Dungeon Running With Ivy

Ivy’s performance in the dungeons is really good, for a first try. We figured that with Ivy as our healer, as well as the increased levels of Mia and I, that our first run with a tier 5 dungeon was in order. Thanks to the skills she has, she works mostly as a guardian of sorts for me. Hopefully somewhere down the line, I’ll be able to acquire a perk that lets her heal at a range.

As the health pool of the people in our guild scales up, she’ll need to get perks to up her rate of healing as well. If I had 10,000HP, her healing rate would be like trying to fill up a swimming pool with a glass of water, percentage-wise.

As it stands, she does her job pretty well. We’re currently in the rat dungeon, as Mia and I felt it would be best to test Ivy with something that we both know. Ivy is definitely a worthwhile addition to our party, in terms of a healer. I’m not particularly strong against the rats, and I find myself taking damage frequently due to little mistakes in melee combat. Ivy’s healing helps alleviate that, and allows me to get more experience in melee situations with less danger to my health.

Her shield and thorns abilities aren’t the most useful of things, but they definitely help in combat. The shield that she can manifest is clearly able to absorb much more damage than her bare skin can, and through experimentation, we realise that they have no limit on the time they can be summoned. They might still have a limit on damage they can absorb, but we didn’t find that limit in this run.

The thorns on the other hand, are useful for doing little damage to whittle down enemies, or distracting them long enough for me to get a good hit in. This comes in particularly useful in the fight with the Queen. I find myself cornered at one point, and in tandem with Mia and her new ability, Ivy manages to distract the boss and allows me to get out of a potentially very dangerous situation for myself.

During the fight, Mia also demonstrates the new ability that she mentioned yesterday. It turns out that she learnt the ability to wield the air as a cutting tool of sorts, now being able to launch sharp cuts of air magic at opponents to slice them open. The ability proves useful against the rats, as one or two more powerful cuts can bring a lesser big rat to a standstill, and are often lethal. These particular cuts are taxing on Mia’s mana though, so she reserves most of those strikes for the boss.

1500xp

As the boss fades away into dust, and I’m that much closer to the next level, I check the status of our health bars, compared to Ivy’s mana bar. Ivy didn’t take a whole lot of damage and was able to passively heal the damage that she did take. My health bar is actually looking pretty decent, having not dipped below 50 for the entire duration of the fight, and is currently at 80HP. Mia’s health bar is looking a little worse, so I direct Ivy to go heal Mia first, while I gather all the loot.

After gathering the loot and Ivy healing Mia and I back to full strength, we exit the dungeon. Ivy’s mana bar is pretty much tapped, so we have to wait for a while before we can go back into another dungeon. We look through the loot and there’s nothing super interesting. $15,000 in cash from the boss, some rat meat and bones, along with a ring that has a weak enchantment on it.

I ask Mia if she wants anything, to which she declines. I put the rat meat on the abyss auction, and tell Ivy to eat the rest of the loot. While she does, I ponder exactly how I want to spend her stats. After clicking on Ivy’s stats earlier, I found that her stats mean pretty much the same thing as mine. Intellect increases MP maximum, wisdom increases MP regeneration, and all other such things. The only other exception seems to be that agility slightly increases Ivy’s ability to shapeshift, and that some stats have milestones to reach, which allow Ivy to do certain things.

The prime example would be increasing her libido stat to 10, seems to be able to let her feel romantic and sexual feelings. Hopefully that also comes with the ability for her to form genitalia. I salivate for a moment at the thought of Ivy being able to create both an artificial dick, and a vagina. I indulge my own fantasy for a moment, before pushing that aside to focus on how I want to invest Ivy’s statpoints. I take out my phone and write down a list of the seven stats and how useful they might be.

Strength: Increases health regeneration. Ivy’s health regen is already decently high, so not super necessary.

Agility: Increases speed. Ivy is not supposed to be a melee combatant, so also not hyper necessary.

Endurance: Increases health bar. With a high health regeneration, a high health bar isn’t as necessary as it otherwise would be.

Intellect: Ivy is a healer, and needs mana to cast her healing spells. She will need much more, as the levels of opponents scale up.

Wisdom: Ivy will need a much higher mana regeneration, in order to cope with the amount of healing she will eventually need to do. If her wisdom is raised high enough, infinite healing may be possible, but that would be incredibly broken so I doubt that would happen. Still, wisdom is important.

Charisma: Ivy’s most important function is as a healer. Social stats are a low priority, with this idea in mind.

