For some reason I had it in my head that nitric acid was hard to get your hands on. I was trying to find a gold plating method that didn't require aqua regia. Since we have it, we can just use a gold coin as the anode and what we want to coat as the cathode to electroplate it.
We should start with something small and light enough that we don't lose a hand if gold grabber's protection doesn't apply to the object underneath the gold, but if it goes well we can have nails, razor blades, and/or throwing knives flying around the battlefield. I think it's worth testing next time we have some down time.
I may have missed a earlier post but is the idea that gold plating may be sufficient to make the gold grabber skill work on whatever we plate? We should do something small as an experiment.
There are not a lot of ways to get gold into solution so aqua regia is probably our only possibility for true gold plating. However, for some materials like silver, copper, Iron, and bronze, I think you can do thick plating by just dipping the material in molten gold. The whole point of electroplating is that you can save money because it's possible to do very thin plating that way.
If someone has a penny, that may be a good test subject. Gold sticks easily to copper. Modern pennies are copper plated zinc but that should work. Nitric acid is not too hard to get but we have limited space and it has so many uses. It's probably the number one thing I would be worried about running out of.
For the record, that red gas you see during the synthesis of the 2,4-dinitrophenol is nasty and corrosive. It smells a bit like swimming pool chlorinator mixed with wasabi.
I may have missed a earlier post but is the idea that gold plating may be sufficient to make the gold grabber skill work on whatever we plate? We should do something small as an experiment.
There are not a lot of ways to get gold into solution so aqua regia is probably our only possibility for true gold plating. However, for some materials like silver, copper, Iron, and bronze, I think you can do thick plating by just dipping the material in molten gold. The whole point of electroplating is that you can save money because it's possible to do very thin plating that way.
If someone has a penny, that may be a good test subject. Gold sticks easily to copper. Modern pennies are copper plated zinc but that should work. Nitric acid is not too hard to get but we have limited space and it has so many uses. It's probably the number one thing I would be worried about running out of.
Yes, the idea is to get gold grabber to work on things that hold an edge. I don't expect it to be super effective, but killing something with gold grabber was on my list of things to try before the next floor.
Helen teleported them from the production trailer back to a safe room, as promised. Everyone paused, reorienting to their new surroundings, and then checked themselves over to make sure their gear was where it was supposed to be. There was no need for discussion; everyone knew that they were leaving immediately to kill more mobs.
Part of Taylor's brain was off in the background, watching with detached curiosity as the majority of his brain prepared. That detached portion was, in its muted and distant way, surprised at the emotions marinating the majority of the brain.
There was...not anger, precisely. There was no valid target or recent impetus for anger. It was more a dull-red resentment, a desire to take the pain that was locked away and tear it out, mold it into a spike and stab it repeatedly into the throat of the toves, or the Vespa, or the kua-tin...or, well, basically anything that wasn't a member of Team Trick Shot. Oh, or the Astronomy Army. Or Team Valkyrie.
Luke and his team? ...Eh, ask on the day.
The front of the mind was focused on preparation, making sure that his yo-yo was on his finger with an untangled string and that the hot list was filled with the necessary items in the correct position so that they could be called forth by reflex. The front of the mind was very explicitly ignoring the images that flickered in and out, existing for less time than virtual particles. Images of murder. A Vespa, a tove, a Nazi...whatever came to hand. Of a Vespa with its wings pulled off, screaming before the Skyhawk came down. Of Mom's and Dad's corpses, crushed to jelly but somehow with undamaged faces. Of a tove with the yo-yo spatially locked in its throat, thrashing frantically as it suffocated. Of—
Taylor shook his head, forcing himself to reassociate and push the images completely away. He checked his gear once more, checked with the others by eye, and swung the safe room door open.
The hallway outside was packed with Vespa. They crawled along the walls and floor and ceiling, vacuuming up every trace of the moss that had been on the walls. The safe room door had been sufficient to block out the sound, but when it opened a waterfall of noise thudded into his face. Buzzing wings, chittering jaws, chitinous legs clicking on stone.
All three humans stood, frozen and staring, at the hive of monstrous wasps that awaited them.
Attracted by the motion of the door, a wasp head jerked around, compound eyes sighting them. An instant later a dozen globs of acid flew straight at Taylor's face.
He watched, too surprised to react, as the liquid came at him, and then disappeared an instant after crossing the threshold. This was a safe room, emphasis on safe. Its protection was inviolate and no attacks were allowed to enter.
