Dungeon 3 Turn 22
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Ricki hurries to the right, trading her torch for Kamau’s hat on the way. She can easily run underneath the chandelier, while Kamau would have to climb over it. The lectern (which looks totally safe) should allow him to do that easily from the right side, but from the left he wouldn’t be able to reach.
Kamau blocks the skeletons and bats from attacking Ricki. He takes no damage.
Ricki emerges into the chapel’s enclosed back yard. This “room” is surprisingly sparse. She was kind of expecting a giant boss monster or a skeleton assembly machine or something.
Remembering what the orc guard told them, Ricki considers the wall. It’s high enough that even if Kamau lifted her she wouldn’t get over. The gravestones are too far back from the wall to use as a boost, and jumping from the upper ledge would probably result in impalement and death. Maybe if she keeps exploring she’ll find something to help her get over the wall if necessary. Of course, the front door is still open at this time in case she needs to leave in a hurry.
I think Ricki should go back and shoot the monsters around Kamau, and Kamau should keep attacking, then they should continue on together.
Hmm, I suppose skeletons spawn from graves. Just a wild guess, but I think we need to put flowers on them to rest skeletons’ souls or whatever. I wonder if one flower per grave would be enough?
I agree that we should do that at some point, which means that we need to find at least two more grave flowers. I think that we should go dispatch the few skeletons in the graveyard and try to replant two of the three flowers after we deal with the rest of the monsters in the pope room. Maybe doing this would at least slow down the skeleton spawn rate, if it exists at all?
Exactly my thoughts, I’d try that, just in case it works. And we have 3 flowers here, leaving only 2 graves active. But first, enemies to clear, so we have to have Kamau here.
Alternative idea: twirl our moustaches and dig up the graves. ԅ(≖⌣≖ԅ)
Seems like this is a strong clue that the thing behind the dark skeletons is in fact a rope. No way to get over this wall, and unless the chandelier rat hole leads up, no way to proceed without vertical movement abilities. Also: Bow! Grave flowers! Arrows! Yay! I wonder if placing a flower on each grave would do something special. Shame we can’t do that.
We can at least redistribute the grave flowers. – There is a possible team member in the chapel, and we need rope. We just must befriend the nice Ms. Spider to join our team, climb some walls and span some ropes (not-sticky ones, that is). [Not believing this myself, through.]
I suggest giving Ricki light armor and get Kamau to the lever and raise her to get to know where the hole on the wall leads to.
Ricki already has light armour (we have two sets of leather now) and that rat hole almost definitely links back to the rat treasure room in the first room with the hole that perfectly lines up.
Looks like black skeleton room is next on the agenda. Not sure if we should go for bow. If I remember correctly it costs 2 gp an arrow and arrows and bow take different slots. The hat is a better choice for now since we don’t have much inventory space.
Ringing the bell is probably what stops the skellies or putting flowers on graves.
Ricki: move back to room on left and attack a bat with ranged attack.
Kamau:smash a skeleton
Could Ricki use the hat and the throwing knife in one round? Or would that be two actions?
Two actions. It’d be like having her attack with daggers in both hands. (I expect that even if we get a dual wielder ability, it’d let you add the attack bonus from both weapons to one attack, rather than making two attacks.)
All hail Poke Ricki!
The bow looks tempting, but can anyone use it? I think Pope Ricki is too small and Kamau can’t with just one arm. Best case scenario if no one can use it, we get a third party member soon and they can use it. Worst case, we can sell it.
Pope Ricki! – Yes, but: there is a sun guy (with sword) before the bow, and bow as well as arrows take up item space, and nobody has a ranged weapon proficiency (and the hat does not need any). If we neither find 3rd party member nor get free inventory space nor have time and HP to try to fight our way to the bow, I would leave it where it is for the time being. It does not run away (and if it does, I would be reluctant to use it).
A bow costs 10. Hopefully by picking up arrows we’ll find out how much damage a bow does, I expect that it’ll do 3-4 damage at range, which would be quite nice. It also looks like arrows can be collected after the fight, so the ammo is more of an inventory concern (though we could still lose arrows, either randomly broken or from shooting at enemies out of reach).
It would only cost two turns of armour break chance to run Kamau over to grab the bow and run back, though if that activates that sun-head… Still not too bad, there’s a stalkroach up the ladder there so we’d never go that way again.
Once we clear out some of these skeletons, I do want to shoot the archer’s dead-dead skeleton to see if we can knock it down and drag the bow with it.
Ricki: Go back and attack the bats using your hat range light zap power. Continue until bats are dead.
Kam: Keep fighting. Minimise damage you take.
I don’t trust that skeleton archer up there. I think it’s just taking a nap and will wake up if anything interesting happens beneath.
But, looking from other point of view, we’ve got some arrows to collect, and a bow as well. Fun!
So Kamau could not crawl underneath the chandelier to the other side? (I wouldn’t advise doing that with enemies around, but then again, neither would I advise climbing over the chandelier in that situation.) Weird.
Anyways. The only unknown room that we know must exist now that we haven’t been to yet is that one above the winch room. So I’m very much guessing that some kind of climbing (down or up in the middle of that area) will be involved. And I agree trying to get the rope from the 3 dark skeletons is probably another item for the agenda. Still, I also feel like the “distrtibute grave flowers onto the graves” theory in order to slow the spawning rate of new skeletons is worth testing.
Therefore my rough plan of action would be: first clear pope room. then clear garden, re-arrange flowers. then get rope and kill 3 skeledogs in winch room. Then climb tower, examine winch and whatnot.