Libido: While having Ivy be able to feel romantically and sexually would be amazing, it does not take precedence over her being able to keep our party alive.

I sit back for a moment and stare at the list that I’ve written, then I start to form a priority list in my head. The first priority is to raise Ivy’s strength stat to 25. This should definitively increase her health regeneration, and hopefully make it so that I don’t need to invest much more in her physical stats for a while. Next is to increase her wisdom and intellect. After some debate, I decide to increase Ivy’s wisdom to 50, then her intellect. As I decide this, I get a popup, along with another window that I didn’t expect.

Looking at Ivy’s character sheet, I do indeed have 55 more statpoints to spend, 5 from the level up and the further 50 bonus statpoints. This is awesome, it’ll put her development so far ahead of where I thought it would be! I look to Ivy to confirm with her.

“Are you okay with me spending your statpoints how I want to? Or do you have a different preference?” I ask her, sharing my plan through our mental connection. She shakes her head. “I am happy with whatever you choose Gemma.” She replies, her voice tranquil but with an undertone of uncertainty. I spend the first 15 statpoints on her strength stat, leaving her with 40 unspent points, and triggering another window.

Holy shit that’s going to be a lot. Before I look at Ivy’s new health regeneration, I spend the rest of the statpoints. Wisdom first, getting Ivy to 50 wisdom, then intellect, leaving her with 40 points in the stat. Another window pops up.

“Oh…wow this still feels really weird…” Ivy expresses, sitting down at the table. “Are you okay?” I ask her. She nods after a moment. “I am fine. I am just struggling to understand things a little.” Ivy says. I think for a moment, before grabbing the tablet from the table, unlocking the device and opening the internet for her. “This is the internet.” I explain to her.

“It is a vast network of knowledge, that I’m going to help you access. See that little bar?” I point on the screen. Ivy nods. “That’s the search bar. Type any question you want into it, and it will find you an answer.” I demonstrate by tapping the search bar. The touch keyboard appears on the screen. “This is a touch keyboard. You interact with the screen by touching it, and this keyboard is no different. Press the letters in the order you want to spell something in, and the words come up in the search bar.” I tell her.

Ivy tests out her new knowledge, slowly tapping at the keyboard. “Thank you Gemma. Can I have some time to search things?” She asks. “Of course. Let me know if you have any problems.” I tell her. Ivy smiles at me, her happiness radiating clearly off of her. My heart melts for this woman. I smile back, and before I walk away and leave her to it, I decide to check her character sheet.

Why is her health regeneration so low? I thought it said it increased? “Wait what the fuck?” I exclaim, staring at Ivy’s health regeneration. “Does it say per second?” I ask in confusion. I blink a couple of times, making sure I’m not reading it wrong. Nope, still there. I take a few seconds to process that Ivy’s health regeneration is so fast and so potent that it’s now at HP per second, before moving on.

Her mana bar and mana regen have grown quite a bit. Courtesy of Ivy having higher intellect scaling than I do, for whatever reason, her maximum mana will probably outstrip her mana regen by a lot. Still, that upgrade to nearly 13MP per minute regen is not bad. I can only imagine that her mana bar is going to explode once I get to the 50 intellect bonus. Her mana bar is full, so we can technically go out raiding again very soon. I decide to leave Ivy to her research anyway. She did say that she needed some time after all.

Instead, I walk back to the living room and sit down on the couch to cuddle with Mia. “Any cool stuff happen with Ivy?” Mia asks. “She levelled up to level 20 and got a bonus of 50 statpoints. Apparently she gets access to that because she’s hooked up to my Gamer powers. I guess it has something to do with the fact that I have 75 more statpoints than I should.” I tell her. “Bullshit.” She says, and I laugh.

“In any case, she now has much higher health and mana regeneration, and her mana bar has gone up considerably too. Her health regeneration is now 1.6 per second!” I exclaim and Mia whistles. “That’s pretty high, isn’t yours like zero-point-something an hour?” She asks. I nod. “Yeah, 0.31 an hour now. Hers is way higher, apparently because she’s an artificial spirit.” I tell her. “Ahh okay.” Mia replies.

“Ivy’s spending some time to research stuff in the other room. Want to do something fun while we wait?” I ask. Mia trails her hand up my thigh. “Any ideas?” She asks, her voice quivering slightly with sexual undertones. “Mmm I can think of a few.” I say, smirking and pulling Mia closer, kissing her deeply.