Eight floors down, and a kit for the last two paths

Last time we rebuilt the first floor of the Mileth Crypt and gave the first three paths something to learn. This time we kept walking down the stairs, finished the wizard's elements top to bottom, and handed the Rogue and the Monk their own opening moves.

The crypt runs eight floors deep

Only the first floor had been built out. Floors two through eight were a mess, half-finished creatures, stats all over the place for the depth, nothing that fought with more than its teeth. Sorted. Descend now and the company changes the way it should, nastier the lower you go:

The timid rats and spiders up top give way to centipedes that hunt on sight, then bats, then scorpions, then great bats.

And for the first time the crypt hits back with more than teeth.

A Bat screeches a bolt of darkness across the room, a Great Bat a worse one, and it bites hard against an unguarded Aisling. Casting turned out to be something the engine could already do once a creature was simply handed a spell to know, so expect more casters the deeper you go. If a bat ever flubs its screech it falls back to biting, so it is never harmless.

Drops land where they belong now too. Bats give a Bat's Wing, scorpions a Scorpion's Sting, great bats a Great Bat Wing, all reagents Dar pays for in town, all on the floors they are meant to be found on.

The last two paths get a kit

Warrior, Wizard, and Priest got theirs last time. The other two catch up now, so every class has something of its own around level five.

Rogues get Stab and, a little later, Stab Twice, the close dagger work the path is built on. Two of the Rogue's signature tools, Hide and Needle Trap, were quietly broken, both shipped with no target to act on, so Hide hid nobody and Needle Trap laid nothing. Both work now. Hide drops you out of sight for about two minutes, until you strike or fiddle with something, and Needle Trap leaves a nasty surprise for the first foe to step on it.

Monks were the last path with nothing of their own beyond Assail. They open with Kick, then High Kick once they have a little Kick under their belt, then Double Punch, a strike with a chance to land twice. That makes all five paths, each with a real opening kit.

All of it learns from Kousai, and each skill shows only for the class it belongs to.

The wizard's elements, top to bottom

A Wizard's four elements run the full ladder now. The lesser and base forms went in last time; this adds the greater (Mor) and astounding (Ard) tiers for Srad, Sal, Athar, and Creag. Sixteen spells, the whole climb laid out ahead.

Each scales with the caster's Intellect. The base damage and the multiplier on Intellect:

Each tier wants more of its reagent than the last and the form below it learned first. The damage and mana are our own numbers for now and may shift once they get played.

More prayers

The Priest's mending and curse lines both grew. Mor Ioc and Ard Ioc close far deeper wounds, for when a small heal stops keeping pace. On the other side, Cradh and Mor Cradh strip more and more armour off a foe, each paired with a cleansing prayer, Ao Cradh and Ao Mor Cradh, to lift the curse off an ally. Thirteen prayers in all now, the core of the healer and curse-breaker the path is meant to be.

One we did not fake. Dion, the shield meant to make you all but untouchable for a moment, needs something the engine cannot do cleanly yet, so it is set aside rather than shipped as a feeble imitation.

The tutorial keeps filling in

Flynn, a combat trainer, joins the teachers and gives a brand new character their first real fight and first coins. Harmless mice wander a practice patch, drop Small Mold when slain, and Flynn buys each clump for five gold.

The teachers used to stand dumped in a straight line across an empty floor. They are spread where each belongs now, the greeters near where you appear, the combat trainers by the pens they watch, the priestess at the board she teaches, the gardener up by the path to his garden, each turned to face the thing it tends.

Gerard's floppy hunt asks you to tell a male from a female, so the garden holds exactly those two now, white and brown, both just named Floppy, with the stray colours cleared out. The floppy population no longer creeps upward the longer the server runs, either.

Mileth, true to itself

Walk out of the inn and the square is the right square. A dozen townsfolk and two guards who never belonged are gone, and the two figures who actually live on that map stand in their place, a Beggar by the east edge and Locky near the middle.

The inn got the same pass. Riona stands behind her counter where she should, the rat underfoot carries its proper name, and a drunk called Artur who had no business there has been shown the door.

Mileth also gained its White Magic Master, Devlin, who had been stranded off in an empty, unreachable room and so was never met at all. She stands in the square now and offers On Honey: bring her raw wax or honey from the woodland bees for 10,000 experience, every twelve hours. One catch, plainly. The bees live out in the Eastern Woods, and that countryside does not yet connect to Mileth by road, so the quest is written and ready but not walkable end to end. Linking the fields between towns is its own job further down the road.

Below floor eight is still the rough old layout, not yet brought up to the standard of the floors above it. Next.

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