Author: kirabug

Day 437:

It took a good part of a day to return back to my home base topside. First, I had a bunch of stuff I wanted to take back — some of that weird blue rock, some of the weird red rock, some emerald, some gold — so I had to pack that up in a way I could carry.

I also had to make sure that I was leaving the space secure. That was standard practice before I landed on Rock O Death, but here in the land of shabby monsters it’s particularly important to ensure that you’ve closed doors and prevented the floors from blowing up.

Then there was the hike up 10 floors and across a significant distance (through a room with a couple hundred duckens too, thank goodness there’s no poop here) to the main base.

As hoped and predicted, I have wood here, so I won’t be chopping trees down tomorrow. Instead I might take a day off, then go back to the mines. Or I might go right back to the mines. Sometimes it’s hard to decide the night before.

Sun’s going down, so I’ll sleep to the sound of cows and duckens and make my decision in the morning.19

Day 436:

I’m 15 floors from my home base and I’m out of wood to make pickaxe handles.

I’ve been able to stay with this particular cache for the past few days. It’s clean and secure and I put a furnace thing in a while ago to make sure I could stay warm.

(I’ve done my best to vent the wood smoke, which is to stay there’s a bunch of stairs above me. I really should consider building proper chimneys.)

(Yes, I’m going to die of lung cancer here. If something else doesn’t kill me first.)

But it looks like tomorrow is a haul back to home base to grab some wood from stockpiles there… and if there aren’t any stockpiles it’s time to go chopping.

I’m hoping I have supplies. My hands have enough callouses as it is.

Day 435:

All the day I’ve been digging I can hear giant slimes bouncing around like green gelatin cubes from ancient Earth cuisine.

It’s seriously freaking me out.

I don’t think they can get where I’m working because they’re just too big, but the noise is maddening.

Day 434: I’m back down in the deep looking for diamonds.

Or rather, that’s the intent, but the ore that I’ve hit right now actually extends up a couple of floors in my weird world of colored chambers.

(I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I rotate between the colors of stone as I build down – granite, andesite, diroite, stone – so that I have a rough idea how many floors down I am just by counting how many times I’ve seen granite as I go down the steps.)

(I miss elevators.)

So I was all the way at the bottom of the world but then I hit this great patch of diorite which led into a patch of granite above it etc. etc. until now I’m three floors from where I started.

On one hand, I have to climb fewer levels of stairs to find a cache of supplies.

On the other hand, that’s a lot of digging.

So yeah, digging down from well above where I expect to find diamonds in the name of finding more diamonds. Normal for around here.

But I still haven’t taken my eye off the prize! Socks await!

Day 433:

I did manage to get up quite a bit of sand, but not all of it.

That’s because I spent a good amount of the day fighting underwater skeletons.

They’re just like not-underwater skeletons, which is a pretty bad choice fi you ask me. Not particularly living up to the whole “evolve to meet your environment” thing. For example, they still use a bow and arrow… it’s just that a bow and arrow is a particularly ineffective weapon underwater. Especially their bows and arrows.

My sword, on the other hand, while hindered by water resistance, isn’t nearly as hindered as their arrows. So once they swam up to a certain distance from me (since they had no choice, their arrows couldn’t reach me) I bashed them a couple times with the sword and went back to the sand gathering.

More than anything else it was annoying because usually I spotted the skeletons from a distance while I was in the middle of filling a sack with sand. So I had to keep an eye on them until they got close enough to be of some danger, then put the sack down, switch to my sword, swim after them (which, with a sword is no mean feat… maybe I’ll add something to the handle to make it more buoyant when I make the next one?) and hack at them… then go back to the bag of sand and try to re-scoop what the water currents had already removed and then begin where I’d left off.

It’s not efficient, is what I’m saying. And I prefer an efficient worksite.

Also one without homicidal undead maniacs would be nice.