Dungeon 10 Turn 3
————
Ricki and Lara hurry up the ladder to the locked gate, which Ricki opens at the cost of one set of tools. Lara then opens the chest and finds a wand that duplicates a spell she already knows. Still, using it doesn’t invoke an angry goddess, so it may be useful.
The wolf spider immediately attacks upon the pair passing by, which leads the seemingly blind drider into combat as well. Ricki takes 2 damage from their combined attack. Lara takes no damage, but is unsettled by the drider in a way that she isn’t by the dead bodies.
The pair then explore the next room.
“W-we should be close to the archive now. It should be above us, if the layout didn’t change too much.”
“Are you doing okay?”
“I’m f-fine. Let’s just hurry.”
————
WAND OF VENOMOUS BARRAGE
Wand
Deals 8 poison damage at range. Can only be used once per dungeon.
Weight 1, Cost 55
Huh, the archive has a lock AND a trap
Possibly a spider egg sac full of either a swarm or one little murder spider.
Lara’s looking for something in the archive room. That could be a locket, or compact mirror, or a ring box.
We probably want to leave an inventory slot open on Lara.
There is no open inventory slot on Lara, but she might smoke the cigs or transfer some object to Ricki (cost a turn) or drop it to the ground (and lose it). Ricki is probably going to get another free slot by using a tool-set on the locked door before the archive.
So those wolf spiders will probably attack when we go to the ladder, we should clear them out so that that isn’t an issue when we get to the Drider.
Also I’m curious what the downstairs room looks like. If we have time, may be worth exploring down one.
Lara: Go upstairs and attack the drider.
Ricki: While the drider is distracted by Lara, pick the lock on the door behind it. Then head through the rat hole (spider hole?) just below the drider. Assuming it leads to the other rat hole we can see, head down the ladder once you come out the rat hole to give us vision on the (hopefully final?) room.
This gets us set up to breach the archive when we need to, and gives us an idea of whether or not driders do poison damage in a pretty safe setting. I’m assuming the wolf spiders won’t attack us, since if they did the rat holes we can see would be pretty useless. Once we’re confident we can clear the archive and have vision on the last screen, we’ll know where best to focus our efforts with the time remaining to us.
Driders don’t seem to do poison damage from that first drider’s attack so Lara would take 3 damage. Plus, I don’t think she can one-shot something that powerful. At least use the cigs if you’re gonna try?
12 damage is enough to one shot most things, but it is possible it wouldn’t do it in this case. I sorta think it’s better to figure that out now than later, but I’m open to other suggestions. Getting Lara to thr spider chest wouldn’t do much good until we dispose of the cigs anyway, since her inventory is full.
Maybe I’m still being paranoid, but I think we should keep poor Lara away from driders as much as possible given the text on this page.
Ricki: Point out the web for lara to attack, then pick the archive lock. Then head through the rat hole (spider hole?) just below the drider. Assuming it leads to the other rat hole we can see, head down the ladder once you come out the rat hole to give us vision on the (hopefully final?) room.
Lara: Destroy the web Ricki is pointing at.
-We don’t need to waste our extremely limited time fighting drider when it can’t even hurt Ricki. Ricki can then disarm the trap whenever we want to complete the dungeon goal, ignoring the drider again.
-Destroying web lets lara loot the chest behind(drop cigs if needed) in an future turn while tanking both spiders for 0 damage.
Leaving a powerful enemy up next to the goal seems like a bad idea to me, and we’d have to plan for drider damage when completing the goal, so passing through any of the other enemies we plan on leaving up could make that a problem. Presumably Lara needs to get to the archive, not just Ricki, so I’d rather fight a drider under safe conditions now to insure accessing the archive isn’t an issue later.
I prefer this option the most as we do not pass the wolf spiders twice like we did in the previous room (which is what triggered it to attack the second time).
We also will be set up so neither character will be engaged next turn so we can do whatever we need to without worrying about extra damage.
Also, a chest with a web In front makes me think there may be a wand of web wall in there and I want that…
I’m reasonably sure it wasn’t that passing them twice made it attack, it was that passing within trigger distance made it attack and that’s how LSN decided to fluff it.
