Intermission 12 Page 17
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After several days of travel, Ricki and her friends near the location of the Imperial research facility. As she observes the surrounding landmarks, Ricki grows suspicious. Then her thoughts are confirmed soon after.
“Huh. I didn’t realize how close this place is to the guard outpost we already went to.”
“I was wondering when you’d notice.”
“Yes, they are both in the same vicinity.”
“It’s possible the same members of the Guard may be patrolling here.”
“If any of them recognize us, they may be quicker to call for reinforcements.”
“Out of curiosity, what made you realize the nearness of the two locations?”
“…Are you serious?”
“My apologies.”
“I suppose it wasn’t much of a joke.”
After several days of travel, Ricki and her friends near the location of the Imperial research facility. As she observes the surrounding landmarks, Ricki grows suspicious. Then her thoughts are confirmed soon after.
RICKI: “Huh. I didn’t realize how close this place is to the guard outpost we already went to.”
AMADEUSZ (thinking about how his neck is definitely closer to his left shoulder, as it should be, because he is so posh): “I was wondering when you’d notice.”
“Yes, they are both in the same vicinity.”
“It’s possible the same members of the Guard may be patrolling here.”
“If any of them recognize us, they may be quicker to call for reinforcements.”
“Out of curiosity, what made you realize the nearness of the two locations?”
RICKI (looking at the giant stone arch that, as she now knows, is definitely making a rude gesture at the big beautiful blue sky): “…Are you serious?”
AMADEUSZ: “My apologies.”
“I suppose it wasn’t much of a joke.”
The guards might recognize the goblin and the guy dressed like a prince who is pretending to be a bandit or an opera villain, but they won’t recognize the other two who are with them, since instead of a one armed human and a kobold this time we have a drider and a mushroom man, nope nothing suspicious about those two at all. Awww, who are we kidding, one look at our team would have most guards calling for backup immediately.
… and an almost invisible, to my eyes, mule.
Yeah, it took me a bit to figure out wat that tan blotch by Amadeusz ‘s silhouette was. Maybe the near-invisibility is why Golly can’t be targeted?
@Spider Minstrel – Really?I’m sorry,I’m not trying to sound rude to anyone with poor vision,but the difference between green & beige are so easy for me to notice.I can’t imagine what the world would look like if I was missing one of my color cones.
There is no need to be rude. Remember that it depends a LOT on the display/monitor you are using. The mule is easier to see on my big desktop monitor than on my phone that I was using originally.
It would look like this.
https://enchroma.com/blogs/beyond-color/how-color-blind-see
Reminds me of Dream & Sapnap’s video,playing Minecraft with a color filter on the screen.
Well, we now know at least one of the reasons that Stargate broken arch thing was in the background at the Guard Outpost.
I wonder if we’ll find out what it is supposed to be (maybe as soon as the next page).
I wonder why the guard is so present around it
I wonder if dungeon magic concentrates around it
I wonder if blowing up the two dungeons under it might compromise something about it
The guard usually seems to either surround dungeons or clear them out. They were exploiting and experimenting with the dungeon magic in Guard Outpost, doing things like ringsmifing and trying to create more powerful potions.
I think the two dungeons may be on either side of the open archway such that you would need to walk under the arch to get from one dungeon to the other.
I wonder if Amadeusz is going to give us a Sketchy secondary objective that involves explosives or otherwise destroying the Research Facility or if it will be something less Sketchy like rescuing someone.
I10P27 We see that there is the Outpost, then there’s some Woods, then Hills, then the Arch with a hole on the left side. Here today we are near the Hills, then the Arch, then are Woods. Arch has a hole on the right side, so we see it from the other side. Also, it seems like the Arch is build in the Hills. So yeah, it totally seems the Output is on the other side. Hard to say how far, it depends on the scale and the only hint we have is the height of the hills to the height of the outpost, and/or any assumptions about size of the Arch. But, anyway I look at it, it’s looks much closer than 1 day of walk. Unless the Arch is ridiculously big. Which it is. Compared to the outpost. But I mean, MORE ridiculously big.
Maybe the arch is THE research facility? With good ol’ default magic rules for some big spells nothing works better than some magic circles on the ground or magic arch portals. Remember portals to Fey in WSWFG? If that was one, it could summon some badddaaasss thing we certainly would’t want to meet. Maybe it’s good it has a hole in the arc.
@que I assumed the 2 outposts were built into the bases of the 2 sides of the half-ring,and that it has something to do with the pre-GodEmperor days when religions weren’t outlawed from the country & people’s memory.
