Dungeon 9 Turn 52
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The party meets the approaching horde head on.
Kamau and Ricki take on the altered zombie. Although its nature seems to have changed on some fundamental level, it remains a mindless creature that lashes out at whatever happens to be closest, and it’s just as infectious as ever. Kamau gains 1 more point of Infection, but the horrible creature is slain. Botanya continues to have a run of bad luck with the pipes.
Lara easily impales one of the regular zombies with her corn spear, destroying it but taking 1 more point of Infection in the process.
The flytrap fumbles in the dark in its search for a target to bite. Just as it seems it might be able to land a hit, the faithless lashes out with one of its limbs and cuts the plant in half.
Better results than what could have happened.
Faithless is there as a way we cant cheese zombie slaying with Botanya or pets.
Unfortunate we lost flytrap but we have one more summon left. After Faithless goes down we’re blitzing into boss room to finish this dungeon once and for all.
Cleanup:
Ricki: Remove your shield then attack the faithless.
Lara: Attack the faithless.
Kamau: Attack the faithless with your hilt. You’ll then with a heroic effort cleave into the zombie.
Botanya: Stand closest to the zombie and pipe at it. Maybe we’ll avoid infection if it targets you or gets distracted.
Ricki in her bone armor has 7 armor against living creatures, and 9 armor against nonliving. Lara has 8 armor, and Kamau has 9. The faithless does 7 and he zombie does 1. Everybody can take 8 damage if they happen to get attacked by the zombie and the faithless, and since everybody has only 3 infection we don’t care who the zombie targets. Kamau should kill the zombie this round since his initial attack on the faithless does 11 damage, meaning his second attack will do 8 which we’ve seen kill a zombie before.
All together Kamau does 11 dmg, Ricki does 9, and Lara does 7, which means the Faithless takes 27 out of the 23 it needs to die.
LSN, To clarify, Lara should keep wearing corn spear and normal helmet.
To be clear, the heroic effort portion of this is from Kamau attacking the faithless. He has 6 hp, it has 15. Since the second attack of cleave is just -3 from the first attack and the first attack does 11, the second attack should do 8 and exactly kill the zombie.
Ricki should scout a room down before coming back to attack faithless so we’ll know of any other alterations it made earlier since she got 2 MOV points.
I can’t downvote this, but everybody should upvote the version that includes Ricki scouting instead. We still do everything this plan had, but we also get to see the necromancer. https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-9-turn-52/#comment-10987
Wait, did the Flytrap manage to hit or not? It LOOKS like it did, but the wording about it ‘fumbling in the dark’ and ‘just as it seems it might be able to land a hit’ makes it a bit ambiguous.
Either way, I don’t think we should have any problems safely mopping up the last zombie and Faithless. We should definitely go fight the boss after this though.
…I think, after we kill the Necromancer’s bone giant (and any summoned skeletons), we should consider having Ricki move back towards Coccyx so that she can talk to him immediately after Lara and Kamau kill the Necromancer. Call it a hunch, but after seeing Coccyx get revived on turn 50 I definitely think he’s under the power of the Necromancer, and thus we need to kill the Necromancer in order to recruit him at the very least.
Since only Ricki can recruit people, we might need her to be near Coccyx when the dungeon ends so that she can talk to him. Hopefully, there wasn’t something else we needed to do to recruit Coccyx- I’m almost concerned that we needed to kill all the undead in the tomb aside from him, based off of what he said at the start of the dungeon (about only dead people being allowed in the tomb).
I’m also concerned about that chest he has on his ledge and the possibility that we needed to loot it (or something off of his body after he ‘dies’). But I don’t think we want to spend Corruption on Lara just for one mystery chest at this point. (Could you imagine if the chest just has a stack of regular arrows for Coccyx to use? What a waste!) Not to mention that spending too much time near Coccyx will risk him being dead when the Necromancer dies, which would almost certainly mean that we can’t recruit him. The options available to us have become increasingly limited as time has elapsed in the dungeon, so we really just have to hope for the best.
In any case: I think Lara and Kamau should be able to fight the Necromancer alone if it comes down to it. Kamau interposes, Lara rips him a new one with the help of her mushroom and badass new sword, Botanya pipes or uses her last ability point to heal Kamau if he needs it, leaving Ricki free to talk to Coccyx as soon as the Necromancer dies if people think it’s a good idea for her to do so.
…of course, it might also be a good idea to see if anything has happened with the Necromancer or his bone giant since the Faithless got summoned. If one of THEM turned red, then everything I just said should probably be reevaluated.
I wondered about that too, but I think that’s a leaf flying off and not a gush of zombie blood.
The “fumbling in the dark” part seemed weird to me though. I don’t remember the flytrap having that problem on previous turns.
I was referring more to the fact that it was biting the zombie’s face, but the lack of blood is also a good point.
