Dungeon 8 Turn 0
————
The merchants don’t seem to want to get too close to the wagons, which gives Lara and Cordy enough cover in the dim forest to run over and enter the dungeon. The entrance appears to be the open front end of a covered wagon, near where the driver would sit. Ricki and her friends can’t make out much inside the wagon, so the only thing to do is head inside.
Once there, the dim light shining through the fabric walls just barely illuminates the interior. It looks like there are groups of bandits and merchants in separate areas, but also a larger mixed group locked in combat. Strangely, they don’t seem to be doing any damage to each other… this may be an early symptom of dungeon madness. Getting involved in the fight may change the situation. And it seems some forest-themed creatures have also wandered in, or perhaps been spawned by the dungeon itself.
Ricki considers how best to approach the contradictory missions she’s been given. Somehow she doesn’t think she’ll be able to find enough loot to satisfy both the merchants and the bandits, so she’ll have to decide which group she wants to help, then knock out every member of the opposing group to make sure it’s safe for her chosen allies to escape the dungeon. Although, dungeon madness being what it is, she might ALSO need to knock out some members of the faction she’s helping. Hopefully they don’t hold that against her.
————
Dungeon 8: The Contested Caravan
Goal: Either all of the bandits OR all of the merchants must be defeated, depending on which faction Ricki wants to help. In either case, the party must also be carrying 10 Boxed Goods. Defeating members of the faction Ricki chooses to help does not cause the mission to be failed.
Time Limit: On turn 20, and on every 5th turn afterwards, a group of wolves will enter the dungeon and begin wandering. If they defeat 3 members of a faction, that faction’s quest cannot be completed. If both faction’s quests are failed, the dungeon can no longer be completed.
This dungeon can be abandoned.
I’m team green (Bandits)
While i agree with people on previous page that 25 gold most likelly will be better. Permanent discount is much more interesting option. Let’s stack those bonuses.
We can just murderhobo our way through the dungeon and kill everything that moves for XP and take their stuff. Heck, it’s a dungeon specifically designed for this group’s play style!
Oh dear. We are being thrown into this without time to make a proper vote, since we only know the rules now.
Hence, I propose we start by doing a neutral action, and do a separate vote in other comments.
Kamau: go up one flight of stairs and interpose versus the Haunted Tree to the right.
Cordy: Attack with Spore Touch the same Haunted Tree, in order to Infest it if it dies and create a little mushroom, assigned to yourself.
Ricki: Attack the same Haunted Tree with Swiftblade And Daisy.
Lara: Attack the same Haunted Tree with GreatAxe
We can just post and vote plans for our prefered side from the get go instead of wasting an entire turn on a stump when we only got 20 turns before people start turning into dogfood.
We have to get past that stump.
We have to get mushrooms.
Regardless of which faction we help or hinder.
(Also, always best to keep separate issues separate. If all plans that purport to be for a certain side are bad, people will downvote the bad plans even while they want to upvote the side chosen)
Vote for this comment to help the Bandits!
(This is a voting comment so we can plan the dungeon going forward, not an action comment!)
Vote for this comment to help the Merchants!
(This is a voting comment so we can plan the dungeon going forward, not an action comment!)
Plan for siding with bandits:
Ricki: Talk with the bandit groups on the right while making sure to stay out of melee range. Tell them their boss got us to help their side against the merchants. Ask for any helpful information. Ask if they’re willing to peacefully let us open the chest next to them so we can get them all out faster before the wolves come. Point out the pressure plate trap on the top floor to your friends. Then, scout 1 room right, getting a feel of how much of your 8 defence was needed to block the lone stump’s attack, then rejoin your friends left if possible.
Kamau: Interpose to protect the rest of the party from the 2 guards on the middle floor. Try to get a feel of how hard they hit.
Lara: Move to the top floor to see if noticing you cause the bandits and guards on that floor to fight each other, but stay a safe distance away, especially not stepping on that pressure plate trap Ricki pointed out this turn, then Battleaxe the leftmost guard on the middle floor.
Cordy: Spore Touch the leftmost guard on the middle floor.
Explanation:
Ricki spend his turn getting us information ASAP. There’s no way a stump hits harder than a mammoth so 8 defence is plenty to take a hit.
We’re attacking the left guard since he looks less armored than the right one. We likely have enough to defeat the armored one, but I don’t want to take the risk it’s not and miss a mushroom. We’ll have more information on stats starting next turn.
Overall, we guarantee us a little mushroom pet turn 1 at the cost of only 1 hp, get eyes on the next room, information from talking to the bandits and take down an enemy. A very productive turn!
Turns are at premium with wolves at 20, we can’t be wasting any one so we can complete this ASAP.
Comments:
Wow that’s a lot of squirrels! Also shields and generic equipment to loot. Boy am I glad we sold a shield and didn’t buy chain armor. If only we left the heavy shield at home, but hindsight is 20/20. Looks like that top guard has plate too. I wonder if their full helmets are lootable as an upgrade for Cordy’s basic helmet?