The Guard Outpost is a castle-like above ground structure that can be seen in gray on a green background in the artwork of Intermission 10 Page 27, https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-10-page-27/
Although I called the enormous structure a “broken arch” it looks much more like a broken ring with slightly more than half of it above ground (and possibly continuing below ground). See Intermission 10 Page 26 for a view of the enormous structure from a distance.
Do you think we’ll get lore on the ring?Why is the Empire so interested in it?
Yes… or at least we should. Logically something that big that can be seen from far away should be a well known landmark and a local legend. As far as I understand it isn’t all that far from the Imperial capital so someone like Ricki who grew up there should have heard of it. Otherwise it would be like someone who was raised in the US state of Missouri who had never heard of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_Arch
I am waiting to hopefully read the explanation.
Now seems to be a good time to go review the archive of dungeon 11, The Guard Outpost.
Here is a place to post Replies with observations and notes about dungeon 11 that might be helpful here in its “sibling dungeon”.
Shoot the pigeons.
Messenger Pigeons: Look at all of the routes that a pigeon could use to escape, including windows, and consider positioning a spare character along their only or likely escape route since they seem to have a Move of more than 1 but they might have to stop when encountering an enemy. Remember that the Messenger Pigeons have an Evade %, like Toaster, and now Ricki, so although they may not take much damage to kill they may take multiple attacks to hit. The Wand of Magic Missiles says that it does not miss so it may bypass Evade (we may find one at the Facility). Pets are good for attacking pigeons, Amaduesz’s Dirge would probably be great for taking out pigeons if he were in Human Bard form since it affects all living enemies in the room.
Messenger Pigeons have 1HP, see Dungeon 11 Turn 10 https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-11-turn-10/ where Amadeusz takes one out with a Hurtful Dirge. He also takes out a group of 3 pigeons on Dungeon 11 Turn 14 with his second and last use of Hurtful Dirge.
Why was it important to build these significant outposts into the base of a giant half-ring?And how is the giant half-ring even here,or hollow?
EDIT,mostly for myself:
Aw,really?Again?This website seems to keep forgetting what my email is,so every 3 weeks I have to fill in the 3 fields to comment.
Save Lara’s spell for the enforcer.
Hummm. We don’t know if there will be an Enforcer in this dungeon and we may be better off by using Lara’s one spell earlier for the +2 Atk she gets afterwards for the remainder of the dungeon.
I’m re-reading the Guard Outpost before we enter the Research Facility. Over at D11T25 the text we got for our first turn of fighting the Enforcer says,
“…she nimbly jumps off of the parapets and avoids almost all of their attacks! Only Ricki and Macadamia connect, dealing minor damage. She makes a heavy sun-powered strike against Kamau in midair.”
From the description text I suspect that the Enforcer may be using Abilities, like the Heavy Strike I Ability that Kamau can buy and possibly the Dodgy I Ability that Ricki can buy. There is no reason the high end opponents can’t have Abilities just like our characters do. This may be what Kamau was referring to last Turn (D11,T24) when he said, “The real problem is we won’t know exactly what she can do unless we DO fight her. Everyone learns different combat styles, you know?”
Groups of enemies can buff each other, making a group significantly more dangerous than they might otherwise appear to be.
Elite Guards buff Guards.
Guard Dogs buff Guards. (we can make a guess based on Daisy, +1 Def for the Guard)
Guards buff Guard Dogs. (we can make a guess based on Daisy, +1 Atk for the Dog)
This makes groups of Guards with Elites and Dogs much more dangerous, rather like groups of Skeletal Swarmfish (which we do know the exact mechanics of since we used a Lens on them). I saw some Comments about whether the buffs ‘stack’, but did we ever learn anything for sure?
Does anyone from Discord know what the statistics of the Guard Dog and Elite Guard buffs are? If not it may be worth using a Lens to find out what Elite Guards can do because it seems likely we will be encountering more groups of guards in what people are calling “Act 3”.
Reference: “The presence of an elite guard is making the others more effective, it seems.” https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-11-turn-5/
Also, human and humanoid opponents like Guards, Elite Guards, Enforcers, Assassins, bandits, etc. could have ‘hidden’ buffs from Items such as rings, making it risky to engage in a fight with them just based on how they appear on screen and our knowledge of their stats and the stats of their visible weapons and armor, making Ricki’s ‘Case’ Ability both useful and important. We can expect Enforcers and Imperial Champions to always be wearing two or even three rings.
