Dungeon 9 Turn 18
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The party returns to the now-safe upper room and proceeds to make it less safe. Botanya opens up the other sarcophagus, and a ghast with golden equipment lurches out. Oh boy, this again.
Lara tries to push the other sarcophagus, but it’s either built into the floor or just way too heavy. There’s no moving this thing.
Kamau drinks the ectoplasmic potion. It heals him for 5 HP, but the aftertaste is unbearable. He loses 2 maximum HP off of his total.
Ricki returns to the previous room and attempts to get some more info out of Coccyx.
“Hey, Coccyx, I—”
It seems Coccyx isn’t interested in talking.
At least it’s not unblockable?
Kamau: Join Golden Ghast fight and interpose.
Botanya: Pipe the ghast.
Lara: Attack Golden Ghast with spear.
Ricki: go one screen right and attack golden ghast with swiftblade
All pets: attack golden ghast
I do not advise attacking with pets. The Golden Ghast can’t damage any of our party with its 7 Atk. And we want as few actual hits on it as possible to avoid breaking the gold plate armour.
Oh yeah, that. Good call
Kamau: Run up to the Golden Ghast, and slash him with your Hilt. (10 damage)
Lara: Run up to the Golden Ghast and Stake him with your Stake. (10 damage)
Ricki: Run up to the Golden Ghast and Stake him with your Stake. (10 damage)
Botanya: Run up to the Golden Ghast and Doot him with your Flute. Pick up and loot he drops and store it on Molly.
Ghasts have 4 or less Atk, we know this from when the previous Ghast attacked Lara. Warhammers are +3 Atk as well. So Kamau doesn’t need to Interpose against this 7 Atk enemy.
I think the Ghast has similar stats to the Undead Knight we fought in the manor, which would be 20 HP, 4 Atk and 5 Def. Meaning we’d need at least 30 damage to take this Golden Ghast down in one turn.
I would think we should be saving those stakes for the big guy downstairs. We know gold ghast can’t hurt us so If it takes two turns to kill it’s not the end of the world
Yeah I think we’re really gonna want those stakes for the bone golem or even the zombowlbear. I think 30 is a bit overkill.
It’s the only way to get 30 damage without using our cigarettes, which I think we need. I only really want to save Kamau’s Stake & Cigarettes to have exact damage to kill the Owlbear in one go. We don’t have any way to approximate The Big Boi‘s stats, but Stakes are only +1 damage over Ricki and Lara’s usual weapons and I don’t think they will be that impactful there.
They just are here in this fight because of all the reasons I’ve given.
I hope golden armor in this world is just as terrible for defense as in real world.
It’s identical to regular armor, except it weighs +1 more, has a 30% chance to break when attacked and is Treasure.
Kamau: Run up to the Golden Ghast, and slash him with your Hilt. (10 damage)
Lara: Run up to the Golden Ghast and attack him with your Corn Spear. (9 damage with night eyes)
Ricki: Run up to the Golden Ghast and attck him with your Swiftblade. (9 damage)
Botanya: Run up to the Golden Ghast and Doot him with your Flute. Pick up and loot he drops and store it on Molly.
Pets: hang back and don’t get hurt.
Shamelessly stolen from Sick, except we’re saving the stakes. I think 30 damage is overkill cause ghasts aren’t going to be as strong as grave knights (that paralysis attack alone…) and we’ll need those stakes for at least the Big Bone Golem downstairs. Maybe even the necromancer.
Yeah maybe 30 damage is overkill. I don’t think the stakes are that crucial for Big Boi or necromancer though and don’t mind expending them here just to guarantee a kill.
Lara’s Corn Spear would deal 9 damage because of Night Eyes. Ricki would deal 10 with the Stake, though I think you meant to have her use the Swiftblade, which would indeed be 9 damage.
You got my upvote though.
Uhm, you still let Ricki attack with her stake, not the swiftblade. Not sure if that was intentional, especially since you wrote “9 damage” in the brackets…
Thanks y’all. Edited Ricki’s swiftblade in there. That’s what I get for unashamedly stealing the post from someone else.
