Dungeon 4 Turn 1
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Ricki quickly climbs down the rat tunnel and runs past the gathered rats in the isolated chamber to pull on the lever. As she expected, it causes the incongruously square grate to retract. Unfortunately, it retracts to the hallway below, blocking off a different area. It seems this lever is going to have to be pulled again at some point if anyone wants to get at all those chests.
The rats attack Ricki, but do no harm to her.
Above, Kamau wades into the pile of rats and interposes himself between them and Lara. He sees that the pile of rats seem to have their tails tangled together, preventing them from separating on their own. He takes 3 damage from the pile and the two single rats combined.
Lara casts Venomous Sting, the only of her Arachnomancer powers that she can still cast freely. She kills one of the small rats.
Ricki: Run back out through the hole
Kamau: Attack the rat pile with your longsword
Lara: Attack the single rat with your sting
Rat piles have +5 attack. Oof.
Kamau: Interpose.
Lara: Take a puff and sting the rat pile.
Ricki: Run back up and attack the rat pile.
The single small rat can’t damage us, let it be. Rat pile, on the other hand, might become a threat to a character with low health.
Cigarettes are +Atk. LSN clarified on discord that +Atk is not +damage. It’ll help if she’s attacking with a sword or whatever, but venomous sting does flat damage, unaffected by Atk. Puffing cigarettes won’t help for this action.
Ouch. There is barely any reason to use use an action to smoke then. Let the addiction proc whenever.
Smoking isn’t an action, it’s part of another action.
Lara: Use Venomous barrage on the pile of rats.
Kamau: If barrage isn’t enough, finish off the pile. Otherwise scout on.
Ricki: Go back through the tunnel. If the pile is still alive after Kamau’s possible attack, finish off the pile. Otherwise kill the small rat.
Alternative assuming 5HP on rat pile
Lara shoot the small rat.
Kamau hit the pile then move on.
Ricki go back and follow Kamau if the pile is dead. Otherwise attack the pile.
Whoa. Barrage just for a standard enemy right off the start? Please, remember the Corruption thing. It’s not renewable.
Ricki: Out through the rat hole, continue left into the next room.
Lara: Sting the other small rat. Walk past the rat pile toward the left exit.
Kamau: Interpose. Head to left side of rat pile.
Rat pile has 5 Atk, so Ricki can get back through here safely on her own to hit the lever, if we want. As a group, Kamau can interpose, taking 1 damage, or none if we give him the shield. Leave the rat pile here. It doesn’t need to die. Lara and Kamau can leave this room next turn. If we spend turns 2+3 here killing the rat pile, we’ll have all of two turns to get to the bottom level. And we’ll lose more actions if we don’t scout the next room before trying to take action in it.
For future planning, as we likely want Ricki to come back here to pull the lever again – as long as we can wipe out the other individual rat, then Ricki can safely pass the pile on its own with her shield. Aside from that, we’ll only go through here once more at the very end, so not worth clearing.
Turn – Move from room 2 to rat hole, soak 5 damage.
Turn – Move through rat hole to pull lever, soak 5 damage, ideally end next to rat hole and not get hit next turn.
Turn – Move through rat hole out of lever room, can run by the pile again and dash back to room 2 if avoiding a parting shot.
…except Kamau first interposing and then Lara and Ricki walking by, but because it is round-based, it probably does not matter. (If it does matter: DO IT!)
Suggested equipment swap and tactics:
Ricki moves back and gives shield to Kamau (6 def).
Kamau gives long sword to Lara
Kamau will interpose to stop damage to everyone else. 5 att (rat pile) + 1 att (single rat) = no damage.
Ricki (3 att) and Lara (4 att) hit the rat pile.
Can’t give up shield this turn. Looks like Ricki’s still in the middle of rats and has damage incoming.
New idea
Ricki: Run back out through the hole
Kamau: Interpose
Lara: Run past and check out the next room
The time limit means we need to know what’s ahead in the future before planning our moves. We only have until turn 5 before Floor 4 (counting top-down) is flooded, so we NEED to know what we can do for turns 3 and 4, besides running blindly past the rat pile or killing it.
If there’s another lever in the next room that flips the doors, that will help. If there’s a ladder that leads directly to that rat treasure room, that will help. If there are more rat piles, that will help.
This all comes from the thought that, how is Ricki going to access the locked chest if she has to stay in this room to flip the lever back and forth? Does Kamau have to drag the locked chest out? That means Ricki is going to be doing nothing but killing rats for a few turns. I think the existence of a duplicate lever makes sense, but we haven’t seen anything like that before, so knowing what the next map looks like is critical.
It’s worth remembering that (Kamau’s) hp is a resource to be spent.
Actually, we don’t REALLY know how many turns we have. 20 turns sounds fine for a quick, timed, dangerous dungeon. But what if there’s a room beneath this one, which we simply have not seen yet?Actually, we know. It’s clearly written on Turn 0 of this dungeon. It’s 20, so this dungeon is horizontal and there are no rooms to the bottom.