"My turn," Taylor said, tossing a trio of piranha bombs and a fire gel sack into the hall, then closing the door.
o-o-o-o
The first thing they did was to seek out and firebomb the crap out of a Neighborhood boss in order to get the Neighborhood map so that they could see where the local mobs were. The results were not reassuring; the area around them was, to put it cheerfully, a 'target rich environment'. Pollyanna might have gone so far as to call it 'a brilliant leveling opportunity'. A pessimist would have called it simply 'game over, man, game over'.
A realist wouldn't have called it anything, as they would have been too busy running away.
It wasn't quite as bad as the area outside the safe room had been, but it was bad; the wasps were everywhere. As the team explored, the lowest level they saw was 15, two levels higher than Team Trick Shot's humans. The highest they saw was a monstrous 21 that was half the size of Moose yet somehow even more nimble in flight than its smaller siblings.
The only good thing, and it was a very small thing, was that Vespa were horrifying creatures but they weren't intelligent; they operated on instinct, not thought, and their instincts could be learned and anticipated.
Taylor held that thought very tightly in the front of his mind as he looked down the hall at the oncoming horde.
It was hard to get a count, but there were at least twenty of them, maybe more. Based on size he was guessing that they were all around level 17-ish, but they were too far away to see exact properties. They wouldn't be for long.
"That is a lot," Drew said. He was slightly stoned but there was an edge of fear showing from under the protective cloak of pot fog.
"Foggy Split?" Calliope asked.
"Foggy Split," Taylor agreed. The others pressed in close, the humans shoulder-to-shoulder with Moose slightly behind.
"Hey, you on the left!" Calliope shouted. "Your stinger's all droopy—can't get it up? Taunt!"
There was a faint outgoing shimmer in the air as Calliope's spell leaped forth and wrapped around the Vespa's head. It dissipated without the angry-face emoji forming; the spell was only level 4 and it still failed sometimes. Still, it wasn't like they needed to enrage the wasps in order to get them to charge.
Taylor took a step back, getting a good grip on Moose's ruff. The enormous dog was growling, head down and teeth bared.
When the Vespa were thirty feet out, Drew's Torch spell, which had been hovering over the team's heads, suddenly vanished and reappeared directly in front of the lead Vespa's eyes, the brightness cranked to max. The spell was level 7 and about as bright as a strong LED flashlight; the wasp shrieked and flipped its head to the side, slamming into its neighbor and sending them both spinning to the ground.
One second later, Calliope triggered a Confusing Fog scroll from her hot list. The fog billowed out from her body, filling the corridor from end to end in the blink of an eye.
Confusing Fog was a wonderful scroll. It filled a huge area with magical 'fog' that to red-tagged mobs was 'cannot see the end of my ugly nose' and to everyone else (especially including the crawlers) was 'a faint mist just barely thick enough that I can tell where it is'.
The lead pair of Vespa, startled by suddenly losing sight of their targets, hesitated just slightly in the air. They immediately got plowed into from behind and six of the wasps went down, crashing into the ground. The rest jinked to the sides or up, flicking around the pileup without effort.
Twelve of them panic-fired their ranged attack, sending head-sized blobs of acid at where Team Trick Shot had been standing. The bugs had an eight- to ten-second cooldown while their acid reservoirs recharged, giving the team one less threat to manage. More importantly, Vespa weren't smart enough to consider things like 'trigger discipline' and 'friendly fire risk'. In this particular example, the ones in the back mostly hit their own instead of coming anywhere near the team. There was another pileup, this time sending eight of the bugs to the ground in a crash of broken wings and snapped necks.
The remaining eight once more dodged the mess and continued straight ahead, pouncing on where the team had been standing two seconds earlier.
Where, of course, the team was no longer standing.
The instant the fog appeared, Calliope and Drew went left and forward, flattening themselves to the wall and creeping along as quietly as they could. Taylor dragged Moose to the right and forward, forcing the huge dog to press against the opposite wall as much as possible while they moved.
The mobs touched down, snapping and stabbing blindly. One of them nearly hit the soup can that Taylor had left on the ground. That would have sent it flying, which would have been a disaster. The can contained a remote trigger, then an inch-thick layer of fire gel, then three inches of water, and then a small test tube filled with piranha solution duct-taped across the top.
The detonator went off, igniting the fire gel, which vaporized the water, which shattered the test tube full of acid and peroxide. The entire mess exploded, splattering everywhere.
The entire point of the device was that it affected a smaller radius than a Distributor Cap would generate. That was good; the team wanted to be able to use these things in smaller spaces without killing themselves.
The device worked a treat. Six of the wasps were burned, the rest had eyes and wings melted, and all of them started thrashing and blindly attacking everything within reach, which meant their own brethren. They instantly dissolved into a mass of stinging, biting self-destruction that the Terrans didn't need to deal with.
