Intermission 5 Page 17
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“Well, good to have that sorted out. Now let’s get this over with.”
“I’ve been looking around, but I haven’t found anyone waiting for us. No other notes, either.”
“The only place left to check is inside the manor.”
“Then I guess we should go in!”
“But that building is probably the dungeon, right? We still don’t know anything about what’s in there.”
“Makes you think twice, doesn’t it?”
“I’m sure it’s fine. Sometimes we don’t know what we’re gonna be up against, we just have to prepare as best as we can!”
“Since we haven’t seen the person who’s supposed to be telling us what our goal is, maybe it would be best to leave someone outside in case they show up?”
“And maybe that someone should be me?”
“Nah, Paws can stay here and keep watch.”
“I think I’ve gone far enough out of my way already, thanks. Leading you across the countryside and delivering your mail isn’t exactly my job, you may recall.”
“And, speaking of my job…”
“If there’s anything you need to buy before you take on this new dungeon, I’d be happy to oblige.”
“Remember, if you’re ever not sure what you need, you can rent my lucky rabbit’s paw.”
“…Where did you get all that stuff from?”
“I brought it all here yesterday.”
Arrow – 2
Bolt – 1
Boots – 4
Bow – 10
Buckler – 8
Chain Armour – 23
Cheap Ale – 3
Copper Ring – 5
Crit Gauntlets – 6
Crit Greaves – 6
Crossbow – 25
Dagger – 3
Dagger, Throwing – 5
Grave Flower – 2
Greatsword – 12
Holy Water – 12
Iron Boots – 6
Leather Armour – 13
Longsword – 6
Magic Lens – 10
Oven Mitts – 4
Pack of Cigarettes – 6
Pick – 7
Plate Armour – 30
Potion of Greater Healing – 17
Potion of Healing – 10
Potion of Rage – 15
Potion of Shield – 15
Rabbit Paw – 10
Shield – 20
Thieves’ Tools – 5
Torch – 2
Wand of Death Touch – 35
Wand of Magic Missile – 40
Wand of Mend – 35
Wanted Poster – 10
Whip – 7
Wooden Stake – 9
In addition to sales and purchases, choose who will enter this dungeon and who will stay behind. Ricki must always enter every dungeon, and Lohk is a required party member this time as well. Either Kamau, Lara, or Macadamia must stay. Inventories can be rearranged freely before entering.
Also, Daisy must either be assigned to a party member or left outside.
I see a skeleton in a window, so maybe a few grave flowers would be worth buying.
Where?
For those who didn’t see it like me, it’s in the lower right hand corner, and really does appear to be there.
nice job spotting that one!
That’s a VERY dark skeleton, nice catch!
Technically just a skull. Maybe it’s Barry.
I miss him.
Yeah, would be nice if Barry isekaied to the Dungeon Eyes world xD
Maybe he can be a pet!
For those who still don’t see it, I changed colors a bit.
(also, it was not visible on i5p13 when we first saw the mansion from afar)
If it’s in the window, it SAW US.
It’s a nicely done hint. Grave flowers. Holy water maybe.
Or just a halloween easter egg xD
Even with confirmed undead enemies, grave flowers are so situational that they don’t seem worth the inventory space.
Well, unless there’s a buried boss, skull of which we can plant a flower upon.
But yeah, chances are low. That’s why if we have loose cash, maybe HolyWater could be a good backup option.
To smif rings.. or not to smif rings..
I wouldn’t worry too much about missing out on bond points. We’re looking likely to see more dungeons before there’s a chance of advancing past a bond threshold. If it’s long term growth you’re after, investment in Lara isn’t great since she has a finite number of Corruption uses.
I’m up for benching Kamau though, playing without Remorse sounds interesting. With a wand of mend we should be able to spend HP without too much worry.
WILL THE PLATE OR CHAIN ARMOR FIT DAISY?!(also maybe the iron boots)
If an anime protagonist can hold a sword in their mouth then our Daisy could definitely hold a buckler if not an entire shield.
I think there was brief mention of a ring on a dog toe, but it would hurt her foot if she ran.
I think there was a question about if a dog could wear a ring but ot was decided it wouldn’t work or would only hurt her foot
From How to Play, Pets:
Most pets are limited in that they cannot carry or use items.
Without an Enc stat, Daisy isn’t an exception here. No dog armour.
Nothing preventing us from feeding her the potion of rage or a potion of shield, though.
Nice catch! I just hope we don’t need a bowl for that.
Suggested load-out, if Kamau stays behind:
Ricki: (6 DEF, ATK 2 (unboosted dagger against non-rats) – 4 (boosted dagger against non-rats)
wolf hide armour (2) (light armour proficiency works on this, thanks for reminding me!)
gold pouch (10 gold)
ratfang dagger
rat tail
shield
(thieves tools yet to drop)
[FULL inventory, with the tools]
Lohk: (5 DEF (against non-fire), ATK 2, 6-9 damage with fireball)
fire robe
Lohk stick
shield
wand of death touch
wand of mending (would be good for wand master, then we can heal all dungeon long and save an inventory slot)
[FULL intentory]
1 ring of defense (her or Macadamia should have it, I think they have both low defense)
Daisy [because Lohk can only move 1, whereas Rick can move 2 and Macadamia, also 2. Lara unfortunately can’t ride Daisy. Besides, it’s only polite to let your elders walk less. ;)]
Lara: (DEF 9, 5 ATK; 7 against large beast creatures)
plate armour (5)
magma shield (2)
whip
1 pack of cigarettes (yet to drop)
1 rabbit paw
2 rings of aggresion
[FULL intentory]
Macadamia: (DEF 4, ATK 2)
leather armour
shield
longsword
potion of rage
2 copper rings
[FULL intentory. unless he can equip the “blank” rings]
Kamau (safekeeping)
hilt
spiked buckler
oxicdicer
double crossbow (2)
great pickaxe (2)
book
[4 FREE slots]
Shopping (already taken into account in the above loadout):
gold: 39 cash +
26 (sell golden shield – treasure -> full price!)
