Dungeon 3 Turn 48
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Kamau lifts Ricki up from the top of the broken ladder so she can look inside the giant, broken bell. There’s no way to exit the top of the bell, but she does find something interesting. It appears to be a part of the damaged bell which holds some dormant holy energy, and which might prove useful elsewhere. However, it’s very heavy, so Kamau lowers it to the ground and leaves it here for now.
Ricki then informs Kamau about the drow on the upper level. She shouts a bunch of questions at her, but the drow either can’t hear her or is pointedly ignoring anything Ricki has to say.
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SUN SPHERE, TARNISHED
Consumable
Can be dropped or rolled towards a creature, dealing 5 holy damage in an area when it makes contact.
Weight 3, Cost 20
Ricki: Can you see the bell through the grate? …blast it with a bolt.
Kamau: Descend the rope and engage the flies on the right.
…I hope this doesn’t piss her off too much…
Kamau should be able to take on the flies safely while Ricki tries to get the drow’s attention. It’ll probably be easier to ascend/descend this way, so clearing out potential threats might be helpful. Concerns are maybe the flyguy wants to meet up with the maggots/flies and killing them might ruin a potential sidequest, or maybe it would rather them be dead? Who knows.
BIG clue. It may be the key to the golden chest. Do we need a sunhead to blast it? To charge or destroy it? Is it best to use it on the ash skeletons? So many options. Kamau can drop the lockpicks, the arrows, and the holy water, and/or give the torch to Ricki who drops her other lockpicks and/or dagger. Maybe we could drop one set all the way to the floor by the winch?
I think it will help us kill creatures in Ricky-only area. Like the last sunhead for the “?” chest.
On the tarnished sun sphere: I’m kind of inclined to use that either on the ashen skeletons or to drop it down the stairs in the entrance room, if a whole swarm of skeletons has assembled there, on the verge of going outside.
Also 20 coins (10 if we sell it to Paws, haven’t gotten prices from other shops yet) isn’t something to sneeze at. If we got the (3!) inventory space to take it with us (potential ally has inventory slots, too, that might help).
Actually, I also think that it would be somewhat of a loss to use it on the last sunhead. I just noted that it could be some help, but I think that Ricky may have a hard time taking it there.. maybe she could roll it into the hole or something.. anyways, it’s quite probable, if not 100% sure, that the sunheads have holy-resistance just like Kamau’s armour. The armour came straight from a sunhead, right.
Another thing is, this thing looks like a bowling ball. We already had fun crushing the skellies with the chandelier, how about going bowling? Sounds fun. But the white skellies, they are so weak.. Unless we have a better target, I also think about using it on ashen skeletons. But then, how can we help Ricky defeat the last sunhead? Ricky can wear a sunarmour, that, or another that maybe drops in the meantime, but that may not be enough. If we’re not at the very VERY end of the end of this dungeon, with all done except of a last action, we can only risk 1dmg on Ricky 😐
Agreed. Enemies generally gain the same benefits from equipment that we do, so I’m highly confident sun-heads have 5 defense vs holy and would be completely unaffected.
Be careful, while the visual of the holy bolt hitting the bell will most likey get her attention better than continuous yelling, this might not sit well with the drow for various reasons.
If she was employed by the people who built the chapel, she might take offense at us scavenging their holy hat.
If she’s hostile and/or hiding out here from the people whol built the chapel, wearing their gear might also get us into trouble (because she thinks we’re with them).
I’m assuming that the pope hat originated from the people who built the chapel, especially since it deals holy damage.
Also, yeah, the drow might have been exposed to the bells ringing at some point and therefore deaf or hard of hearing. (Or she might have even been deaf before, we seem to have a knack of picking up people with a handicap. Ricki with her RNG disadvantage, Kamau with only one arm, it would only be fitting if the drow had some kind of trait that would make her a “misfit”, too. Might also be the cause of her running away and crying in the prologue.)