The two groups of mobs who had gone down earlier were starting to get themselves sorted out and would be moving to the attack again in another few seconds. Sadly for them, they weren't fast enough. Calliope jumped onto the wall and skated with ever-increasing speed up at an angle, onto the ceiling, and over the first group. When she was above them she stretched her hands up as far as they would go and pulled an open-topped box out of her inventory, a single bag of fire gel inside it, the trigger already clicked. The box was outside the area effected by her Gravity Resurfacing spell; it plummeted to the ground atop the pile of wasps and detonated, splattering liquid everywhere that promptly ignited into something as hot as a welder's torch. The bugs barely had time to scream before they died.
Taylor felt like he probably should have felt sorry for the mobs, had some degree of empathy for their pain and a desire to put them out of their misery quickly. He didn't. He simply pulled out another sack of fire gel and moved calmly towards the remaining pile of wasps. Drew was already choking them to death with his smoke, but it was a good idea to have a second option ready in case they didn't die quickly enough.
He looked to the ceiling. "Remember," he said to the distant crowd. "They're trapped in here with us."
o-o-o-o
"You're getting close to a trillion views," Levi said approvingly. "It's impressive."
"How important is it to get a trillion views before we go down?" Taylor asked, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. Drew was leaning back on the sofa, smoking 'just a little' and vaguely listening to Taylor and Levi's conversation. Calliope was spooning her way through a five-gallon bucket of pistachio ice cream and clearly not paying attention.
Levi grimaced and rocked one clawed hand in a so-so gesture. "On the one hand, it will definitely unlock some good classes for you, which will make a huge difference going forward. On the other, a good class on the third floor means nothing if you die on the second. With the Vespa in the numbers and levels that you're describing, it might be worth bailing now."
Taylor scratched his chin, thinking. "We've got about thirty hours before the floor collapses, so twenty-four before it's smart to go down. Leveling has slowed down a lot, but the XP awards are going up. We can probably make it to level 14 before we go down. You mentioned that many of the classes have stat minimums?"
"Sure, but an extra three stat points is unlikely to make the difference between 'good class' and 'awesome class'," Levi said.
"No, but it's easy to find mobs to grind on around here, and the XP awards are good."
"Sure," Levi said. "Moose and those fire gel sacks and chemical bombs are overpowered for this level. On the other hand, how many do you have left?"
"Eight of the fire gel, three Distributor Caps. But I've got a bunch of boxes to open and there will hopefully be more."
"'Hopefully' being the operative word."
"Okay, fair, but what if we go down and there aren't as many mobs to hit, or they don't give as much XP? We're already having trouble leveling."
"I wouldn't worry about it," Levi said. "I'm not allowed to tell you anything about the third floor itself just yet, but be assured that there will be plenty of stuff to grind on. Plus, it will be more level-appropriate. I don't know what's going on with these wasps, but they are way out of sync with what you should be seeing on the second floor. Level 21? Dozens of them in a group? That's fourth-floor stuff."
He wasn't allowed to tell them about the third floor? Interesting. Apparently Omusa had been breaking some rules.
Taylor: Don't talk about the interview.
Calliope: Why not?
Taylor: Call it a hunch. Check?
Calliope: Sure, I guess.
Drew: No worries, dude.
"If it's so far outside the curve, why haven't the showrunners fixed it?" Taylor asked, looking to Levi.
Levi shrugged, the motion rippling through both pairs of shoulders. "The last recap episode did say that they'd cut the numbers of these things in half. Beyond that, no idea. They do seem to be pushing a little hard this season. The timer was much shorter than it should have been."
"A little hard?" Taylor asked, ice creeping into his voice. "Have you seen the survivor numbers? Thirteen million people came into this dungeon and ten days later we're down to 880,000. Probably less, since the last time we checked was a few hours ago."
"I know," Levi said, his voice sad. "It's hard, and it's not going to get better. They want to have about fifty or sixty thousand crawlers make it to the ninth floor but with these loss rates..." He shook his manatee head.
"So you're saying that we should go down now?"
Levi's eyestalks spun in a quick circle. "I can't make that decision for you. The extra level isn't worth staying for, but the social numbers might be. The trillion-view class unlocks are often really good but, again, they don't do you any good if you're dead."
Taylor pulled up his Social tab and rubbed his jaw in thought.
