Chương 20: Apparently, Luck Is Expensive

Matt woke up to the sounds of industry. There were no birds in Ironvale Works. Only the distant rumble of heavy trucks moving through Camp, the warning beep of reversing equipment, and the faint metallic pounding from somewhere beyond the Gate. THUNK. THUNK. THUNK. Matt lay in bed for a few seconds. Level Ten had happened yesterday. More importantly, the third COPY slot had happened yesterday. It was still there. Matt resisted the completely unnecessary urge to activate Overmuscle just to admire STR 63 again.

Barely.

"Maturity." He got out of bed and started the coffee maker. When the coffee was ready, Matt briefly swapped Perfect Temperature into COPY, brought the mug exactly where he wanted it, then moved on to the morning Crafting setup. All four copied Crafting Skills had reset overnight. Vital Imprint. Elemental Ward. Weighted Edge. Quickened Temper. Forty potential guaranteed outcomes spread across four specializations. Matt took a sip.

"…This is becoming a job." Another sip.

"A very well-paying job." ◆ The Life-and-Resistance production line no longer needed experimentation every morning. Matt had restocked the night before from Ironvale's commodity market: ten cheap clean beginner Bases with no premium Implicits, plus the common Currency needed to process them. Raw materials. Nothing more romantic than that. He switched Vital Imprint and Elemental Ward into COPY and started working. By now, the process had a rhythm. Prepare the Base. Guarantee Maximum Life.

Guarantee an appropriate Resistance. Record the actual rolls. Move on. Some results were merely decent. A few were strong. None were special enough to derail the production line. By the time breakfast was finished, ten new beginner Rares were ready for consignment. Vital Imprint and Elemental Ward were both exhausted for the day. Weighted Edge and Quickened Temper were untouched. Matt had learned not to interpret unused capacity as capacity that must immediately be burned.

Weapon Crafting was still a newer market for him. He had less pricing history, more variables, and a good chance of wanting Quickened Temper for his own equipment. So those twenty uses stayed available. He checked the defensive production spreadsheet. His previous batches had established a reasonably stable range. ESTABLISHED DEFENSIVE CRAFTING LINE Typical Full-Day Gross Sales: ≈ $4, 000–$4, 500 That was gross. Not profit. Bases cost money. Currency cost money. Marketplace fees existed. Taxes existed.

WhiteBase had successfully bullied financial literacy into him. Matt added a new line beneath the production history. WATCH: MARKET ABSORPTION AT 10 ITEMS / DAY No answer yet. Worth monitoring.

"Factory one complete." The second production line was much less mature. Weighted Edge and Quickened Temper let him guarantee Added Physical Damage and Attack Speed. Increased Physical Damage remained the problem child. Tempered Edge was still B-rank. COPY was still capped at C. Which meant weapon Crafting retained one uncontrolled step. Matt looked toward the Rare Foundry Longsword resting beside his equipment rack. Ten to twenty-five Physical Damage. Seven percent increased Attack Speed. A very good sword.

Built on the third prototype. The first two remained excellent reminders that there was a major difference between: I can guarantee some useful modifiers. and: I can manufacture perfect weapons. He could not. Not even close.

"Armor is manufacturing." Matt looked at the sword.

"Weapons are manufacturing with gambling attached." He had several cheap clean weapon Bases and eligible Gloves set aside for later testing. He left them alone. One lucky sword was not enough market history to justify turning breakfast into a weapon factory too. Instead, Matt updated the second spreadsheet. WEAPON CRAFTING — ECONOMIC DATA Sample Size: Insufficient He nodded.

"Responsible." Strangely proud of that. Then he packed the ten defensive items into padded shipping containers and took them to Ironvale's Marketplace Dispatch Counter. The clerk verified the Item IDs and modifiers, sealed each piece into insured consignment, and activated the listings. 10 LISTINGS ACTIVE The Gear disappeared into the physical Marketplace logistics network. Matt could stop thinking about delivery. Warehouses and trucks would do the rest. Now he had a different question. Level Ten.

What else had changed? ◆ Matt returned to the trailer and searched: what to do at level 10 delver The internet answered with violence. TEN THINGS YOU SHOULD DO AT LEVEL 10 LEVEL 10 IS WHERE YOUR BUILD ACTUALLY STARTS STOP FARMING LOW-LEVEL DUNGEONS LEVEL 10 CHECKLIST FOR NEW DELVERS YOU HIT LEVEL 10. NOW STOP WASTING MONEY Matt stared.

