Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

It's been quite some time since I checked in on the record keeping for traits, magic, and new species.  I left others to handle the task, so I'm interested in how things are going.  It does seem like a few new traits have been found, and a few traits have become much more common in our population over time.

We have 57 individuals who have gained the manavore trait.  Based on the records, the manavore trait started showing up more frequently after I installed the extra crystal in the stream.  A sizeable amount of the population has heightened strength or improved endurance, or both.  There is an estimate that between 5% and 10% of the population also has the mana affinity trait, though it's mostly present in those who use the bathhouse frequently.  Around 10% of the population have the carnivory trait and eat exclusively fish, and about 5% have the new 'herbivory' trait and can eat some plant matter that others cannot.  Almost all the goblins and hobgoblins who work near the water also have water resistance now.  I don't know if it's intuition or if there is an actual discussion, but it does seem that most of our population seems to prefer to prestige, rather than evolve.

That doesn't mean that they don't have the option to evolve into things we haven't seen yet, however.  In the notes, there are four listed options that I don't recognize.  When I say that I don't recognize them, I mean they seemingly make no sense in what they're written down as.  I thought this might happen, back when I taught Zeb how to see his health and mana in numbers rather than as a more instinctual value.  Basically, the interface that each individual sees is actually updating based on their own knowledge, so if a species hasn't been seen by any of us, it's name is basically meaningless, though I actually can get some basic idea of what it is.

One is called 'watergob' in the demon language.  Now, I highly doubt if I had that option available, it'd be called watergob.  It'd probably be 'fishman' or 'kelpie' or something along those lines.  Another one translates roughly to 'fish hobgoblin' though in the demon language, it's a bit nicer sounding, since the word for fish and the 'hob' part of hobgoblin rhyme.  Both of those options are presented to fishergoblins with very similar stats, prestiges, and traits, which makes me suspect they're both the same species being presented, but they've each interpreted it differently.

We have a similar issue when it comes to traits, though Elora and the goblin taking notes have seemingly standardized those after having discovered that the properties of the traits seem to be the same.  One such trait that both of the goblins with the aquatic evolution potential seem to possess is 'aquatic maneuverability' which resulted in webbed hands and feet and an instinctual understanding of how to swim.  Both goblins are fishergoblins who've started to spend their free time swimming around the jetty.

We've had two more goblins become the gorilla like species that Kaga turned into.  As they've collected data on that particular species, it seems like there are four major requirements to evolve into one.  The individual needs to have heightened strength, improved endurance, thick hide, and be at least a mythic goblin.  Very few of our goblins gain thick hide due to how peaceful we are.  Some of the carpenters seem to have it, along with the goblins in charge of forestry.  Both are jobs where you're likely to get splinters or small cuts regularly.

We have two more available evolutions for some hobgoblin fishermen, though I suspect both are the 'ogre' evolution that I had offered before.  I could be wrong about it, but between 'bigger hobgoblin' and 'bulky goblin' as their naming conventions, I suspect that's the case.  I've really slowed down in my own leveling endeavor, but the fishergoblins are quite diligent, so I suspect quite of a few of them are actually ahead of me now in total prestiges and overall stats.  A few of the projects I've worked on have needed me to cut down a handful of trees, but nothing on any large scales, so I've basically been getting only passive levels, which are very slow.

<APEX LESSER EARTH DEMON>
Level: 31
HP: 2299/2299
MP: 1420/1420
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Improved Dexterity, Heat Resistance, Partial Sleep
Magic: Improved Stone Shaping, Tectonic Sense, Improved Earth Spike, Thermal Hands, Pulverize

Unfortunately, I can't directly compare the numbers for anyone except Zeb, since that would require teaching them to see their status the same way I do.  It may be worth it down the road to teach the record keeping goblin how I see it, and how to teach others, so we could receive better documentation for some of this data.  On the other hand though, I don't know if having that data is actually that useful.  It's an interesting puzzle, and might give me better insight into why demons evolve and other species don't seem to, but the application of that knowledge seems lacking to me right now.