Ricki, in addition to the above or any other action you take this turn: check out the grate, does it have a keyhole ?
Random thought: if we can get Kamau into the bell that fell down, he might be strong enough to push it (from the inside) to the side, so it doesn’t cover the opening in the ceiling/floor anymore, and Rick could possible (she might not be able to reach) make it onto the same level as the drow. However, Kamau would be stuck in the bell, with no way out (except pushing it back over the hole in the floor.
Might still work, if Ricki can/has convince(d) the drow to join us and she and the drow get down through the hole again before Kamau pushes the bell back and gets out himself.
What about pushing it just far enough, that Ricki can pass besides it, while not so far, that Kamau cannot leave it? Just half of the opening looks still wide enough for a person to pass through.
If the smoking person is deaf, shooting at the spider net next/right/over them might get their attention. Or putting a torch at the big spider net below/behind them.
There’s nothing better for catching lady’s attention than putting her dress on fire! xD
Well, it sure would get my attention. 😉 [Do NOT set my dress on fire!] I expect that there would be no danger, because the nets are at the wall and the person is not leaning against the wall but sitting on the floor. Alternatively, we could also try to throw (yes, neither elegant) something through the grate or through the window upwards. Remains of buckler, an arrow, dead bat… yes, yes, you do not throw dead bats at persons. Any better idea? What? Taking a grave flower, tying it to a living bat, shooing that out of the window, but preventing it getting lost by tying at a rope? You got crazy ideas… Why not just text them? The vibration alarm of the phone should get their attention. Oh, yes, we don’t have the number – might be in the golden chest!
What about smoke signals? Can we set the window frame on fire? “When in doubt, set something on fire!” (I forgot who said this.)
Found the quotation source, Belkar at https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0270.html
Also Ricki, dungeon 1 turn 5. When in doubt, burn things.
I recognized it immediately 😛 a true classic
Kamau doesn’t have an arm, due to his past vocation.
Maybe the drow is/was a bell-ringer and is deaf now 😐
The Holy Bowling Ball will make short work of the dark skeletons.
And possibly the sunheads too. Ricki roll it in front of her through the rat tunnel and into the sunhead, hopefully opening the golden chest.
It’s the clapper from the broken bell, if anyone can’t tell.
I can’t help but feel we should go downstairs and check on the skeleton outbreak. On the other hand, turn 50 is upon us so we need to recruit the drow and ring the bell tout suite.
Maybe the drow is deaf due to sitting under the bell when it was rung before. Use sign language. Thieves’ Cant uses non-aural components, doesn’t it?
This is a sunlight temple and that’s a drow, a creature of darkness. Hide the pope hat (it’s called a miter) and take out any symbols of darkness we might have. On all accounts avoid light and light sources. Make motions to the drow that we know the way out of this cursed place of blinding light and can take her to nice dark places where the nasty Yellow Face can’t come. Ricki is a nocturnal creature and Kamau is a traitor, and we all know how drow like treachery. Use this to our advantage! Somehow.
> On all accounts avoid light and light sources
Duuude.. she’s sitting right in front of a huge hole that opens right into the blue sky. I don’t think this drow has ANY problems with light.
Also, if she liked treachery, I think she wouldn’t be running away crying in the prologue.. I think she’s not a model drow in the classic stereotypical way.
(notabene: I also don’t think she’s an emo-elf. While the suit fits, she still wouldn’t have a cigarette. Smoking is all about burning plants and all..)
I bet she’d appreciate being out of the light regardless. When you try to get someone on your side, you agree with whatever values they might have. Be they darkness, treachery, sign language or warm and fuzzy puppies.
Unless – ugh – this is the Drizzt Do’Urden type of drow, a chaotic good rebel yearning to throw off the reputation of her evil kin. Seems they’re all like that since they became a playable race.