"There are too many people making lists." He selected a relatively normal-looking DelverForge guide. LEVEL 10 PROGRESSION CHECKLIST Better Level-appropriate Bases. Serious Passive planning. Support Gem progression. Item Rarity Gear. Matt went down the list. Better Bases? Already painfully understood. Passive planning? In progress. He still had the Level Ten Point unspent and no reason to panic about it. Then he reached: SUPPORT GEM PROGRESSION Matt clicked.

◆ The article opened with a large section on Support Socket Expansion Orbs. SUPPORT SOCKET EXPANSION ORBS Level Ten marked the beginning of normal Support Gem progression. Expansion Orbs existed in versions that added from one to five Support Sockets to eligible Active Skills, with higher versions locked behind progressively higher Character Level requirements. The only one Matt could use now was: SUPPORT SOCKET EXPANSION ORB I Required Character Level: 10 Effect Adds 1 Support Socket to an eligible Active Skill.

A community note sat beneath it. Don't complain. Everyone starts with one. Matt laughed.

"…Fine." Higher versions existed. Two sockets. Three. Four. Five. Not for him yet. No miracle where Level Ten suddenly let Cleave wear an entire jewelry store of Support effects. Apparently the System had standards. Matt stared at Cleave. It was still his default pack-clearing Skill. Which made it the obvious first experiment.

"So the Skill has a build." Of course it did. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. At this point, he should have expected that. Matt opened the National Skill Gem Market. Filter: Active Skill: Cleave Compatible Support Gems Search. The result loaded. 126 RESULTS Matt stared. Once. Twice.

"One hundred twenty-six?" He scrolled. Fire Damage. Cold Damage. Lightning Damage. Physical Damage. Attack Speed. Bleed. Area expansion. Area contraction with higher damage. Critical effects. Life recovery. Mana recovery. Damage conversion. Reach. Resource efficiency. Conditional effects that required paragraphs of explanation. The scroll bar barely moved.

"Why are there one hundred twenty-six answers to 'swing sword sideways'?" No one answered. Matt returned to DelverForge. There had to be some structure. ◆ The community had attempted one. Sort of. COMMON SUPPORT CATEGORIES DAMAGE Supports primarily intended to increase offensive output: Added elemental damage, increased Physical Damage, conversion, Attack Speed, status effects, conditional bonuses.

SUSTAIN / UTILITY Supports primarily intended to make a Skill safer or easier to use: Mana efficiency, Life recovery, Mana recovery, Area changes, reach, resource interactions, and other utility. Matt read the categories.

"Helpful." He thought about it.

"Not really." Attack Speed affected damage. It also changed timing and Mana consumption. Area could increase clear efficiency without technically increasing the damage number. Life Gain on Hit was sustain, except more targets also meant more recovery. Everything connected to everything. Matt opened another tab. best cleave support gem The internet immediately became hostile. Damage first. Dead enemies can't hurt you. Sustain first. Damage is irrelevant when you're out of Mana. Attack Speed.

Anyone saying otherwise doesn't understand clear speed. Increased Area. Hitting the pack is more important than theoretically killing the pack. Multistrike and never look back. Multistrike is a beginner trap. You're a beginner trap. Matt stared at the last reply.

"…Great." One thread titled BEST FIRST SUPPORT GEM FOR PHYSICAL WARRIOR? had more than five hundred comments and years of accumulated hostility. User 1: There is no best Support. User 2: There is. It's damage. User 3: No, it's Life Gain on Hit. User 4: Your healer is your Life Gain on Hit. User 3: Solo player. User 4: Then stop giving party advice. Matt leaned back.

"Fifteen years." Humanity had possessed Dungeons for fifteen years. Mana Stones had transformed entire industries. Multibillion-dollar companies existed because reality had developed loot tables. And the internet still couldn't agree on how to modify a sword swing. Matt kept reading until one comment finally sounded irritatingly sensible. What is your build currently missing? Add that. Matt stopped.

"…Okay." That was logistics. Identify shortage. Fix shortage. He audited his current setup. Damage had improved dramatically with the new sword and the third COPY slot giving him access to Overmuscle without sacrificing his other default answers. Defense was strong. Movement was good. Range existed. Single-target damage was covered. Pack clear was covered. Mana pressure had eased now that ordinary enemies no longer needed repeated casts. Matt frowned.

"…I'm not missing anything obvious." That was inconvenient. The sensible answer had failed him too. He thought for a moment. Then shrugged.

