Doyle takes another glance over what armor he has available. ‘I don’t really want to deck the kobolds out. That would cost too much and not fit what I feel my first floor should be.’ Ally shrugs, ‘so keep it light then. It isn’t like those two dagger kobolds would fight better with more encumbrance. They only have three strength after all.’ Doyle’s core dims, ‘hmm, you’re right. Actually, now that I think about it, let's bring up the kobold status.’

{Kobold

S[4] A[7] C[4] I[6] W[6] P[6]

Skills: Heavy Bash lv3, Improvise Trap lv3}

‘Wait a second! You were going to let me fall into another mistake. They have the skill for heavy bash and here I am trying to give them swords and daggers.’ Ally smiles but doesn’t say a thing so Doyle continues, ‘You were! Switch out the daggers and swords for maces. Gah, and I forgot to let them wander around and lay out traps!’

Ally interrupts him and points out that, ‘they need to gather some excess energy for the traps so they couldn’t have set traps. Since you didn’t tell them not to they will when possible.’ Doyle brightens up again. ‘Well, I did nothing wrong then. But yeah, any kobold with a melee weapon should now have a single mace. Maybe once the pattern levels up more I will get other weapon skills to put on them.’

‘Anyway give the shieldless kobolds some greaves except the wand using one. Also, don’t think I missed the clothes pattern. They are absurdly cheap as long as I don’t do anything fancy with it, right?’ Ally nods, ‘yeah. Regular clothes generally cost a single point for the whole suit. Mostly because that existed in societies your earth pushed the meaning of normal clothes into the gutter. When there are people who find it easier to just buy new clothes instead of washing old clothes, you know something is going wrong.’

Doyle shifts around, ‘not everyone was like that. Anyway, throw shirts, pants, and underwear on them all. Six world essence isn’t worth quibbling over. To finish up with armor, I really want to deck out the boss.’ Ally interjects, ‘not a boss.’ Doyle rolls to the side, ‘meh, the leader should be well armored. She can have a tunic, gauntlets, greaves, helmet, and a pair of boots. Actually no, cut the boots and greaves. They seem like the kind of race that goes around barefoot anyway and five items is enough. I am tempted to cut the gauntlets as well but protecting her hands so a lucky shot doesn’t drop her shield or mace sounds like a good idea. Also can I armor the goats?’

Ally laughs, ‘of course you can armor the goats. You just lack any good armor to put on them except maybe the helmets. Once you get some more proper main armor pieces, it should be possible to make something work.’ Doyle sighs, ‘don’t bother with the helmets. I will just give them collars and be done with it.’

Ally frowns and looks down for a moment but can’t keep it going. She brightens up and laughed some more, ‘fair enough. Though the helmets would have looked cool, I think they should be fine without. Now let’s take a look at the butcher’s bill. [System what are the temp and loot prices for the items we want?]’

{Clothes for six kobolds and two goat collars: 6

Wooden Wand: 10, 100

Wooden Shield: 2, 20

Bronze(9:1) Mace: 5, 49

Leather Greaves: 2, 20

Leather Gauntlets: 2, 16

Leather Helmet: 2, 19

Leather Tunic: 2, 17}

With her eyebrows raised Ally clicks her tongue, ‘quite the spread there. I was expecting the armor to all cost the same. Also before you ask, the wand costs so much because it is magical. For basic magic items like a wand or a sword enchanted to be sharper the price is generally double. Though of course it’s magic. You can never quite pin it down.’

Doyle does some math in his head, ‘looks like arming my kobolds will cost only 67 world energy if I don’t make any of it loot. I do want some of it loot though so let me think. At least one wand being lootable is a must. Only the leader should have a chance to drop a mace as well. So that would bring us up to 201 points. The mace and shield girl can drop the shield, same with the shield and wand guy. The mace and greaves kobolds I think will lack any loot. So what? A total of 237 points on arming them? I wanted to keep it down but I still spent almost as much on their gear as I did on the kobolds themselves. The leader kobold doesn’t have all the loot I wanted her to have.’

‘Though that reminds me. For stuff like their gear loot is mostly self explanatory. The monster dies and all the energy goes into the item instead of some random drop. How would it work if I wanted something they don’t carry to be loot? I noticed the metal coins in the pack so they are probably the common currency under the system.’

‘That’s a good question.’ Ally thinks about her answer for a second before she continues. ‘There isn’t really a set way to do it to be honest. Some dungeons literally place all loot options on their monsters somewhere. A coin in the pocket or the stomach. This obviously becomes less viable for the more extreme rewards you might give out.’

‘You can also set it to them without spawning the item. This means you could do silly things like having a bee drop a chunk of ore three times its size. A very useful method if you have a normal animal but want them to drop leather clothes. Though mentioning leather brings us to the third most common way to do loot drops. You can select parts of your monster to become their loot. This means you can have your goats potentially drop a nice hide when defeated even if they got hacked apart and then burned.’