6 (sell greatsword)
Buy: wand of mending (if you don’t want to give it to Lohk for wand mastery and instant perma-healer, then let Lara or Kamau keep it. I -want- a way to heal people reliably, especially if Kamau and his “interpose” skill stay at home) – 35 gold
1 rabbit paw (give to Lara, she has most room) – 10 gold
2 copper rings (give to Macadamia) – 10 gold
1 longswords (already in Macadamia’s inventory above)
This leaves us with 10 gold, which we can either keep (in Ricki’s pouch) as in the above loadout, or invest in a magic lens, or possibly up to two more sets of thieves tools. all of this would have to be stored in Kamau’s inventory for now. because everyone else has already FULL inventory.
Feel free to grab any info from my post and re-do it, for different ideas of the loadout. 😉
EDIT: typos, plus decided for a firm load out without any “we could do this or that”.
If we need Macadamia to deal damage, too, we could give him the rings of aggression, and have Lara use her spell to deal damage at range, but that would probably be a real waste of the plate armours defensive capabilites.
EDIT2: swapped the 12 gold greatsword in Lara’s inventory atm (before shopping) for a 6 gold longsword (in Macadamia’s inventory in the loadout), after Thisnameismeta pointed out to me so kindly that what Lara currently has in her inventory isn’t a longsword. Thanks. 😀
Edit 3: corrected Ricki’s DEF value (forgot to take light armour proficiency into account).
I forgot about the tools and cigs before seeing your post, so thanks for that. One comment would be that we don’t actually have a longsword and would need to buy one.
Oh? What is that in Lara’s inventory, then? A greatsword? I thought those needed 2 slots.
But in any case, greatsword needs 2 hands and therefore can’t be used together with a shield. And without interpose, that’s way too risky.
Thanks for pointing this out. 🙂
“2 copper rings
[FULL intentory. unless he can equip the “blank” rings]”
Of course he can. Which would give room to move an item from Lohk to Maca and get a free healing potion for Lohk at the start of the dungeon.
Alternate option:
I would do one minor change to the loadout above (I wasn’t aware of Lohk getting an item, if she has an inventory slot fre, too). However, I can’t edit my post (because I’m not registered and I turned off my PC since posting it.
Everything as above, but put the wand of death touch into Kamau’s inventory (for safe-keeping), instead, so Lohk has 1 free slot for her free “start of the dungeon” item.
If you can avoid it, don’t fill out Lara’s and Ricki’s inventories. They both can get an item (Lara pack of cigarettes, Ricki set of thieves tools) if they have the space.
Thanks! Fixed.
Same for Lohk, she gets a free potion of healing.
I’d also recommend spreading out the rings of aggression. In particular, precisely 0 enemies are one-shot by 3 damage (unless they’re also killed with 1 damage) but at 4 damage you take out dire rats, beavers, and stray/skeleton dogs in one turn, and going up to 5 damage lets you clear plague rats, skeletons, and enemies like the thugs and kobold miners. On the flip side, Lara hitting for 8 damage is neat for big enemies but it’s wasted on everything which goes down with 5 damage. We can add damage up by having multiple characters attack the same target, but we can’t split damage.
Of course, tough enemies like hobgoblins, centipedes, and spiders would have us waste fewer actions with one big swing.
Macadamia is listed there with 2 attack, but the whip only gives 1 attack against most enemies. Remember, Macadamia has 0 base attack. Doesn’t matter with ranged weapons…
I think I made all of the relevant changes you pointed out. Potion of Rage transferred to Kamau to free up the additional space on Mac for him to hold the Wand of Death touch.
Party strategy:
Ricki – mandatory
Lohk – mandatory
Kamau – tank and inventory. Having him allows Lokh to use her fireball or safely fire off up to 4 death touches this dungeon (remember, it requires melee range). Also, his level-ups are worth more than Lara’s at this point. It sucks he has full bond, but Interpose is a very powerful ability and likely we’ll be able to leverage Interpose to get better loot than we’d be able to get if we leave him behind.
Maca – 2 rings is more powerful than a level up. We want to be smiffing and levelling him to upgrade his smiffing. It’s currently our greatest source of power curve, and that’s without unlocking further tiers. Level ups at this point are frequently situational +1 bonuses — he provides at least 2 per dungeon, which can be moved/swapped.
Lara – sorry honey, but you’re the opposite of Maca, because the more we use you the worse you get. Her best abilities are gated by corruption. Also, her currently available level ups just aren’t that appealing.
Of course, now that Lara isn’t needed to fill out the party, we can use more Corruption because there’s no drawbacks when we don’t plan to use her later.
So? Use Lara up like a tissue. Have her use all her cool corruption powers. When she gets to the end, it’ll make a cool dungeon boss for the next party.
Just pointing out that this comment includes no inventory management, and since we have to both pick AND outfit our party, we’ll be going into the dungeon still carrying the gold shield and with no light source for Kamau to use.
What we are missing here is that building our party to rely on interpose means dramatically lowering our damage. With Lara wearing plate and wielding the heavy pick, she dishes out 7 damage a turn in the darkness, every turn while sitting behind a 6 defense wall. Nobody else can match that and still have inventory space to spare. Kamau using our best weapon still only does 5 damag, and he needs a light to fight, which we don’t have and this post doesn’t advocate buying. That means in all situations where we aren’t using interpose, he’s worse to have than Lara. With Lohk around and Kamau sitting outside, damage isn’t a problem because it won’t cause remorse and can be healed with relative ease. That lets us send all 4 characters, which can get up to 5/6 defense each, into the fray to clear fights much faster than we would with 3 characters doing minimal damage. Using our best 1 handed weapons gives us a damage spread outside of Kamau and Lara of 3, 2, 1, which is terrible. In comparison bringing Lara along gives us 6, 3, 2, 1. Our damage output literally doubles.
Other way around? Interpose lets everyone else use two-handed weapons, so you have fewer attacks at higher damage with the option of letting Kamau go on the offense himself and hit like a truck. 5+, 5, 3 damage (heavy pick, empowered Rat Fang, greatsword) vs all with shields and one-handed weapons dealing 6, 3, 3, 2.
Interpose also lets our very squishy Daisy join the fight without risk of death, which is another 2+ damage. Overkill damage is wasted, as is damage spent overcoming defense on the same target on multiple turns due to not having enough to finish them off.
