Dungeon 6 Turn 3
————
Lohk and Macadamia hurry to join Lara’s battle with the armed skeleton. Once again Macadamia smifs a ring instead of fighting, making another ring of aggression. Lara and Lohk defeat the skeleton handily, and Macadamia scoops up the longsword it was wielding. There is also a suit of rusted chain armour, but nobody can carry it right now.
While all that happens. Ricki darts back into the kitchen, crawls under the tables, and grabs the keys hanging on the wall. They are labelled “tower”, so presumably they open something on the highest level of the manor.
Crawling under the table IS safe and doesn’t prompt any response from the flies.
Should we have someone check the door and make sure another skull is dimmed?
Lara: Go down a room and kill a centipede. Avoid stepping on the suspicious floor plate. Observe how well-lit each room is.
Ricki: Crawl back under the table. Go down a room and point out the suspicious floor plates. Attack the other centipede.
Macadamia: Go down a room, avoid stepping on suspicious floor plate, and attack the same centipede as Ricki.
Lohk: Investigate the stove, and also the wardrobe if you have time. Go down a room, avoid stepping on suspicious floor plate, and explore through the rat hole.
7 damage should kill a centipede based on past experience (3 Def and 4 HP), so Lara should be fine even without Night Eyes. We should avoid going into combat on turn 5 since we don’t know who the specter will hit, or for how much.
It’s possible I’ve misread “minor” damage and the centipede actually has 2 Def and 7-8 HP, in which case this plan would leave both alive unless the Oxidicer breaks or Lara crits or smokes.
I would like to point out that your reading of minor damage for centipedes and skeletons is inconsistent. You thought the skeleton took 2 damage when Lara attacked it alone (half its health). That was also described as minor, but this plan only works if minor damage for the centipede was 1 damage and not 2.
Could you include plan for Daisy, i.e. scattering some bones, like thisnameismeta suggested?
“Lohk: Investigate the stove, and also the wardrobe”
and have a look into that bucket!
My big worry with this plan is that it keeps Lohk separated from the group. If we have to fight the specter and it appears at the start of the round to attack her we won’t be able to get Lara to her to help.
Ricki: Crawl back under the table, then head down the ladder then left to the entrance hall. Then head upstairs to try your new set of keys on the unguarded locked door to the right of the skeletons.
Lara: Double Move left and then upstairs to hang out in the library.
Lohk: Move left then upstairs. Try pushing the bottom bookshelf so it’s lined up with the middle book shelf on the floor above.
Macadamia: Move left then upstairs. Look through the second bookshelf.
Daisy: This might feel weird, but tear apart the dog skeleton in the library. Try not to think about the implications. You’re a good girl and those are just some bones – good girls get bones.
Goal is to get everybody together for the first specter attack. I’m not sure whether we will have to fight it or even whether it’ll appear at the top of turn 5, but better safe than sorry.
I wanted to support this plan instead of KingMarth’s, because your focuses on exploration, and his doesn’t seem so, but then – keys and the door are kind of obvious, and we can safely do that anytime with anyone, even sending someone alone.
But then, after re-reading his plan and checking the map, I noticed that his plan will almost for sure also uncover a new room, because Lohk will check out the rat hole. Furthermore, we have no idea where that hole leads, we see no exit holes matching this one. So it will uncover either leftmost room in the basement, or the same room as your plan would… or maybe some room to the right (proving that the dungeon is wider than we think now) or maybe into the basement even deeper then the sealed door.
Learning about any of those directions sounds very useful, and temporarily saves us walking around, using the keys, and also the overall plan may end up killing 2 centipedes, which is always a plus, considering how many enemies we apparently have to clear up.
Keep in mind his plan also leaves us split at the start of turn 5 and we don’t know how the specter works. If we have to fight it every 5 turns we will be in trouble if we aren’t all in the same room at the start of turn 5. Similarly if we want Ricki to lens it we need to be together.
Relatedly: I’ve been seeing a lot of comments assuming that the spectre will attack once and vamoose (idk if LSN confirmed that but if he hasn’t) it’s very possible that we’ll have our hands full for several turns dealing with the spectre or worse; we might have to deal with multiple spectres at once if we’re not careful
This is also my fear! Everybody is assuming it appears, punches someone in the face then leaves. There is no basis for this assumption that I’ve seen, and I think it’s far more likely that we have to kill it. Keeping everyone together at the end of this turn is IMO very important. We want to lens the specter if possible since it’s an enemy we will be seeing a lot this dungeon, and the only way we can guarantee that is if we are in one room at the end of this round.
He wants “battle”, I think the ghost will be permanent, one entity, respawning after being defeated. The ‘multiple copies’ doesn’t feel along “I want to battle with yee” thing.
I also think if we fail to kill it in 5 turn window, it will either regenerate some/all health, or will stay with current health, but will instead get a boost like i.e. +1/+1 to punish us for slacking and make him even stronger.
