Intermission 3 Page 4
————
“Find anything good?”
“We got a neat hat. We had some armour too, but it exploded.”
“Kind of a light haul.”
“Yeah, we had some trouble.”
“Well, if you’re really committing to this dungeon-crawling lifestyle, there’s another place you might want to check out…”
“Don’t get me wrong, the kobold warrens are a fine place to go poking around looking for loose coins, but there’s people LIVING in it. I doubt there’s any really great treasure left.”
“But I happen to know where all the city’s rats congregate to stash the things they steal and plan their next heist.”
“Rats? What kind of stuff do they steal besides cheese?”
“You’d be surprised. It’s kind of a dangerous place and the window to get in and explore is narrow, but I’ll give you directions in case you’re feeling bold.”
“Thanks!”
“Now then, is there anything you fine folks are looking to sell? Or buy? Why not step into my humble store and take a look around.”
“That’s… a dark alley.”
“What, don’t you trust me?”
“Do you sell cigarettes?”
“I do if you want ’em.”
“I say we check it out.”
“Like I said last time, a copper ring or two will come in handy if you go to the warrens.”
“If you’re going to try to tackle the rat vault, I’d recommend kitting yourself out with defensive gear, Ricki. Your two friends aren’t going to be able to get around there as easily as you will, and you might have to do some fighting solo.”
“I’ve also got some new stock in since the last time we met. Take all the time you need.”
Arrow – 2
Bolt – 1
Boots – 4
Bow – 10
Buckler – 8
Chain Armour – 23
Cheap Ale – 3
Copper Ring – 5
Crossbow – 25
Dagger – 3
Dagger, Throwing – 5
Grave Flower – 2
Greatsword – 12
Holy Water – 12
Leather Armour – 13
Longsword – 6
Magic Lens – 10
Oven Mitts – 4
Pack of Cigarettes – 6
Plate Armour – 30
Potion of Healing – 10
Rabbit Paw – 10
Shield – 20
Thieves’ Tools – 5
Torch – 2
Wand of Magic Missile – 40
Wand of Mend – 35
Wooden Stake – 9
I had a few ideas, replied below. The core idea that runs here is that we don’t need the Dawn Mitre, and we keep the sun sphere.
– Lara has a ranged attack (that also does more damage). Dawn Mitre’s 1 damage is literally useless unless somebody else is attacking.
– The light benefit is covered by the torch, and doesn’t require the holder to spend their action attacking with the hat
– 10 gold is a lot of money
– In each of the three dungeons so far, there has been 2-3 chests guarded by a difficult encounter. LSN said during the stream that the sun sphere would have been able to wipe the plague/dire rat pair, so we can use this next time we find a ricki-only room with lots of chests. As long as the treasure is worth more than 10 gold total (+ cost of thieves tools), we profit.
I vote for selling the dawn mitre. Dunno what we should buy, but it’s close to useless unfortunately:(
1 damage at range is deceptively good, as it lets you pull enemies into traps, but Lara can do that herself. Stepping up from 2 to 3 damage consistently at range is also helpful. That said, the light isn’t a big concern given how many free hands we now have, and 10 gold is a lot of money.
dawn mitre 10
arrows 4
gold 10
= 24
longsword 6
buckler 8
2 rings 10
= 24
—-
Better combat gear is always a safe bet. This idea originally was for 3 rings, but since Paws is saying “1 or 2” I guess we won’t need to equip everybody with them.
dawn mitre 10
gold 10
= 20
bow 10
2 rings 10
= 20
————-
Bow and arrow probably do more damage than the dawn mitre, so this will let us keep Ricki out of range and still contribute meaningfully to combat
We will probably go to the rats, as it probably won’t be available later. We know there’re will be a lot of Ricky-only places (consider the chapel: we had 2 or three interesting Ricky-only places, with noticeable enemies, and that was just a distraction, not the main theme). This means that the use of bow will be very limited, if any at all. I think it’s not the time for buying a bow. Getting high DEF for Ricky is far more important.
dawn mitre 10
gold 10
= 20
shield 20
= 20
———–
Rat vault is a new option. This will let us gear up Ricki for those encounters Paws mentioned (suggested by somebody else in the discord yesterday). This should give us 5 def
Alternatively, sell arrows too for chain armor instead
Chain would provide 1 extra armor than leather and take up 2 extra slots of inventory. a bucker would provide the same added defense with less slots and cheaper cost. (assuming we plan to let ricki use it in the rat dungeon)
Sell arrows either way. No bow in our immediate future and gold will stack higher, if we’re going to a loot dungeon then there will likely be gold in chests.