Okey doke, I have some coffee and extra time so here’s a space for a pep talk, taking a breath, and planning. Especially for those not on the discord.
This wasn’t the best week of turns in some measures. The ghast clocking 3 remorse isn’t great. Kamau getting cringingly low on hit points was also a surprise (holy crap unblockable enemies in a dogpile suck). So it’s no surprise there were some calls to bail early when things started to look dire. BUT, we’re suprisingly low on infection given the clutch and lucky use of the pipes. And we seem to have the end goal pretty close in sight already. We’re actually not doing TERRIBLE. But we will have to be careful to not remorse out Kamau as that’ll basically end the dungeon for us if we’re not careful.
So this is gonna be a thread to brainstorm some ideas, get a sense of our priorities, and shake out the anxiety we got. Here’s some possible directions to go in this dungeon.
Assumption is once we kill the necro the dungeon is done. But there’s always twists.
So if anyone has any preferences on what they’d like to focus on, toss it in the thread. We can’t do them all – but getting an idea on what to focus on first isn’t a bad idea.
My opinion: I want to maybe start clearing traps and possibly using them to help clear the zombies on the way to the ritual space to kill the Big Boi and Necromancer. I would also love to have eyes down there on turn 20 to see exactly what the animating zombie process entails and if it gives us clues. If it’s 1 more zombie animated on turn 20, that’s doable. If it’s 2 more zombies or even 3, then that gives us an idea of the timer we have – ie if we should leave by turn 29, 39, 49 etc.
After that I really think clearing out the escape path with the undead owlbear will be worth it long term.I think we could use a quick escape hatch for whatever twist is coming. Or whatever emerges out of the weird depression that we unsuccessfully had Lara try to pickaxe.
Mulching poison rats may be worth the trip to have backup plants. And since they’ll likely randomly target like the skeletons we can clear them out fast with everyone on site. At this point healing is moot cause if we do 2 damage on anyone but Kamau we’re done. We could also maybe try to open some trapped chests on the way.
Oh if I hadn’t mentioned it yet, Screw Urns.
My preferences is loot room and Necro. I don’t want to delay ending dungeon due to possible twist or special abilities. We might need all of Kamau’s hp to even have a chance to clear them
The twist could be guards starting to clear the dungeon from the entrance, so I’m not keen on the owlbear.
We also don’t know what the reward is for killing all the zombies. In the past, all secondary goals have been gold. Even the dead drop just saves us gold. Warrens gave us a consumable item we just sold anyway. So not keen on the zombie quest.
Puzzle chest Is iffy since we know ghosts are in tombs and I don’t think we’ll get a chance to open all of them.
The ghasts are pain in the ass, so I’m semi banking there’s only one per room at most. Three of the rooms have no source for them so I think the only x factor is if the rat with the two zombies on the bottom level counts as one. And that we’d find out quickly if the chest doesn’t open once we kill the claymore ghast.
I agree its pretty weird we have had such a direct and easy path to what seems to be the final boss. Almost all the obstacles we had were self imposed.
Despite all the shocks, i feel we are doing just fine with this dungeon so far.
Lara took damage and Kamau took a lot of Remorse? Well we just armoured up a lot.
Kamau interposed a bunch of unblockable damage? Well we got a potion and what else in this dungeon is gonna hurt him, aside from more unblockable damage?
We have even avoided a ton of infection so far, and have plans to minimize infection on all our other encounters.
For these reasons I want to focus on cleaning up the left side of the dungeon: Kill all the Zombies, Ghasts, loot Sarcophagi I think we can easily manage it in 10-20 turns and have plenty of time left for Big Boi and the Necromancer, and whatever twist may come our way.
*Living things that Botanya might use mulch on: The plague rats. The Spider (behind the dirtpile).The plant pet (which will expire at the end of the dungeon anyways). Any of our other pets. Any of our characters.