They’ve actually been like that since before then–it’s just that the ones who are like that tend to get murdered, or else live in the non-Lolth cities.
I did wonder if we’d need to make a sunlight-free path, but since there’s open windows up here I don’t think so.
If we wanted to tackle the rat treasure room, the sun sphere would likely wipe out those rats quickly. I’m worried Ricki would get caught in the blast, though. I’m also confident that sun-heads wouldn’t be affected at all by 5 holy damage since they also have the armour with extra defense against holy.
I feel like ringing one bell won’t quite be enough, or at least I hope so because I see no other way to change our interactions with her from down here. If ringing the bell clears the dungeon, then we wouldn’t be able to chat further.
Unless she’s there just for the show, and the talking & recruiting happens in the intermission afterwards, with effects based on how and what we did inside.
But, for the time being, I still think we can get to her by pinging the bell, or moving the broken bell and just walking there (and if we succeed in moving it, that would also somewhat show that we might be also able to tilt it and drop it out of the window… I have no idea what for, but I think I’d do that just to see the outcome. If the ‘cracked ball’ makes 5 holy dmg AoE, then imagine falling bell, banging on the church’ walls, and then big-banging on the ground. I just hope it doesn’t kill us (Oo).. can it?).
From turn 22:
When we take one of the ropes/part of the rope/…, make it into a kind of lasso and throw it over one or two of that spikes on the wall, we could climb the wall, lower the rope on the other side, and exit the chapel. That would be the emergency exit, if the front door gets barricaded due to too many skeletons leaving. It might also be possible to lower the rope down from the balcony down to the outside, if the rope can be mounted there, but this is not decided.
[Note: this is NO proposal to abandon the dungeon, but just reporting knowledge how to leave the dungeon in an alternative way at some point in the future.]
I though about it as well, but I think it will not work. Buildings and walls like that are usually not adjacent. I mean, if we drop down a rope from the spire and climb or slide down, we’ll just end up at the building’s wall, where the rope lands, not at the other side of the fence. I’m thinking of it like [..(*)..] where [ ] are the fence-walls, and (*) is a building with a spire in the middle, and the dots is just free space. No way a rope will go past [, it may land somewhere in-between the building and outside though.
I can be wrong of course. It can be [*)….] at some point, where your idea would work perfectly.
However, your idea also gave me another one. If the building does not touch the outer walls, then we need some ladder, stairs, boxes, or any other thing that will allow us of stepping/climbing the wall, and we probably will have to push/drag it to the wall.
How about dropping the broken bell through that LARGE hole/window to the left?
Sure it probably will wreak havoc below, and the even will probably also be loud as a solid thunderstorm (to surprise of all guards outside the building) (also, will that mean holy dmg area effect all over the place? PLEEEASE! so cool!) but should it land on the very ground, then we can surely push it to the wall, and just by the looks of it, its size fits the task!
That sounds like overthinking it. If we use a rope from that balcony, we should be able to abandon through there, remember the dungeon expanded up to the walls. It took me a second to realize that you meant dropping the broken bell itself rather than the sun sphere (clapper), which would be interesting. I think we’d want it out the right rather than the left to have it fall into the courtyard on the right. Of course, if we could move that thing then we’d have other options.
Hmm, speaking of how we recruited Kamau by giving him his signature weapon back, there is a bow downstairs which are famously associated with elves…
Unlikely given that there was a skeleton implied to be the previous owner right there, but maybe running past that sun-head to grab the bow would be good. Another reason to check out that balcony.
Hmm.. alright-ish. In fact, we did not see the ‘left side’ of the church, we already entered into inside.. so while on the right side, we know there are walls and graves and balcony etc, so dropping a rope on the right makes no sense — but on the LEFT, it indeed makes sense. If the doors are “welded shut”, we still might land right at the door from the other side. You’re right there. Also, I dont think we need to save spare rope in case we need to try escaping that way. I think we can simply cut off as much rope as we need.
