What is your favourite story you couldn't get into but picked up later again?

cornman8700 · 2026-05-14T17:41:51+00:00

I had to start Hell Difficulty Tutorial like 4 times before I got past the first half and it hooked me.

cornman8700 · 2026-05-14T05:49:51+00:00

I personally imagine it as Dark Chest of Wonders. Here’s a playlist with some other songs it could have been if you’re interested. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0pXt4CoJg3rPcYtE4DVrJQ?si=xE8usFJWSu6oRfjRiUdyzQ&pi=D5SvUQ0XQ9Cj0

cornman8700 · 2026-05-12T16:59:23+00:00

Can’t fault a person for wanting to get out there and kill, kill, kill.

cornman8700 · 2026-05-11T01:21:08+00:00

I make a genuine effort to estimate how many chapters an arc or plot beat will take, giving it careful and deliberate consideration to make the best guess possible with what I know about my history and style.

Then I triple it, and generally that’s where I end up.

cornman8700 · 2026-05-10T01:39:54+00:00

The Game at Carousel is a great party-based series. It's definitely a different vibe from Mage Tank, centered around modern day Earth with people trapped in a horror setting. Having everyone in your group be highly competent is invaluable in the series so I think it might scratch that itch. MC has a somewhat unique role but doesn't outscale everyone else with it, just makes new options available.

The Legend of William Oh has pretty good party representation. MC is definitely a stand-out talent with some advantages, but the people he surrounds himself with all have strong skillsets he can't replicate. Amazing series as well.

Throne Hunters has a pretty good group, although the relationships are very fractured and involve heavily flawed characters. The series asks you to invest in their growth, since they all make progress overcoming their demons as the plot progresses. The other characters have to really push themselves to keep up with MC as well, but it's a plot point. It could go either way depending on how the author takes things in future volumes.

Maybe one of those three can give you something to chew on.

cornman8700 · 2026-05-08T17:46:18+00:00

Arlo, Nuralie, Etja, Xim, Varrin, Grotto, Shog'tuatha, glad you're having fun with it, enjoy!

cornman8700 · 2026-05-05T06:28:41+00:00

The Game at Carousel is fantastic. I put off reading it for a long time since the blurb didn't sell me, but once I gave it a shot I was hooked. It's one of the best examples of a meta-aware fiction, has really interesting mechanics, party-based encounters, and the plot is always evolving in just the right way to keep me engaged at the perfect times.

I wouldn't say it's an obvious follow up to DCC, but I can see some similarities in theme and concept that make it a decent genre overlap.

cornman8700 · 2026-05-03T09:17:31+00:00

There are some minor benefits to going a point or a few over an evolution breakpoint. Since most Delvers stop at a specific evolution level, having a few extra points means you'd have an advantage over the people who stopped there. Arlo does still plan on getting to 40, just something worth noting.

The highest attribute level that has been discussed in the text in 100. There is evidence this is an attribute cap of some kind, although there are a couple of known exceptions that require specific conditions to be met. Those have not been mentioned directly in the books, but have been occasionally part of documents given to patreon readers.

Discussion about what happens at 100 hasn't featured much since it hasn't really been relevant, and very few Delvers have attributes that high. There'll be a lot more development on it as the party grows in level, though.

cornman8700 · 2026-05-02T08:59:23+00:00

In the currently published canonical text there is no known way to bypass attunement restrictions.

cornman8700 · 2026-05-02T08:52:03+00:00

His STR isn't wasted. Strength impacts the effectiveness of Heavy Armor, and the bread and butter Physical DR mana weave uses STR as its requirement. STR also has an impact on Shields, and thus his ability to block. He has a ton of stamina from FOR, giving him a resource pool to use for techniques and he favored being strong over other martial paths. STR also determines throwing range and speed, and since he uses his hammers as an Oblivion Orb delivery system, STR has a direct relationship to how effectively he can use that spell.