Thought: Selling arrows could also get Cheap Ale. An extra stacking point of defense that doesn’t take an inventory slot, though only for a few turns.
dawn mitre 10
arrows 4
gold 10
throwing dagger 2(.5)
= 26
longsword 6
shield 20
= 26
———–
Rat vault says “the window to get in and explore is narrow” so if we want to do the vault we have to do it now. That’s why we’re going all in (not really), giving both ricki AND kamau weapons, in exchange for a chance at treasure. If we do this, we should prioritize loot over victory and be prepared to abandon the dungeon
Less weapons for Ricki and Kamau and more weapons for Ricki and Lara. This would put the trio at 6 Intercede defense backed by 7 attack.
The dagger would keep a decent ranged option in Ricki-only areas where two swords won’t help. Ranged seems unlikely to help much there though, it’d mostly be for luring enemies into traps, and unbalanced thrown weapons should provoke that much.
Ricki is going to have trouble carrying the sun sphere *and* a bunch of extra defense. It’s heavy. That reduces its use to us a fair amount. I’d really rather sell it if we’re going to do this sort of thing.
The thing about consumables is that you don’t have to carry them for long.
I don’t think I would buy another sun sphere for 10 gold, when we have so many gaps in our permanent equipment slots.
I’d vote to keep the throwing dagger (in case we want/need a ranged option for ricki) and sell on the thieve’s tools instead – since we’ll get another one of those anyway
I vote against selling the dawn mitre
I wonder if going for Rats we could use Mitre to aggro rats from places our big friends can’t reach. Forcing them to fight us out in the open.
If “places only Ricki can enter” means doors that ‘teleport’ us to other parts of map then it’s not very usefull,
but if it means narrow tunels with rats holding their ground we could force them to get to us.
I love the idea of unlimited ammo ranged attack.
Lara’s Venomous Sting I can do the same, and if the goal is to pull enemies out into a space allies can fit, then Lara can fit there to cast.
The Mitre is good, it’s just outclassed.
One case where the Mitre would be better is for the turret snale in dungeon 2, a ranged attack from up on the ladder would’ve changed its targeting area, and it would be more effective for Kamau to wear the hat and draw attention rather than interceding for Lara while she draws attention. This even provides its own light for him.
If i understand correctly Lara Corruption does not go away. Ever.
using one of her 8 times to cast a spell on a mob fight is extreme waste.
Mitra is free, if weak.
EDIT. Nevermind. i double checked. the ranged one is the only of her abilities that do not cause Corruption. mb. then yea, Mitra is redundant. it’s still nice being able to keep both of our squishies out of melee so Kamau can attack instead of interposing each turn.
i really hope rules will be made explicit before she goes to 7 Corrup in next dungeon.
It was made pretty clear last dungeon that ranged attacks don’t actually stop enemies from stepping out of melee to chase you down and trigger Remorse. It’s all a matter of whether the enemy in question is capable of retargeting, which we can only discover by being burned by it since we can’t prove an enemy can’t do something vs they just haven’t done so yet.
You are correct about corruption, it’s permanent. Big difference between Venomous Sting and Venomous Barrage.
enemies changing targets from Kamau is only a danger if we are one hit from loosing someone.
1HP and a dream 😉
not all enemies can do it, and not all enemies that can will.
not sure how math checks out but having 2+1dmg from range and Kamau fighting melee is potentially faster than 2 in melee and Kamau interposing. (if DM is kind to us it can help with damage break points. If we get data that kamau and Vsting is enough to finish someone and Mitra didn’t need to be used.)
