re: Dungeon crawler carl

I’m assuming it was intentionally placed there by the AI for the lulz.

Given that the AI apparently went primal far earlier than normal, that may explain why certain things such as artifacts and quests involving gods happened so prematurely.

Y’all, I don’t know what I was expecting for Sam’s voice, but it wasn’t that

Whew those last 40 pages of Parade of horribles is such an exposition dump and names and gods and everything

I'm only about 5 chapters into Book 5 and feel like I will go back to Book 4 at some point and listen again.

Precisely why it did that. Some of it was because it is hard coded into the rules and the bubbles were all averaged out. That is why you dont have Katia with carl and donut since they were all top tens and you get Louis and Ferazz. Also, since the crawlers were, on average, too weak to survive the floor it compensated with better loot, the artifacts, and it picked up the pace of the awards. The AI also wants the crawlers to do well because it hates the show runners. Probably a result of it becoming more Primal

I’m not arguing against your general position; I’m saying I don’t think balancing bubbles is responsible for the artifact in particular. Again, if it was, why did the AI wait so long to add it? Why not do it from the beginning of the bubble? It gets added all the way on page 135:

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I moved the telescope back to the bird. I zoomed in one more tick, and the description popped up. Ruckus. Spring-operated Chicken Hawk Sentinel. Level 55 Borough Boss! This is a bereft Minion of Shamus Chaindrive. The great bugbear treasure hunter Shamus Chaindrive was known as both a paranoid and a greedy bastard. Having been betrayed one too many times, he no longer trusted any living soul. That is why his crew was always comprised of constructs and automatons. He dedicated his life to hunting down long-lost treasures and artifacts. He prized one item above all others. The Gate of the Feral Gods. Said to be buried in the long-lost Necropolis of Anser. Chaindrive set out to find the tomb. He boarded his great submarine and sank beneath the waves, vowing to never surface again until he had his prize. It took the bugbear almost twenty years to find the tomb, poking up like a monolith from a desert island. Using his submarine, he docked it against an underwater entrance directly adjacent to the main chamber of the trap-filled tomb. He quickly learned that he was not the first to arrive. A young mage had recently landed on the island and was attempting to magically burrow into the tomb. A colony of dirigible gnomes were settled in the area. All sought the treasures held within the tomb. All had failed so far. Chaindrive unleashed his greatest weapon in an attempt to slow the efforts of his competitors. Ruckus had been stored in stasis in the hold of his great submarine. The self-replicating, spring-operated automaton was given the task to kill all who wished to steal Chaindrive’s prize. Now that the bugbear is long dead, the sentinel chicken hawk is content to spend its day circling around the island and being an all-around a-hole. The regular residents of the island are smart enough to leave this powerful boss alone. The fact you’re reading this means you’re not one of the smart ones. “Strange,” I said to Donut and Katia. “It says the boss comes from the underwater guy, who is dead. I think the ‘castle’ is a giant submarine. Also, it sounds like there’s a hidden treasure in…” System Message: Please Wait. The world froze for about half of a second. It was like the beginning of a boss battle. But nothing happened, and the short glitch was over as quickly as it started. System Message: Thank you for your patience. You may now resume normal activities. “What the hell was that about?” I asked, looking around. “I don’t know. Weird,” Katia said. Carl: Mordecai, did you feel that? Also, do you know what the Gate of the Feral Gods is? Mordecai: I felt it. It happens. It’s usually not a glitch, but a gameplay timeout so dueling routines can clarify or reconcile rule conflicts. But no, never heard of the gate thing. But remember what I said about the word “feral?” Stay away from anything marked that. It’s always bad news. Carl: What about artifacts? It said the gate is one. Mordecai: Odd. An artifact is a legendary or celestial-tier item one may find sitting around the dungeon or as dropped loot. Like I told you before, most of the best items in the game come from boxes for the first several floors. After the sixth floor, dropped loot starts to get much better and more magical. Artifacts start popping up around the eighth or ninth floor. They’re usually very powerful items. Carl: Eighth floor, you say? I can’t help but notice we’re only on the fifth. It says it’s an item inside the necropolis under our feet. Do you think that had anything to do with that weird pause?

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I suppose one could argue that the AI didn’t need to add it until the party saw that description, but again, why? If they were going to survive the bubble, they would obviously come across mention of the Gate. Why not just seed it from jump?

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I always figured it assessed the situation after Borant's vetoes and then added it. That is all ive got

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And it's possible, but because the veto happened two floors ago, it seems like something must have happened to prompt the AI to decide this was a good way to frick with Borant. Balancing the bubble could make sense, but again, it came in rather late if that were the reason, and beyond that, sending the party on damned near a suicide mission doesn't seem like a good way to balance anything (as a reminder, had they used the "easy" solutions for the castles, they never would have recovered anything). The item M.M. got could potentially be a catalyst. The AI could have also spit out that description and then said "lol, hold my beer you Mudskipper fricks" and manifested the item and related quests to bring about the chaos it so enjoys. Or it could have been something else. But "balance out the bubble because everyone outside of the party was weak" just strikes me as the least likely of all possible scenarios, for the reasons I outlined. But again, I could be wrong. Hell, Matt makes mistakes. An amusing but clear one I came across yesterday was that he clearly describes Signet as having "small breasts" on the third floor and clearly describes her as having "large breasts" on the sixth floor. People have asked him about breast enhancement to make the show more popular, and he said he loves that as a retcon, but he just flat fricked it up

Well I just picked up the first book at the airport and about to start page 1 of this journey. Here goes…

Have you tried the Bobiverse?