Using Interpose to handle attacks and also building to not need Interpose is indeed terrible. That was my criticism of the Sally fight, we went to the trouble of equipping everyone to survive being attacked and then we used Interpose anyway. Of course, the primary attack wasn’t fire damage and we needed conditional fire defense to make everyone safe, and there was a path to victory without needing Kamau to attack, so it’s fine.
The problem with building for two handers is that it’s not super viable outside of interpose, and Kamau can’t interpose in small spaces. Ricki can be built to use a two hander and still have 5 defense, but it requires the wolf armor and Daisy. Anybody else would be limited to 4 defense with a two hander, which is an uncomfortably small amount when remorse matters. Of course rings can buff that. 5 defense is also less than ideal on Ricki imo, but it is a possible build. Lara in contrast can get 6 defense while two handing and she isn’t stealing any equipment from other units to do that (the way Ricki would be stealing Daisy from Lohk). There’s also the issue that splitting up becomes less viable with Kamau, because remorse is a constant risk and Kamau can’t fight on his own without light. Without Kamau, Lara can fight alone as a tank without needing someone to hold a light for her, or burning 12 gold to buy a holy water.
Since this option atm has the most votes (currently 6 positive), allow me to post a link to a suggested loadout (also currently with the most votes, 2 positive) in case we leave Lara behind for LSN’s convenience:
https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-5-page-17/#comment-5855
As long as we use those consumables. But I think we should get a second thieves tools.
Party: Ricki, Lohk with Daisy, Lara, Macadamia.
Starting cash: 39
Sell: heavy gold shield (26), encyclopedia (10)
Buy: copper ring x2 (10), thieves tools (5), wand of mend (35), rabbit paw (10)
Leftover: 15 gold
Inventory: (EDIT: shuffle to give Lohk the wolf hide)
Ricki: leather armour, rat fang, rat tail, shield, potion of rage, thieves tools, ring of aggression x2, 1 empty slot
Lohk: Lohk’s cane, wolf hide armour, wand of Death Touch, ring of protection, 1 empty slot
Lara: plate armour, Oxidicer, greatsword, rabbit paw, shield, 1 empty slot
Macadamia: magma shield, spiked buckler, wand of mend, purse, copper ring x2
Kamau: Kamau’s Hilt, shield, fire dragon robe, heavy pick, heavy crossbow, whip, 4 empty slots
Goal is to smif the spiked buckler early and likely give Lara the Ring of Evasion. Stashing some of the stuff we can’t buy back on Kamau because selling it would give us more gold than we can use, though I could see cashing in the spare Shield to have more gold on hand for in-dungeon shopping. With our free items (thieves tools, cigarettes, and Lohk’s potion of healing) this already starts us with completely full inventory, so we need to actively use up items. The Oxidicer will break, we want to use thieves tools, Lohk can eat the wand of Death Touch, and we don’t worry about losing HP.
snip, nevermindI think we should leave behind Kamau.
Kamau’s bond is currently maxed, so leaving him behind allows us to continue gaining bond experience for our other party members, and maximizes our long term growth. Since we still don’t know how to move past bond plateaus, it seems smart to work on building up a stockpile of plateaued bond characters, and bringing along Lara and Macadamia let’s us work towards this goal. Macadamia also provides long term upgrades through ringsmiffing, and we’ve yet to see what his level up options are. Leaving him behind would really leave us in the dark as to what his long term outlook is. It also allows us to bring a party that’s entirely set up for fighting in the darkness, which seems ideal.
Putting Daisy on Lohk gives her 2 defense and 3 movement, giving all party members except Lara at least 2 movement.
Starting Gold: 39
Items to sell: Gold Shield(+26) = +26 Gold
New Gold Total: 65
Items to Buy: Rabbit Paw (-10), Magic Lensx2 (-20), Copper Ringx2 (-10), Leather Armor (-13) = -53
Final Gold Total: 12 gp
Final Inventory Distribution:
Ricki: Leather Armor, Shield, Oxidicer, Encyclopedia, Magic Lens x 2, Ring of Defense, Ring of Aggresssion (4 Atk, 6 Def, 6/7)
Lara: Plate Armor (5), Heavy Pick (2), Purse, Rabbit Paw, Ring of Aggression (7 Atk, 6 Def, 9/10)
Macadamia: Magma Shield (2), Whip, Leather Armor, Wand of Death Touch, Copper Rings x 2 (1 Atk, 5 Def, 5/5)
Lohk: Lohk’s Cane, Wolf Hide Armor (2), Shield (2 Atk, 6 Def, 4/5)
Total Inventory Slots: 24/27 (before cigs/tools/healing potion)
Left Behind Kamau: Hilt, Shield, Spiked Buckler, Dragon Robe, Rat Fang, Rat Tail, Great Sword, Potion of Rage, Double Crossbow (2) (10/12)
Edit, apologies for the repost, but the spam filter keeps destroying my post when I try to edit to fix mistakes/incorporate suggestions.
I do like the spread of this. Unlike our previous strategy which was having Kamau tank with high def, we can actually heal damage so high def is not as crucial. We should be able to learn a lot from the enemies in here
Actually, Leather armour (+1), shield (+2) and ring of defense (+1) give in sum +4 DEF on top of the 1 DEF that Ricki has innately. How do you end up on 6 DEF in your calculation?
Daisy is on Lohk, if I read your post correctly, so she can’t supply the missing +1 point, either.
Light armor proficiency gives +1 for armor of 2 defense or less.
Right. Thanks, I forgot about that.
We don’t “leave behind Kamau”. We assign him to guard the entry and the valuables in his inventory. Duty as sentry is not “leaving behind”.
this one
This one
this one
Yeah this is the play I think.
If anyone’s wondering why a bunch of people are just saying I vote for this, it’s because it seems like there might be some weird stuff with the Thumbs Up/Down going on with this post.
Also, I vote for this plan. 6 Defense on everyone (Except Maca, who has 5 but get more from Smiffing) is enough to make me okay with leaving Kamau behind.
