After Jeremy catches his breath he gets up only to see a goat munching on some grass off to the side. He freezes, but the goat ignores his presence. After a few minutes Jeremy steps back and goes into a defensive stance, but still the goat ignores him. He creeps toward the goat only to be ignored even harder. Eventually he even gets so close that he pokes it. All the goat does is give him a side eye before going back to munching on the grass.

Jeremy is tempted to shrug and go away, but something sticks in his mind. He turns back and examines the goat closer. It was a doe, but that isn’t unique in the dungeon. Then it hits him. Maybe it is just the fact those other goats were aggressive, but this one seemed like an older adult instead of some rambunctious youngling.

He takes a chance and goes right up next to the doe and pets her until she goes back to grazing. Then, in what might be the craziest thing Jeremy has done yet, he takes out a bucket and milks the goat. The first couple squirts he fires off into the dirt just to make sure everything is clean but the rest goes into his bucket. By the time he finishes, Jeremy has a good gallon of milk in the bucket. From there he harvests the rest of the plateau before the group heads out.

Back in the core room, Doyle and Ally watch them leave. ‘Well, that’s a thing’, Ally comments, ‘when did you go and make the goat up top there peaceful?’

Doyle tilts to the side, ‘that’s what you ask about and not the amazing performance my cliff had?’

Ally shrugs, ‘I expected the wall. Though yeah, that wall is a lot nicer than I bet either of us expected. Now that it has activated, do you have a better understanding of what it does?’

Doyle wobbles around and laughs, ‘so you are interested in the wall now?’ Ally pouts but doesn’t say anything, so he continues, ‘the wall is tall enough so the person climbing it has to exceed their limits. The funniest thing about that is if someone is incredibly weak, the wall will be shorter than the actual height. Also, time is apparently a bit wibbly wobbly around it so no climb will ever take more than an hour. Don’t ask me how that works, I can see the magic warping around it but I definitely can not parse it yet.’

‘Oh, and the goat thing is a last-minute change I made. Now I am not going to go easy on them, but those founders are sort of important to me at the moment. I didn’t want one of them to climb the wall only to die from the goat, so I turned it passive. The milk thing is a coincidence, though I will probably keep it in now. That climb is enough of a challenge so the goat isn’t needed. Besides that though, we still have one big sore thumb to talk about.’

Ally groans, ‘the birds.’

Doyle nods and sighs, ‘yeah, the birds. They did exactly what I wanted them to do, but it sucked. There must be some way to make them not derp so much!’

Ally shrugs, ‘they are just dumb. Like, really super extra dumb. Your best fix will be to control them like puppets. Even golems aren’t this bad because at least they pick up some of your common sense when you make them. I swear, those axebeaks would probably run themselves to death if you put them on a treadmill with prey in front of them.’

Doyle’s core dims, ‘I wouldn’t put it past them. They act more like feathered missiles than sentient animals. The idiots couldn’t even stop from bashing into the walls. I will admit that is partly my fault. I didn’t provide them with any area to stop behind where the adventurers enter.’

‘Though that gives me an idea. As it is I have them just charging right away or more correctly I leave it up to their instincts. With my carvings, the birds already get a decent amount of speed over a short distance. To keep any changes simple I can just restrict the aggro range of the birds and move them all to the back of the room. If they only start to charge after the enemies have moved further into the room they won’t go splat.’

‘That and adventurers won’t be able to just nip back out of the room. Especially important in the ramp room where they got baited into just charging down by a single person. I don’t want to make too many changes so I can tell what my changes actually do, so this seems like a good start. Just move all the birds to the back of their rooms. Now limit their territory. Though there is one special touch I want to do. In the ramp room for the second set of birds I will only have them charge after the kobolds below them enter melee combat. Hard to dodge a bird when a kobold is trying to kneecap you.’

Ally nods, ‘that seems fine. Though I do have to ask how the goat farm is doing? They just did a full clear of your second floor. Not that they really have a choice of it? But did you get enough new goats to replace them, or was it up to respawning?’

Doyle’s core flashes for a moment, ‘that is a good question. I got caught up in talking about the rest of the stuff and forgot. Now lets see what we have.’ Four screens pop up showing an overhead view of the goat farm, the two mirrored rooms, and the forest room.