We’ll know shortly. But things that are even more important, aside from how much DMG his attack does, are:
Implications of the first one are obvious. But consider the second. If he spawns at certain specific place, and really gets +X/+X each few turns.. then we’ll either have to almost permanently split out team, or be constantly running back-and-forth between out things and his spawning point (i.e. door, i.e. painting), because we might not be able to let him slowly chase us because he might simply grow too strong on the way. I hope I’m so wrong xD
The key could very well open a door up the ladder behind the skeletons, not the door that is being tried right now.
I see a couple paths we could take. Since we got some commentary before that skeletons are content to attack the one who attacked them, fighting 4 skeleton groups as a full group seems like it’ll be pretty safe. If we want to make our way to the skeleton fight upstairs (the four small ones) who are guarding another key ring, it’ll probably have to wait until at the earliest turn 6 to start, since we don’t know how much damage the specter will cause us (or who it will target on turn 5). Since we can kill two skeletons a turn, as long as we can start the fight by turn 8, it can be resolved by the end of turn 9. That keeps turn 10 open with combat resolved and all characters in the same room before the top of the round. That should work regardless of whether the specter appears for a fight or simply to do damage to one person before leaving.
All of this is to say that it probably doesn’t make sense to rush to the tower now. Either we should try to gather in the entrance for the end of turn 4 (which would allow Lohk to check on the door and take an action anywhere between downstairs and the entrance hall and everyone else to take actions in the entrance or this kitchen area) or we should do some more actions here and in the basement, with the long term goal of having Lara end turn 7 <=1 move away from the library, Ricki and Mac <=2 moves, and Lohk <=3 moves respectively.
TLDR, we just need to make sure we end this next turn out of combat and with all characters in the same room in case the specter appears to fight, not just attack and then disappear.
Skeletons’ description on enemies page says they attack random targets. The commentary probably just meant that this particular skeleton decided to attack Lara. He could have chosen to attack Ricki; he just didn’t.
Sure, but even if the attacks are random, 4 people is still quite safe. The odds of anyone being attacked by 3 skeletons are 1.5%. We’ve also never seen a skeleton that was attacked by one person in melee attack a different person not attacking it, and there were a number of times this could have happened in the Chapel. Random targeting can apply and skeletons can still prefer to target those attacking them – the two comments aren’t mutually exclusive. That is to say that if two people target the same skeleton the one the skeleton chooses to attack can be random. That latter part would fit their observed behavior and all commentary. Obviously a true random targeting can’t be ruled out, but it would rely on some incredibly unlikely rolls in the chapel.
>The odds of anyone being attacked by 3 skeletons are 1.5%.
No, something is wrong. I did tests in Excel, and I got roughly 20% odds that at least 1 party member gets hit by 3 or more skeletons. I don’t know how to calculate exact odd, I suck at math and probabilities, but something tells me there’s more than just calculate 0.25^3. My guess is that it has something to do with actually increasing odds of hitting an already hit person.
I’ll try to explain: consider 4 members engaging 4 skeletons. One of the skeletons attacks first. He has 100% odd to hit a non-hit person. Now that one of the members got hit, for a second skeleton odds are 25% to hit an already damaged person and 75% to hit an unharmed person. If the second skeleton attacks an unharmed person, which is more likely, the odds for the third are 50/50. Now, if the third skeleton hits one of the two already damaged members, the odds for the last skeleton to hit the 2-times damaged person are 25%! If the third skeleton decides to attack one of the two unharmed members, the odds for the last skeleton to attack already damaged person are 75%.
So, in conclusion, while it’s unlikely that anyone gets hit trice, the odds are much, much higher than 1,5%.
Ok, I did the math, it was easier than I expected. Here’s what numbers I got for 5 possible cases:
1) One member got attacked 4 times – 1,56% odds
2) One member got attacked 3 times and another member 1 time – 18,75% odds
3) Two members got attacked 2 times each – 14,06%
4) One member got attacked 2 times and 2 members got attacked 1 time each – 56,25%
5) Each member got attacked once – 9,375%
If someone’s interested, I can explain how I got these. If we sum the odds of case 1 and case 2, we get 20,31% odds that one unlucky member gets to be attacked 3 or more times, which matches with the number I got in Excel.
I’m probably thinking way too much about this fight than it really deserves, but eh, calculating all this was fun anyway.
You’re totally right about this! I can’t edit my post but 20% is the risk of one member taking 3 or more attacks. I still think this is unlikely, but we should find a way to build around that possibility. The chain armor might offer an opportunity (or the cheap ale/bucket)
That 1.5% is a chance that one specific person gets hit all 3 times. But we have 4 valid targets, so total chance for anyone getting hit 3 times is 4x that, so 6.25%.
