Dungeon 13 Turn 8
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The two normal guards and the armed elite run up the ladder to join the fight, despite Ricki and Amadeusz’s attempt to hold them back. All of them attack Lara, as do the skeletons, as does the justiciar. Though the elite and the justiciar are defeated in the melee…
Lara has been slain.
Guards, let the skeletons delay the remaining intruders. Alert the commanding officer. They are not leaving this facility. Perhaps the scientists will make some useful discoveries during dissection.
Glory to the Emperor.
Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait—
Guard #1, surrender and throw them off guard by offering to join them to replace their fallen comrade.
Guard #2, run for your life, there are only 3 of them and 4 targets so as Guard #2 you have at least a chance of surviving if the 3 intruders focus on the 2 skeletons this turn.
…or you could both just fight to the death as usual and attribute it to “dungeon madness”.
I believe this plan is safe now that the damage has been done.
Cordy: Assign New mushie to self. Spore Touch a guard
Ricki: Take your feelings out on the other guard
Wolf: Chew some bones off a skeleton
Next turn, Ricki and Cordy clean up the skeletons while Deusz transforms.
Turn after that, looting and such while Deusz rezzes Lara.
Then lots of healing dumped on Lara so the next death mob doesn’t just autokill her I guess.
Then maybe we actually plan fights better instead of just Leeroying at the first combat we see, since we have now finished our yoltwice and are down to yolo.
The most damage should be a max of 6 on Amadeusz if both guards prioritize him + the 2 skels, since guards at 8/1/1 when not buffed by the Elite.
They’re potentially punching harder than that, since they may have rings, but unless they’re both packing 2 gold rings of aggression, Deusz can survive that. (2 gold rings of aggression would be 7+7+2+2 = 18, exactly killing Deusz)
If they ARE both packing 2 gold rings of aggression, then we can abandon the dungeon after this fight with 2 casualties and a lot of sad feels. Also, they probably would have targeted differently during this round.
I understood “Leeroying” but can you explain “yoltwice” and “yolo”?
BTW: In the next couple turns, Wolf should probably eat Raw Meat to heal before transforming.
YOLO = You Only Live Once
YOLTwice = pun on our single resurrection capability, You Only Live Twice
This seems like a case of really bad luck, since I don’t think we could have predicted that Lara would get debuffed last turn and by that point we were committed.
On the bright side- I think there’ a good chance that this room is probably the most difficult one in the dungeon, aside from perhaps the boss (if there is one; the outpost didn’t seem to have a big boss monster so much as it had a bunch of elites, which seems like it might be the case here, too.)
With Amadeusz, we can revive Lara after this encounter. We won’t have any more freebies after that, so after collecting the gear we need and seeing if we can’t recruit another character I think we should bounce ASAP.
It may have been avoided if we had insured the justicar went down in one turn but no sense complaining now
IMHO, it’s not bad-luck, but wishful planning and not being “paranoid enough”.
1) We saw posters. We knew Justicar uses debuffs. We couldn’t have guessed it will debuff Lara, but anyways, whoever would be debuffed, our total ATK gets a hit. We didn’t account for it by using/expending mushies “just in case”. Doing that would kill Justicar. If Justicar was down already in this turn, Lara might have survived, and we wouldn’t need to ‘requiem’ her.
2) We DONT have Kamau. Guards were alerted to battle. Why have we thought that we can stop them and prevent them from running where they wanted? We know we can ru past enemies, we just get hit. Also, we’ve seen enemies run past us, we just hit them, and they ran away.
3) Guards from lower level were alerted, so they would rush to help Justicar. Everything happens on the same time, so they could run up/down the ladder while being engaged in combat, and/or choosing who to engage. It’s not like there are any obstacles that make moving especially hard, it’s just a ladder, which even Golly can traverse with no issues. They had minimal chances of staying in the lower level.
4) Why focusing on Lara? No idea. Least HP+DEF? Highest total ATK? Did the most damage last turn? Or just looked the most scary? Or, they simply attacked the debuffed person, because of -2def. No idea. But I think that’s how it works: Justicar can apply a single debuff to a single enemy, and that’s how he coordinates the attack. Then, he debuffs another enemy, and so on.
But of course now it’s easy to look back and talk like everything was obvious 🙂
RE: 3) Guards from lower level were alerted, so they would rush to help Justicar. Everything happens on the same time, so they could run up/down the ladder while being engaged in combat, and/or choosing who to engage. It’s not like there are any obstacles that make moving especially hard, it’s just a ladder, which even Golly can traverse with no issues. They had minimal chances of staying in the lower level.
