And probably a Green Li Suyin, with possibly a Peak Yellow Zhenli and a second spirit beast for her.
We'll also have a more active Sixiang! She's working on something, and I can't wait to see what it will be.
But yeah, if we go down again, I expect that Li Suyin will have three or four green level constructs to provide for some basic guarding and excavation functions, with even better tools at dealing with the creatures we might find here. One thing I think she'll work on is to someway counter-act the corpse devouring thing that forced us to flee. Figure out a way to deal with stuff like that, and we can descend even deeper into the chasm.
Also, she'll probably have better storage. After all, the real reason we didn't just keep on going down the planned down route was that we didn't have the room for materials. Even having two yellow constructs carrying a huge spatial box between them to store a whole bunch of stuff would be incredibly useful for doing deeper and longer dives in the area.
Speaking of which, what's the availability of dungeon crawling with Li Suyin? Is it now our default social act for her? Once a month? Only when she's ready? Can we go without her (although we shouln't)? Narratively, she goes in by herself frequently, and only goes deep when she has backup, right?
I'm not sure what the availability of doing dungeon crawling with Li Suyin is, but we do have this tidbit here.
She nodded happily. "Yes! I've acquired so much more than I could have hoped for! And it was amazing, seeing you fight like that. I'm sure, once I break through that we'll be able to go even deeper!"
So I don't think that we'll be going down again until Li Suyin has broken through to green, which might take months depending on how diligent she is regarding it. However, I would find it unlikely that it is going to be a regular occurrence, for either of us. The tools that are needed to keep one safe from the environment are consumables, which means that you need to make them or buy them each time you want to go down there. That takes time, resources, and effort that could be spent doing other stuff with the goods you've already retrieved.
Given the preparation needed to go down into the caverns, which is likely to be more significant than we know given the various consumables that Li Suyin prepared and used (Fresh Air bombs, Disposable Skeleton Bird Delivery Systems, all of the explosives she used, and what looked like a drill/fresh air dispenser), I find it more likely that the game plan is infrequent deep dives. Prepare the team as thoroughly as possible, and then dive as deep as possible and try to get the maximum amount of material from each dive. This way, Li Suyin can build up the needed supplies gradually without taking up large chunks of time that could be spent on other things.
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In other news, I've been thinking about the bandolier that Ling Qi grabbed for Li Suyin, and I'm getting more excited for that piece of loot than even the knife or necklace. If there are still consumables in it, then Li Suyin can figure out what materials exist down in the chasm. Materials that she might not know about unless she stumbled upon them, or an independent source verified their existince.
Depending on how exicited Li Suyin is for the materials, she might look to invent a means of scrying and locating valuable minerals down in the tunnels, so that we can go for valuable veins right away rather than relying on luck and providence to find the more exotic materials.