EDIT: re rope&left – there’s just one tiny issue: image border is thick and black on the left where the green spike is. I don’t think we can barge through a thick black border even with such a smart idea 😐
For clarity, I don’t think we can leave from the roof. I was talking about the balcony in the courtyard with the bow from the turn OP quoted.
Kamau: Leave your boots, the arrows, and a set of thieves tools here. Pick up the sun sphere. Climb down the rope, jump over to the side with the flies, and kill one with your sword. Then continue to climb down the rope and end turn by the ladder going further down. This shouldn’t send you through the patch of glass, but remember where Ricki pointed it out to you even though it wasn’t important while you had the boots on.
Ricki: Climb out on the right and shoot a holy bolt up past the drow’s field of vision, looking for a response. Climb up the rope and examine the grate to check if it’s removable. Pass one of the arrows through the grate as a peace offering. With avenues of communication exhausted, announce you’ll be back later and get ready to head down (climb down on the outside left if attacking for purposes of sending a signal doesn’t stop you from leaving the room).
Rationale: I want to start going back down, but the next actions I’d want to take are two rooms down, with the rope by unburnt skeletons. Having Kamau fight the flies doesn’t really do much for us, but we get a bit of info and by leaving their space after attacking I hope they won’t get a parting shot when he leaves next turn. I kind of want to send Ricki down, but I feel like I’m missing something here.
I’m glad to hear what she has to say, it does tell us something about her. While the recent use of sign language in the intermission does support her being deaf, I don’t think we can quite rule out the other option that she’s just ignoring weird dungeon inhabitants. That does complicate finding what she wants, though. (With four arrows we could spell out “HI” in English, wonder how the fantasy languages work out…)
Plan from here: We will need the other two ropes and to work the winch under sun-head guard. I’m a little worried the sun sphere will be a bomb that also hits the roller, as it is an area effect. Our obvious options are the rope guards, it would definitely save 4 turns of crushing skeletons and might help with the ashen skeletons though there I’d rather deal massive damage to a single target than risk leaving three damaged enemies dealing full damage to us. I’m also inclined to go check the chandelier, sadly the sun sphere is consumable so if we left it there as a trap to catch small skeletons then it’d only work once.
We have 3 sets of thieves tools and there is one useful lock left in the dungeon, I think we can ignore the keys. In total there are four locked doors and three locked chests, but two chests are in Ricki-only areas (with one of those definitely hosting a stalkroach) and the third is guarded by an armed ghoul. One of the other locked doors just exposes rats and the other two have spider guards.
… you know, if the cigarette wasn’t already burning, we could try to hold the torch through the grate. Offer fire to the lady who wants to smoke…
The chest is golden. The sun guys are golden. Kill all the sun guys to open the chest.
Thing is, with Ricki and Kamau working together, each rope can be obtained by 2 turns of interpose. We don’t need to kill any of the skellies. As cool as the holy bomb is, I don’t think it’s that useful right now.
I propose we get the ropes for now as that’s our primary objective.
Kamau: move down 2 floors via the outside.
Ricki: follow kamau and watch the glass
As for drow, I agree she’s probably deaf. Since we know she’s looking outside we could try a mitre bolt over her head to get attention.
I noticed a creative but wasteful and useless use of the holy-ball – but 100% safe for our guys. It’s safe, because we use a hole in the wall, to roll the bomb and cause an explosion in the other room. Please don’t do it. I just include it as a reference, because that’s the first one I noticed.
Then I noticed, that we actually can do the same with the sunhead with a sword – just roll the bomb from the left room:
This allows us to hit the sunhead, and be (almost) 100% sure we won’t get hit by the blast.
However – if the armour has the same stats on the sunhead as it has on us, then it means def 4 against holy. Text on the sphere says 5 holy dmg (not +5 holy atk) so I dont know if that’s blockable or not, but if it is, then explosion would deal just 1 damage. Pure waste. Probably.