‘Suffice to say each method has its own upsides and downsides. As for the metal coins you might want to set a couple copper on your leader kobold. Now your world might not switch to using system currency. Some never do. However it is the only universally accepted currency. Even the worlds that don’t adopt it use it. This mostly stems from it not being counterfeitable.’

‘Only entities like the system and dungeon cores can make it because at the center of each coin is a quintessence signature. The higher grade the coin the more quintessence in that signature. This stored quintessence is used by the system when anything is directly bought from it. As a side effect of this coins always cost the same amount of world energy. Copper at ten and silver 100. Of course there are higher tiers of coin, some even valuable on their own for the metal they are made of. You don’t have to worry about it though as after the next coin, gold, the cost balloons.’

‘Hmm’, Doyle tilts forward, ‘Three copper coins as loot then. This raises the cost up above what I earn in an hour but everyone loves coins. Also, you said it had a signature in it. Is that my signature or a generic this is a coin signature?’

Ally makes a number of illusionary copper coins all of them different. ‘Not only is the signature uniquely yours but their design depends on the dungeon as well. We won’t know what ours is until one gets dropped. In fact, you can’t even use gold coins until the fifth floor boss so I guess it is a good thing you didn’t want to use it. Not that we are likely to see them in the tutorial. Your kobolds aren’t likely to survive long enough for any loot to drop. Good news about that is you only need to pay the loot cost the first time or after it has been looted. Otherwise you just pay the basic cost.’

‘Of course that is only if you spawn the same setup. If you try to change equipment or creatures, the pattern holding the loot in place falls apart and you have to set it up again. Train your rules enough and you can automate the respawning of things. Honestly, a lot of this is provided by the system to promote growth in dungeons. Without a system to handle it dungeons tend to stick to fewer but deadlier floors.’

‘This works in systemless universes. Systems however change the game as it smooths out the progression of adventurers. You want level one to five threats on the first floor. Second floor can then be level three to nine and so on. That way people can level up. Without levels though the tiers of strength tend to be more exponential if harder to progress. Oh, and your monsters are all level one at the moment. You’re limited to monsters equal to or less than your level and the monster itself can have limits built in as well. For instance, you can’t spawn a real dragon under level 1000.’

Doyle nods his core, ‘good to know. Though I have to ask, if monsters don’t have paths how do levels work for them?’ Ally shrugs, ‘I don’t know the details. Even though we have all these dungeons like Flisle and the Infinite Caves to do tutorials, they didn’t start under the system. Their floors and monsters had already been setup and they don’t exactly have leeway to set up new ones. I am sure we will find out soon enough.’

Doyle sighs, ‘we are in a tutorial. Shouldn’t there be some kind of quest or text about it?’ Ally laughs, ‘as if the tutorials are really going to set you up for the world. For people born under the system they already know most of the extra stuff from living their lives. You knew people wouldn’t be able to learn what you really need in less than a few years. Instead, the tutorial is entirely there to get you ready to live life. If the tutorial actually was here to get you system ready it would let you experience leveling up and more paths.’

‘It packs people full of just enough false confidence that you don’t all die. When the system reforms your world it takes years for it to stabilize. Most buildings with more than a couple stories will have collapsed. Animals will have acclimatized to the energies in the air and some will have changed into monsters. While major cities and important buildings get some protection, your world has well and truly ended.’

Ally closes her eyes and rubs the bridge of her nose. ‘Hah, sorry about that rant. In my years I have seen a good number of worlds introduced to the system. Helped in protecting those important places. The people come back from the tutorial and see that for the most part everything looks the same. Governments try to regulate levels and paths. Extremists deny it all and kill the strongest to try and prove in some twisted way it isn’t real. Dungeons and monster dens get quarantined so no one can enter them for their own safety.’

‘We can only do so much without turning entire species into our dependants. Even then it doesn’t work all the time. Some godlike being comes along and tries to handhold a civilization through the change. No good ever comes of it. Governments crumble, cities burn, and whole societies die out. Everyone has to take that first step into the new system based reality and some species just can’t manage it.’

‘Luckily I haven’t personally experienced it but entire species have died. Something in their core existence that denies the system. The Alilloou in particular are a poster child for it. Anyone that helps with new worlds is required to read the account. They at first seem to be adapting perfectly. No chaos and they banded together right from the word go. Within a couple years everything seemed at peace like they had always had the system. The team, happy with the progress, left before the century of observation was even a tenth of the way through.’

‘They got sent back when no communication or travelers came from the world. It was a tomb world when they arrived. Every Alilloou, old and young, had simply stopped living once they were alone. It took millennium to find the answer. As a species at some basic level they couldn’t handle the mystical energies. While the observers were around, they acted like observers in the quantum sense of the world. Once they left, well, yeah. What’s worse is this was likely the best outcome for them. To never know they are trapped and can never leave the presence of someone of another species or they may just die without notice.’