Also, since someone mentioned a “time limit” in one of the last pages. From turn 0 in dungeon 3 (https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-3-turn-0/) :
so apparently we don’t have anything happening at fixed X0 turns or something. However, we seem to constantly have skeletons spawning from the graves at some unknown rate (whether it is Z skeletons in Y turns or if e.g. each grave without flower on it has a certain percentage X to spawn a skeleton each round or any other option). And once 10 of them have “escaped”, the soft time limit will trigger (namely our heroes getting unable to abandon the dungeon until another escape route is secured.
However, if we successfully ring the bell (and probably something additional, like killing a necromancer perhaps), the main goal will be achieved.
With the chandelier in its current position, will a larger-sizes skeleton (as dumb as it is) be able to pass? Nevertheless, the smaller-sized skellies might pass below the chandelier.
Yeah, since it says Kamau would need to climb over, I think the chandelier will keep human-size skeletons busy. Once the room is a bit clearer, I’d like to see if we can block the path under the chandelier with the lectern, or if they could just walk around it (still worth a try, no brains). The lectern might also be too heavy or anchored to move.
Of the five new skeletons, only one was small, so it’s not very common. I’m not too worried about 10 skeletons escaping, but it might be too much trouble to keep 0 skeletons from escaping.
I expect we’ll still see complications if we dawdle for too long. But yes, they will be less predictable than just “every 10 turns”.
Thought: After we clear skeleton dogs, there are four bats in that room. With a trick shot, Ricki could alert them, and then we leave to take out the ash skeletons. Sun-head will clean them up sooner or later, but they could clear the fly for us, and maybe soften up the centipede. No time wasted either, as long as we’re dealing with skeletons anyway.
It’s possible that doing this will activate the sun-head, but the one in the rooms room was already shooting without ever being approached. We’ll need to fight this one to use the winch safely.
Investigating time limits:
On Turn 2, 7 skeletons.
On Turn 12, 9 skeletons (including 2 new arrivals that turn).
On Turn 15, 11 skeletons, did not seem to have new arrivals. 8 were crushed by the chandelier, leaving 3.
On Turn 16, still 3 skeletons.
On Turn 18, 4 skeletons.
On Turn 19, 3 skeletons left after the bats ate one.
On Turn 20, 2 skeletons left after the chandelier dropped again.
On Turn 21-22, still 2 skeletons.
In total, 12 skeletons have been in this chandelier room. 5 new skeletons have shown up over the last 20 turns, all of those 5 in turns 12-17.
It took 10 turns for 2 skeletons to show up at first (both at once), then another 2 arrived over the next 3 turns, and another one 2 turns later on turn 17, the only turn in that span where we weren’t watching this room. The yard here has 4 skeletons (3 humanoid and a dog) which seem to not be moving.
When we tackle the ashen skeletons, I’m tempted to have Ricki hold up a torch and run back and forth to keep an eye on the entrance, so that if one gets loose then Kamau can dash down on the next turn and keep it busy. We’ll see how tough those are; might be worth using the holy water there if ashen skeletons take more than a turn each to smash with Kamau’s longsword and Ricki shooting with light.
Once we go down the chimney past the skeleton dogs, there’s no easy way back. We’ll see how often skeletons seem to come by, but I feel like we won’t be winning that bet.
Kamau: Smash undamaged small skeleton.
Ricki: Shoot a bat with the Mitre. Ask Kamau about what goblin-sized flies are like.
Having two bats in this room is more of a nuisance than a skeleton-clearing trap, though it might’ve been nice to let them kill the rat. I think that actively attacking the bats will draw them to attack Ricki and override their random targeting, which would be nice for the turn we send Kamau out back to avoid stacking up even more damage. Still, let’s not wait around here to kill the bats if we keep missing, the rat will handle that for us.
I am curious if holy damage deals extra to undead, but we’ll have plenty of time to figure that out in the backyard.
Those sticks are arrows, I guess? Oh I see, they’re fletched, it’s just really hard to see because the fletching is almost the same color as the background. I really thought they were sticks up until now.
If the graves are spawning skeletons, then why’s there a dog there? Do dogs get graves and headstones? If there’s no time limit on this dungeon, we can see by waiting and watching to see if anything comes out of those graves.
Kamau: after finishing combat, search that lectern!
Ricki: backtrack and explore where we haven’t been before while Kamau cleans up all the foes on his screen and this one. We need a complete picture of this level before we can rightly know what to do. And we need that new ally! If nothing else than to refresh our pool of total hp. Which, I should point out, is down to 12 including all abilities and potions, 4 of which aren’t available due to Remorse. So we got 8hp to give in all combats. Engage wisely, make sure every combat has a concrete reward.
Linking the map again: https://viewer.diagrams.net/?tags=%7B%7D&highlight=0000ff&layers=1&nav=1&title=Dungeon%20Eyes#Uhttps%3A%2F%2Fdrive.google.com%2Fuc%3Fid%3D1Kbl4QaQZ205RJG2DVZXetuXqJ985Wglz%26export%3Ddownload
We know that the only place left to explore is past the skeleton dogs in the winch room (or into the rat hole above the chandelier, but that almost certainly connects to the rat treasure room with a green dire rat with unknown stats and 3 possibly-trapped chests).
It’ll take a few turns to clear out the courtyard, that should give us a chance to see how spawning works. The riskiest combat turn here will be the first one in the yard, especially if there are more skeletons than we expected when we finish up here. I expect that skeleton dogs will match stray dog stats – 3 HP/1 Def, and then 2 Atk when ‘frenzied’ which might count as ‘with other skeletons’ rather than ‘with other skeleton dogs’.
Ricki: Shoot your holy beam at a skeleton, while Kamau attacks the bats
I’d reverse that. She should hit the bats while kamau finishes off the skeletons.