Back on the original topic of other new traits that have been found, a few goblins have gained a trait that the record has dubbed 'bad air resistance', but I suspect it might be arsenic or sulfur dioxide resistance because it's isolated to the handful of goblins who are working at the sulfur ore roasting area.  It seemingly reduces the negative side effects of working in the area, but it also reduces their endurance slightly.  It's quite interesting if I ignore carnivory and herbivory, most traits have only strictly positive effects, but this one has a detrimental tradeoff.

The final new discovery was a new magic dubbed 'sprint' which seems to function similar to the spell meteor shot, in that it seemingly affects muscles.  As long as the user has the mana to continue using it, it allows their legs to propel them forward at about twice their normal maximum running speed, while experiencing very little fatigue.  Only a few hobgoblins have it, and it's limited to ones who have improved endurance and heightened reflexes, and are at least rare hobgoblins.  The three who have it all have a habit of running to their destinations rather than walking, even before they had access to sprint.  It seems they can only sustain the spell for a few minutes before they run out of mana, so it's not going to be speeding up our cross-island transport, sadly.

After reviewing all that information, I started to think about a few things.  We've sort of figured out that behaviors before prestige influence what options you'll receive during the prestige.  We likely have a large amount of improved endurance and heightened strength due to the amount of hauling jobs we have at any point in time.  In fact, there are more hauling jobs than any other job by a sizeable margin.  Only for a few weeks during planting and harvest time do farming jobs even come close to the amount of hauling we have.

That isn't a problem in and of itself, but as our population has grown, the number of available jobs hasn't grown by an equal amount, leaving more and more of the population idle more frequently.  It hasn't gotten bad enough that people are starving or anything, but if we don't come up with more unskilled jobs, it'll become a problem.

With that in mind, I started to think about what sorts of jobs could be beneficial and sustainable such that we can have a larger portion of the population busy.  We've made quite a few tasks like this in the past, between farming, hauling, fishing, salt pond tending, and quarrying to some degree.  For some of these, we can expand the total work in those fields.  Fishing should have more available work next year when the second tide pool is completed, and we're always slowly expanding our farming area.

Given we want more stone shaping goblins, I'm inclined to expand the quarrying process, but I'll have to talk with Zeb about it.  The issues we run into for mindlessly quarrying are two-fold.  Namely, we'll suddenly have an excess of stone which isn't nicely shaped and it requires further work for most construction purposes.  We've used stone like that for making the jetty before, so there are uses for it, but they're somewhat limited.

Though after some time, we can expect that a certain number of the quarrying goblins will gain access to stone shaping, and will become exponentially more useful, so even if the quarrying is a temporary stopgap, it might still be worth pursuing.  Another option is to start growing plants that are useful for fine textiles.  The amount of processing that plant based textiles take could provide our idle workforce with ample work that could then also be used for trade in the future, though it will take up more of our limited available land.

So, after coming to that conclusion, I went to talk to Zeb about the whole thing.  I keep coming to him with these tasks that will result in pulling a construction team away to work on some new project idea, and I can tell that it's a bit frustrating to him.  Though it was offset this time by the expected payout of many new stoneshaping goblins within a few years time.

Ultimately, we settled on bringing the number of construction teams building new housing down to only 1 team, while the second team will begin work on a new, large scale terraforming project.  What they'll be doing is transforming our valley's hillsides into terraced farmland.  A large number of goblins will be recruited for the process of breaking the majority of the rocks, and the construction team will do the detail work to make it look nice afterwards.  Once the new tidepool is done, the crystal over there will be relocated to help with this project, and that construction team will also move to work on this project.

The excess stone that is mined out from the hillside will be transported to the far side of the island.  Ultimately, I'd like two long jetties stretching out from either side of the natural bay, since I want to make it a harbor.  Between the hauling and stone breaking, that'll use a significant amount of workers.  As the terraces are completed, we'll also have more farmland available, and we can consider using some of it for textile plants, rather than food.