Dungeon 3 Turn 39
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Ricki and Kamau trade weapons again, then Ricki hurries up the ladder into the next room. Kamau takes a swing at the bats on his way to the upper level of this room, but misses. The bats don’t deal any damage.
Ricki finds herself face-to-face with a large spider, but it doesn’t advance to attack her just yet.
Ricki: Go back down the ladder and attack a bat
Kamau: Attack a bat
God damn it people, why do we keep having Ricki explore by herself? We’re lucky it’s not attacking us, but it could have. If it had 5 atk and was alerted (like the bat two turns ago) that would have been the end of the dungeon.
We’re not on a time crunch, why are we rushing? If anything, we should have had Kamau go explore and Ricki deal with the encounter-we-know-is-safe.
We don’t need dungeon eyes to see what’s in the next room, Ricki seeing it personally would just allow us to act on some knowledge within the meta.
Usually it IS safe to just enter the room. Even with the previously disturbed bats, they didn’t attack Ricki immediately, but only in the NEXT turn, meaning she would have been able to book it without getting damaged.
And YES, we are on a time crunch. We don’t know it as precisely as in dungeon 1 or 2, but LSN clearly stated that we won’t be able to faff around endlessly in any dungeon.
But I guess it might have been safer to explore the new room with Kamau, while Ricki fights the bats, so you do have a point.
In every combat we’ve disengaged from (which hasn’t been a lot) the creatures have always been able to get an attack off. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened with the bats because wouldn’t have been in active combat or running past the group of creatures, but historically an attack has always been made.
And I’m aware our time is limited, I brought that up a few turns ago.
a. We have a time limit, not a time crunch. We’re in Dungeon 2 in between centipede and guard, where we know we’re running out of time but we don’t know how much and we don’t know what the consequence is. A time crunch would be seeing skeletons spawning constantly and start battering the chandelier.
And if we were on a time crunch, then there are two better things to do than split: wipe the enemies together (no matter what the enemies are), or ignore them completely and move everybody together.
The only situation I can think of where splitting into unknown territory is better is if we were down to our last few turns or Kamau was forced to interpose.
We don’t know whether or not skeletons are spawning constantly, we only were able to observe the backyard for a couple of turns, because we have other things to do.
And we also don’t know what the ones that spawned in the meantime are going to do, because in other dungeons, we have only seen immobile skeletons and in this dungeon, we saw some skeletons getting directed by the ghoul pope, which is gone now and allegedly that meant that the skeletons went back to their normal behaviour (it said so in the update text). Which we know nothing about (because we “instantly” killed the ones we witnessed spawning), but might very well include battering the chandelier, if it is in their way.
So, while I appreciate you elaborating what difference you define between time limit and time crunch, we don’t know which of them is the case in this dungeon.
(The skeleton spawning might be a certain percentage for each grave to produce a skeleton each turn, which I would absolutly say qualifies for “constant spawning”, especially since – if we are unlucky – that could mean up to 4 or 5 – if the grave flower on the last one doesn’t work like we suspect it does – new skeletons per turn.)
And since Ricki has a tendency of breaking her euqipment, I think having one of our characters reduce the enemies that might make a passing attack in a room we will definitely still have to go through a couple of times with Ricki, is a good idea. We are also needing to ring the bell and we can’t do that without knowing all of the dungeon, most likely, or at the very least the area where that bell is located (which, even if dungeons are weird and not always logical, seems to be at the top of the tower).
But like I said, in this one case, you are right and it would have made more sense to have Kamau explore and Ricki stay behind to kill a bat. However, I can understand the notion that in general, fighting should be done by Kamau, because he can take it, so it was an easy mistake to make (by the person making the suggestion as well as every person supporting this suggestion).
Just like it is an easy mistake to forget about the “mind the glass” bit in suggested actions, but one with possily dire consequences, too.
That’s exactly my point. That’s why we’re not in a crunch and we don’t need to rush. We don’t yet have the crunch condition of a guard walking around the dungeon yet. We have to be fast, but we don’t have to be reckless. Dungeon 1 had 4 rooms and 30 (?) turn hard limit. Dungeon 2 had 6 rooms and a 50 turn soft limit (definitions in rules). Dungeon 3 has 8 rooms, and we’re only at turn 40. We have time. I’m also confident that when the soft time limit is passed, we will be alerted somehow.
Ricki doesn’t have any gear left to break right now. If you agree that reducing the number of enemies is the play (for gear or for potential damage), then it would have been better to have everybody contribute, cause it would take less turns and less chances for enemy attacks.
That bird looks like a use case for a bow and arrows.. but I don’t know what the key would be for.
And those yellowish blobs we already saw on the ceiling before.. I think that’s a monster, not a trap.
Interesting. These flies are different than the flyguy before. So maybe that guy was not an enemy?
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Also, since a new turn happened while I was writing, I’ll let myself paste re breakage chances:
If I didnt’ screw up the math, chances of surviving at least N hits, in %, for a few first N:
30%: 70, 49, 34, 24, 16.8, 11.7, 8.2
10%: 90, 81, 73, 65.6, 59, 53, 47.8 (then slowly falls, 31 on 11th, 20 on 15th, 9 on 22nd)
…did someone count how many hits solar armour took so far? It doesn’t mean much, it’s still 30 or 10% per each time anew, but it may give us a hint how lucky we were so far 🙂
Also.. I wonder, if, say, 5 skeletons hit Kamau in solar armour in a single combat round, does that count as 5 checks, or does that count as 1 round of combat and 1 check? So far I have not thought about it at all, and I “intuitively” assumed that it’s one test per combat round, but I suddenly realized that the wording was “when hit”, so it may actually be the other case. That means that these 4 bats actually tested that Ricky’s poor buckler 4 times, and we were really really very likely to lose in times like this moment. It also should make us think about solar armour a bit more when sending Kamau into a fight with multiple low-dmg enemies. Dmg doesn’t count for breakage, all non-evaded hits count.
