Yesterday's enemy could be tomorrow's friend. The phrase had never really been very applicable for Mark. Mark glanced once more at Nicholas Holt’s name. Just minutes ago Daniel Hale had created a group with himself, Amelia, Avery, and Nicholas. Amelia had immediately brought it to his attention. Daniel’s message was simple and demonstrated another popular Earth phrase, ‘if I can’t have it then no one can.’
Daniel spoke about the primal essence and its potential uses. Now both Gale and Leonard held the center island hoarding the top tier essence resource, and Daniel wanted the world to know. He also asked the other three dungeons to form a coalition with him against the other two. Nicholas Holt was the first to respond.
[Nick Holt: So you were hoarding the resource for months by yourself, and now that you lost it you want us to help get it back?]
[Avery Kingston: I’m game. Of course then the four of us will have to fight over it. (smiley face)]
[Amelia Cromwell: We are in as well. Possible strategy. Mr. Holt and Avery attack Leonard, while we work with Mr. Hale to take out Gale?]
Mark smiled as he finished the message. Working with the others would be a great way to rid themself of the biggest thorn in their side, Gale. The swamp fortress would be a tough nut to crack, but Danial’s forces had shown an impressive display.
{Nick Holt: Sure of course I am willing to help you guys take out my biggest competition. I like Amelia’s plan. We will need to work out a timeline and other details.]
With Nick Holt’s ascent Avery and Daniel also readily agreed. It did not take them long to decide on a timeline. Both Gale and Leonard had just expended a lot of MP on their latest battles, but every dungeon of the coalition still wanted to wait a couple months for various reasons. Daniel Hale probably wanted to respawn some of his unique units he had just lost. Mark also wanted to respawn Henry, but he would not have held off purely for that reason.
But once it was clear that the other dungeons wanted a longer timeline, Mark was fine with the deferral. The longer timeline would allow them to gain settlements III and make more preparations. Sure Gale and Leonard would also make preparations, but with 4 dungeons to their 2 could they really complete. The real question was whether the coalition armies would be able to finish the job.
They decided that they would work out the details as the attack date got closer. With that Mark was left wondering on how they should proceed. Not just for the upcoming coalition army battle, but for the rest of the battle.
On paper the longer the succession battle continued the more of a disadvantage they would be at as other dungeons got more and more sponsorship packages, but as far as Mark could tell they had often done more for less thanks to having numbers and better equipment on their side. Three sponsorship packages a week was nothing to scoff at. If they were tier 5 they basically gave around 18 elite tier 3 units that would likely cost around a day's worth of production. An advantage for sure, but not something that could not be overcome with better preparation and tactics, and now there were alliances which could potentially be extremely deadly or beneficial. Mark and Amelia just needed to play their cards right to give them an opportunity.
Six days after the coalition was formed, they finally finished their final unique germination path upgrade, trainer. Mark had not known what to expect. The other unique paths had been pretty good, so he had decided to go for it. Unsurprisingly the upgrade was a pre battle upgrade. The trainer upgrade allowed a plant unit to train a small 12 unit patrol of creepy crawlies. The patrol would get a power rating increase as a whole and the plant unit would get the equivalent military ranking upgrade.
It was only a 10% boost for the beast units at the germination budding stage, but the plant trainer would get a 25% boost since it was basically acting as a Lieutenant for the patrol. If Mark were to unlock the equivalent 5th tier flowering stage, he was sure the bonuses would go up even more. The only downside was that all units in the plant led patrol would have to train together for at least a week prior.
Mark could definitely see the use of the upgrade. Potentially he could have 12 elite crawlers that would all get the marginal boost when in battle. They would be led by a the plant unit that could act as their healer.
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Of course he could also combine it with the other unique upgrade options. The symbiote upgrade could make the elites even more powerful, While a breeder could spawn each of the elite crawlers prior to battle. If he did this with a half dozen patrols of spiders he could have a force of more than 1,000 led by 60 elites with 6 healers for support. Sure the majority would be weak tier 1 equivalents, but numbers were there on strength. Mark could not forget the seemingly endless tide of undead that Nick Holt had brought against them. Now Mark felt that they could potentially match it.