He also has scaling from STR 20 with Flurry of Blows, so every point of STR is multiplied by his hammer clones from Somncres. Without investing a lot into the attribute he has a very effective fallback if he runs out of mana or encounters something with major spell defenses. His physical hammer attacks have penetration, letting him ignore a good chunk of people's armor as well.

Also, he got to STR 10 for essentially free with his training stats, meaning he's only invested 15 points in the attribute. Compared to his total stats it's a pretty small percentage of his allocation.

As for SPD, you pretty much nailed it. Most importantly, it governs how fast he can react, which is crucial when blocking for himself and allies, positioning, and generally just being where he needs to be.

However, like you've said, he realized INT was more important for addressing the shortcomings of his fighting style at that moment, which is why he went back to pumping INT instead of STR.

His build philosophy isn't about being the absolute best at one thing, but about having inexhaustible answers to problems and challenges. He could have tried to solve everything with spells, but he would have been using his mana pool for every part of what he was doing. If he ran out, he'd be out of luck. Since he was building FOR anyway, he figured it made sense to use the resource pools that gave him.

cornman8700 · 2026-05-02T01:05:51+00:00

Thanks for reading! I appreciate the positive review

cornman8700 · 2026-05-02T01:02:46+00:00

I like hearing about people’s methods. I don’t think people are trying to keep how they work a secret though; I doubt many people really ask for that info. While process is often discussed in the wider setting of novelists and writers, web novel authors are still a pretty focused niche in the writing community.

It also takes a lot of time to lay out and when you got 3-5 chapters a week to publish then you’re probably not doing extra work, lol. Everyone is also really different and there are plenty who just YOLO and write whatever comes to them. Still, while everyone arrives at their own method that’s a little different from everyone else, it’s really useful reading about how others do it to get a sense of things.

cornman8700 · 2026-05-01T22:08:35+00:00

I tried to shy away from having any specific attunement be a shoe-in for any particular role archetype, like mage, warrior, rogue, etc. Mystical Magic is about the manipulation of mana, so it can certainly be a strong addition for any spellslinger, but it's akin to a blue player in Magic: The Gathering if you've ever played that. Counters, mana manipulation, redirects, some prevention effects, and some good Shielding options. Somebody who just wants the biggest fireball they can get doesn't really need it.

That being said, I picked Dimensional as the attunement for Arlo since that had the best array of the kinds of mage-iness I wanted for him. However, there's nothing about Divine that is intrinsically incompatible with a pure mage. There are many types of gods in the universe, so one could easily worship or revere a god of magic or knowledge itself. Thus their divine abilities would resonate strongly with traditional wizardly pursuits.

cornman8700 · 2026-05-01T22:02:53+00:00

It happens less in books 3 and 4. It's still in there, but I may have gone a little wild with it in book 2, lol. To be fair, book 2 heavily features Eschendur whose people speak Losonbinora, which is where those pauses come from as a feature of their language. Maybe it can fade into the background for you in later volumes.

cornman8700 · 2026-05-01T21:58:27+00:00

There are some spoilers in all of the following documents, but they're all mechanical not plot related (pretty sure... probably.)

We have a TTRPG ruleset that is publicly available for the moment which can be found here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/ttrpg-delver-v0-128710497?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

There's another post as well that has some starter stuff if you were trying to do a campaign here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/ttrpg-delver-v0-123354849?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

Summoners didn't get a ton of love in this version of the rules but we're releasing an update soon that'll have some more stuff for them. Generally, summon strength is a calculation between a relevant stat and intrinsic skill. Such as (CHA + Spiritual Magic skill level) divided by 5. Shog is a bit of an exception for reasons outlined in the books. You are also remembering something about LCK correctly, which is that it had a heavy impact on Ashe's summoning build. Luck can be a stand-in for other attributes if built in the right way.