As above, but after Ricki leaves the hole, have her kill the other small rat. It’s perfectly safe with interpose.
Also: please Kamau grab the pack of cigarettes. You will get remorse if Lara damages herself. Statistically, she will loose ~1,5 hp due to smokes during this dungeon. Also, cigarettes can be sold if she doesnt smoke them, technically.
It was stated in the last turn that LSN told people on discord (allegedly, I don’t use that channel, so I wouldn’t know) that self-inflicted damage (and the cigarettes qualify as that) doesn’t count towards remorse. It would be helpful if he added this information to Kamau’s character sheet, though.
Yes, Kamau does not get remorse from this, but Lara looses HP and if we cannot sell the cigarettes at the next intermission we loose money and if Lara smokes them without using the +2 attack she looses that, too. Therefore: Kamau, grab that cigarettes! And pass one set of thieves tools to Lara, then everybody in the team has one set. Just in case something happens to one team member (remorse, rust monster, throwing away things…).
While I am not averse to the idea of Kamau keeping Lara from smoking for now, in fact the exact opposite, I’ll just state that I worry she won’t allow Kamau to just take her cigs.
LSN reiterated this ruling on Twitter which is more public. Agreed that this is counter to what is actually written on the sheet.
I like how this lets us tap more resources. I wonder if Lara will get more cast-from-HP options on level up.
Kamau: Interpose:
Lara and Ricki attack Rat Pile
It would be a good idea to know how much hp the pile has. Also, we’ll need to run BACK through this pile later so keep our exit clear.
Kamau interposing would prevent any rats from attack ricki who will have taken 5 damage from the lever room rats.
Also, How the heck do we get that 1 Locked chest behind the 4 rats and the pile? If there is only 1 lever for this grate, Ricki will be trapped by the entrance, and only Ricki can use lockpicks. Deduction: There is a second lever that activates this grate/door.
Additionally, have Kamau give Lara the longsword for attacking the pile this turn. Let’s not waste free damage.
I suppose a chest can be dragged. The corridor is flat, there’s nothing to prevent this, and we did it already many times with opened chests.
Dungeon 1, turn 22 explicitly calls out that Ricki alone needed the chests to be open to drag them around. Kamau is beefier, and could carry the ale barrel in dungeon 2 though not up ladders.
Do we have to make Kamau interposing if the only other combatant is ranged? We are on 20 turn time limit.
Pile of Rats is called “Rat King” and is reall life thing.
I’ve been avoiding calling them a rat king to avoid confusion with the humanoid rat with a crown in dungeon two.
When it’s an unknown enemy, in this case an unknown enemy capable of dealing 5 damage (or 1 Ricki-Death unit, to use metric), then yes. Enemies have moved to ranged attackers before, see dungeon 2 where rats immediately ran over to attack Ricki when she used the wand.
Ideally we could’ve also used the interpose to get Lara across the cluster of enemies for this turn. Movement within a room is free, we don’t need to reposition every turn but let’s be intentional about where we end up.
Whoa. I just checked wiki on that, and really, what! omg!
Kamau: Interpose. End turn on the left.
Ricki: Run out through the hole, kill the other small rat, end turn on the left of the rat pile.
Lara: Trade cigarettes and torch for Kamau’s boots and longsword, explore to the left.
Get cigarettes off Lara to avoid accidental misfiring.
Note to self: Remember that dash is an option. I’m good with Night’s version of this with Ricki exploring the next room, putting her in position to check out another rat tunnel while the tall folk deal with the rest.
I’m thinking that the sun sphere right now would be best used on the four rats and king, just to cut down on actions needed. Even if we can’t get the locked chest there, it’d probably be worthwhile.
Just to mention, the rat pile probably will be named “Rat King”
We already have an enemy in the list that is called “Rat King”, look it up. I mean the one that drops: 1 Crown, 1 Rat Hide Armour, 1 Rat Tail.
So I very much doubt that another enemy would be given the very same name.
Nope, that enemy entry is “RAT, KING” making it a King Rat much like “RAT, DIRE” is a dire rat (and the green is a plague rat). This is a “RAT KING”, entirely different. The similarity in structure with different meaning is totally intentional.
Ricki: On your way up through the rat hole, check if it goes to the right.
I feel like there’ll be another rat hole on the room to the left which connects to the hole by green dire rats. However, that would bypass the beaver dam, so maybe our only way to the bottom floor on the room to the left is to go through the dam. I don’t find this likely though, LSN didn’t say that there’s an opening to the right and we’d need to take that now to get to the bottom floor while it’s dry.
I’d just add, to prevent any misunderstanding, that Ricki shouldn’t go down that path yet, just check if it is there, because the green rats will overwhelm her if she goes there this exact round.
A rat king! 😀