The passing twice thing makes sense with the behavior we’ve seen before though. Enemies that aren’t already alerted usually don’t attack on first vision, but do on second. Passing by them twice gave two opportunities.
I agree with the trigger distance, also the direction monsters are looking is important. Those four spiders are alert and they could kill Ricki with this plan.
Hmm, goal is in sight with 7 turns to go and another room yet undiscovered. I suspect a “part 2” to this goal, like in the Kobold Warren where handing over the ring changed the goal.
Even so, the sheer quantity of enemies here is time consuming. Clearing the wolf spiders for safety would take 2 turns. They are further away from the ladder than the one last time, but that is a bit risky, that’s 8 damage there and the last attack was focused on one target.
Plus side, we can currently reach the exit in one turn; Lara can action-dash while Ricki’s regular movement gets her to the entrance with an action to exit. I agree with securing our path to the archive first.
or it’s loot dungeon testing our greed.
We can finish it now
or we can gather stuff and risk not making it in time.
I agree that it’s a loot dungeon testing greed. There are plenty of alarming hints that we need to get out fast. Lara doesn’t feel comfortable here, the dungeon is probably super tiny, we can see what the goddess curse does, the loot we *have* collected is kinda meh. I think the room below this one is the only room with good loot, but will have something there that will slow us down. I think most we can do is have Ricki peek in there for map clearing purposes. If it’s the sacrificial chamber, I say we “nope” out of there. Lara doesn’t need to see that and reawaken some trauma. I think it’s very telling that the archives are before that room.
I’d rather get Lara out alive and wonder what sort of loot we could’ve gotten than get something super good but sacrifice Lara to a fate worse than death getting it.
We’ve only collected one loot, and it’s a 55 value single-slot item (that also would be pretty killer on Lohk, especially if we’re running her without Lara and can let her borrow the hood)
The loot here is time consuming, but tempting. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is more of Lara’s skill set in those chests, along with items that would compliment her abilities.
The number of warnings Lara has given us about how uncomfortable she feels and how much we need to hurry feel STRONGLY like a hint that we absolutely do not want to be here turn 10.
Ricki has 7 armor, Lara 4.
there are 4, 2 attack enemies in our way.
Ricki: Attack Spiderwolf
Lara: Attack Spiderwolf
The only way Lara takes dmg is if 2 unasssinged SpiderWolfs aggro her. And while that is possible, she has 9hp and it’s only 25% chance. Worth it and we won’t have better option.
plan: Next turn Ricki attacks Drider, Lara kill 3rd SpiderWolf
( Ricki took 2 dmg from Drider x SpiderWolf and we know Wolf has 2 dmg. that means Ricki is immune to solo Drider. We still don’t know if it has poison dmg so sending Lara means she might take damage)
Goal is to unlock Archive BUT NOT ENTER IT YET (as we don’t know if there will be second part to this dungeon) while pushing to explore 4th room. It’s gotta have something good in it for DM to try and bait us with out goal beforehand
We should only access archive on 8th turn. That gives us enough time to run to exit if that becomes a new goal.
I want to add that we learned this turn that the spider wolf are aggressive so it’s smart to deal with them before climbing up the ladder.
The wolf spiders can’t be guarding the ladder leading up if the rat holes lead to each other. They’d be useless rat holes in that case, which makes no sense. Given we don’t know we need Lara to do anything in room 4, and there are things she’s best suited to handle that we don’t need to kill the wolf spiders to access, it doesn’t make sense to start killing the wolf spiders before we know it’s necessary.
Ricki: Warn Lara about the web, lens the tiny spider, go through the hole, go down the ladder.
Lara: Bypass the web and attack a spider; if that’s not possible, attack the web instead.
Ricki’s Actions: We need to get eyes on the room below us as soon as possible in case there’s something good/dangerous down there, and the tiny spiders are an unknown factor that seem to be guarding chests.
Given how powerful the rat in the sewer dungeon was, its small size probably means low HP and DEF, high ATK. Knowing exactly what it does will let us know if Ricki can take it on by herself and survive, or if she needs Lara to support her with extra damage/healing. There’s not too much of a point on using a lens on a Drider, since we’re probably going to need to kill that one in front of the archive anyways.