— Furthermore, in general, opponents with unknown stats may have some Ability that we don’t know about that lets them buff others (like the Skeletal Swarmfish did), thus making it dangerous to make too many assumptions about their combat stats based on our first encounter with a small group of them. The GM seem to like both starting the dungeon fairly easy but also ‘suckering us in’ for what will happen later (the Skeletal Swarmfish are a good example).
Note that Lara’s Web Binding spell (-3 Atk and Def) may be very useful in avoiding 3 damage from a large group of Guards and Dogs in the first round by entangling their Elite leader, since I think the debuff takes effect before the opponent’s attacks are resolved and if she just attacks the group with her poisoned siegesword she might kill one but their first Turn’s counterattack might cause one or more of the attacking characters damage. In fact it might cost Lara 5 damage to use the spell but save her 3 damage from the first Turn’s counterattack, thus making that 5 damage she takes from using a spell much less painful than it seems. We don’t have to save Lara’s one use of Web Binding or Venomous Barrage for a mini-boss or boss, they may be more useful against groups of weaker enemies that buff each other making taking damage from their first attack difficult to avoid.
Can a long-time player or someone from Discord confirm that the debuff of Lara’s spell probably or definitely takes effect before the opponents attacks are resolved?
Hard to say, LSN confirmed the frog grab debuff takes effect The round after. However, LSN does rule in our favor for some things
Thanks for the reply and the info. The frog is an interesting point.
I think can give examples of where a buff or debuff takes effect immediately on the Turn after we declare the action that causes the buff or debuff (e.g. on the Turn when it occurs) before any combat is resolved or environmental damage is taken for that Turn. I think Botanya’s debuff to opponents in melee range fits this pattern, they are debuffed before they can attack Botanya or anyone with her and not on the turn following their first attack. I also think Amadeusz’s buff to allies from Zing and Thrum takes effect on the turn when he plays music before any combat for that turn is resolved (there are examples in dungeon 11, The Guard Outpost). I also think that the buff from drinking a potion occurs immediately on the turn when the potion is drunk before any combat or environmental effects are resolved.
I think the debuff from the attack of a Giant Bullfrog is different and a special case because it is part of an effect from an attack that could also cause damage, thus that debuff occurs after the opponent has a chance to resolve their own attack.
The general pattern that I see and what seems to make sense is that ‘naked’ buffs and debuffs that are not part of an attack and that need to be done instead of attacking are take effect before combat for the Turn is resolved, but buffs and debuffs that occur as additional extra results of an attack take effect after the combat for the Turn has been resolved.
Since Lara’s Web Binding spell needs to be done instead of attacking or any other action I think the dubuffs would likely be resolved before that target’s attack is resolved, otherwise the spell would be nearly worthless. If Lara could cast Web Binding as a part of a physical attack (with a poisoned Siegesword, for instance) then it would make sense if the spell took effect after the opponent’s counterattack, otherwise the spell would be OP.
Here are the things I referenced, for convenience so that anyone who is reading this doesn’t have to go to multiple pages to look them all up:
BOTANYA
Disarming Aroma I: Enemies in melee range have -1 Atk.
LARA NE
Web Binding: Makes a ranged attack against one enemy that gives it -3 to Atk and Def. This penalty is reduced by 1 at the end of each turn.
ZING AND THRUM, VIOLIN
Tool
Can be played to give all nearby allies +1 Def, or +2 Def if used as part of a Musical ability. As an action, can transform the violin into a weapon.
Weight 1, Cost –
GIANT BULLFROG
HP: 8
Atk: 6, or 3 at range
Def: 4
Ability: pulls targets of ranged attack close, swallows Small targets to prevent escape and inflict -2 Atk and Def, aquatic
Amphibians grown to enormous size aren’t uncommon in dungeons containing significant amounts of water. Though they aren’t especially powerful, they are dangerous for smaller creatures. They target these creatures preferentially, but their favourite food appears to be giant flies, insectoids, or any sort of giant insect, arachnid, bug, etc. Since they attempt to crush a creature they’ve swallowed before they attack anything else, this can be used as a strategy to sneak past them if effective bait can be acquired somehow.
I’m going back through the Guard Outpost and Turn 14 confirms that regular Guards have Atk 1, since base 1 +2 for longsword = Atk 3 for each Guard so three Guards together would be Atk 9 and Amadeusz with a Def 11 (on Turn 14) takes no damage, however if the regular Guards had a base Atk 2 then their combined attack on Amadeusz would have been Atk 12 and the Def 11 Amadeusz would have taken one point of damage (unless it was somehow blocked by some unknown ability of the pet chick Phoenix).
Knowing the base Atk and Def of regular Guards is important for figuring out how combat with groups of them is likely to go.
