Prismatic Jelly Special Order
| Prismatic Jelly Special Order | |
|---|---|
| Type | Special Order |
| Board | Special Orders board |
| Giver | Wizard |
| Time Limit | 7 days |
| Repeatable | No |
Rasmodius asks for one jar of jelly from a slime that does not exist until he asks. The prismatic slime is a rainbow-coloured stranger that quietly replaces an ordinary slime somewhere underground, roughly one spawn in eighty, and it hits far harder than the thing it stands in for. Finding it is a search rather than a fight, and the fight afterwards is the stiffest any town notice asks for. The payment is the largest purse on the board and the recipe for Monster Musk, which doubles the monsters on a mine floor for ten minutes and changes how every later hunt is run. It is the one notice worth clearing the calendar for.
The board reads: I require assistance in tracking down the rare and dangerous prismatic slime, within the local caves. Bring me a jar of its prismatic jelly and you will be duly rewarded. -M. Rasmodius
Requirements
The slime appears only while the order is live, and the jelly it carries disappears with the order, so there is nothing to prepare in advance. Each slime that spawns in The Mines, the Quarry Mine or the Skull Cavern has a small chance of coming out prismatic instead, and daily luck nudges that chance up or down. A good forecast from the fortune teller is therefore worth waiting a morning for, and a bad one is worth skipping.
Depth does not matter. A prismatic slime can replace a slime on any floor, in the quiet mines or the dangerous version, which means the fastest hunt is wherever slimes are thickest rather than deepest. The frozen middle of The Mines and the slime-heavy stretches below it both work.
The search works as a loop. Floors in The Mines and the Skull Cavern are built fresh each time they are entered, so riding down, glancing across the room for a slime that cycles through colours, and walking back out costs seconds per attempt. The Quarry Mine behaves differently: it rebuilds once a day rather than on every entry, so a prismatic slime that appears there stays all day, and a farmer who faints from a bad exchange can come back and try again on the same slime.
The fight itself is the trap. The prismatic slime carries a thousand points of health and hits for several times what a cave slime does, so a mid-game sword will need a long and dangerous time at close range. The Slime Charmer Ring, which Gil hands over for clearing a thousand slimes, removes the damage entirely and turns the fight into a chore rather than a risk. Worn with the Burglar's Ring, the kill drops two jars, though the Wizard only wants one.
One rare disappointment is worth knowing. A prismatic slime that lands on a spawn already marked as a special slime drops that special item instead of the jelly, and the hunt has to start again.
The order asks for every item in this table.
| Item | Image | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Prismatic Jelly | 
|
1 |
Rewards
The purse is the biggest any town notice pays, which alone justifies a week spent underground, and it arrives when most farms are still buying out the blacksmith.
Monster Musk is the lasting prize. Spraying it doubles the number of monsters placed on a mine or Skull Cavern floor at the moment that floor is entered, for ten minutes at a time, which turns every eradication goal and every monster-drop order into half the work it was. It is built from slime and bat wings, both of which pile up without effort, and it sits in its own buff slot, so a cooked meal's attack boost or a luck drink stays on while the musk runs. Floors that rebuild once a day rather than on entry ignore it, although the creatures that wander in from off the map still arrive in greater numbers.
Krobus is the only resident who likes being handed a bottle, which makes the spare musk a convenient friendship gift for the sewer.
Finishing the order pays out all of this.
| Reward | Image |
|---|---|
| 5,000g | - |
| Monster Musk recipe | 
|
Strategy
Check the forecast first, then commit the day. Ride the lift to a floor that reliably holds slimes, scan, leave, ride down again. Counting slimes rather than floors is the right instinct: a floor with eight slimes is eight rolls, and a floor with one is barely worth the walk.
Prepare before accepting rather than after. A healing stock, a weapon with real damage behind it and the Slime Charmer Ring if the eradication goal is already done make the difference between finding the slime and surviving it. A bottle of Monster Musk from an earlier run doubles the slime count on every floor entered, which is the fastest search of all for anyone taking the notice a second time.
The usual way it fails is a week of thin floors and poor luck. The other way is finding the slime late in the evening and dying to it, which costs the kill and the day. A week on this paper means the week it was posted, so a notice taken down on Thursday almost never finishes.
Notes
The jelly cannot be sold, kept or put to any other use, and the Wizard takes it at his tower rather than from a box in town.
Frogs on the farm and in the caves will not try to swallow a prismatic slime, which is a small kindness given how rarely one appears.
A hunt for this slime doubles as a mining run, because the floors that carry slimes in numbers are the same ones that carry coal, iron and the gem nodes that fill the museum's gem case. Nothing underground is wasted on the way to the Wizard.
All Special Orders
Every special order from both boards, with who posts it and how long it runs.