I tend to make the mistake of assuming how things will work based on ‘common sense’ and how the real world works. In reality, while three people might just be able to run around two defenders in a flat empty field without undue difficulty, two people defending a ladder against three people trying to climb the ladder and run past them is a very different situation. Staircases in medieval castles are narrow for a reason and a ladder is an even more extreme case. Having things follow strict “game logic” for the rules of a game that we don’t know is a fairly difficult situation. I guess we now know that in “dungeon logic” climbing a ladder is no obstacle even if there are opponents at the top of or even on the same ladder.
RE: 4) Why focusing on Lara? No idea. Least HP+DEF? Highest total ATK? Did the most damage last turn? Or just looked the most scary? Or, they simply attacked the debuffed person, because of -2def. No idea. But I think that’s how it works: Justicar can apply a single debuff to a single enemy, and that’s how he coordinates the attack. Then, he debuffs another enemy, and so on.
I think we need to try to learn from this experience and try to better understand the targeting logic that the Justicar, Elite, Guards, and skeletons were using that resulted in them all attacking Lara. I’m going to provide my analysis of the possibilities you raised in your point #4.
>Least HP+DEF? Highest total ATK?
— Probably not. They aren’t using a Magic Lens and Case so they shouldn’t be behaving as if they knew the party’s stats and abilities! If the GM was using GM omniscience to play the opponents that would be a sign of poor GM’ing and I hope that we have a better GM than that. One very scary variation of this would be that Justicars do have some access to the godlike abilities of the Emperor and do actually have some amount of omniscience. Using a Magic Lens on a Justicar should reveal if some sort of omniscience is one of their Abilities.
>Highest total ATK?… Or just looked the most scary?
— Looking scary or holding the biggest weapon might be a possibility, but probably not knowing Lara’s total ATK value.
>Did the most damage last turn?
— How would the Elite and 2 normal Guards know who did the most damage on a Turn that they did not witness? A more likely explanation would be that Lara was the only one who had melee attacked the Justicar the last turn but even that doesn’t seem right to me.
>Or, they simply attacked the debuffed person, because of -2def. No idea. But I think that’s how it works: Justicar can apply a single debuff to a single enemy, and that’s how he coordinates the attack. Then, he debuffs another enemy, and so on.
— This seems unlikely to me. The Elite Guard and two normal Guards don’t have Dungeon Eyes to see through ceilings so I don’t know how they would know who had been debuffed by the Justicar on Turn 7. The people on the lower floor were not in a position to see the Justicar use his debuff power on Turn 7 and the Justicar debuff does not seem to leave a visible indication the next turn (either described in text or shown in the artwork, either here or back in D5) so using that debuff to coordinate the attack in this situation would seem require some amount of mystical senses or omniscience.
I remember something being said about Guards concentrating their attacks on the “least armored opponent” (apparently on Discord or a dungeon debrief), see https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-18/#comment-15375 but looking at Armor alone Lara has the heaviest armor of the group (Chain) while Ricki only has Hide and Wolf and Cordy are unarmored. Counting the visible shields, helmets, heavy gauntlets and heavy greaves (without knowing what their special powers are) makes Cordy the least armored character present in this fight: Ricki = 2+3=5, Wolf = 2+1+1=4, Lara = 3+1=4, Cordy = 2, even if you included the -1 Def from the Siegesword Lara would still have 3 visible Def from Armor and protective Items and Cordy would be lower at 2 Def from visible armor and worn items. If the Guards could somehow ‘sense’ the -2 Def penalty Lara got on a Turn where they could not see, then Lara would clearly be a better target than Cordy.
Maybe it was just a tossup between them all attacking Lara or Cordy and Lara got unlucky. Maybe if Cordy had unequipped their helmet or if Lara had unequipped her Siegesword (and maybe equipped that Tower shield she didn’t pick up) then Cordy would have drawn all the Guard attacks on Turn 8 instead of Lara.
Oh well, that’s enough analysis and speculation for now. I don’t think it is particularly popular in the Comments.
[edit: I fixed the math to include Lara’s helmet. On the bright side, I guess we now know that all those Wanted Posters of Ricki in every room do not result in the Guards in this dungeon automatically always all targeting Ricki, which is a good thing to know! Perhaps that Wanted Poster really doesn’t look that much like her after all?]
re: #4, I’m fairly sure we’ve long known that intelligent enemies can target intelligently, unlike (most) “dumb” monsters.
That the guards went for Lara *specifically* is probably luck, though it could be because she was the one who attacked the Justiciar last turn, or because the skeletons were already attacking her and she was thus obviously the best target, but I think it’s not at all unexpected that the patrol would gang up on *somebody*.
