Dungeon 6 Turn 8
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After a brief trip back through the tunnel to check on her friends, Ricki continues fighting the rats. She breaks her oxidicer over the head of the second dire rat, dealing massive damage and killing it (which would be more impressive if she couldn’t still kill it without doing so). She now holds a broken oxidicer, but she has a sense that this magic weapon won’t stay broken for long.
Ricki takes no damage from the volley of acorns. The wolf spider hangs back this turn to avoid taking more damage.
Lara walks back up to the top of the room and jumps down the now open and clearly visible pit to help Macadamia and Lohk. A strike from the longsword and heavy pick are enough to kill the majority of the rats in the cluster, except for two which are cut free in the process. However, combined with the parting shots the wolf spiders took, Lara ends up taking 3 damage from the battle.
Lohk opens the nearby chest. Inside she finds some thieves’ tools, which she leaves because she can’t use them, and a helmet, which she takes.
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HELMET
Accessory
Def +1.
Weight 1, Cost 16
OXIDICER, BROKEN
Weapon
Atk +1, target’s rusty items are twice as likely to break this turn. At the end of the dungeon this weapon is restored to an Oxidicer. It can also be restored by using it to break an enemy’s rusty item, or by sacrificing another rusty item in the wielder’s inventory as an action.
Weight 1, Cost 12
Interesting. It looks like the spawned rats undid some of the door progress.
Door seems to be tracking current living beings.
Ratking spawned more smoll rats so the skulls got re-light.
Actually, only one of the small skulls got relit. The flash lines on the left are for the medium skull that went out when Ricki killed the second dire rat.
there was only 1 small skull to be light, but we “summoned” 2 rats.
The question is what happens when we kill a rat now. Will a skull go out or will first kill be “wasted” because we are over the limit.
No idea but we have a big skull knocked out now. We have to engage the things under the beds for sure.
I guess the skulls reigniting mean it’s pretty likely the dog skeletons will animate at some point. Also if we are cool with Lara burning through her corruption points (because who says her transformation will be bad) shouldn’t we just let the wolf spider pets die to save as much time and hp as practical and replace them?
Lsn has basically said it costs us an eighth of a character every time we use it, so I’m expecting we lose her after we max out. Maxed bond might mitigate that though.
Lose a Lara but gain a new permanent spider mount pet?
I’m expecting “Loose Lara and get Mid-Boss fight at worst moment”
Yeah, use ’em up like a box of tissues.
Ricki: Go back and free everyone by picking the lock to their room. If you can and you used your Thieves’ Tools, pick up the Thieves’ Tools.
Wolf Spider: Kill a Rat.
Lara: Go upstairs and investigate the flies.
Maca: Kill the other Rat.
Lohk: Go through the Tunnel and attack a Squirrel.
Daisy: Attack the other Squirrel.
Explanation:
Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Door!
Lara’s low Mobility makes me want to get her closer to where action will be next so she’s not lagging behind. Everyone can catch up after clearing some more monsters. Investigating the Flies is to give her something to do and get info.
https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-3-turn-36/
https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-3-turn-37/
A large person (for example: Lara) can lift a small person (for example: everybody else here, including the pets) up one level. If that costs an action point, Ricki needs to use the Thieves’ Tools (because otherwise Lara would spend 3 turns lifting everybody up). If it doesn’t cost an action point, Ricki using the Tools would be a waste. Does lifting cost any action?
It doesn’t look like it takes an action, but it’d still leave Lara behind and I’m not sure if she’d be able to get out by herself. Maybe with standing on the chest.
I don’t remember. Is it possible to do an action and attack on the same turn? If so, then Please let Lohk scatter the dog bones where the squirrels are. If not possible, the attack get priority, but let’s not forget to scatter them when we’re done.
We’ve got 4 locked chests just in the part of this dungeon we’ve seen, let alone the 6 locked doors that we may or may not have keys for yet. Two of those doors block our access to new screens so I’d really rather save the lockpicks for chests or new screens.
Maybe have Lara test her keys on the other locked door in the room, if it opens go inside, otherwise go up to the kitchen. I think the keys will be for the door leading to the new area in the library but this door is the other possible one.
Borrowing parts of CTNC plan.
Ricki: Kill a Squirrel. If possible, scatter dog bones.
