim keeps it quiet and peaceful.  The peace is a little strained at the back of the graveyard, where the wolf spawner is.  My awoos need a bit of room, and even the most respectful delver will have a hard time resisting a fight against them.  I’ll definitely be moving them out into the forest, probably before I do anything else with it.  Whatever section I put them in will be the winter one, which I should probably put far away from town… or maybe closer to it?  Could I even have each section go through the seasons, just on their own time?  I’m going to need to play with the climate control option a lot once I buy it from the Southwood.

And one last backtrack to the tunnels allows for the entrance to the lava labyrinth!  My newest section definitely has my strongest encounters yet, both with denizens and with traps!  The entrance is pretty peaceful, with it looking more and more like a mall or a bazaar as I make adjustments.  Jello’s new metalworks is there, and it looks like she’s even been included in the quests from the aranea kiosk.  It’s a bit bigger than most kiosks, and probably has a different design than most… I just think of it as a kiosk because kiosk is fun to say and is always used mostly to give out information.

Anyway, kiosks aside, Jello is where a lot of gathering quests in the labyrinth are getting turned in now, with the accomplished delvers sometimes getting silken wear from the aranea, or some metal doodad from Jello.  It looks like she’s working with the aranea to give some of the shirts and pants some snap buttons to make them easier to put on, as well.

The true entrance to the labyrinth is a sculpted entrance that looks like a huge wyrm with an open mouth, all three mandibles open wide to let delvers walk down its throat.  I’d like to make it open and close some day, but it’s pretty far down the list, honestly.  Inside, delvers have to deal with more modest-sized wyrms and soon my basilisks will be able to wander the place, instead of all being sent off to fight the Maw.  I should probably look into diversifying the encounters a bit more, too.

The traps are working out as I hoped, but I don’t want to make solving the labyrinth as simple as a good fire resist potion.  I wonder if I could get my twinsnakes in here, possibly with a couple winter wolves to help regulate the heat.  Cold-blooded critters need help to warm up, but they also need help to cool down.  I wouldn’t want my noodles to cook before they can play with the delvers.

I’ll probably need to upgrade the snake spawner to get enough numbers for the twinsnakes, though.  And I’ll need Queen to get settled back into her lab at home if I want to give them the metal scales and lightning affinity, too.  Yeah, lightning, fire, and ice should be a good mix to lower the chances of delvers cheesing things.  There’s probably a more general elemental resist potion they could take, but I’d expect the effects on each element to be diminished versus a single specialized potion.  I just need to make sure the puppers and the sneks can operate down there without too much trouble.

Oh, I could also upgrade the earth elemental spawner for some more fun things to fight in there!  Some of the spawns already frequent it, but more variety will definitely be better.

I spend a little mana to move a couple groups of snakes and wolves there as a test, before turning my eyes to a currently-empty section of the labyrinth.  I’ve been wanting to do this one for a while now, too.  My ant spawner is maxed out, and the siren song of a new enclave has been in the background since before the fight with the Maw.  Like my spider and rat spawners, the final spawn straddles the gap between denizen and delver.  They’re smarter and have manipulators, and the final denizen for my ants are the magmyrm.

They did a great job as my own version of the red cross during the battle with the Maw, and I’m looking forward to establishing an enclave and seeing what an antkin looks like, or whatever the technical term is.  I’ll wait until they get back home, though.  If the past is any indication, when I designate an enclave, a portion of the final spawn will get progress bars and get to work making their home.  I don’t know exactly how much they remember from being my denizens, but I want to reward my hard workers as much as I can.  I want to make sure they have the chance to become the first generation of my ant dwellers.

I think I’ll set the groundwork for the forest of four seasons, then designate the ant enclave.  My other two enclaves grew up with me working on projects, too, so I don’t think that will harm their development.  They’ll also have my ratkin and spiderkin to help them along, not to mention Aranya.  There’s no worry about them being neglected, even with a big project going on.  In fact, if my ratkin and spiderkin are any indication, having a project is likely to help inspire them for their own ambitions.

Imagining my established enclaves working together with Aranya to guide the new one gives me a good feeling about the whole thing.