Then, actually, if we want to use it on rats, then on the first picture I pasted, rolling it to the RIGHT makes MUCH more sense – two wererats, guarding a locked chest. There are better things in locked chests, right?
And also we can hit two green rats, and a larva on the ceiling, if we roll it to the left of the black skeletons.. but then, do we need those arrows that much? I doubt. Unless that’s a trigger for the drow, which I doubt as well. But who knows?
I still try to think how we could open the golden chest.. I was somewhat wary of the sword the sunhead carries, but by the looks of it, I’m pretty sure its a “rusted sword” (see the dark hilt and reddish blade) so while it adds +2 atk, it has 30% breaking chance, I think we could tackle this guy. But I have no tricks against the one in Ricky-only area :/
…except for preparing everything for the endgame, like removing all the sunheads that Kamau can reach, collecting and fixing the rope, but NOT moving the winch. Then, once it’s all ready, arming up Ricky with all the best armour we find, and sending her there. That sunhead is unarmed, that’s a plus. Def+4 plus mitre plus some buckler (if we find any), it may mean 0 dmg for Ricky with some luck. Unarmed sunhead could do no damage to Kamau, and Kamau didn’t a have a shield. And even if Kamau’s remorse triggers, then Ricky should be able to move the winch and ring the bell.
Do we put the bow at risk by the explosion?
One turn of Interpose is enough to grab a single rope. We established with the bats that if you move out of the area of the room with enemies, then they don’t attack on the next turn (turn 47 mentioned a parting shot since Ricki fought bats and stayed there on turn 46, but turn 40 had no parting shot because Kamau moved away after fighting on turn 39). You can’t leave the room after attacking or Interpose, but movement within a room is free; on that note, Ricki can totally leave the room entirely after grabbing the rope as long as she started that turn in the room with the rope. This only works on rooms with different areas to retreat to, there’s no way to get away from enemies in rooms like the entryway.
There’s a risk that once these enemies are activated, they might attack anyone climbing the ladder by their floor. This isn’t an issue for the skeletons since their rope will let us climb by on the other side, but the ashen skeletons are on our only path out. It’s also not impossible that skeletons will start moving for the exit, but since the group at the entrance was willing to stick around after activation with only bats in the way, that should be safe.
The skeletons (in group with the dog) might also try to “attack” the rope.
Chances are kind of low, since Kamau said skeletons are not intelligent (no brains), but they did behave out of the ordinary (moving between rooms) in this dungeon already (at first directed by the ghoul pope and very likely afterwards, too, or else there is no way any skeletons could “escape” the building in the first place).
Also, I kind of wonder: since Ricki has the dungeon eyes, do we even get to see the things that “trap detection I” reveals, or does LSN remove those visual clues in rooms that Kamau explores, until Ricki enters these rooms, too?
I mean in turn 2 of dungeon 3 Kamau went into a room on his own and we were able to see the glass on the floor there (even if people didn’t spot it), but does the glass even count as “trap” or is this more like a “ground hazard”?
We get to see the whole room, too, even if Kamau doesn’t, so here’s hoping that we get shown the traps as well (and the spider web blocking passage that Kamau got trapped in was “just” something that needs at least trap detection II in order to become visible, but we WILL see trap clues even in “Kamau only” rooms. Or in “new ally only” rooms, else Rikci will have a hard time keeping everyone safe.
(I remember reading somewere that we can’t take more than 4 people into any dungeon, so if we ever get that many, we could have them split into 2 groups of 2 people to explore quicker. That would certainly make Ricki having to run around a LOT if trap clues only appear in whatever room she was in.)
Probably useless observation:
Get the ropes. Connect to the mechanism. Ring the bell.
Can we PLEASE check up on the ground floor? We gotta make sure alls well.
I think we can unlock the grate with the keys near the bird . Ricki should climb the rope and check for key hole in the grate.