I really wanted Cleave + Shield Bash ASAP though just because of the mental image it gives me, but I guess I can wait.
I don’t think it’s a bunch of people saying “this one” but one person making the same comment with multiple emails/names
I’ve seen them talk on the Dungeon Eyes Discord.
I can say for certain that Thisnameismeta, Siv, Sick, Holographic Golem, and ShailynSlay are either all different people or have been faking for a long time.
Or someone is just using thier names. Might have to go to a word press to run comments
Or someone is just using thier names. Might have to go to a word press to run comments.
Well this is at least obviously an imposter, since you don’t have Shailyn’s avatar.
I don’t think it’s a bunch of people saying “this one” but one person making the same comment with multiple emails
I don’t think it’s a bunch of people saying “this one” but one person making the same comment with multiple emails
+1
This one
I’d say leave Macadamia outside.
they don’t seem the combative type.
Maca’s Smiffing makes bringing him very good for in the long term. For this dungeon, I think two extra rings would be enough stat buffing help to make him good in the short term too. I can’t say no to more Rings of Protection!
Two extra rings isn’t nearly enough to make Macadamia competitive with Kamau or Lara in the short term. Not even close.
Taking him may be useful in the long term, but don’t lie to yourself. We’re going to enter the dungeon significantly weaker than we could be. We’re also going to miss loot because of it. Dungeons are not designed to be 100% finished, much less when we’re deliberately choosing to go in with less than maximum strength.
This is a gamble that two rings and a level on Macadamia is worth more than all the loot we’ll miss out on. And that might be! Rings are really good! But they’re not worth more than, say, another pet.
The thing about loot is that we can’t carry any more equipment, aside from rings. We have the best weapons and armour and shields we can buy, we can hope to find cool unique stuff that fits our interests or we can make our own and also maybe find stuff.
Agreed that Macadamia won’t at baseline match up to either tall character. We’ll see how much of a drawback that is in practice. Hopefully this dungeon won’t be all fighting all the time, anything like the chandelier in the Chapel will make us quite happy to have an extra pair of hands around.
This is what happens when an RP-er proposes something to a bunch of min-maxers 😀
Ignore me. Sorry.
Re: RabbitsPaw
We know it’s good. But have no idea how it works.
Depending on exact rulings, I readily see two possible strategies:
In the best case, with both of above are possible, then it’s soo game-changing, and we were such a dummies earlier for not buying it 🙂
If on the other side, more likely, it does not do any of that.
If, for example, it may allow us to magically exchange proper-amount-of-gold for exactly-one-item from the shop, or something like that.. No exploitable selling, no re-renting and true one time use only.
In such case, I think we should buy HolyWater upfront, and leave RabbitPaw for higher emergencies and/or unexpected things. Right now we know to expect undead, and most of people’s plans ended up with 10+ gp left, so maybe it’s better to risk wasting that 12gp than be sorry that we ignored the undead in the window?
We know it allows some buying and selling based on comments during stream.
Maybe we should do a vote first, about who stays behind and who goes on a mission, before we think about load-outs. Allow me to present the options.
There are 3 options, because we got 5 characters available atm and both Ricki and Lohk -have- to be part of the party for this dungeon.
And once we know which party member stays behind we can work on the load-out?
EDIT (some musings on the topic):
Like if we leave Kamau behind, I would really, REALLY appreciate it if we get the option to heal by buying a wand of mending. (Lara can tank okay-ish with her 10 inventory slots, she can fit the plate armour and some shield, but the problem is that she can’t keep anyone else in that same battle safe).
I see advantages and disadvantages for each option.
If we leave Kamau behind, we lose the “interpose” skill (for this dungeon), and a lot of inventory space, but we also get to work on the bond for all remaining characters. We’d still have access to Lara’s magic/pet taming skills, cigs, and Macadmia’s smifing …
If we leave Lara behind, she can’t gain any bond (or level) this dungeon and we will be missing her inventory space, too, but we will be able to keep everyone safe with Kamau’s interpose and have access to Macadmia’s smifing.
If we leave Macadamia behind, he can’t gain any bond (or level) this dungeon (so we will not learn what nice skills he will get with levelling up) and we will be missing out on his ring smifing abilities for this dungeon. We’d still have access to Kamau’s interpose AND Lara’s magic/pet taming skills, cigs, …
I mean stat wise (especially when it comes to attack), Macadamia is the worst (he has 0 ATK and 1 DEF innately, everyone else has at least 1 each), but he can make up for that really quick with 2 rings and some suitable items (if he keeps the rings, and not hands them off to other people).
But we don’t know what kind of (numbers/groups of) enemies we’ll be facing, so preparing for that is guesswork, like always. If we’ll meet enemies that have a lot of DEF we’ll have trouble with the loadout I suggested for if Kamau stays behind (because that focuses on giving people loads of defense, because no interpose, with a shield for everyone and that means no 2h weapons and that means less ATK on our side.
Option 1:
Kamau stays behind.
Bringing Kamau along means we are going to again rely on interpose, but our damage output without Lara is abysmal. Remember that we can’t trade inventory freely anymore, so we need to be building our characters to function well in all situations, and not relying on passing equipment back and forth. If we bring Kamau, we will want to build around using interpose, but given that all of our characters rely on shields for defense, we can’t just toss two handed weapons onto them to increase damage. In the layout I gave above, we have a damage distribution of 7 (8 in darkness!), 4, 2, and 1. With Kamau and relying on interpose we lose the 7 damage and are down to just 7 damage a round. We are halving our damage output. Even assuming we don’t use interpose, Kamau just does 5 damage (assuming we buy a longsword for him) which is less than Lara can offer. Even with a single cleave he just ties her.
I should also say we can’t build around interpose completely, because there will still be small areas where he can’t go. We need our small characters to be able to hold their own in those areas, which means not skimping on defense.
Option 2:
Lara stays behind.
Lara has two arms and is the ONLY member of the party that can wield the heavy pick and wear plate armor. This makes her an incredibly powerful source of damage that we can’t easily replace. Because the rules on item swaps are changing (per LSN on discord and in stream) we will not be able to rely on the equipment changes we’ve been using before (they will take actions). This means we need stable, well defended, and powerful loadouts for everyone. Doing that without Lara means a dramatically lower amount of damage, since we need shields to give anyone else adequate defense.