"Fine." Testing. ◆ Matt refused to pick one Support because a forum thread had declared holy war over it. He would buy several cheap beginner options and test them one at a time through the same Cleave socket. The first was Added Fire Damage Support. Simple baseline. Cleave hit something. Fire also hurt it. No philosophy required. Cart. Life Leech Support came next. Damage dealt through the supported Skill contributed to Life recovery, with the actual usefulness depending on the amount of damage he dealt.

Worth testing. Cart. Life Gain on Hit Support solved sustain differently, tying recovery to successful hits rather than the amount of damage dealt. That sounded particularly interesting on Cleave. One swing could hit several enemies. More targets could mean more recovery. Cart. Then Multistrike Support. The supported attack repeated rapidly. The marketplace description was calm. The community was not. BEST CLEAVE SUPPORT. ABSOLUTE TRAP. NEVER REMOVE IT. DO NOT USE THIS UNTIL YOU UNDERSTAND POSITIONING. Matt nodded.

"Perfect." Cart. Increased Attack Speed Support was obvious enough that Matt almost skipped reading the description. Windrunner Boots. Attack Speed on his sword. Quickened Temper. Now this.

"I keep buying speed." Cart.

"Apparently it's addictive." Then Matt reached the option Pikesmith would probably have yelled at him for ignoring. INCREASED AREA OF EFFECT SUPPORT The supported Skill covered a larger area. No direct damage bonus. No Life recovery. Just more Cleave. Matt stared at it. He thought about Black Hollow tunnels. Ash Rabbits refusing to group. The difference between catching two monsters and catching three in the same arc.

"Bigger Cleave sounds offensively obvious." Cart. Six Support Gems. One Support Socket Expansion Orb I. Total: A little under $2, 500. Matt considered the number. Not trivial. Not remotely alarming either. More importantly, this wasn't a permanent commitment to one philosophy. One socket. Six candidates. Swap. Test. Measure.

"That's reasonable." He purchased the order. ORDER CONFIRMED Estimated Delivery: Tomorrow — Ironvale Camp Receiving Matt looked at the delivery date.

"Tomorrow is going to be busy." Today, unfortunately, his build had not changed at all. Knowledge acquired. Items still in transit. He opened the Black Hollow Group. ◆ Matt: hit level 10 yesterday. bought support gems. Ethan answered almost immediately. Ethan: WHAT DID YOU BUY Matt typed the list. Matt: added fire Matt: life leech Matt: life gain on hit Matt: multistrike Matt: attack speed Matt: increased area A pause. Ethan: you bought the argument Matt laughed. Chloe: Trying them all?

Matt: yeah Matt: internet was useless Chloe: Sounds about right. Matt: Everyone says something different. Chloe: Because everyone needs something different. Matt waited. Chloe: Party builds can specialize much harder. Chloe: If you have a healer, your first Support socket probably doesn't need to solve your own sustain. Chloe: If somebody else covers control or utility, same thing. That made sense. A party could distribute problems across several builds. Matt's solo setup had to answer far more of them itself.

Two people could both be correct about the "best" Support because they weren't asking their builds to perform the same job. Ethan contributed his expertise. Ethan: MULTISTRIKE Chloe: Of course you would say that. Ethan: MORE HIT = MORE GOOD Matt: incredible analysis The chat went quiet. Then Chloe sent another message. Chloe: Wait. Chloe: You're Level 10 now. Matt: yes Chloe: Then you can wear this. A Marketplace link appeared. Matt clicked.

◆ FORTUNE'S HARNESS Rarity: Unique Required Level: 10 Implicit Items Found have 20% increased Rarity Modifier Items Found have 30% increased Rarity Flavor Text Fortune does not favor the brave. It favors those who can afford to keep asking. Matt stopped.

"… What." He read it again. Twenty percent. Thirty percent. Total: 50% INCREASED ITEM RARITY That was all the Belt did. No Life. No Armor. No Resistance. No Attributes. No damage. Nothing that made Matt harder to kill or monsters easier to kill. Just loot. Matt returned to chat. Matt: this belt does literally nothing except make loot luckier? Chloe: Basically. He reopened the Level Ten guide. The Item Rarity section suddenly mattered. The guide was careful about what the stat did not mean.

It did not increase the amount of loot dropped. It did not guarantee Rare items. It definitely did not guarantee Uniques. It increased the Rarity of items found. The exact internal mathematics of how the Dungeon System translated Item Rarity into individual drop outcomes remained opaque. The guide did not pretend otherwise. Matt appreciated that.