I hope the lesson was learned last dungeon to use interpose. 5hp split between 2 characters is cruel.
but with VSting i feel better about selling Mitra. I’ve been blinded by spiders being everywhere on Lara
Gold available for this proposal: 43
10 from loot
10 sell mitre
10 sell holy orb
6.5 sell leather armor
4 sell arrows
2.5 sell dagger, throwing
Buy: Shield, 20
Buy: Chain Armor, 23
This allows the following loadouts
When Tanking Combat:
Kamau, Shield, Chain Armor, interpose @ 7? defense
Ricki, attack with longsword for 3
Lara, attack for 2 (venom or basic attack)
With Kamau using Interpose, it doesn’t matter if enemies are smart enough to re-target, they’re just forced into combat with Kamau.
DPS Combat:
Kamau, attack 4 (hilt) defense 5
Ricki, attack 3, defense 2
Lara, attack 2, defense 1
We’ll probably rarely use this, and it can be rapidly upgraded if we find any further weapons.
Hopefully, this also allows us to send Ricki into solo combats with Chain/Shield/Longsword (or Leather/Shield/Longsword, weights depending), allowing us to do some looting in the City Rat Dungeon.
I think with this loadout, it’s time to try the City Rat’s lair for loot, with the expectation we may have to loot like mad and abandon, since it’s called out as being dangerous and requiring solo combat from Ricki.
It has good loot
It’s a limited time dungeon.
“It’s kind of a dangerous place and the window to get in and explore is narrow”
For DPS, chain armour is +3 defense and Ricki has Light Armour Proficiency, so Kamau would have 6 defense (chain) and Ricki would have 3 (leather), with an extra 2 from the shield either boosting Lara to 3 or Ricki to 5. In emergencies until we find another weapon, someone can swing with a torch for an extra point of damage.
EDIT: I was talking about the loadout, not how chain armour applies to each character.
Correction: Ricki would have 4 Def with the chain armour. She has 1 base (no longer malnourished) and +3 from the chain (at least that’s what the rusty chain gives, and I somehow doubt that the pristine version is any worse in that department). However, if the shield (+2 Def assumed) takes up 2 slots, too, (which would make sense with the “1 point worth of Defense takes up at least 1 inventory slot” scheme/mechanism that we have observed so far) that would be 5 slots altogether and that means no room for a weapon and only 1 Attack value on Ricki (which usually isn’t even able to break through the enemies defense on its own).
Depending on enemies, this may be enough to loot. We don’t need to necessarily kill everything. If there were 2-3 rats guarding a chest, we want the chest, we can ignore the rats with def high enough.
We need inventory space to carry the loot back, though. I agree that we probably won’t be able to effectively use both chain armour and shield on Ricki due to filling entire inventory, but leather armor and shield is still the highest consistent defense she can get, and chain armour is a great investment since Kamau can get Proficiency and Lara can wear it when needed or if we upgrade later to Plate.
I agree to go for the rat vault. For gearing up Ricki, a Shield would be better than Chain Armour to leverage Light Armour Proficiency, and it works just as well on Kamau if he’s Interposing. I also recommend going big on weapons, Ricki has difficulty punching through defense.
Boosting Attack cuts down on number of turns in combat, reducing the cost of breakable equipment and the HP cost of mob fights where you need to cut down on the number of attackers. Without enough Attack, some fights are unwinnable.
Boosting Defense reduces the HP cost of each turn in combat. With enough Defense, any nonzero amount of damage to enemies will eventually result in victory.
Any damage to Ricki is really bad, but we can always load Kamau up with loot before he goes home.
Unwinnable fight is still OK if that’s in a Ricky-only area that doesn’t block the team from moving, and if Ricky has def high enough to not get any dmg and just ignore enemies and just go for the loot in the rats’ hole, etc.
Something that’s worth keeping in mind is that looting the chest and/or grabbing stuff guarded by enemies will take an extra action.
It’s doable, but it will take long(er). That’s the downside of “ignoring” enemies.
Given how long combat takes, it’s probably faster to just grab things, especially since opening a chest is an action anyway. We might be collecting rat tails again, though.
That’s absolutely true, grabbing stuff is most likely quicker than taking down (most) enemies, then loot.