Suggested loadout, if Lara stays behind:
Ricki: (6 DEF, ATK 4 (unboosted dagger against non-rats) – 6 (boosted dagger against non-rats)
wolf hide armour (2) (light armour proficiency works on this one!)
gold pouch (10 gold)
ratfang dagger
rat tail
shield
(thieves tools yet to drop)
2 rings of aggression
[FULL inventory, with the tools]
Lohk: (5 DEF (against non-fire), ATK 2, 6-9 damage with fireball)
fire robe
Lohk stick
shield
wand of mending (would be good for wand master, then we can heal all dungeon long and save an inventory slot)
(healing potion, yet to drop)
[FULL intentory, with the healing potion]
1 ring of defense (her or Macadamia should have it, I think they have both low defense)
Daisy [because Lohk can only move 1, whereas Rick can move 2 and Macadamia, also 2. Kamau unfortunately can’t ride Daisy. Besides, it’s only polite to let your elders walk less. ;)]
Kamau: (DEF 11, 4 ATK; 6 against large beast creatures)
plate armour (5)
magma shield (2)
whip
hilt
1 rabbit paw
[2 spaces left intentory]
Macadamia: (DEF 4 (with shield, else 2), ATK 3 (when wielding greatsword, but then no shield)
leather armour
shield
greatsword
potion of rage
wand of death touch
2 blank copper rings (equipped)
[FULL intentory]
Lara (safekeeping)
1 pack of cigarettes (yet to drop)
spiked buckler
oxicdicer
double crossbow (2)
great pickaxe (2)
book
[2 FREE slots]
Shopping (already taken into account in the above loadout):
gold: 39 cash +
26 (sell golden shield – treasure -> full price!)
Buy: wand of mending – 35 gold (give to Lohk)
1 rabbit paw (give to Kamau, he has most room) – 10 gold
2 blank copper rings (give to Macadamia) – 10 gold
This leaves us with 10 gold, which we can either keep (in Ricki’s pouch) as in the above loadout, or invest in a magic lens, or possibly up to two more sets of thieves tools. all of this would have to be stored in Kamau’s or Lara’s inventory for now. because everyone else has already FULL inventory.
We can still make rings of aggression to gain up to 2 more attack. Also, we can have Macadamia attack only when protected by Kamau, then it doesn’t really matter if he has only 2 Def during. (I know it’s not perfect, but Macadamia isn’t exactly build for combat, anways.)
And, like before, feel free to suggest your own variant. I just put this here, so that the apparently vote-winning “Lara stays put” option does have a loadout at all. As far as I can see, nobody has posted such a thing yet (at least not while explicitly mentioning Lara should stay behind).
Edit: typo and clarified the blank copper rings better.
Thanks for doing this. I really didn’t want to because I think bringing Kamau is a mistake, but it would be terrible for us to walk in with a nonviable loadout because nobody bothered to make one when suggesting we bring Kamau. I don’t think Lara will get the cigs because she isn’t going into the dungeon, but that’s not a big deal. I also don’t think the wand of mending is helpful if we are bringing Kamau. With 12 defense I think he’ll be hard pressed to take the 13 damage he’d need to suffer for us to use the wand in the first place. Remember it only let’s us heal people with 3 hp or less. Beyond that, if we take enough damage that we can use the wand on anyone but Kamau, we have big problems and should not have brought him (remorse). I’m also not totally certain taking the whip on Kamau is worth it. He has his hilt anyway. I’d personally rather he use oxidicer.
To be fair, I want that wand of mending anyhow. The sooner the better. Even more if we can “integrate” it into Lohk’s character. (And since she can do that only once per dungeon, we might as well make good use of it asap. Yes, we have the wand of death touch, too, but a) like pointed out elsewhere, that needs melee range and b) we might actually want to use that with someone else. And yes, the “b)” bit could be true for the mending wand, too, but at least we will have options to pick from, even if we don’t happen to find any more wands in the dungeon.)
Besides, we do have the cash atm now, we might as well use it. And if Kamau initially joins, but then leaves the dungeon due to remorse, we will definitely NEED the healing. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but it doesn’t hurt to come prepared.
You make a lot of good points, both in general as well as in this one post. Thank you very much for that.
I’m not going to fiddle around with my loadout, to reflect your input, though. (you can make your own post, if you like with a full load out, or hope that LSN integrates your suggestions into my post, if they both get “the most” votes. 🙂 )
I’m also not putting any holy water or grave flowers into my suggestion, because we saw a SINGLE skeleton. We have fought skeletons before and unless they are allowed to amass, they are pushovers. And if they amass, we’ll be in trouble anyways (we got super lucky in the church dungeon, but it was a damn close call), with or without the holy water and/or grave flowers.
Hrmmmm… I am starting to think that maybe a wooden stake might be a good idea, though. Mansion + undead just reeks of a potential vampire, doesn’t it? And we’d still have the 9 gold one of them costs. But then again, we could use the rabbit paw to buy that, if push comes to shove, once we maybe collected some loot to sell, too.
Master Wand doesn’t have a usage restriction. However, I think we’re unlikely to get this sort of massive payout again soon, so feeding her expensive wands isn’t necessarily the best call.
I’d prefer the wand of mend on Macadamia, he doesn’t have many good options for actions to take. Mending is slow at 1 HP per turn, Mac can do that while Ricki is picking locks and Lohk is channeling magic.
The wand of mending is only useful when we have 3 or less HP on someone. For a Kamau team, we are probably in remorse trouble before the wand of mending is ever useful. I can see an argument for buying the wand on non-Kamau teams but I don’t think super tank Kamau is going to take 12 damage.