I am curious if even regular Guards in groups have a Ability that buffs the overall group’s combined attack when they focus on one target (like +1 per Guard after the first attacking the same target), since that would still fit in he results from Turn 14 (D11,T14).
Also, back of Turn 5 of the Guard Outpost (D11,T5) we learned that, “The presence of an elite guard is making the others more effective, it seems.”
Note that having a high Evade (like the Enforcer’s in The Guard Outpost or Ricki’s current 50%) is VERY helpful for going solo against large groups of enemies that add their Atk stats together. Our fight against the Enforcer demonstrated that.
In fact, Ricki might be able to solo a patrol of guards if she got lucky enough (and having Amadeusz along for Resurrection makes that a risk that we may be able to take).
Do we know if Rings of Evasion and Ricki’s Dodgy Ability add their % chances for opponents to miss into one % that is then resolved once for a given opponent’s attack or if they are resolved separately for each source of a % chance? There is a BIG difference in the math of how that works out. If they add together into one chance then having multiple sources of evasion is awesome and if Ricki got Dodgy III and wore two Gold Rings of Evasion she’d have a 90% chance to dodge all attacks, which would make her nearly immune to swarm attacks that rely on multiple attackers all adding their Atk values. The fact that this specific combination is 90% and not 100% might be very intentional and 90% is the maximum Evasion that any character can get! If different sources of evasion are resolved separately with multiple dice rolls then stacking sources of evasion is not nearly as nice, but that does make for a lot of dice rolls if someone with 3 sources of evasion (e.g. an Ability and two rings) fights a large group of enemies (e.g. a character with 3 sources of evasion going solo against a patrol of 3 normal Guards, one Elite Guard, and a Guard Dog would be 15 dice rolls for evasion instead of 5). It may be somewhat difficult and time consuming to determine the exact mechanics from just what we can observe from combats.
From a story standpoint, Kamau mentioned that he used to wear three (3) rings when he was an Imperial Champion but he hasn’t said what combination(s) of rings he has used in the past. We should be able to ask him what happens if someone wears 2 or even 3 Gold Rings of Evasion since he is one of the few people in the world who ought to know the answer to that. We should ask him at the first convenient opportunity (perhaps on Turn 0 when we have Wolf use the Upgrade Press, if there aren’t any immediately threatening enemies).
If we manage to get another gold ring of Evasion (+30% Evade) then Ricki may be able to wade into combats with groups/patrols of Guards reasonably safely, especially if there are other characters to help split up their attacks. This is starting to become important because of the groups of Guards and the patrols that we are seeing in places like the Guard Outpost and likely here at the Research Facility.
RING OF EVASION, GOLD
Ring
All attacks have a 30% chance to miss you.
Weight 1, Cost 30
RICKI
Dodgy II: Incoming attacks have a 20% chance to miss.
Just a heads up, LSN revealed on Discord that miss chance caps out at 70%, even if someone is in the dark, wearing a bucket on their head and attacking someone with 2 gold evasion rings.
Thanks for reading my Comments and thank you for the info. I don’t get all that extra information that appears on Discord, and even if I joined Discord it might be difficult to find information like that.
From what you said I assume that the miss chance from multiple sources is just added, with the cap of 70% to prevent abuse.
The design of dungeons tends to give you information or items that you’ll need based on what you can see, do, or get in the first few rooms. For example, in the Guard Outpost that lever that we could see above us in the entry room (which turned out to be behind two big groups of monsters plus a wall of wood and a spiderweb, making it unattractive since pulling that lever didn’t have any obvious immediate payoff) probably opened the door to the Kobold’s cell in the room below the entrance. That would have been a good clue to what we needed to do to free the recruitable prisoner and it would have had a payoff of several rings including a gold ring later (the ones in the Kobold’s cell).
Also, from this same example, dungeons can be designed such that the payoff isn’t immediately obvious.
Furthermore, from this same example, dungeons can be designed with intentional ‘red herrings’, since some Comments thought that the lever seen in the first room would drop the ‘chandelier’ in the second room to the right of the entrance (like we saw in dungeon 3) rather than open a cell in the room below the entrance.
Rushing to explore and get eyes on as many rooms as possible as quickly as possible before dealing with what we can see, do, or get in the first few rooms has hurt us at both the Guard Outpost and the Poisoned Well. Keep this in mind as we do the Research Facility.
Sometimes what appears to be a mini-boss or even a boss is either tangential to actually completing the adventure’s objectives, such as the Enforcer in the Guard Outpost who took a lot of valuable time to defeat even if she did drop good loot (which was a part of the objectives), or might be even counterproductive to the objectives, such as the bull Mammoth in the Overgrown Farm. Just because something exists in a dungeon doesn’t mean that we need to fight it.