I just wanted to remind everyone about the “it takes extra turns” to “just grab stuff”, because sometimes people suggest impossible stuff like “walk past an enemy, open chest, loot chest and leave the room (not the immediate aggro-area) of the enemy again.
So the “it takes an action to grab stuff that is guarded by enemies” as well as the “you can’t leave a room after being in combat with anything” principles are still not present enough in everyone’s minde and are worth bringing to peoples attentions every now and then. 🙂
People also don’t have any trouble suggesting that characters move 2-3 rooms away and still do something on getting there, yeah. The entrance stair tripped people up in the last dungeon since it counts as a move within the same room, and we’ll be seeing a lot more of those shortly with how rat tunnels work exactly the same way. Usually it’s not so bad to talk about where you’d like to go on future turns, but when each of those turns is under threat, knowing your limits is important.
Point of clarification: it isn’t that you can’t leave a room after *being* in combat, it’s only when you *attack*. Being attacked doesn’t pin you to the room (this was why I wanted Kamau to run past the armed sun-head to get the bow), though since damage is counted across the entire turn, moving between rooms can open you up to more damage than any individual room can pose alone.
Current gold: 10.
Sell Tarnished Sun Sphere (10), all arrows (4), Dawn Mitre (10).
Buy Shield (20), Greatsword (12).
Remaining gold: 2.
Tarnished Sun Sphere would cover one encounter. Greatsword spikes Ricki to most likely 4 outgoing damage consistently. Reminder that the guard with a greatsword was able to hold a torch in the off hand.
Note that dire rats have 3 HP and 1 Defense, so going from 3 damage to 4 damage is the difference between two turns of combat and a one-shot. In particular, if there are too many dire rats to engage safely, taking one down in one turn means that’s one less turn of HP damage before the group loses 2 attack and may become safe.
Alternative:
Current gold: 10.
Sell all arrows (4), Dawn Mitre (10), throwing dagger plus thieves tools (5), longsword (3).
Buy Shield (20), Greatsword (12).
No remaining gold.
All equipment on one. This puts us in a bad spot with weapons, though we do have a torch. This preserves the bomb to hopefully short-circuit one encounter.
I wonder if the (shield and/or) greatsword will also have more than 1 weight/inventory slot.
But still, even if it has 2 (and the shield does, too), equipping her with leather armour (1 slot, 2 def), shield (probably 2 def, likely one or two slots) and greatsword (probably 3 attack, likely one or two slots) should still work on Ricki (for the Ricki-only areas), and allow her to have 5 def (1 base, 2 from leather armour and light armour proficiency, 2 from the shield – I’m assuming it has to be better than the buckler, to justify the higher price), none of which are breakable (this is REALLY important with Ricki) and 4 attack (1 base and assuming 3 from the greatsword). She’d have no room for loot and/or to bring other items with her into the fight, so she might be running back and forth a lot, but at least she’d be a force to be reckogned with (to the extent of her possibilites).
The downside of this “loadout” is that we’ll only have 2 sets of armour (both leather) between 3 characters, so Kamau would likely not do much tanking, while Ricki is all geared up (unless/until we find/loot some more armour).
Other way around, tanking is necessary with not enough defensive equipment to cover everyone. Cycling out equipment and loot is basically necessary until we invest in Big Haul.
Agreed on the trading of equipment around as needed.
I just said WHILE Ricki is wearing all the tanky gear, Kamau would (or should) most likely not do much tanking (at the same time!).
Which limits what Lara and Kamau can do, while Ricki is in her crawlspaces considerably (and that is not something I’m happy about so “downside”).
Alternative (Mitre is cool):
Current gold: 10.
Sell all arrows (4), Tarnished Sun Sphere (10), throwing dagger plus thieves tools (5), longsword (3).
Buy Shield (20), Greatsword (12).
No remaining gold.
All equipment on one. This puts us in a bad spot with weapons, though we do have a torch. This preserves the Dawn Mitre for style and persistent 3 ranged damage.
Sell:
Arrows. (4)
Sun sphere. (10)
Leather armor. (6)(.5)
Gold. (10)
Buy:
Plate armor. (30)
Why:
Arrows. No good without a bow.