The question was where should he go from here. He would love to get their RP working towards one of the level 3 techs, but he could not stomach the endeavor taking over a 100 days for even the cheapest of options. In that same time he could unlock a good number of lesser upgrades with many options taking less than 10 days. Mark quickly scanned back through all of their upgrade options looking for force multipliers or…
Mark came across a special class under the healer class archetype: Witch doctor. They currently only had the healer class unlocked to level 2, and the unit had one spell and two curses at level 2. The witch doctor had an area heal spell around itself that had a 20 minute duration. Meaning the unit was a walking healing point. It was the only evidence that the unit was a healer. The other two spells were both enemy debuffs.
At level 1 the witch doctor class also started out with, growing faint. It was a debuff that affected units hit by it in a circular area with a 25 feet diameter. The spell would cause a general power rating decrease. Mages might have less manna. Melee types would get physically weaker. The decrease would also last for up to 2 minutes or until the witch doctor was killed, but the spell was not completely predictable. For one the witch doctor could only have its current levels worth of growing faint spells active at one time, so two for a level 2 witch doctor. Second affected units could only be affected once by any witch doctor. The effects could not be stacked.
The curse's effects could also vary greatly, from 1 to 25%. The curse's effects would decrease against targets with higher unit levels, greater power ratings, morale, etcetera… It would have diminishing effects if the enemy units in the affected area were more powerful or were highly motivated.
The second curse the witch doctor class received at level 2 was called smite. It had a far longer cast duration of 30 seconds but could cause a debuff of 10-50% against an individual target for up to 2 minutes. Once again the same factors would determine just how much of a debuff the curse would actually have. The witch doctor could cast the curse as many times as it wanted provided it had the manna available. Mark noted that it would work quite well with one of their in progress enchantments quick cast which could potentially reduce the cast time, allowing a witch doctor to decrease powerful enemies one after another.
Regardless, increasing the healer class would effectively make the witch doctors more powerful as well as potentially adding more curses or spells. Overall improving the witch doctor was the cheapest way to improve their goblin forces strength at 50,000 and 100,000 MP for level 3 and level 4. Upgrading the mage class would be his second choice, but the next upgrade was 250 for level 5, but with mage and flame juggler classes both relying on the upgrade the benefits would be compounded.
But Mark also wanted to unlock their unique tier 4 flowering upgrades for their plants units. Symbiote, breeder, and trainer upgrades would all cost 100,000 MP a piece, but increasing their crawler armies potential even further could certainly be beneficial. As far as their beast upgrades they only had the second evolution at one million MP.
That many projects would keep their RP occupied for a while. As far as their DP and MP, Mark would be saving them for a while. Until they had the dungeon features III tech, Mark would not have much use for DP for a while, so converting it was probably the best plan. Mark smiled when he realized that he could potentially cut off some time by converting their DP to MP to unlock Settlements III, increasing their daily MP production earlier. Yeah, that would be the best use of it. After that he could start saving it again, converting it as required.
The only other preparation Mark needed to make was any special gear, potions or pills that might be useful for assaulting the swamp fortress. They were making more and more exceptional or masterwork equipment and consumables. Soon they would potentially be able to shoot for artifact quality.
Over the last few days they had seemingly stumbled beyond another boundary of their magic mine. They had found a few never before seen higher level materials. The first was petrified wood. Large clumps of actual wood that was actually quite light for how durable it was. On Earth petrified wood was definitely actual stone made through fossilization, but apparently something had been lost in translation. Or perhaps the battle creators were taking some artistic license. The second material was mithril. It was the first fantasy metal that Mark could think of so he was not too surprised to see it here. Both materials would allow for easier qualitative leaps forward with their equipment.
The last method of preparation that Mark could come up with was siege equipment. Gale had some huge giants on her side. Even powerful enchanted arrows had difficulty bringing down such a large target, but for every problem there was a solution. Mark had already started building ballista for their own dungeon defenses, but he would add a mobile version to their attack plans as well as potentially some other siege weapons.