Listed in sinking desirability of using them for the mulch ability, though the spider and the plant pet might swap position, depending on how much time we want to spend of faffing around with the lever and/or if the two rat tunnels in that room are actually interconnected, like we suspect.
*Clear the path to the Big Boi and necromancer, and sooner rather than later: agreed. If the necromancer is the source of the spawning zombies every 10 turns, then this has even greater priority. We don’t want to not be able to get to the necromancer, because we accumulated too much infection elsewhere.
*I’m not sure what you mean with “Poison Rat chest”. Behind the plague rats, there is a sarcophagus. An unlocked chest is in that same room (behind the dirt pile, guarded by a spider). Could you maybe clarify, if you please?
*Cocyx: Maybe killing all the zombies would make him recruitable? It doesn’t really make a lot of sense, but it’s the only thing I can come up with so far. Maybe we’ll get more info, when we have the showdown with the necromancer… But I agree until/unless we learn more about this, attempts to talk to him seem moot, LSN seems to have made that pretty clear with this update.
*Unguarded treasure chests:
I did notice the one in the spiders room, the one at the bottom right of Cocyx’ shooting platforms (though I wouldn’t necessarily count them as “unguarded”), the shooting chest in the bottom right corner of that same room (where we have yet to find what triggers it), and five unlocked chests (two trapped with crossbows, most likely, one with a punchbug, and three – the punchbug one among them – most likely guarded by bigboi). On and also one behind the undead owlbear and two out of three beaver damns (again, not necessarily “unguaded”). I’m generally happy to try and get the contents of some of them (the shooty one in the room left (and on level) of the necromancer room seems like a good choice), but we have to pick our battles.
*I’m not entirely sure how I feel about opening sarcophargi/tombs, not 100% opposed, but please only one at a time and only when Kamau is nearby to interpose. Don’t do it while we have other stuff going on!
I’m 100% against unnecessarily messing with any more urns (unless we’re about to leave anyways, at the very end of the dungeon, and that’s still a big maybe there). Unblockable damage on allies could push Kamau over 4 remorse SO fast, it’s not worth a couple of coins.
*no opinion on the claymore ghast or the imp so far. We’ll have to sort that out when/if we are able to get access to them and in what shape the party is then. Especially the ghast needs at least 2 more lever pullings, and I assume you can do at most 1 of them per turn.
“*I’m not sure what you mean with “Poison Rat chest”. Behind the plague rats, there is a sarcophagus. An unlocked chest is in that same room (behind the dirt pile, guarded by a spider). Could you maybe clarify, if you please?”
That was me being totally wrong and mixing up this detail when I was trying to organize my thoughts with so many others. Yes it’s a tomb. Sorry. My bad.
My thoughts on traps and boss room in gwneral:
-We should not fiddle with the traps. Trying to turn them in our favor has never worked. Since the caravan, we have to assume all enemies know more about them than we do.
We should be prepared for any attempts in dealing with them to fail. Which means sending someone alone with a pet that can take the damage.
-Boss fight: Given its construction, it’s like the bone golem has the almost the same attack pattern as an owlbear, but with unblockable damage mixed in. Healing Kamau further would be nice
-Given the likelihood of unblockable damage it’s likely botanya won’t do much good against the golem, but maybe she will be clutch vs the necromancer, who likely can inflict zombification directly. It would be excellent to find magic lenses before attempting that fight.
-We likely won’t have time to deal with the chests below after the fight. And it will take at least four actions to deal with them, plus one action and one lockpick for the door. Maybe we can deal with them during the fight if not too dangerous? Again, we need lenses.
I’m not seeing where the unblockable damage estimate from the bone golem comes into play. I mean it does have a similar head to the wraith but that’s seems a little of a stretch. Can’t hurt to get more hp on Kamau though.
It’s the Necro that could do unblockable. We know death touch is a thing (from wand) and a Necro fits thematically for having a similar ability
Now that is a fair point.