Sun sphere. It’s a great consumable, but it’s a consumable. We need real gear.
Leather armor. Sucks to lose, but instead of chain, it lets us get:
Plate armor. Send in the tank. Brute force is worth a lot. Both Ricki and Lara have ranged attacks, which means against dumb stuff they’re okay with not having such great def. Against smart stuff that may target them, we need to have Kamau interpose anyway, and still don’t care a ton about Lara’s def. Ricki sometimes has to operate on her own, but Lara can’t really get anywhere Kamau can’t. We’re roughly never going to send her to take attacks deliberately. So, Lara can make do with scavenged rusty armor for those “whoops we didn’t think that enemy would attack her” moments.
Ricki can probably equip the plate armor if she has to operate solo, and this avoids selling the hat and throwing dagger. Chain mail is good stuff, but you know we’d want to replace it with plate at some point.
Interesting, cigarettes are cost 6, up there with a longsword. Suggests they’ve a little more kick than the cheap ale.
As was hinted, Magic Lenses have been cut down to cost 10 from 30, so it’s less brutal to actually use them.
Wand of Mend sounds promising as an aspirational goal. A healing wand would be of the once per dungeon type, so this would be like buying a rechargeable healing potion. Still, buying extra max HP is far less important than buying the Defense to not lose that HP in the first place.
Isn’t “mend” usually “healing” (or rather repairing) of items? That would be even more awesome, because then we could take all those “reject” items (like rusty longsword or tarnished solar armour) and make them “better” – not sure if pristine version would be possible or just some “intermittent state” between rusty and “normal” – and either use them indefinitely (because they don’t break) and/or sell them for more coins, if we don’t need them.
There has to be some serious limitation to this, though, or else it would have the potential to break the game (economy wise at least) pretty hard. Maybe one can only use it once (or a few times) per dungeon?
As for cigarettes: Maybe a “pack of cigarettes” is multiple use, and that’s why they are more expensive than a single mug of (cheap) ale.
There’s also a possibility that a Wand-of-Mend is just a hack item that works much like grave-flowers. The flowers were used up automatically when right things happened, and the wand may be the same: when a chance-to-break item would break, wand-of-mend might be automatically activated to expend a charge and prevent that breaking. Once per charge. Works. Is usable. Saves precious items in dire times. Doesn’t break economy by permanently repairing items.
..but still, I think it heals.
If it mends items, then simply working once per dungeon and costing 35 is enough of a limitation.
We should store the sun sphere with Paws, and take it back for the rat vault. Consumables for Ricki could be a life changer there.
Also, can we ask paws if she sells a cheap bucket if we are going to the vault? +1 def is big.
Alternatively Ricki go steal a bucket.
Did Paws’ gender get revealed yet?
I’m not sure, but somehow I don’t think they are a “she” (if you look at how the torsos of Ricki and Lara are depicted, versuse Kamaus torso, I kind of feel like Paws might be a “he” instead. If the characters in the comic are limited to binary genders, that is)…
Also: DON’T have Ricki try and steal anything. a) you all saw how that turned out in the tavern (and we still don’t have the “sneaky” or “steal” skills yet, either and even if we did, those are most likely limited to “in dungeon” areas, similar to the dungeon eyes) and b) Paws is, if not an ally then at least a well-meaning neutral NPC. I don’t want to loose the option to use their shop, just because someone got greedy.
EDIT: Oh, you probably meant have Ricki steal a bucket from anywhere/who else. I still don’t approve, because (nearly) everyone in Goblintown seems to be so badly off that stealing from them is really not a classy thing to do (stealing from the rich, while still illegal is something I would morally have less of a problem with than stealing from the poor) and if we’d go through the trouble of leaving Goblintown to steal from someone well-off, we’d probably not have enough time for that during the intermission and/or before the window of opportunity for the rat hideout dungeon elapses.
During Intermission 2 Ricki referred to Paws as “he”.
Thanks for providing this information. 🙂
So my gut feeling was right, yay! 😀
It’s implied that if we want to go to the rat vault, we need to go now: “the window to get in and explore is narrow”. No time to go to the warrens and likely recruit another Small party member to help in cramped spaces.