Voting time! Voting ends Wednesday,
or when there have been no votes for 24 hours. (Yes, the schedule that I thought I was going to set has pretty much gone by the wayside.) Feel free to do a write-in vote if you like, but the main option is:
[] (Departure) Get out now. This stuff is too much
[] (Departure) Fort up in the room with the staircase, only kill things that come to you
[] (Departure) Wander the halls until we all hit 1T views, then fort up
[] (Departure) Keep wandering the halls as long as possible. Need those levels!
These options trade off chance of survival with chance of breaking through the 1 trillion wall. If you leave now then it's guaranteed that no one breaks the wall. If you fort up then Calliope probably will, Taylor might, and there's a decent chance Drew will not. Wandering and then forting up splits the difference on both survival and advancement.
I'll be straight with you: it's a narrative quest, not a simulationist one. Taylor has plot armor and is going to survive. The rest of them...eh. I like them and there's a lot more character development potential and storylines that I'd like to tell, and it's awfully early to start killing major characters off just to set the stakes. On the other hand, GRRM kills important characters every couple of pages and I aspire to have a tenth of his success, so...
Point of information: I have some truly excellent classes that require a trillion views to unlock. If you don't break the wall, those classes will not be among the choices but I'll post them separately so that people can satisfy their curiosity.
Also, reminder that Moose will stay a dog and will not get a class.
Current status of Taylor's incendiary supply:
Kobold fire gel x12
Remote detonator x6
Distributor Cap x7
The fire gel sacks come with their own trigger, 3-second delay, so you don't need to be worried about not being able to set them off. The remote detonators and Distributor Caps are important only because they give additional capabilities.
Good stuff as always.
Also the chapter isn't threadmarked.
Edit: voting for this option
[X] (Departure) Wander the halls until we all hit 1T views, then fort up
It's a bit greedy, but once we hit our 1T views goal, our protagonist can fall back and fort up, hoping for the best in terms of level up. Also it's more dramatic that way.
Do we have a rough burn rate (ha) for these supplies? Can we estimate a corresponding view growth rate and do some forecasting?
Do we know about any 'mundane' activities which generate loot boxes? Can we take down Neighborhood bosses pretty easily?
Am I substantially overcomplicating things based on the numbers you provided?
I'm going to post a teamup plan: Trick Shot, Southern Pride, the Valkyries, and any other humans we can find join forces to show off one of the biggest reasons we're apex predators: tactics. Teamups sell and that looks like enough juice for an explosion the viewers back home will feel in their back teeth or the equivalent.
I'm going to post a teamup plan: Trick Shot, Southern Pride, the Valkyries, and any other humans we can find join forces to show off one of the biggest reasons we're apex predators: tactics. Teamups sell and that looks like enough juice for an explosion the viewers back home will feel in their back teeth or the equivalent.
[X] Do You Want a Medium or Large Crater With That?
We need views - even if we can't all hit 1T, let's get some of us to that point.
What do people love? Explosions. The bigger, the better.
Spend our remaining time gearing up for a single big explosion. Farm loot boxes (trade achievement notes with other teams?) and do more chemistry.
We probably have some flammable gasses with us, or we can make them: hydrochloric acid and iron sulfide make hydrogen sulfide, which is very dangerous stuff. Paraffin wax and sulphur works, too.
Scout the area for somewhere we can turn into a good kill zone.
Lure as many Vespa as possible, detonate, and get the fuck out of dodge.
Moose-towed Calliope is a great lure.
Acetic acid and isobutanol attracts wasps, as well as mundane stuff like sugar water. Talk it up, get the AI on board.
Keep the bare minimum to survive the first few minutes of floor 3 but use everything else.
Reach out to other humans. Explain the race/view stuff - are they close?
Valkyries: how'd you like to be famous for something other than feet?
If everyone agrees, ask Southern Pride if they wanna show these bastards some good ol' fashioned American firepower.
Others they know are welcome.
Pool resources and execute on the plan.
People like romance subplots, too.
If the age gap wouldn't be weird, and with Drew's consent, see if you can get one/some of the Valkyries flirting with Drew, or him flirting with them. Sanity-check with Calliope, too.
Lovable stoner and tough-as-nails warrior woman is trope-adjacent.
This is a fictional romance arc for the sake of views etc. Negotiate boundaries and scripts in advance.
The intention isn't an actual relationship. Drawn out will-they-won't-they gets views, and shows hit their low points when their romantic leads get together.
Be clear this is business and not a proposition. Drop it with apologies if there's any hesitancy.
Encourage Drew to go after this - or if not this, something else that's grabby. We need him alive, and views mean survival.
So I have a couple idea for increasing views without increasing the number of fights.