"So I can wear this for a week and still get garbage." Chloe: Absolutely. Chloe: That's the fun part. Matt: That is not how I define fun. Ethan: IT IS Chloe continued. Chloe: Fortune's is popular at lower levels because it gives a lot of Item Rarity in one slot. Chloe: If you're already comfortably farming something, you can trade some combat power for better loot odds. That was more interesting. Matt wasn't going to sacrifice survivability in unknown content for no reason. But Ironvale's ordinary enemies?

He understood them now. His offense had improved dramatically. His defense was already strong. Level Ten had opened the third COPY slot. There were circumstances where giving up some Belt combat stats for loot efficiency could make sense.

"Combat margin converted into loot efficiency." That he understood. Then Matt noticed the price. PRICE: $20, 000 He stared. Silence. Matt: twenty thousand dollars Ethan: YEP Matt: for a belt Ethan: FOR LUCK Matt looked away from the screen.

"That makes it worse." Twenty thousand dollars. For a Belt. With zero combat stats. The same amount Vein's Echo had sold for back in Black Hollow. That already felt like a different financial era. Ethan sent another message. Ethan: cheap MF Matt: mf? Chloe: Magic Find. Chloe: Old community jargon. People still use it for Item Rarity gear. Matt sighed.

"Of course there's jargon." Then Chloe sent: Chloe: You don't even have to wear it the whole fight. Matt stared. Matt: what He had a terrible feeling about this. ◆ Chloe: Item Rarity for a kill is checked from the Delver who lands the finishing blow. Matt slowly leaned back.

"Oh no." He could already see where this was going. The loot split didn't change. Everyone who contributed could still share the value however the party had agreed. What changed was the Item Rarity being applied when the kill resolved. Ethan confirmed the inevitable community response. Ethan: BUDGET MF STRATS Matt: what does that mean Ethan: THEY CHANGE CLOTHES Matt stared.

"…What?" Chloe clarified. Chloe: If nobody can comfortably fight in MF gear full-time, the party fights normally. Chloe: Boss gets low. Chloe: Designated finisher swaps into Item Rarity gear. Chloe: They get the kill. Matt pictured it. Serious Boss fight. Nearly dead monster. Everyone pauses. One person starts changing equipment.

"You have a designated lucky person." Ethan: YES Matt: so you change belts in front of the boss Chloe: Sometimes more than belts. Ethan: FULL BUDGET MF SWAP Chloe: Works much better when somebody else is keeping the Boss occupied. Chloe: Area attacks do not pause for wardrobe changes. Ethan: MF GUY DIES HALF DRESSED Matt stared.

"Of course there are videos." He searched: boss mf gear swap fail There were many. Too many. Matt selected one. A heavily armored Tank held a large Orc-like Boss at close range while its Life bar hovered just above empty. Someone yelled from the back:"HOLD IT!" The designated Magic Find Delver retreated. Combat Belt off. Fortune's Harness on. Another piece came off. Another went on. The Tank yelled:"GO! GO! GO!" The MF Delver fumbled the swap. An area warning appeared beneath his feet.

"WAIT!" He tried to run while still halfway through changing Gear. Explosion. The MF Delver disappeared in the blast. Matt choked on his coffee. For several seconds he coughed and laughed at the same time.

"This is the stupidest thing I've seen all week." He replayed the final ten seconds. The Tank screaming. The frantic Gear swap. The AoE. WAIT! Matt laughed again.

"And it makes perfect sense." That was the worst part. ◆ Matt returned to Fortune's Harness. Fifty percent Increased Item Rarity. Twenty thousand dollars. The Buy button waited beneath it. His amusement faded.

"This is real money." A couple thousand dollars for Support experiments was one thing. Twenty thousand was still twenty thousand. Matt opened his financial ledger. He had more than enough liquid cash to buy the Belt outright. No equipment sale required. No truck sale. No trailer sale. No threat to the road trip. That did not make the purchase automatically intelligent. He looked at the established defensive-Crafting line. Roughly four to four-and-a-half thousand dollars in gross sales on a full production day.

Matt almost divided twenty thousand by that number. Then stopped.

"No." Gross was not profit. He had paid for Bases. Paid for Currency. Paid Marketplace fees. Taxes would take their share. The real recovery period was longer than four or five mornings. Still— not months. If his current margins held, Fortune's Harness represented something measured in a modest number of good production days rather than some impossible future purchase. That was new. A month ago, spending twenty thousand dollars on one Belt would have sounded like evidence of a medical emergency.