Of course, maybe this was intended to say that we wouldn’t have much time in the dungeon itself.
Wooden Stake?
oh no.
no reason to buy for now, but it makes me worried.
Right, this was mentioned as a weapon in a chest we didn’t get in the last dungeon. I’m guessing it deals 3 damage to undead, wonder if it is 1 or 2 damage to the living since it is more expensive than a longsword.
I think it might grant a small DEF bonus. Think monks and staves. Considering DEF is of much more value than ATK, it would explain the price difference.
A wooden stake is associated with killing vampires; it’s less a staff and more a big wooden nail, something you’d hammer into the ground to pin down a tent. A wooden stake through the heart is supposed to kill an otherwise immortal undead. I liked the Innistrad take on this legend where the important part is that the wood was cut recently and is still alive, and that’s what makes it particularly dangerous to the undead.
I have wondered if we’d get a parrying dagger, some sort of +1 attack/+1 defense weapon. Since a buckler is 8 gold on its own, that might be even more expensive, especially if it stacked with a shield.
Vampires, I know. But according to my local old wisdom, it can’t be just about any wooden stake, it has to be ASPEN stake. So I automatically disregarded that option.
But now I checked, https://www.ithilear.com/2017/08/why-we-use-stakes-to-kill-vampires.html – it seems that the kind of wood differs around the world, so we’d first need to know the vampire’s nationality, so maybe it rightfully simplified in the game 😀
Hrm, I kind of wonder if this would be a consumable, too, or if it would be a permanent weapon.
They are 100% consumable. Despite what’s shown on popular TV shows, each stake is one-time non-reusable thing. And you cannot just shoot them out from bow/crossbow/ballista/gun/whatever. Vampire has to be held and be immobilized (or else it can turn into bat, etc), and you have to nail it to the ground or something else ground-referenced solid. Somehow nailing vampires midair doesn’t work properly. Nailing it through its heart straight to the ground works the best. So well you’ve got almost 100% success rate, except for missing the heart (oops happens sometimes) or a rare vampire type having its heart on the right side. Once you nail the vampire’s heart with it, you cannot remove the stake, or the vampire will recover. It takes a long time for the vampire’s body to go dry and fully bloodless. Only then it’s safe to remove the stake, but the vampire can still recover if some blood is spilled upon it. It’s much safer to leave the stake in for as long as needed for the vampire’s body to fully decompose. For that reason, usually, the type of the wood is chosen so that it decomposes slower than the body, or some special curing is applied beforehand (but not at the pointy tip! it has to be wood there!). Anyways, hacking/burning/dissolving/etc are often employed to speed up the process, just so nobody gets any stupid ideas about taking stakes from vampies lying around and reusing them for raising tents etc. Or any stupid ideas of i.e. checking if that was a vampire. Sure it was of course. No checking. Move along.
Lara, as team member you get a Pack of Cigarettes free at each dungeon start, no need to buy one. – You smoke HOW MANY packs per dungeon?! [If Lara would stop smoking, we had 3 additional Gold per dungeon by selling the cigarettes!]
Lara: yes
What concerns me is how fast that she will go through that Pack of Cigarettes and what will happen when she does. This is likely a mechanism similar to Kamau’s Remorse. At some point, Lara would abandon the dungeon to go looking for more Cigarettes when she runs out.
How many are in a pack? How long does it take her to smoke each one? This gives us a clock to finish a dungeon.
Eh, there’s nothing in Lara’s abilities to go leave for a smoke break. It might just be that she only lets us mess with one pack from her stash per dungeon, especially since she’s been blowing smoke at Kamau without a pack in her inventory.
We’ll see what smoking does once the next dungeon starts.
From https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-1-turn-31/
Do we want to ask Paws about it? I guess that he is the person who would have the money, but would not be seen by the guards.
That was my read, yeah. The one who would try but couldn’t afford it is Lohk, the one who can afford it but won’t deal with guards is Paws, and the one who actually offered is still unknown.
Good point, Paws seems well informed.