One is manufacture story a la reality tv. Ask the valkyries for a team up and then over chat ask if any of them would be ok with Drew flirting with them for views. Before the team up have Drew talk about how cute he found her to set the stage and get the audience invested. Then he does some flirting (how he does doesn't matter) maybe he smokes some shapes to help him and add a coolness factor. Whichever way it goes can make a story, leave it up to Drew to decide. Maybe they become a will they/won't they and flirt each team up, maybe Drew strikes out and keeps at it and that becomes his thing kind of like Brock in pokemon (and Leo can razz him about it, his line "Hey I'm a Stoner not a loner.")
But it would help Drew long term as well as help us here as it would help the views of our least popular member.
Idea two is to get the valks and propose a team up where we split the group. This is mostly because I'm not really sure how the viewing system works, but for example if someone watching is a Leo fan and we split her up with most of the valkyries then they might bounce back to the other party to see how we're doing. Obviously dangerous to split the party though.
Do we have a rough burn rate (ha) for these supplies? Can we estimate a corresponding view growth rate and do some forecasting?
Do we know about any 'mundane' activities which generate loot boxes?
Can we take down Neighborhood bosses pretty easily?
Am I substantially overcomplicating things based on the numbers you provided?
I'm going to post a teamup plan: Trick Shot, Southern Pride, the Valkyries, and any other humans we can find join forces to show off one of the biggest reasons we're apex predators: tactics. Teamups sell and that looks like enough juice for an explosion the viewers back home will feel in their back teeth or the equivalent.
Respectively:
- With his loot boxes
- A single bag of fire gel will take down essentially any Vespa that it gets splashed on, so it's just a question of getting them close enough together to be worthwhile. Under current circumstances, a single bag will take down 5-10 Vespa each shot. (The toves are all long dead.)
- I'm not sure what you're thinking of. You've executed on all the achievements that you're aware of, and made sure to copy them among the whole team.
- Given enough space to use your incendiary and/or chemical weapons, Neighborhood bosses are not an issue for you.
- Possibly. :>
Drew's Smoke Form spell is currently level 8. It can only move smoke around, not arbitrary gasses. The AI appears to define 'smoke' as "gases + particulate matter that all results from a combustion process". The exact details are fuzzy. He can move uncontained smoke quite quickly, but it doesn't generate a lot of force, so smoke-filled balloons can only be moved slowly.
Levi assures you that it will improve substantially once it finally hits level 10, but that's going to take a while. Leveling slows down as it goes up and the jump from 9 to 10 is a big one.
I like this. Leo is an awesome kid that's already pretty popular, and has a popular hook. Taylor is the Team Leader (with all the inherent popularity that implies) with a moderately niche draw, but with the entertainment experience to leverage that for all that it's worth. Moose is Moose, and will continue to surpass them all.
Setting Drew up for a romance arc ("golden retriever himbo romantically pursues badass Amazonian warrior-lady" is a popular trope for a reason) will help boost his views (and maybe also the number of views for the rest of the party, tangentially) and that of the other party.
Romance dramas are popular.
@FaintlySorcerous would you be willing to add some variation of the following to your action plan?
If Drew consents, do the following...
Over chat, with the Valks, explain 1T viewcount rewards.
Ask if any of them would be ok with Drew flirting with them for mutual views (more views = better chance at patrons = better lootboxes)
Explain that it's to set up a fictional romance arc for the sake of views.
Love stories are popular in human fiction, and it would make sense that would carry over here, especially with the framing of "tragic romance in the middle of the death game."
Nothing would happen without mutual consent, it's just a fictional pursuit of romance, with a long and drawn out "will they, won't they" segment
After all, in most TV Dramas, when the male and female leads actually get together, it's considered the downpoint of the show.
Drew and the person in question (if anyone is willing) would negotiate boundaries and work out scripts beforehand, so that everyone knows what is going to happen, and no one is caught off guard.
Be polite, be compassionate, be understanding. Don't be rude, don't be offended, respect their answer. It's morally dubious, and "no" is a complete sentence.
Absolutely on the Valkyries.
For Southern Pride... remember that interactions with them are already strained. They could cause trouble with Valkyries.
[X] Do You Want a Medium or Large Crater With That?
Maybe reach out to Valkyries first and ask them if they are ok with Southern Pride joining up too.
If they don't want a big hunt, we could still meet up with them at stairs down and from there go hunting as our individual groups, making sure to stick close enough to each other that one group could run to help the other. ("Wander the halls until we all hit 1T views, then fort up" with cooperation to reduce the risk. +A dramatic rescue scene could also be really good for views)
What? You're telling me that soft music and one instance of looking into each other's eyes doesn't constitute a romance arc? I know a few anime that might suggest otherwise