Actually, for three skeletons hitting four targets at random:
someone hit 3 times: 0.0625someone hit 2 times, sb else hit 1 time: 0.5625someone hit 1 time, sb else hit 1 time, sb else hit 1 time: 0.3750
sums up to 1.0, so probably correct 😉
EDIT: I was doing the math for 3 skeletons, and you seem to be talking about 4 of them, oh well, nevermind then 🙂
We don’t know how skeleton dogs are going to behave. For ‘safety’, it’s be better to gather in a place where there’s none of them, but where we can see at least one of them, so we can confirm if they react to the spectre. This makes it the top-level of the room with sealed door, as there’s exactly one dog there, and not on our level.
Alternatively, we could gather at the top-level of the entrance. There’s just one skeleton dog there, instead of three on the level below. If they wake up, it’s better to have one on us instead of three. And we would also see whever the painting reacts. Maybe the spectre walks out of the painting and starts chasing us? Or something.
I was asked to repeat my previous comment on the latest page, so this is what i am going to do. Info seems important, i think there are some interesting conclusions what we can get from it.
“I want to bring attention to the fact what someome might have entered this mansion before our party and then actually managed to leave it. I don’t think what someone could have thrown the knife with the letter from the outside due to the angle between the knife and the wall.”
Actually, i want to double down on my suspitions. Aren’t this “friend” knows a little bit too much about this dugeon, dungeon what nobody can leave? All this info about this spirit and his motives and limitations, where he is and how to kill? Sounds so specific what i’m starting to think what this guy straight up CREATED this place or something. Also, the only reason why someone this rich could be interested in Ricky specifically is dungeon eyes, right? So fishy.
What if our “friend” is a descendant of the knight and inherited this mansion? It explains why he’s interested in clearing the dungeon, and also kinda explains how he got away: maybe the knight’s spirit acknowledged him and let him go. Though the latter is unlikely, considering dungeon madness.
sadly we know too litle about our “friend”, but possible way to know about dungen:
1 long-range communication magic, someone enter the dungeon and send help signal
2 some sort clairvoyance
3 teleportation magic
4 our “friend”, is necromancer and “dead” dog is actualy his minion
last 2 variant explain how he/she leave this place after placing the note
I think we just need to brainstorm this and when we will get more clues chech the list of options. There are sure dosens of ways in witch this could have been pulled of, but this is still more info than what we had before.
Interesting thing about most of those options is the fact what Ricki isn’t really needed if all he wants is just to clear the dungeon, or even several dungeons, he or his servants are more than capable of clearing dungeons themselves, so all of the work what was made to hire Ricki isn’t justified. And this is a really bad sign, because now we are looping back to this one special ability Ricky got…
This was sorta my thinking. It makes sense a relative wouldn’t be targeted. Bit of a mean move to not help us out though.
I have throught about this one, and it explains the note, but not the rest of the information he got. Althrouh, this option can overlap with any other pretty easily, so we are definetly not discarding it.
Do we know if Fireball is an area spell or single target? Spell description on Lokh’s page says nothing about an AoE, but my D&D brain cannot accept that.
Lara: Go downstairs and engage a centipede, being careful to step over the weird floor spot.
Ricki: Crawl back under the table to get away from the flies safely, then go downstairs and engage the other centipede, avoiding the weird floor spot in front of said centipedes. Point out the weird floor spot to Lara and everybody else, and while you’re at it mention the other traps in this room. If questioned, just say that your thief senses that thieves totally have are warning you about the danger.
Macadamia: Go downstairs and engage the same centipede as Ricki, also doing your best to avoid the weird floor section.
Lohk: Open and search the wardrobe. If you can look at the bucket while you’re at it to make sure it’s empty, do so, but then head downstairs to join the group (also avoiding the weird floor section).
Daisy: Attack the skeleton dog corpse in the basement. Try to rip it apart to prevent it raising later.
I’m going to steal Marth’s general plan with one change. I’ve been mostly convinced that the centipedes are probably 4 HP and 3 defense, so fighting them this turn SHOULD be safe, since both would die to the above combat. I’m more worried about splitting the party by sending Lohk through the rat hole. In the past, when enemies appear on a certain turn they have appeared IMMEDIATELY at the start of that turn. If the specter follows this rule, we need everyone to be in the same room to guarantee we can use a lens on it, and also guarantee that we can dedicate full team damage to killing it if necessary. I don’t want to take risks on the first appearance of the specter, because basically by definition we will know more about its capabilities on every subsequent appearance. It’s possible the specter isn’t an enemy, and instead just appears to deal damage then disappears, but there’s nothing to indicate this is the case. It’s safer to assume it’s an enemy to defeat until proven otherwise.
I’m into this. I really like Marty’s plan except for sending lohk away at the start of turn 5. I want to lens that specter as much as we can.
and have Daisy gnaw at some bones.
I’m on par with this. I’m curious if the skele-dog will wake up when spectre shows up, and if Daisy succeeds, we won’t know. But oh well. Let’s have Daisy try having some fun. If it’s fun to gnaw on same-species bones. Uh-oh. We’ll get Daisy to a therapist after this dungeon.