Can’t leave a new room after entering it for the first time. Ricki can explore the room on the right, but can’t leave afterwards.
Wait, really? Not even for going back where we can from? Is there a source for that? It would make sense we can’t use previously unknown room exits in the new room to enter a 2nd new room in the same turn, but I don’t see why we wouldn’t be able to turn around after poking our head in.
Well, no big deal anyway. The important parts would still get done even if Ricki stops after scouting the new room.
It’s in the how to play under Mov under Attributes – “No matter how many rooms a character can normally move through, they can’t move any further if they enter an unexplored room.”
https://dungeoneyes.com/how-to-play/
Thanks!
Edited, but kept the move back since maybe it’ll work depending on LSN’s intention with that wording (maybe moving “back” is not included in moving “further”?) and it’s free to try and know for sure.
Sorry, I also should have mentioned that a character can’t leave combat after engaging in it as long as the enemy attacked is still up after the attack – or at least that’s what we’ve found. We ended up with Kamau taking drowning damage in the rat vault because of this unstated rule. That means Lara probably can’t go upstairs. Also Ricki has to be present to point out traps, and I’m unsure if her pointing it out then peacing out will work. I don’t think we’ve had a chance to really test that since the manor trap catastrophe.
Ok thanks, edited that.
Kamau: Move up and interpose the tree stump on the right.
Cordy: Use Fungus Among Us to spawn a mushroom pet on yourself, then head past the tree stump being interposed by Kamau and into the next room.
Ricki: Attack the tree stump with your swift blade.
Daisy: Attack the tree stump. It’s practically a stick, and therefore a toy just waiting to happen.
Lara: Attack the tree stump with your battle axe.
Explanation: This gets us eyes on the next screen, so we have a better idea of how long we can put off making a decision on who to help, while still letting us spawn a mushroom this turn for sure so we can get an idea of their stats. We’ll do a minimum of 18 damage to the tree stump, which should be plenty to kill it.
Should we add Daisy to the attack team, just to be sure?
I was wondering about that. I assumed the reason you didn’t include her was in case there’s an AoE, but if there’s an AoE we’re probably in trouble from remorse anyway. I’ll add her I think.
No, the reason was that I forgot about her. Bad habit from the Farm. I added her to mine, too.
By “head past the tree stump” you want to say “into the next room”, right? (“eyes on the next screen” does not make sense otherwise, but someone could choose to just do exactly as commented and not as intended…)
Thanks! Fixed.
It think it’s wasteful to have Cordy Among Us instead of Spore Touch.
Spore Touch-ing save 2 hp and gets us massively more damage with the same action. The free damage then let another character do something else with their action, such as talk to our preferred faction for more information. And that’s a non-combat action so we can still get our eyes on the next screen.
Are you worried about poison resistance maybe? I think it’s unlikely but we can avoid that by attacking an enemy faction member instead which we’ll have to defeat anyway. I don’t see any reason to delay choosing a side. We already have both side’s story and the dungeon rules.
Cordy does less damage than any other character and their pet that we have available. Ricki and Daisy do 10, Lara does 8-10. Cordy does 7-8 with spore touch (assuming the tree takes poison damage). Given we’re limited on the damage we can take because of remorse, I think wasting some of Cordy’s hp isn’t a huge problem. We’ve got a potion in our inventory to heal 5 hp on Cordy after all, and the only thing we can safely spend HP on is cigs or mushrooms. We could have someone else talk to a bandit group then explore right, while Cordy fights instead, for a bit less damage (only 17 guaranteed if we pick Lara).
Potential risks of going with that strategy would be that the stump is poison immune (doesn’t seem likely, the other plants we have stats on aren’t but the stump is also just a stump, somewhat spooky, and less traditionally alive than previous plants), and that the person trying to talk ends up getting attacked for their trouble. Depending on how likely you think either of those are, having someone else scout and Cordy fight might be better.
There’s also the issue that Cordy’s ability explicitly only works on killed organic enemies. We knock out humanoids, we don’t kill them per the kobold warrens, so there’s also a chance that Cordy’s ability just won’t work on a bandit or guard.
Cleave also explicitly only works when an attacked enemy is killed, and people have stated that this ability was clarified to work on “knocked out” enemies.
I meant Spore Touch deal massively more than Among Us-ing(0 dmg) with the same number of action taken, and taking less damage is still useful in case of unforceseen circumstances or to save the potion if we need Kamau to take a lot of damage later on.
We already spoke to bandits just fine before, like in the tavern, even when it wasn’t part of the dungeon goal.
I think knocking out vs killing is just flavor given how they’re mechanically gone from the dungeon and even the wolves can’t eat them. Like “the patch of skin Cordy touched start moving and detach from the unconscious body, turning into a small mushroom” or something. But even if it doesn’t work, that is important information that is good to learn in an safe turn.