Doyle takes a moment to count the goats in each room and sighs. ‘The forest room is fully restocked but that’s it. The other two rooms don’t even have half the numbers. I need 20 goats to refill the floor if they don’t kill the milker and the farm only holds 30. Luckily goats generally have twins so the ten extra can handle it. It might strain us once people become able to quickly clear these early floors, but that is for a later date. Plus hopefully people will just skip the early floors in favor of a greater challenge.’

Ally laughs at this, ‘as if! Once you get a few people able to clear things quickly, the settlement will probably farm your early levels regularly. They might even set aside a period just for their higher level groups to run through the early stuff. After a certain point you are probably better off not bothering to restock this level beyond what the goats can naturally refill. Not only will that be cheaper, but push the stronger parties deeper. Once you get a bit more space on the first floor, you might want to do the same thing there as well. Remove one of the kobolds and make another goat farm.’

Doyle takes a quick count of how many goats are on the first floor and shakes his core. ‘There are 27 goats on the first floor and four of them are level two. The mob cap is too restrictive there to set up a big enough goat farm. Even with nine goats having twins on the second floor I can’t quite keep up with the floor and I have less space to work with on the first.’

‘I will probably put some sort of limit on how quickly I respawn the goats. Maybe hook it into how much world energy the floor generates on a run. That way if they send a high-level group through that can trounce it all without breaking a sweat I won’t go into the negative.’

Ally shrugs, ‘you basically volunteered to feed them so you probably shouldn’t be too stingy.’

Doyle bobbles up and down, ‘I didn’t say I was going to change it right away. For now they don’t even have a group capable of making me go negative, so that isn’t a problem. What is a problem is potentially those wolves. They are clearly being drawn to me. What happens with that?’

Ally claps and smiles, ‘you kill them! This is an excellent chance to get a couple wolf types under your belt. To be honest? It is actually odd that you haven’t had one or two filter in already, even with the new settlement out there. There is a reason “starving wolf” is an early floor trope. Your entrance is right next to a forest and there are always some wolven outcasts just scraping by.’

‘Though if you meant to ask, what happens if the wolves get to your core? Since this is a new world, not a lot. There aren’t any monsters currently on this world that can kill a dungeon core. The only reason adventurers even have a chance without a hundred or so levels is because the system provides them a way so people can take care of problem dungeons. It does get abused, but overall everyone agrees that a plague dungeon isn’t the best of neighbors.’

Doyle tilts to the side, ‘Jim mentioned the lesser shadow wolf being lesser because it wasn’t sapient. What if that has changed? Also, as my kobolds have shown, you don’t have to be sapient to have a mind.’

Ally crosses her arms in an x shape, ‘not possible. Maybe if you give the wolf a decade or so to gain knowledge and wisdom. Though this doesn’t even include whatever life it has already lived. Without the boosts the shadow wolf species provides, a normal wolf can’t keep the needed knowledge in its head. Shadow wolves are one of the types that builds enormous packs. Their children are born as lesser shadow wolves and the parents will keep them around till they become sapient. This can lead to a pack thousands strong as being a lesser shadow wolf doesn’t stop them from having kids. Though you only find packs of that size in true wilderness areas because of the needed space.’

‘As for your kobolds? Part of that is them being your monsters. Like I said with the golems earlier, they pick up a bit of your common sense. Also, kobolds are one of those monsters that always teeter on the edge of being just another sapient race. The same thing is true with goblins, though kobolds tend to be farther along that track. In fact, in older dimensions kobolds tend to evolve into sapience as a race while goblins tend to be a coin flip on if they do.’

Doyle wobbles a little, ‘So I don’t have to worry too much about the wolf pack?’

Ally laughs but halts and puts on a serious face. ‘I didn’t say that. They aren’t sapient so you aren’t going to gain any world energy from them. That means if they beat a floor and just settle down you can’t do anything until someone comes and clears them out. If the wolves are tough enough to beat the town and they settle in on the first floor, it would screw us.’

‘At least you have a second floor so you could in theory still figure something out. On the other hand, it would leave you vulnerable if some adventurer with less than peaceful intentions came around. Of course they would have to be able to kill the creatures that took over, so this is more of a threat for new dungeons. For instance, if the wolves had shown up right at the start.’

‘Huh’, Doyle’s core sinks downward for a moment, ‘well we go off lucky. Now lets ignore this bit of late onset dread to go look at the next group. Ace and co seem to be done with informing Jim’s party about what they found. With Jim being one of the first people to try out our dungeon here and being one of the key people, I want to pay special attention to their dive as well.’