Suggested alternate loadout, if Lara stays behind (making Ricki into somewhat of a BEAST, so she can handle the “small creature only” areas better on her own, Lohk and Macadamia are intended to stick with Kamau more often than not):
Ricki: (6 DEF – 1 innate, +2 wha, + 1 lap, +1 Daisy, +1 ring, ATK 5, 1 innate, +3 pick, +1 ring, 3 more with Daisy)
wolf hide armour (2)
gold pouch (21 gold)
great pickaxe (2)
magic lens
(thieves tools yet to drop)
1 ring of aggression
1 ring of defense
[FULL inventory, with the tools]
Daisy
Lohk: (3 DEF (against non-fire), ATK 3, 4-7 damage with fireball)
fire robe
Lohk stick
shield
wand of death touch
(healing potion, yet to drop)
[FULL intentory, with the healing potion]
1 ring of aggression
Kamau: (DEF 11 – 3 innate, +5 plate + 3 ms, 4 ATK with hilt, 5 ATK with ocidicer, however long that will last)
plate armour (5)
magma shield (2)
oxicdicer
hilt
1 rabbit paw
holy water
[1 FREE slot]
Macadamia: (DEF 4, ATK 2)
leather armour
shield
longsword
torch
2 blank copper rings
[FULL inventory]
Lara (safekeeping)
1 pack of cigarettes (yet to drop in the NEXT dungeon, I’m keeping it here for a reminder)
spiked buckler
whip
double crossbow (2)
potion of rage
book
shield
ratfang dagger
rat tail
[1 FREE slot]
Shopping (already taken into account in the above loadout):
gold: 39 cash +
26 (sell golden shield – treasure -> full price!)
sum 65 gold
Buy:
1 rabbit paw (give to Kamau, he has most room) – 10 gold
2 blank copper rings (give to Macadamia) – 10 gold
longsword (on Macadamia) “free” (trade 1:1 for the greatsword)
magic lens (on Ricki) – 10 gold
torch (on Macadamia, so Kamau can fight with his one arm, holding something else) – 2 gold
holy water (on Kamau) – 12
This leaves us with 21 gold, which we can either keep (in Ricki’s pouch) as in the above loadout, or invest in something to store in Lara’s inventory for now. because everyone else has already FULL inventory.
EDIT: corrected the fireball damage for Lohk. (The robe gives +3 DEF for RECEIVING fire damage, only +1 damage when dealing fire damage. My bay.)
I like this loadout much better than than the one you originally posted. Thanks Gathers.
Option 3:
Macadamia stays behind.
I’m going to Copy/Paste what I said about the other Leave Maca behind post.
Maca’s Smiffing makes bringing him very good for in the long term. For this dungeon, I think two extra rings would be enough stat buffing help to make him good in the short term too. I can’t say no to more Rings of Protection!
I think it’s time to break the interpose habit. We leave behind Kamau. His defense is overkill, which is fine for interpose – but his damage is not a factor because of it. We’re gonna do better getting everyone decent defense and decent damage. The load out meta posted is a decent one, although I might quibble on some details, maybe in the comments.
We can’t trade items like we used to so it’s better for us to give everyone a decent spread of armor and damage. Building to rely on interpose basically means we can only do one fight at a time. That’s going to severely limit our options especially in time crunches. Plus he needs a light source and lara doesn’t. That’s actually a much bigger deal than you think, especially with night eyes buffing our damage.
And lara looks badass in plate armor.
Plus, yes remorse is a severely limiting factor. Moreso than hit points. We have a few decent healing options with the tea and Lohk. We can soak more damage to hit points than Kamau’s remorse which has no way to heal. It’s time to be brave and give our poor ptsd fighter a break.
Thoughts on our heavy items:
Magma Shield: Easy keep. Basically a Shield plus Leather Armour, except you can also potentially equip armour. If we ever fight something with fire damage, it’s even better. Defense lets us do so much more.
Heavy Pick is our only consistent Atk+4 option which even has built-in crit. This lets even Macadamia one-shot enemies like dire rats and stray dogs. As a two-handed weapon this is of course best with Interpose to remove the drawback of not being able to use a shield, but Lara can use this with heavy armour. Strictly better than greatsword with crit gear.
Double Crossbow is less clear to me. It’s a three-slot (with ammo), two-handed weapon. Ignoring Atk incentivizes putting this on our small characters with 1 or less base Atk, but that basically fills their inventory and we haven’t seen many situations where an obstruction lets you attack safely at range. Lara also has a built-in 3 damage at range, and Kamau can’t use it, so the people who can carry this don’t get much use. If a regular crossbow only takes one slot on its own and still lets you shoot for 3 damage, then I think the extra inventory slot is worth more. Still, going from 3 to 5 damage is the difference between needing backup to take down a normal enemy vs one-shot clearing out plague rats and skeletons. We can’t buy this one back, but the 16 gold may be more useful and will definitely be easier to carry.
Oh yeah, the Encyclopedia: I offered several actions last dungeon which used the Encyclopedia, but every time it was more important to get guaranteed information and/or free up an inventory slot. It can maybe let us get more use out of a Magic Lens, but as we’ve found, that 50% usage rate is very chunky when we only have one or two of the item in question, and it also risks burning the lens for no benefit. On average we’ll get ahead, but that’s one inventory slot tied up while waiting.
Weirdly the double crossbow is potentially quite good on Ricki. She has the space to use it, can get decent armor from the wolf hide, light armor prof, and rings or Daisy, and wearing defense rings is “free” when using a ranged weapon. Not to mention she has crossbow proficiency as a level up option, which would turn it into a 4 damage attack with 1 bolt, and 6 damage with 2.
Big Haul can be upgraded as well which would allow for more ammo. We can store it and save this decision to sell or not for later.
Ricki could also get even MORE defense, if we have a lot of gold with the “comforting weight” skill. (+1 DEF for each full stack of gold, and the purse has room for 4 full stacks).