Oh, it always had a 50% miss chance because of the lack of light. No, we didn’t know it needed light before coming to this dungeon. Was FUN to find out 🙂
LSN: Thanks for making clear what the faithless didn’t do to the dark zombie.
Dice: Thanks for giving the infection point to Kamau instead of Ricki.
Cleanup but now with bonus scouting!
Ricki: Remove your shield, run downstairs to get eyes on the necromancer, then run back upstairs to attack the faithless.
Lara: Attack the faithless with your corn spear and still wearing your helmet.
Kamau: Attack the faithless with a heroic effort and your hilt. You’ll then with cleave into the zombie.
Botanya: Stand closest to the zombie and pipe at it. Maybe we’ll avoid infection if it targets you or gets distracted.
Ricki in her bone armor has 7 armor against living creatures, and 9 armor against nonliving. Lara has 8 armor, and Kamau has 9. The faithless does 7 and the zombie does 1. Everybody can take 8 damage if they happen to get attacked by the zombie and the faithless, and since everybody has only 3 infection we don’t care who the zombie targets. Kamau should kill the zombie this round since his initial attack on the faithless does 11 damage, meaning his second attack will do 8 which we’ve seen kill a zombie before.
All together Kamau does 11 dmg, Ricki does 9, and Lara does 7, which means the Faithless takes 27 out of the 23 it needs to die.
I made yet another post because I still can’t edit :(. There were concerns that the faithless could follow Ricki down to the next screen and attack her there. If it does follow her, she’d only have 7 defense and no longer benefit from Botanya’s aroma. So we have her keeping the shield on until engaging the faithless after scouting. She’d only be able to remove it if she wasn’t attacked, so it’s safe to try doing so.
https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-9-turn-52/#comment-10989
Cleanup but now with bonus scouting and the scouting is now safe if the faithless follows Ricki!
Ricki: Run downstairs to get eyes on the necromancer, then run back upstairs and unequip your shield (if you can) to attack the faithless.
Lara: Attack the faithless with your corn spear and still wearing your helmet.
Kamau: Attack the faithless with a heroic effort and your hilt. You’ll then cleave into the zombie.
Botanya: Stand closest to the zombie and pipe at it. Maybe we’ll avoid infection if it targets you or gets distracted.
Ricki in her bone armor has 7 armor against living creatures, and 9 armor against nonliving. Lara has 8 armor, and Kamau has 9. The faithless does 7 and the zombie does 1. Everybody can take 8 damage if they happen to get attacked by the zombie and the faithless, and since everybody has only 3 infection we don’t care who the zombie targets. Kamau should kill the zombie this round since his initial attack on the faithless does 11 damage, meaning his second attack will do 8 which we’ve seen kill a zombie before.
All together Kamau does 11 dmg, Ricki does 9, and Lara does 7, which means the Faithless takes 27 out of the 23 it needs to die.
By the way. What if the faithless can warp the remaining zombie? We didnt see how that happened to the black zombie.
I’m almost certain that the Faithless needs to use an action to do that, seeing as only one of the zombies was warped by the time we got to the room we’re currently in.
I think it either takes an action from the faithless or that’s the ramp mechanism for future turns. We got one warped zombie this turn. On turn 60 it’d be two, etc.
Phew. That went about as well as we could have hoped for.
Also, I know I was the one that noticed the similar colour scheme between the “special” zombie and the faithless, but it is also possible that the altered zombie was the one that the necromancer had on his/her (did we get any hint on their gender yet? I forgot) slab and seemed to be working on for the past I don’t know how many turns. Maybe it was altered by the necromancer.
Anyway. If Ricki goes scouting, the faithless might choose to follow her (its “cousin” in the chapel acted rather intelligent, and one member splitting from a larger group would make for a fine target to single out and whittle down). I think this should be without risk for Ricki, but if the faithless isn’t in the room with the remainder of the group, they can’t attack it. Maye we should have Kamau, Lara and Botanya add “follow the faithless, if necessary” to their turn?
Ooooooh, I just had a NASTY random thought. If The Emperor is opposing the (previous/other) gods, does that mean the faithless (who dwells in desecrated places; desecrated means the influence of a god that was there has been removed, iirc.) is an (unwilling?) ally of The Emperor? Maybe even His emmisary/spy/grunt/vanguard/puppet/manifestation?
My guess is it would be better to compare it to a scavenger than an ally. The Faithless definitely benefits from all the weakened gods, but I doubt the Emperor would let too many Faithless spring up, or let them get too strong.
Actually, this bit of the faithless’ description:
kind of makes me think that The Emperor might have been the first ever faithless… I mean he is seeking to desecrate the world (a very wide location, but still a location) further (removing all of the previous gods’ powers) and there seem to have been more faithless spawning (though we have not detected evidence that this is connected with The Emperor).