Dungeon 9 Turn 43
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The party gathers again. Ricki and Lara each strike down one of the remaining zombies (with help from the flytrap), though each takes 1 more point of Infection in the process. The flytrap also takes 1 point of actual damage from Coccyx, who continues to target pets. Despite whatever else they forgot, it seems they still remembered who in the party is most vulnerable.
Meanwhile, Kamau opens the nearby sarcophagus. A zombie crawls out, but this one is much larger than the standard ones that have been found throughout the dungeon.
Whelp.
Kamau: Interpose
Ricki: Attack the big boy.
Lara: Attack with big boy with the big sword.
Botanya: Pipe the big zombie.
Mushrooms and flytrap: Attack the big zombie.
This likely means we shouldn’t chance further zombie killing. Having to take an infection on Kamau really hurts, but I’m not sure we can risk anybody else attacking him. Maybe we’ll get lucky with pipes, but if we don’t we should probably just move on to finishing the dungeon.
New Totals for Infection:
R: 3 (1)
RM: 3 (1)
K: 2 (2)
L: 2(2)
LM: 2 (2)
Total unused Infection: 8
Total remaining Infection from one round kills: 6
Much of the plan I had for taking on zombies relied on Kamau being a source for cleave. We really don’t want him to have 4 infection moving into turn 50, because then it becomes much harder to take on larger numbers of zombies. He’ll have 3 after this round unless Botanya’s pipes work, so we really can’t risk messing around and getting him to 4. If we can come up with a viable plan for taking out the lower left zombies without Kamau, maybe we can still salvage the secondary objective, but I’m not incredibly hopeful.
That being said, lets see how this round goes. Assuming we kill him with only one infection, an alternate plan for the lower left zombies would be something like this:
The above won’t work because we’ve confirmed that characters using ranged attacks while their pet fights in melee count as being in melee range, and therefore might be targeted. The might be targeted part is somewhat speculative but LSN definitely confirmed they be in melee range.
Wait, why is Kamau interposing then?
This is a fat zombie, not a giant hulking boss. Regular zombies do what, 2 damage? Our def can easily take it even if it deals double that, especially with Botanya around.
We can even offer the flytrap as a target (we know Coccyx prioritize pets) by having it attack if y’all think fat zombies hit like the full wrath of owlbears or something.
Maybe it can’t get through our defense, but it’s also possible it causes more infection
If the flytrap attacks it probably just dies to the fat zombie and Coc. We don’t know how much damage the zombie does, but can most of our party stand up to it AND Coc? Coc prioritizes pets because he can’t hurt us most of the time. But if he sees us getting hit by a big zombie? He might change his mind.
Lara’s defense tops out at 8 if she switches back to her corn spear and helmet, and Coc does at least 4 damage when he’s targeting us (because Kamau said he hit harder than expected early on). Do you think the big zombie does less than 4? Do you want to bet Kamau on that?
We know for sure Coc doesn’t know what other undead will do on the turn, or he would have shot Lara with a ghast on a previous turn.
And flytrap only dies if fat zombie hits it. Which mean it saved us infection. And then we can replace it. Isn’t that worth it?
And offering the flytrap means fat zombie would need 9 damage to hurt Lara, of which I am quite certain it doesn’t.
We don’t know Coc’s rule for targeting. He’s basically always hit the person furthest into the dungeon if there was a choice. On the turn you’re describing Ricki moved further into the dungeon and became Coc’s target.
Um. The fat roach did 9-10 damage. Really bad assumption you’re having there.
1.That was a giant roach, not just a fat roach. Notice how it was the size of tall character like Kamau, unlike regular roaches which can go through ratholes and are thus smallish at best.
2.Regular roaches hit significantly harder than regular zombies.
We can’t use pets to attack while Coccyx is around, and Lara’s defense is lower these days. Also it is an unknown enemy. Might have multiattack, might hit like a truck.
Coccyx can’t kill flytrap with only 1 more shot. If it dies to fat zombie dogpiling it, then it saved us infection on our actual party members which is good.
But Coc and Big zombie can dogpile ricki or lara instead which would be disastrous.
Please read my discussion with TNIM.
If Coccyx rolls the 25% to hit the mushroom that has 1 hp, it will explode, dealing 1 unblockable damage to Botanya, giving Kamau 1 remorse, causing us to lose him.
If we didn’t interpose, we wouldn’t attack with the shrooms.
Exactly
Oh great, they have a Kamau too.
It would have been hillarious, if this “more dangerous zombie” had only 1 arm, too. 😀
On an unrelated note (not addressed to Siv specifically, but I don’t want to make another post):
Can we PLEASE stop pushing our luck and go kill the necromancer and the golem and finish the dungeon main goal? I’m tired of people risking all sorts of things (someone wanted to shoot more urns, which could have caused someone to get 1 damage – because they deal unblockable – and Kamau to remorse out, and now we are going into more zombie fights. We don’t know how many the necro will summon on turn 50 – so far it has been 1 on turn 10, 1 on turn 20, 2 on turn 30, 2 on turn 40, iirc, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will continue in this pattern – and someone getting 5 infection is a death sentence, most likely not only for them, but also for the rest of the party, because they will have to fight the newly zombiefied member, as well – and we have no idea if not at some point, guards start appearing.
Also this “big zombie” could possibly deal more than a single point of infection at a time) and for what supposed benefits? Someone wrote “we have an idea on how to recruit Cyx”, may I ask what that idea is?
Can’t edit. I thought of something else, so I have to add another post, after all. 😛
Additionally, we don’t know how long it will take, to get rid of the infection. I think the description said that the party member was infected with the zombie virus and would have to fight said infection in order to remain human. I can imagine that e.g. for each dungeon done between when they got infected and “now”, one point of infection goes down again. This would make entering other dungeons containing zombies that much more dangerous for the infected people. It’s possible infection gets reset to 0 after a “rest” (either sitting out a dungeon completely or the time between dungeons), but we don’t know that for sure, either.
I know I tend to err on the side of caution a lot (sometimes “too often”), but seriously people, we have been here long enough.
I’m with you actually. I’m pretty much on team wrap it up at this point.
The cocyx idea required getting up to his level to recruit which requires shooting pots on the rope to get up there.not sure how feasible it is with a time crunch but we’ll see.
Also not sure at this point if finishing off the necromancer will actually finish the dungeon – which mashed it even more imperative we get to stepping, I think.
After finishing the big boy, can we please go finish the necromancer lest we become (un)dead ourselves?
Oh thank jeebus Coccyx is still
alivenot dead. I really hope we can recruit him