Time to gather information.
Kamau: Interpose the stump
Lara: Make firewood from the stump (attack with greataxe)
Ricki: Move past the stump and get eyes on the next room.
Cordy: Spawn a baby mushie and assign it to yourself.
Reasoning:
We need information. Not getting eyes on things early is always a major issue, and the sooner we know what’s coming the sooner we can make plans to address it, so let’s get eyes on the next room while Lara makes a start on the tree. Kamau should interpose because we have no idea what it’s capable of yet.
We also need to know what Cordy’s little babby mushies are going to do, especially since we know “Fungal Family” is going to have SOME effect. Getting one up and running for 3 HP is a trade we are going need to make, so we might as well make it now.
With a little luck, we’ll find a way up (possibly using Lara’s webbing) to that pile of Squirrels, who’ll make very easy targets for Cordy’s Spore Touch.
Pressure plate at top of leftmost ladder. No clear traps for it to trigger, so I assume this one explodes.
We can “disarm” it by shooting into the melee on the right there. If anyone comes over to fight, they hit the trap. This will “activate” that fight.
Hmm, we’re only listed as losing if a faction is defeated by wolves (and eaten). No mention of if they defeat each other. We’re also incentivized to knock out the people we help if that puts them off screen and safe from wolves, so hopefully people are willing to just walk outside. Hard to tell with the dungeon madness, especially as telling everyone to leave would negate all human combat except for where they’re actively fighting each other.
I’d be wary about splash damage from someone stepping on it that close to the person triggering things from the ladder.
Seems likely. D6T7, Daisy took explosion damage while “not harming” Lohk and Macadamia. Could be read as not hitting them at all, but I think this just means Defense works. AoE 3 damage, not unblockable.
Likely works in our favour, provided Kamau is involved to insulate us against all of them coming over to hit us. Either we soak the damage or more is dealt to multiple attackers.
Even if it’s not explicitly stated, we probably get more benefits if we rescue most/all members of one faction, rather than just a few. Kind of like the unstated benefit of getting a mammoth pen.
There’s a pressure plate/trap trigger at the top floor almost all the way to the left (next to the ladder).
EDIT: Sorry, King Marth already mentioned that one. Never mind this comment. 😛
Current inventory, for posterity and easier determination of how much loot we get here:
Shocking Swiftblade
Wolf Hide Armour
Magma Shield
Wand of Fireball
Purse
Thieves’ Tools
Ring of Aggression
(Kamau’s Hilt)
Plate Armour
Heavy Shield
Ring of Protection x2
Greataxe
Bat Hide Armour
Ring of Aggression x2
Helmet
Potion of Greater Healing
Silver Ring of Aggression x2
Storage:
(Lohk’s Cane)
Staff of Gravity
Fire Dragon Robe
Monk Robes
Corn Spear
Hunter’s Bow
Arrow x3
Pipes
Owlbear Cowlwear
Rat Tail x1
Double Crossbow
Shield
Kamau: Move up the ladder and interpose the Stump.
Ricki: Move up the ladder and attack the Stump with The Shocker. Have Daisy attack the Stump with you. (7 and 3 damage)
Cordy: Move with Ricki, attack the stump alongside her while using Spore Touch. (7-8 damage)
Lara: Talk to the two bandits on the bottom floor if you can. Afterwards, move right past the stump into the next room.
Alternative to attacking with Lara and Fungus Amongus’ing with Cordy. Saves 2 HP on Cordy and only deals a bit less damage than having Lara attack. (17-18 vs 18-20).
Am I reading it right? If we murder/knockout EVERYONE and get 9 boxes, so we know that the wolves can’t hurt anyone (except us), and both sides are happy, and then we pick up the 10th box and say where the oscar goes to..?
…it sounds so exploitable, we can be sure we’ll have a second time limit.. or the wolves will come in large quantities, possibly growing each wave.
…and 10 squirrels, time to start investing in CC and AoE?
Given there are three chests in this room, I estimate four rooms. No way we can clear 4 rooms like this in twenty turns. No, we kinda have to take a side here. Or get wolfed.
Each side said something along the lines of ‘save enough of our guys’. We’d probably get a lesser benefit for knocking out ALL of them, even if it won’t fully fail us.
Dungeon rules explicitly state that those defeated by us do not count for failure. We-do-not-kill-humans/intelligentbeings was stated elsewhere as a game flavor mechanic. That’s why we CANNOT attack nor kill a peaceful NPC. Also, we-we-dont-kill-we-knock-them-out counts as saving. We already had this mechanic with tavern’s drunk customers.
So, I think, that’s not true. I think KO’ing them makes them ‘immune’ to wolf raid, and counts as saving.
There’s a possibility that we’d get some penalty for making it too rough for them. But that’s just an RP guess.