Dungeon 7 Turn 16
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Ricki, Lohk, and Macadamia continue to fight the second corn knight, defeating it. Macadamia gets attacked in the process but takes no damage. Ricki stashes the two cobs that drop from the battle in Molly’s packs, while Macadamia takes the corn spear.
Kamau picks up the dropped onion and then attempts to dash past the flying potatobeast. He takes no damage, because the monster screeches and gets out of his way for some reason. Shrugging, he continues on to the barn’s second room.
The second room of the barn is also dark, so Kamau can’t see much, but he still notices movement at the far end of the hall as soon as he enters.
We’ve got three exists here. I think we can safely assume that bottom-right is an exit from the building, and that top-right is some kind of a ledge or balcony like we saw at our entrance.
It somewhat doesn’t make sense for the bar to block the ladders, there’d be no other entrance to the upper parts, and removing the bar seems not possible, there’s really nothing there here. Also the ladders are drawn on the bar, suggesting that they aren’t really blocked.
Also, the rat’s holes. It’s almost sure they are lead to the previous room, and it’s almost sure that to get to them, we have to go to the room above Kamau.
Potato monster seems afraid, but of what? Of a rat? or a human?
I considered placing a bet that this is a dwarf skeleton on the right 😉
And finally, what an army of chickens (OO). Do we have any AoE?
Anyways, my idea for the next turn:
Kamau, go left, interpose at potato battleRat, hideMolly, stay backeveryone else: kill potato monster in melee
Let’s hope we get some potatoes now!
You need to edit your formatting, otherwise I think this is solid.
Thanks, I made a last-second edit, and the editor seems to have erased all bullet points.
Also: Once we know what scares the potatoes we can reassess how to approach the keys the one above the bottom right exit seems to be protecting.
With this many enemies and two unseen rooms in the barn left, we’re not going to be able to clear everything before Atk penalties cripple us. We have to make choices about what to do. Stalling/scouting for information is also a choice, and one that will make any other goals harder.
I see maybe four major goals we could go for:
1) Get out the right side of the barn and go for the bull while we still have damage
2) Get the hay bale out the upper right side of the barn, try to drop that on the bull
3) Get the smalls through the rat holes, and the chest in the first room of the barn
4) Locked chest behind reinforced skeletons
5) Clear the barn for the special chestNot doable with our current teamIt was basically spelled out that chickens can be distracted using corn. So getting out the right side shouldn’t be a major problem. But if we want to engage the bull (presumably out that side) directly, it has to be *now*
Getting the hay bale past the two corn knights and the tomato is a significant fight. 14 damage on that lot, and will take us ~2.5 turns if we do it before another Atk penalty. And we’ll also have to deal with the potatobeast that ran away from Kamau.
The chest through the rat holes needs us to scout up from where Kamau is, lead an expedition through the holes, and preferably figure out what scared the potatobeast so we don’t have to engage the one between the holes directly. (torch? onion? large size? aggression?)
Locked chest is probably the easiest: Assuming the rusty maul is five damage, that group has a total of 13 damage–we can handle that even after our group gets significantly weaker. Moreso because we can just interpose, loot the chest, and run without killing those reinforced skeletons.
Possibly more goals further up in the barn.
My guess is that the potatoebeast is “scared” of the onion (it was hinted at multiple times that they STINK and Kamau just picked up another one of them, so he has 3 in his invenory right now.
On the other hand, potatoes usually are not known for their keen sense of smell, so it might also be the rat accompanying him. Rats would happily gnaw at any potatoes they find, so that might be it.
Also LSN reminds us of Kamau not being able to see in the dark. As long as he doesn’t attack that doesn’t really matter too much, though. (iirc. darkness only had an effect on atk rolls, giving people who can’t see in the dark a chance to miss.)
Oh and point 3 of your list is not possible (yet), as far as I can see. All the rat tunnels we have seen so far, are locked away behind walls. (unless there is one hidden away in the chicken coop. >.>)
While we don’t strictly know where the entrance to the tunnels is, it’s a fair guess that it’s above where Kamau is. As I said.
I also considered tunnel behind the chicken coop, but it is not aligned vertically. So it’s likely that the entrances are in the two top rooms.
Those bats should take out the chickens for us if aggro’d.
Nice idea. It’s always fun when the monsters take care of each other.
It could save us some turns actually.
If the bats survive the first pecking, it may take some time for the battle to conclude, but it can be in parallel to us scouting the top rooms or fighting something else.
Some of those bats might be just rock ornaments, like in the roon with the bat beast in the mansion. Ricki could find that out with her armour.
That would be even better, as they’d simply DFA the chickens.
Plan: explore as much as we can and ignore the potatoes.
Kamau: interpose on corn.
Ricki. Move right and attack corn
Lhok: move right and ray corn
Mac & daisy: move right and attack corn
Reason for leaving potatoes alone: we have enough targets as is. We don’t know the reason it didn’t attack Kamau was because of squirrel, onion or human. It could also just be peaceful or maybe attacking them makes them all hostile. I’d prefer to let them go for now.
There are two very good reasons for killing potato where we have it at hand right now
another unique food itemwe may learn something, and we will be more informed when we consider going through the tunnels without Kamau
Going by the sign, the chickens can probably be pacified/distracted with corn.
It’s not useful right this moment but it’s something to keep in mind.
Kamau: Move left, attack potatobeast with torch
Ricki: Trade tomatoes for corn with Molly as a free action. Inspect coop. If possible, put corn in feed slot of coop, or similarly give corn to coop. Afterwards, go upward 1 screen to the new screen.
Mac: Smif corn spear into silver ring. Go right one, then up 1 to the new screen.
Lohk: Try to snipe the rooster from up on the ladder using Ray of Frost.
Rationale: Most important part here is that we’re assessing if Lohk can snipe from the ladder. If so, the rooster in room 2 can be sniped, which makes that whole room a lot less dangerous.
Besides that, we want to explore.
Potatobeast is scared of Kamau, but we aren’t sure he’ll be scared of everyone. We’re attacking him to assess defense and keep him out of the way while everyone does their thing.
Mac is the fastest, so we’re having him explore the furthest.
Ricki already has corn, and a lot of people on discord were suggesting that giving corn to the coop in some way would have a positive result. Maybe even a pet chicken? At least something nice, like free eggs. Worst case it doesn’t do anything.
Leave the tentacle monsters alone. They’re not aggro’d, and time is more valuable than whatever they might drop. The point of every denizen of this map is not to be murdered immediately.
Please read my comment to Claudious and reconsider attacking potato here.
“put corn in feed slot of coop” meaning 1 (one) corn cob, not, repeat: NOT!, all corn.
I hereby approve this english grammar lawyer comment 🙂
I also approve of this comment, but am no longer able to edit.
If people are more worried about the potato that’s fine by me. I do feel that we’re going to lose out on other things in the other 3 unexplored rooms though
I am glad we met your approval.
That said, I think this command is all about exploring (in both the map sense and the experiment sense). We’re exploring 2/3 possible directions in one turn. The only reason we aren’t doing all 3 is that we can’t easily soak all that buffed chicken damage.
We’re also testing if it’s safe to snipe the next room’s rooster, which would make progress safe; we’re also testing to see what the potato’s defense, damage and reactions are like. We can disengage or finish him as is appropriate next turn.