Furthermore, the small spider on this screen in particular is essentially guarding two chests, which is mighty tempting. However, getting Lara in a position to help would eat up at least two turns slugging it out with the group of four Wolfspiders for no real gain. Using a lens is thus a quick way to figure out the best way to grab those chests, and/or possibly even grabbing the chest on the previous screen that’s behind the locked door and guarded by the skeletons and another small spider.
This also puts Ricki in a good position to flank the group of Wolfspiders with Lara if we decide that we need her help, either with the little spider or whatever’s in the last room of the dungeon.
Lara’s Actions: Whether she kills a spider or destroys the web, this will help us grab the chest those spiders are guarding. I don’t think Lara can one-shot a spider (without smoking) with the Web penalty up, so either bypassing it or getting rid of it is the way to go.
Or she could ranged attack it and bypass the danger and the lens use.
Hmm, that’s a good idea. I’ll make another post suggesting that and see if people vote for it.
Ricki: Lens the tiny spider on the treasure chest. Point out the web to Lara, then go through the hole and explore down the ladder.
Lara: Break the web.
Agreed with alterkat but clearing the web is way more important than clearing the giant spiders since, as pointed out, Lara can tank two spiders but can’t leave with a web in the way.
While I agree it wouldn’t make much sense to have the hole at all if the wolf spiders are guarding the ladder, I don’t like tangling with the drider on the same turn we test that.
Lara: Use Wand of Mend to heal Ricki.
Ricki: Disarm the web, then go through the hole and explore the next room down the ladder.
Lara: Climb the ladder and end turn by the hole.
This risks losing thieves tools to sneak some healing in and avoid provoking more enemies on the turn we test wolf spider guard range.
Prediction: the room below will contain the sacrificial well and the unalived girlfriend.
Ricki: Use thievs’ tools on Web (it’s a trap) and use rat hole to scout next room
Lara: Murder one of the spiders behind now disarmed web.
next turn Ricki will lockpick Archives and attack Drider while Lara kills last spider. or just takes smoke break (to clear inventory) and loot chest. We will have options.
on “wasting” thievs’ tools on web.
objective:
push towards Archives clearing the path.
While i don’t think the spiders would aggro on us if we were to just use the ladder. Might as well kill them. With Lara dmg this chest is basically free for us.
I think I’d rather have the third thieves tools for that egg sac thing behind the locked archive door in case it’s an actual trap.
Venomous Barrage is a really good wand.
Especially if we give it to Lohk, who can use it twice more per dungeon for free.
Uhm, if I am reading this right, it will not be a wand of Venomous Barrage, when given to Lohk (because she doesn’t know that spell).
Edit: tried to clarify a bit better.
Pretty certain you’re reading it wrong. It’s not “Lara finds a wand of (a random spell the holding character knows, that will switch when we give it to someone else)”, it’s “Lara finds a wand of Venomous Barrage (which happens to be a spell she knows)”.
DON’T FORGET! Ricki has the ability “Case” now. We probably only have enough time to loot ONE chest. And the best loot is probably in the last room we haven’t looked at yet, which is probably also the sacrificial chamber. We can use Case to decide if it’s worth it or not. OR we can assume it’s a given that whatever loot is in that room is really good but too risky to get, and use Case on another chest.
Case takes an action
Ricki: Warn Lara about the web, go through the hole, use Wand of Fireball on the tiny spider at range, then go down the ladder.
Lara: Either bypass the web and attack a spider, or if that’s not possible destroy the web.
Ricki’s Actions: This lets us warn Lara about the web, gets us eyes on the (final?) screen of the dungeon, and preserves our lens in case there’s a boss enemy in the last room that we might want to fight (or we could use it on a Drider instead). It also puts us in a good position to flank the group of Wolfspiders with Lara, if we decide we need her help to deal with whatever’s on the last screen.
Lara’s Actions: This sets us up to take care of the two spiders beneath the archive, possibly with Ricki’s help, if not outright killing one.
Attacking prevents going to a new room