Time has been a valuable resource in every dungeon and fighting something takes up valuable time even if victory is assured. I think most or all dungeons have had one or more ‘time traps’ for us to mess around with.
So,uh…How do you suppose the structure is staying up?
AFAIK-arches obey gravity,so removing a brick would mean that the whole thing should fsll.
They built it in creative mode then imported it into survival.
It’s just really a lot of duct tape.
Magic,anti-gravity duct tape,imported by the Mythbusters,seemingly.
Maybe it is a crashed spaceship made of unobtanium.
Ash Williams: “What’s it called again?Macguffinite?”
Brock Samson: “Cantgetany-ium?”
We should introduce ourselves to the first guard we see. Tell him we’re dungeon inspectors, a new top secret division spearheaded by the emperor himself. We go into dungeons and determine their severity and unique qualities before reporting back. Then a properly outfitted and specialized team of dungeoneers can come clear it. The secrecy is why we were spotted infiltrating the other dungeon and ran. That was determined to be a poor method of handling a dungeon that contains empire personnel and resources so this time it was decided we be upfront with our mission.
And if he doesn’t believe us we kick him in the nards and run.
We do have a BARD in our party……
…and this whole misadventure was HIS suggestion.
Speaking of the bard,should he be Wolf or Normal upon entering?My vote is to keep him Human for now.
I believe that the form that Amadeusz starts this dungeon in has already been discussed and decided when we selected our equipment and pets for this misadventure. Please go review Intermission 12 Page 15 specifically https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-15/#comment-15133
“We start with Wolf since we really only want to bring out The Bard when we need him to resurrect the new friend we will inevitably let die. That and his high stats and ability to shovel raw meat for infinite hp. Amadeusz has 31 hp to burn through this dungeon. It’s wild.”
So far I’m enjoying Amadeusz’s dry sense of humor but I think many of us were hoping he’d switch to Wolf form sooner so that we wouldn’t have to listen to some Sketchy secondary objectives. Hopefully he’ll at least get a transformation sequence on Turn 0.
If you look at Amadeusz’s character sheet right now (19-July-2024) you’ll see he already has his equipment load for this adventure and his Atk stat has 3 purple daggers (+3 Atk) while his Def stat has 1 purple shield (+1 Def); those indicate that he is in Wolf form… or at least he will be in werewolf form when we start this
fiascolegendary adventure.Shapeshift I : Can transform into werewolf form and back once per dungeon each. Werewolf form has +3 Atk and +1 Def, but cannot use weapons, shields, armour, or Musical abilities. Can choose which form to take at the start of a dungeon.
Hey. I’ve reading for a while now. I know I’m not the only one having trouble reading the red texts. It’s kind of a thing now that somebody will be so generous to take some of his time to translate it in the comments (along with some clever jokes), but still it’s kind of a hassle. Please LSN, if you could just replace the background for black and the comment section back to gray? It would make the site even much more enjoyable for me and others like me. I’m sure his trouble would mean a lot for all his loyal colorblind readers.
1. The way you wrote “comment section BACK to gray” makes me think the site changed color palettes multiple times.
2.Why not just do the boring-but-practical thing and click & drag with the mouse/finger,as if you were going to copypaste?I understand having a colorbling-mode for videogames,but this is just text.Also,we don’t know the code behind the website,or how easy it’ll be to implement a colorblind-mode (LSN had to put the current party in a seperate tab,rather than in the comments,as an example).
3.There’s also the option of special glasses,I’ve first seen them in the “colorblind man sees purple for the first time” video.I just don’t know how expensive/accesible they are.
>Why not just do the boring-but-practical thing and click & drag with the mouse/finger,as if you were going to copypaste?
Once again, it depends on what type of device you are using. The trick of selecting text to make it easier to read works fine on my desktop PC but doesn’t help at all on my phone (the highlighting color scheme on my phone is as hard to read as the original text is).
My phone has a button near the url (that looks like a clipboard) and it simplifies the page to white background with the panels and black text. No comments. I think it’s an option to simplify a webpage? obviously not everyone has this option but maybe there are other settings available to you that may help? Worth a quick google
So that’s what that button does 😉
That method helps but since it removes all the text colors you need to switch back and forth to be able to see the color of the unreadable text to know which character is speaking a line and then switch to uncolored mode to actually be able to read the line. This can get rather awkward when Amadeusz and Lohk (the two colors that seem the most difficult for people whose usernames don’t start with ‘Bruno’ to read) are both talking.