It’s probably too late, but we have not really gotten a valid layout for the case where we leave Lara. Gathers posted one, but it has us buying a wand of mending which won’t be useful in the event we are taking Kamau. That’s 35 gold down the drain for a wand we won’t even be able to use this dungeon. This means we won’t be carrying in any magic lens, nor are we carrying in any disposable weapons, armor, or shields for Mac to Smif. Remember that wands of mending restore 1 hp to characters with 3 HP or less. Because of remorse, we can’t take more than 4 HP damage total between Lohk, Macadamia, and Ricki, so the only person the wand could be used on would be Kamau. That being said, Kamau has 15 hp and 12 defense in the layout Gathers posted. It doesn’t seem at all likely that he’ll be losing 12 hp or more to benefit from the wand of mending, and if Kamau is taking that level of damage, the ability to heal him from 3-4 hp (or 1-4 hp over 3 turns) is not going to help. The wand of mending COULD be useful if we leave Kamau behind, but remorse makes it a bad pick for a Kamau team. Gathers’ layout also splits the wolf hide armor off from the person with Daisy, which hurts the team’s damage output. Generally speaking the layout tries to split the difference between a flexible high defense layout for all characters and a high damage low defense layout to utilize interpose but ends up doing neither incredibly well, and is buying items that are better suited for an entirely different team composition.
All of this is just to say that nobody has posted a viable layout for Kamau coming along that actually takes advantage of his strengths or helps with his weaknesses. As things stand he’ll be entering what appears to be a dark dungeon with no light source, in addition to the difficulties mentioned above, so our only choice will be to use him for interposing. Kamau cannot see in the dark, and without holy water, he would have to fight with a torch or have someone hold one for him (a dangerous prospect given everyone is relying on shields for defense).
The only layout posted gives us a damage spread of 4, 3, 2, and 2 including Daisy, but 5 of that damage is only useable as part of interpose. That means we will have to rely on Ricki and Lohk for any small areas inaccessible to Kamau. Given Daisy’s low health it will frequently only be safe for her to attack during interpose, and Macadamia’s layout means he has only 2 defense when attacking and thus can’t attack outside of interpose. Macadamia is bringing a shield along, but he’ll do 0 damage while using that shield, so it would only be useful for running Macadamia by enemies.
This layout doesn’t seem better than a damage spread of 7, 4, 2, 1 that we’d have using Lara. There’s also some juggling of rings that could be done to get a layout like 6, 4, 2, 2, that would let us take down 3 dire rats a turn (or equivalent) with all combatants having defense of 5 or better.
For anyone that’s been down voting the Lara layouts that have been posted, please consider that the alternative has the problems above and we have no time to address them at this point. If you want to post your own layout that fixes the issues above, please do so, but down voting all of the suggestions will just lead to us doing nothing or something entirely random. At the time of posting no layout has more than 1 upvote, so clearly nobody likes any of the ideas that have been posted. Down voting everything isn’t constructive.
Wow, talking about “constuctive”…
WHY on EARTH didn’t you post a “better” loadout, then? You replied to my post 2 minutes after I created the (initial) layout for “Lara stays behind”, but instead of making one of your own (where Lara stays behind), you seem to be happy to find hairs in everybody elses’ soup.
If you had done that, everybody (who is of similar opinion as you) could have voted on your loadout in the meantime, if you only put one (or even multiple to pick from) there. Instead, you double down NOW (when it is almost Monday) and critisize my loadout AGAIN. Like this is going to do us any good?
EDIT: typo
Also, I spent more than an HOUR to come up with an alternate loadout for “Lara stays behind”, you can find it here: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-5-page-17/#comment-5855
Gathers, I don’t want to bring Kamau. I didn’t want to put effort into making a loadout that I don’t WANT us to pick just to save us from making a choice I like even less. I am genuinely sorry if it seemed like I was picking on you, but yours was literally the only Kamau loadout posted, despite people seemingly wanting to bring him. Nobody that was in favor of bringing Kamau made any effort to post a layout using him other than you. I’m really grateful you made any post at all advocating for a Kamau layout, because without one presumably we’d buy and sell nothing. You’re basically asking why I didn’t make a stronger argument in favor of a choice I don’t want us to make.
Well, guess what? Kamau coming with us and Lara staying behind, is NOT my first pick, either (because bond can’t be maxed). But it is the option that (currently) still hast the most votes (6 positive at the time I am making this post here; I am talking about Jerf post for these 6 votes: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-5-page-17/#comment-5790).
I guess people want to make sure they can keep Lohk and Macadamia safe.
I still sucked it up and tried to come up with not only one, but two suggestions of how we could equip the group in this case, because even if I am going to be stuck with a party composition that is not favoured by me, I can still be a positive influence and contribute on how everyone is geared.
You not presenting them with a (better) loadout (for Lara staying behind) didn’t sway people over to picking the “leave Kamau behind” option instead, and would in the end if push came to shove have left “us” with a party composition we (two) aren’t super happy about AND less than optimal gear distribution.
And yeah, repeating why my initial loadout was all kinds of “bad” in your eyes in like every single excruciating detail AGAIN was unnecessary and felt like you were bashing me specifically.
It’s not like people couldn’t go back and read that information in your other post. So while I appreciate your apology, I am not yet accepting it (give me some time, maybe I’ll view it differently tomorrow).
EDIT: added link to the “6 votes post” for clarity.
Right. I wish I had any idea why people want to bring Kamau, but nobody other than Jerf has actually posted why they want him along. For what it’s worth, I have now made a post with a layout using Kamau.
I’d like to point out, and I’m not faulting you for this, but part of the reason we are in this situation is because you posted the poll. I ALSO initially thought separating the decisions would make the most sense, but unfortunately we aren’t choosing who to bring. We are choosing who to bring AND what layout to give them, and you provided people a false choice by letting them vote on who they wanted to bring in abstract. My original post (long ago eaten by the spam filter) was just advocating leaving Kamau because I initially thought it would be good to just post a couple of options based around party composition, and then followup with layouts. I was going to follow that with a post advocating leaving Lara. I edited it within 15 minutes of posting into a post advocating a layout because I realized it doesn’t do any good to give people a choice they can’t actually make independently (who to bring). Again, I also initially thought a poll wasn’t a bad idea, so hindsight is 20/20 on this.
If there was an outside figure that could make a cutoff and say, okay, the people are choosing to leave Lara, post all your best layouts for Kamau etc, then a poll like you posted makes sense. Outside of an outside authority doing that though, this just muddies the waters by encouraging people to downvote the existing Lara loadouts without actually posting or upvoting a viable layout of their own. This has the effect of bullying people like you and me into making a layout for people whose goals and desires we can only guess at.