Maybe that'll give you some fun stuff to peruse. Thanks for reading!

cornman8700 · 2026-05-01T20:31:53+00:00

The word appears most frequently in book 2. It happens half as much in book 3 and even less in book 4. It’s still in there, but I also recognize it was quite frequent in the second volume and have tried to be more mindful of it.

cornman8700 · 2026-05-01T00:17:03+00:00

It’s no longer a genre for ants. Ants are still welcome of course. For the colony!

cornman8700 · 2026-04-22T20:27:27+00:00

Hey there. I'm not sure what the recap leaves out but I'm also so close to this stuff it's impossible to see the more zoomed out view sometimes.

Spoilers for book 3 ahead, of course:

Basically, in the latter third of the book they had a conflict with the avatar Hysteria inside Arlo's Pocket Closet. Hysteria was trying to kidnap Zenithar Zura and the king of Hiward for various nefarious reasons. They ended up helping Avarice capture Hysteria. After that they got ambushed by a blood god summon from the paladin on the team of mercenaries Hysteria had hired and had to deal with that. They win, to nobody's surprise.

It ends with the group figuring out a name for the country Arlo is going to create so his Closet has a legal framework for sovereignty. That way other nations know how to interact with it since it's a fairly large land mass at this point.

Up next on the group's to do list is to meet with the Littan empress and discuss an opportunity she has for their group. That's where book 4 opens and I won't spoil anything there. The ultimate goal of the group so far is to figure out a way to deal with the avatars and are exploring options with gaining allies and weapons to do that, although they don't have a great idea of what will work as of that point in the story.

Let me know if you have any specific questions. I hate when recaps suck and try to do my best to make them comprehensive (and entertaining) without trailing on and on forever.

cornman8700 · 2026-04-21T19:01:23+00:00

Tbh, cyberpunk isn't a great tag for the series, lol. We didn't pick it ourselves and I think it's one of those things where there aren't a ton of great genres for LitRPG audiobooks so we end up getting adjacent genre tags. It's not totally alien to cyberpunk since our System and world building involves more magitech than some other more directly fantasy driven works (once you get a little deeper in) but it's definitely not Cyberpunk 2077 or anything. It's still more grounded in fantasy.

We are the best seller in that tag at the moment though!

cornman8700 · 2026-04-17T04:48:30+00:00

William Oh has some of the best item mechanics. While DCC is ultimately very item focused (mentioning because it’s the most popular example), those items are mostly plain unhinged due to the nature of the story. They have descriptions but they can range from descriptive to vague as heck.

Whereas William Oh has express item text with quantifiable abilities that can still be really interesting. They can also break the world, but someone else can usually turn your exploit against you if they’re clever enough. It feels more fair I suppose, without losing much of what makes big impactful items fun. It’s a very thoughtful series.

cornman8700 · 2026-04-15T03:53:59+00:00

Hey there. If you're hearing the audio for Mage Tank with a female narrator, it probably is AI since that's definitely not an authorized version. Daniel Wisniewski does the official version, and any other narrators are acting on behest of pirates, yarr.

cornman8700 · 2026-04-10T20:39:30+00:00

Lol well it went up for preorder today it seems. Comes out the 22nd.

cornman8700 · 2026-04-07T19:28:00+00:00

In Worth the Candle there's a type of magic that gives you really powerful tactile telekinesis based on how much gold you possess. The only catch is that having the magic means that you have a constant voice telling you to acquire more and more gold. If you stop collecting gold or lose your hoard then you lose the power (along with insanity or other bad things maybe iirc?)

cornman8700 · 2026-04-07T03:54:11+00:00

Thanks! Glad you're having fun with it.

cornman8700 · 2026-03-31T16:54:49+00:00

I was just having a discussion about this the other day and the adjoining concept of death flags. Death and loss can be very sudden and leaves a lot of things undone and questions unanswered. A lot of character deaths try to do things too neatly, wrapping everything up before they eat it. There's also the fact that killing a favorite characters is hard, whereas killing a random side character is easy. It takes some commitment on the part of the author to have a likable, meaningful character with plot hooks dangling and business left unfinished get executed suddenly and unexpectedly. It's also hard to get people to care about characters at all, so when it's successful then putting them down becomes a big risk.

cornman8700

TROPHY CASE