Now Matt could evaluate it as capital expenditure. He frowned.

"Twenty thousand dollars is still twenty thousand dollars." Important. He was not going to become the person who called five figures cheap because his income had become weird. But the purchase was affordable. Both statements could be true. Matt had apparently entered an era of financially inconvenient dual truths. ◆ What was he actually buying? Not damage. Not defense. Not storage. Not mobility. A reusable loot-efficiency tool. If Matt quit Delving next month, the purchase would probably be stupid.

If he kept moving from Dungeon to Dungeon for years? The Belt could potentially influence an enormous number of future kills. Whether those altered odds ever produced twenty thousand dollars of additional value was impossible to know cleanly. RNG remained RNG. He could wear Fortune's for a week and get garbage. Take it off once. Watch a Unique drop. Spend the rest of his life blaming the Belt. Matt stared at the screen.

"That is psychologically evil." He was beginning to understand Magic Find players. He didn't like that. Then there was the Spatial Expansion Pickup. The good models lived in a completely different price category. Twenty thousand dollars pushed that future upgrade farther away. Not catastrophically. Still measurably. Matt considered how he would actually use Fortune's Harness. Combat Belt for unfamiliar content. Fortune's Harness for comfortable farming. Combat Belt for an unknown Boss.

Fortune's when he had enough combat margin to trade some survivability for better loot odds. And maybe— eventually— he would become one of the idiots changing Belts beside a nearly dead Boss. Matt looked toward the failure-video tab.

"No." He paused.

"…Maybe." He sighed.

"Apparently I have Dungeon Belts now too." Then clicked Buy. PURCHASE CONFIRMED Matt stared at the confirmation.

"…I just bought a twenty-thousand-dollar Belt." Silence inside the trailer.

"That does nothing in a fight." The sentence did not improve the purchase. He opened the group chat. Matt: bought the belt Ethan: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA Matt: why are you laughing Ethan: WELCOME TO MF Chloe: Keep your normal belt. Matt: already planning to Chloe: Good. Chloe: Don't wear Fortune's into something dangerous just because number go up. Matt: I am responsible now Ethan: you bought six support gems because the internet disagreed Matt: research Chloe: That is not helping your case. Matt closed the chat.

◆ The order now contained six Support experiments, one Support Socket Expansion Orb, and one twenty-thousand-dollar Magic Find Belt. Everything was scheduled for delivery to Ironvale Camp Receiving the next day. Matt stared at the order.

"Tomorrow is going to be busy." He opened the Fortune's Harness page one last time and read the Flavor Text. Fortune does not favor the brave. It favors those who can afford to keep asking. Matt looked at the charge.

"…That's incredibly rude." Also annoyingly accurate. He closed the page. ◆ Matt opened his planner. TOMORROW CLEAVE Open 1 Support Socket Test Added Fire Damage Test Life Leech Test Life Gain on Hit Test Multistrike Test Increased Attack Speed Test Increased Area of Effect GEAR Test Fortune's Harness Compare Combat Belt vs. MF Belt DUNGEON Ironvale Works Matt looked at the list. One Support Socket. Six Supports.

"This is going to take a while." That was fine. Better, actually. He wanted differences he could feel. More damage. More recovery. Repeated attacks. More speed. A larger Cleave. One at a time. If one Support was obviously best for his current problems, excellent. If not, future Support Sockets would eventually change the question from: Which one? to: Which combination? Matt froze.

"…Oh no." He made the mistake of opening the forums again. The first thread: FORTUNE'S HARNESS IS A NOOB TRAP Matt immediately said:"No." Second: FORTUNE'S HARNESS PAID FOR ITSELF IN THREE DAYS Third: I WORE FORTUNE'S FOR A MONTH AND GOT NOTHING Fourth: MF DOESN'T WORK, PROVE ME WRONG Eight hundred-plus replies. Matt closed the browser. Completely.

"No." ◆ He leaned back and looked through the trailer window. Ironvale Works stretched beyond Camp. Paved lanes. Heavy vehicles. Warehouse walls. The Dungeon Gate glowing in the distance. Level Ten had already opened one extra COPY slot. Now it had also opened two entirely new categories of optimization. Support Gems. Magic Find. Matt looked at tomorrow's planner. Then at the purchase confirmation for Fortune's Harness. Twenty thousand dollars. For luck. He took another sip of perfectly warm coffee.

"Apparently, luck is expensive."