On the other hand because the actual final choice hasn’t been made, people who favor bringing Lara don’t have an incentive to form a consensus around any given Kamau option because there’s still theoretically time to convince everyone to vote for Lara, and why bother expending effort on making a better Kamau post when you could just fight harder for Lara?
As a side note, there’s been some talk on the discord that’s skeptical of the vote totals. Around 3:00 PM ET yesterday the top Lara layout had 11 upvotes, and by 4:00 PM ET it and all other Lara options had been downvoted to 0 with no corresponding uptick on the “leave Lara” vote in your poll. Normally once an option has that much momentum you don’t see it reversed in an hour or less. It’d taken a couple of days of back and forth for any option to get close to that many upvotes, so it’s weird that they dissolved literally instantly. Later that evening the Lara options were again positive and rising, but as soon as this was pointed out on the discord they were voted back down to 0. Because votes are just tied to IP addresses, anyone with a VPN or mobile data can vote multiple times with ease if they wanted to, and a large change in a short time frame like that (unconnected to a page update) seems more like one or a few people purposely manipulating totals than anything else.
Unless we can get rid of Kamau’s Remorse eventually we should leave him behind for now as he apparently can’t get any more bond until his thing is done.
And if bond is that powerful we don’t want to miss out on it. Meaby Lara can get rid of corruption that way too?
Lara can’t get rid of Corruption. Corruption is permanent.
She might get new abilities which don’t rely on corruption, but LSN has stated there’s no way to remove corruption.
He’s also stated that we will be VERY happy to get to max bond for a character. It’s always supposed to feel worthwhile, so either Lara will get an entirely new kit to replace corruption, or she’ll get some method of handling it IMO. It could be as simple as removing the corruption effect from her existing corruption abilities, which allow LSN to keep corruption permanent but also remove it from our calculations moving forward.
Or her tolerance ceiling could get upped to like 50. That would still make us a lot happier without changing anything about how she works
I think a post was deleted which removed my reply talking about damage splitting. In particular, I wanted to note that stacking the rings of aggression on one character (e.g. Lara with both rings of aggression and the heavy pick) is wasteful.
There’s roughly five types of enemies by durability – tiny enemies like bats and rats which will go down to 1 damage, small enemies like dire rats and stray/skeleton dogs which need 4 damage in one turn (3 HP + 1 Def), medium enemies like skeletons, plague rats, thugs, and kobold miners which need 5 damage, large enemies like spiders and bugbears which have enough (8+) HP that we need multiple turns or an all-out attack to take them down, and bosses like the salavamander and Faithless where we’re all attacking.
I draw a stronger difference between the smaller enemies because it’s in our power to tweak loadouts to have one character one-shot an enemy, which drastically speeds up combat. Consider 8-Atk Lara and 2-Atk Ricki vs four dire rats, it takes 3 turns of Lara overkilling individual rats while Ricki spends all three turns chipping down the fourth. Move the rings over, and Lara with 6 and Ricki with 4 can both one-shot. (Kamau Cleave with 8 Atk would kill two and wound a third, which is why Cleave is good.)
From the enemies we’ve seen, there’s a big jump from 5 damage one-shot to 7-12, and 2-3 damage just isn’t enough to quickly defeat anything alone. We can always have multiple characters gang up on one opponent, but overkill damage is wasted.
It was on my original Lara layout post which was eaten by the spam filter. I agreed with you, which is why the rings were swapped around to get Ricki to 4 damage. I think the big question is whether or not most enemies are like dire rats or bug bears.
Okay fine.
Layout for Leaving Lara:
Lohk gets Daisy.
Ricki: Leather Armor, Magma Shield, Oxidicer, Magic Lens, Encyclopedia, Ring of Protection, Ring of Aggression (6/7, 4A, 7D)
Lohk: Greatsword, Wolf Hide, Cane, Daisy (4/5, 4A, 4D)
Mac: Heavy Pick, Leather Armor, Torch, Shield, Copper Ring, Copper Ring (5/5, 4A, 2D)
Kamau: Plate, Shield, Hilt, Potion of Rage, Magic Lens, Wand of Deathtouch, Rabbit Paw, Purse, Ring of Aggression (12/12, 5A, 11D)
Guardwolfspider Lara: Double Crossbow, Robes, Spiked Buckler, Whip, Rat Fang, Rat Tail (7/10, 3A, 2D)
Starting Gold: 39
Items Sold: Heavy Gold Shield, Shield (+36)
Items Bought: Torch, Magic Lens x 2, Leather Armor, Two Copper Rings, Rabbit Paw (-55)
Ending Gold: 20
If we leave Lara and there’s a permanent spider pet she could have gotten us, I will never forgive all of you.
Since everybody wants to bring Kamau, here is a layout that actually buffs everyone’s attack to take advantage of Kamau’s shield wall. We now have 3 members of the party that can kill a dire rat in one hit, plus 3 more damage on Daisy.
Disadvantages:
Kamau CANNOT interpose in small areas. We will be able to buff the other small characters to at most 4 defense with this layout (or one can be 5 while Ricki has 6) which may not be enough for anyone but Ricki and her 7 defense to explore a small area. Our healing on Lohk is probably going to be useless because Kamau is unlikely to take much damage with 11 defense and no other party member can afford to take damage while Kamau is around. Additionally, given Lohk does 4 damage in this config, her fireball is way less attractive. In practice, this means most of Lohk’s best abilities aren’t useful in this configuration.
Lara’s corruption abilities are very good panic buttons in addition to providing lots of general utility. If there’s a spider in this dungeon, taming it would be another significant buff to our party damage. Instead, we will have to kill it or avoid it. This will be especially painful if there’s a wolf spider available, as the first one we saw was a permanent pet.
Remorse can kill our party. Because everyone is built around Kamau as a tank, if we fuck up and take a total of 5 damage, we will lose this dungeon. We cannot hope to clear the dungeon without Kamau, because we’ve now purposefully gimped everyone else’s defense to make taking Kamau worth it. On the other hand, if we don’t buff everyone’s damage to utilize interpose, there isn’t any point in taking Kamau. Taking Kamau is going to be strictly worse if we just give everyone one handed weapons to keep them viable in small spaces.