Wolf Spider: Kill a Rat.
Daisy: Attack the other Rat.
Lohk: Push the bed towards the hole in the ceiling. Climb the bed/chest improvised staircase and go to Ricky’s room, if possible, shoot frostbolt at the other Squirrel.
Lara: Push/pull the chest onto the bed, so it is just beneath the hole in the ceiling. Climb up, go upstairs and investigate the flies, and maybe meat (if you can investigate two things that are very close).
Maca: Go with Lohk, attack the same Squirrel as Lohk.
Why’s and WhyNot’s:
1) I think our pets will deal with the rats just fine. Even if both rats attack the same pet, it’ll not die, ending up at 1 HP. If rats split attacks, pets’ DEF will sink it all.
2) I don’t want to send Daisy to Squirrels. I think Squirrels have 1atk, but if they for any reason have any chances for 2atk, Daisy may die there.
3) I don’t see opening the door by Ricky as important, possibly spending lockpicks, on a door that we may have keys for. Also, in her room, there are 2 locked chests, and we have 2 sets of lockpicks now. I’d rather spend them there.
4) I don’t know what to do with Mac. I think Lohk and Ricky will deal with Squirrels, but we don’t know their HP. So I send Mac there just to make sure. If any rodent survives, Lohk and Mac will deal with it, and Ricky can start opening the chests. Also, it’s one more person to shuffle inventories/scatterbones/etc, depending on what’s in the chests.
5) All “if possible” are there, because I don’t remember if a character can do both action and attack in a turn, or only one of them.
Of course feel free to downvote into oblivion, or copy/paste/reuse in any way 🙂
Ricki: Head back out the rat hole, help everybody avoid the stupid exploding pressure plate that hopefully doesn’t explode again, then drop down in the hole below. Push the bed over so it’s under the trap door.
Lara: Lift up the empty chest onto the bed and under the trapdoor so everybody can get in and out of this room safely. Help Ricki with the bed if necessary.
Macadamia: Feed your potion to Daisy.
Lohk: Heal Lara.
Wolf Spider: Attack a rat.
Daisy: Attack the other rat.
Intention is to clear out the current combat, get everybody ready to exit the pit, and also get us set up so we can swap inventory among everyone. We’re full up on inventory more or less and need to consolidate the keys. It’d also be good, I think, to have Lohk eat the death touch wand to get a sense of what wand mastery does. There’s also the possibility of adjusting Lara’s inventory to allow her to fight the rusty longsword skeleton and start clearing out that group. Lara with a longsword, the magma shield, helmet, and cigs can deal 7 damage in one hit. If we also pass her the defense rings she’ll have 12 defense, meaning she’d only take 2 damage from the skeletons, plus 1 damage from the cigs. Right now she’s down to 4 hp, so she’d need some healing first before this is a possibility, which is why I’m having Lohk heal her this turn. While Lara is doing that combat, the other characters can be clearing dog skeletons, looting bookshelves, or trying the keys on locked doors.
I would recommend consolidating keys on Lohk since she currently has the highest move. It is three movement between the library and basement workshop, so she would have the easiest time testing keys.
Have we tested if characters using a ranged attack are immune from getting attacked if the enemies are engaged with someone in melee? If so, we can pair Lohk with Lara for the skeletons to maybe save a bit of HP from the cigs. If we have not tested this, then once the sword skeleton is dead this could be a safe-ish chance to test it.
Anyone with two movement should work fine too. Using the keys and then moving two lets us test both doors in two turns and move through one of them, which is the same as what we can do with 3 movement provided the first door we test is wrong.
Using ranged attack doesn’t protect from getting attacked in melee (even by enemies that are a bit away), as long as there is nothing between the potential melee enemies and the ranged attacker to stop them from going there.
We learned that the hard way in https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-4-turn-8/
Ricki: Go back though the rat tunnels and pick the lock of the door top level blocking the passage to the left (in the room with the trapdoors). Then go left.
Wolf Spider: Kill a Squirrel. (unless that stops Ricki from leaving the giant bat room) Then follow Ricki
Maca: Push the bed towards the hole in the ceiling. Climb the bed/chest improvised staircase and go though the rat tunnel (into the giant bat room), if possible attack a Squirrel.
Lara: Push/pull the chest onto the bed, so it is just beneath the hole in the ceiling. Climb up, go upstairs and investigate the flies.