Also:
Ah yes, it was: two chests here, if we scout the upper room from outside and it turns out dangerous, then Kamau could use them as stepping stones just like before, to get to the flies, and then again to the room above (assuming he can throw a a chest one floor up).
I never noticed the tiny green dots before. Looking at it “zoomed in” I do think they look like some kind of larvae maybe? The green dots being the eyes and the black spot being the mouth maybe?
We have seen a lot of insects already, the yellow blobs might be the infant form of any of them. Or perhaps that’s how the sunheads’ offspring looks like?
I wonder if the “humanoid” fly guy could have been the potential ally we are supposed to find here.
And the regular dots on the outside of the tower might be ladder rungs or similar. I’m not sure if they would allow us to go around on/alongside the outside of the tower, too, or if they are “just” suited for climbing up…
I wanted to point out that the background behind the keys looks funny, almost as if the one key was holy or at least radient and the other not, but then I looked closer and now I think that’s supposed to be the bird’s nest.
Since it was established that Ricki can have pets, maybe we should try to tame the bird instead of shoo(t)ing it?
I’m pretty sure the ‘dots’ on the walls are handles for climbing. It would be hard to draw them differently, and they are very suitably spaced.
That background you noticed behind the keys is probably the bird’s nest, just like you said before.
Green dots? you mean on those yellowish blobs? I noticed them few turns later after we saw the first blob we saw, that’s why I wrote at one point that I doubt it’s a trap, it looked like tiny tiny eyes. But I often write too late 😉 I don’t think it’s sunheads infants, I think it’s just another sun-themed monster. We’ve had ale-snale, so maybe we have sun-slimes here. A sulime (sah-lime), maybe? I just hope they are gooish and don’t vomit acid like snales did.
Re taming the bird.. cool idea, but do we have any worms, or mean? It looks like a crow.. seeds could do as well, but we’ve not seen any. Pieces of a giant centipede? Spider legs? Ooh, rat tails! That could actually do the trick. Nice idea!
The keychain is likely one key. Take a look at the pristine maps for the Jail and Tavern Cellar, each keychain visually has two keys but was only one key when we found it. I’m guessing the key goes to the doors below, which is further indication that the piles are important. Given we still have two sets of thieves’ tools, we can most likely skip the key if we want.
Agreed that the blobs are insect larvae, with eyes and a mouth. I think the flies there are the first adult stage, and the humanoid fly is the next, given that insectoids are a thing Kamau knows about.
To me it does like this is also a proper keychain with two keys (It does look excactly the same – it’s just sideways and with the ravon sitting on it harder to see the second one).
Those aren’t flies. They’re moths.
And what do moths like? A strong light. I bet we can distract them and get past them without fighting by using Ricki’s mitre.
I see the “butterfly trunk” on those airborne creatures, but I think the wings would look differently, if it were moths (not transparent for one, and probably another shape, too).
LSN has already drawn moths, in his isle of starlight game (the summary of which you can get here https://ko-fi.com/s/2d40383560 ), e.g. their first appearance in turn 19 in turn (page 113/427) and the moth queen in turn 82 (page 324/427).
It’s unfortunate that the “fly guy” looks straight into the camera, because that way we can’t compare his “mouth piece” to the one of the airborne creatures in the tower.
But the eye colour is different, and the leg number (fly guy has 6 limbs and the airbone ones seem to have 4, which in itself is a weird number for insects), too, so I doubt that they are related (KingMarth suggested somewhere above that the airborne ones were the previous development stage of the fly guy, but I didn’t want to make yet another separate post), even if in the insect kingdom some really weird metamophoses are possible (you’d never suspect that a catapillar is the “child” phase of a butterfly, if you knew nothing about them and just saw one of each side by side).
Where’s a bunch of magic lenses when you need them? 😀 (…and no, I would most likely not use them on those airborne creatures, even if we got one.)
Kamau: Go up the ladder and attack the spider.
Ricki: Hang back and use a magic light attack on the spider after Kamau engages.
Also, is this room lit by the outside?
I doubt. The trap door is open, but the windows are blinded like before. Maybe we have some ambient light close to the trap door, but I think the rest isn’t. We’ll need Kamau’s opinion on that I suppose.
It should be okay, a torch through floors and walls will illuminate the entire “room”, so if the opening provides light it should light up the entire room.
The bolt attack provides light, if that’s your concern.
If Kamau engages with the spider while still being engaged with the bats the damage will get added. So 3+whatever spiders do.
We’d be better off just moving up to the next room and waiting.
Is this tower round? I wonder if we can climb around it on the roof, from the left side to the right side, from the door to the bird.
Ricki: wait for Kamau
Kamau: move up and join Ricki.
We need to wait before engaging spider to avoid the bats’ damage being added to the spider’s attack.
If we leave the bats now they may engage the skellies we ran past.
As much as I hate to have a no action turn, i think it is the safest course since our hp is limited.
Ricki, additionally to that: Tell Kamau [and us] what brown thing you did see behind the skeletons. Warn him of the glass trap on the next level.
Kamau still has his boots that make him immune to weak traps like glass, so no need to warn him. But Ricky – she has to be careful.
New skelettons will spawn soon. Kamau and Ricki go towards the graveyard, minding traps and all. Ignore the bats. The bats will probably search new targets like the skeletons close by which is good for us.
It’s a waste of time to run back and forth just to kill constantly spawning skeletons. IMHO we should rush to the bell.