Lohk: Kill a Rat. Climb the bed/chest improvised staircase
Daisy: Attack the other Rat. Then follow Lohk out of that trapdoor room.
This is a variant that uses the “build bed/chest stairs” idea, but also allows us to explore more of the dungeon.
Unrelated sidenote: the oxidicer seems a lot more useful than I originally though, seeing how it can be “repaired” back to normal, rather than going from “normal” to “broken” to “not existing anymore” in one direction only. I’m still not sure if we’re not better off simply using a longsword instead, but that varies with the situation we find ourselves in, I suppose.
I think the best thing about Oxidicer is that once broken, it can simply repair itself as a side-effect of an attack.
Earlier I was against perma-enchanting the Oxidicer, and now I have to reconsider. We don’t know if the enchantment would stay on it when it changes states between broken and normal (I think it should stay, but who knows), but I think I’d take this risk. Oxidicer with +2 lightning would make it:
*) +2+2L in 70% of attacks in normal state, +50% chance on breaking rusty items
*) +2+2L+3 in 30% when it breaks, +50% chance (..)
*) +1+2L when it’s ‘broken’, +50% chance (..), +autorepair, +manualrepair
The only real downside is that it can break anytime on any attack (even a small rat), but needs specificaly rusted items to be repaired. Fortunatelly, it can be rusted-anything, not just weapons.
Gives +3 in worst case, and +4 in lucky 70% non-crit cases, and +7 on 30% ‘crit’, and is 1-handed, so allows to use shield as well. But the break-repair cycle is irritating. We’d need to carry rusty items around (-ENC) or be prepared to get sometimes prolonged period of staying ‘broken’ and +3. It’s not bad though, +3 is still nice.
Comparing to 2-handed HeavyPick: It has base +4 and 20% chances for +7 instead. Enchanted, it would be base +6 and 20% for +9. Repeatable at no cost, ‘crit’ is lower to 20% but higher damage. And 2-handed, so no shield. On average, 6.6dmg. Hmm.. I can’t make my mind. But I think I’d go with perma-lighting the HeavyPick, just to get predictable results.
Other unknowns for future:
Does it mean we will be able to buy such scrolls in a shop later? 😀 I wonder if we can double-enchant an item. If not, it may be that we even simply can’t enchant the Oxidicer since it’s already magical.
I feel like we should have Lara test her keys on this door before using lockpicks on it. I think the key she has goes it the door leading to the unexplored area next to the library, but if it turns out to be to the door here then that kinda sucks.
There is also the possibility of gearing up Lara with defensive items to grab the library key while only taking two damage, that is the key that I think would go to this door.
I am not against picking this door, the item trades to Lara and back is going to take multiple actions, I just want to be sure we do not already have the key to this door before picking it.
We can basically follow this plan with a one turn delay, have Ricki kill a squirrel this turn and next turn have Lara test the keys and if it does not work then Ricki picks the lock.
We will not be able to have the wolf spider kill a squirrel, and this does give good odds of us not having enough lockpicks for the locked chests. We’ve found very few items worth selling rather than keeping thus far, so I don’t want us to count on being able to buy enough lockpicks (and anything else we need like lens or holy water) with Paws. Lockpicks only cost 5, but their value is far higher than that.
If we decide to pick one door, this one would be my choice, getting the other key from the basement and getting access to the other room will prevent back tracking.
So, we can clear the basement, then moving onto library, tower, and other room, then return to basement to reconfigure loadout, prepare, sell items if needed, etc. Then move onto the boss.
As much as I would like to use every key to get as many items as possible, picking this door looks like it will save several turns, from my perspective at least.
I guess. We are going to need to do a grand inventory swap sooner or later anyway. Having two people try the keys on every door isn’t efficient, and the key in the library is possibly either the tower OR the master bedroom. If we heal this turn (which needs to be done anyway) we can swap inventory on everyone next turn and still send Ricki and Lohk into the rat tunnel to kill the squirrels using the pets actions.
I should also say that as long as there are things to do in between, backtracking is painless. We have plenty of dog skeletons to destroy and bookshelves to loot between here and there. We are also basically completely unlikely to have enough inventory room that we will realistically clear ANY area until we start using consumables like potions and the wand.