RE: 3) …it’s just a ladder, which even Golly can traverse with no issues.
Either Golly the Pack Mule is very surefooted and can climb ladders or maybe the character who has Golly as a pet just puts the Pack Mule in their “Horse Pocket”, search on YouTube for “horse pocket” for the fun comedy sketch by Viva La Dirt League about how silly video game logic can be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvEe3Y3B2cg
I agree there’s no sense complaining now but we probably should discuss what exactly went wrong, what assumptions we made that turned out to be incorrect, and how a fight in this room could have been won without casualties.
We certainly could have guessed before the combat started that the Justicar might have used his debuff on Lara. We’d seen the Justicar use that debuff back on D5T29 and that Justicar started with that debuff on Kamau rather than using their ranged yellow (Holy) beam attack or a melee attack. For a while now I’ve been raising the possibility of using Lara’s Web Binding debuff to an enemy’s Atk to prevent 3 damage to a character involved in a melee and people have been gracious enough to take the time to explain that we don’t know the order that the debuff would work in compared to the combat for the turn until we try it; I think the Justicar likely just painfully demonstrated that tactic does work.
I’ve also asked what we knew about the Guard targeting. We’ve discussed the Guard targeting AI and whether the Guards have a predictable AI or if they are just played intelligently by the GM. One advantage the Guards (Elites, Justicars, etc.) seem to have over the players is that they not only fight intelligently, they seem to fight like they know how the rules work better than we do. We may need to acknowledge that handicap.
In addition to making sure that the Justicar went down in one Turn, I think this result also could possibly have been avoided by attacking the Elite and 2 unarmed normal Guards first, because according to the description of the STAFF OF TURNING it does not give the user the ability to command skeletons (just pacify them) and those skeletons were facing away from the ladder and thus probably wouldn’t have activated at all if we had not messed with them or the Justicar hiding on the far side of them. We may have messed up by bringing those skeletons into the fight when it wasn’t actually necessary. If we’d gone for the Elite and two normal Guards first the Justicar might have done a “!” as we passed by on the ladder but I don’t think he could have used his ranged attack on Turn 7 and once we were fighting the Elite on the floor below we’d be out of the Justicar’s line of sight for his ranged attacks and could have finished off the Elite and two Guard before messing with the Justicar and his wall of skeletons. If the Justicar had come to back up the Elite and two Guards I don’t think the skeletons would have come with him.
I look forward to seeing some other analysis and speculation from the more experienced players. I see it has already started while I was typing this.
I think more players would be better. Recommend this game to friends!
Always good to have many people watching for mistakes and point them out before its too late. Like, I don’t think you were there when the fight start plan was decided and I wasn’t there too.
I only know very people who seems to play every turn and we cant expect anyone to think of everything everytime by themselves no matter how experienced.
Sadly, based on my experiences in I12 and so far in D13 I wouldn’t currently recommend this game to my friends, especially if I want to keep them as friends. IMHO, it is just too late to start playing now and be effective. Anyone attempting to start now has missed too much that cannot be recovered even by reading the Archive, and joining the Discord group seems to be a near necessity for those who want to understand things. Things have become very complex compared to the first few ‘learning’ dungeons and there’s now a long history of past decisions and house rules that are not written down, beginner-friendly, or even intuitive. I can also think of one or two people who, if they had been playing, would probably write an insult and profanity laden Comment to the GM about some decisions such as the one here about 2 Guards and an Elite Guard just forcing their way up a ladder defended by 2 characters; I assume you’d rather not have those sort of players.
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I’ll put the following quote on an old turn (since we’re now on Turn 9) so that it gets less immediate notice and hate, but the turn where Lara died seems like an apropos place for it:
“Dungeon Eyes is half webcomic, half RPG, half video game, and half board game (with no written rulebook provided to the players). Nobody but the DM/GM/storyteller/author is sure which half is which. The genre varies from lightheartedly whimsical pun-filled comedy to dark and deadly serious with character addiction, corruption, body horror, and even unexpected death as possible themes. Reader or player discretion is advised.” –Archanalach
I do not blame anyone for Lara’s death.
I blame Cordy because he was unable to help thin the numbers with his weak def and attacks. His ability to generate gold through labor blinds us of our real priorities which should be survival and dungeon completion.
Ok, now that my short rant is over I’m ok. We’re going to have to be especially careful moving forward since there are no second chances now and we’ve been set back since we need to spend turns rezzing lara
I hope we actually can resurrect her. I remember something about “reviving directly next turn after death”, which would prevent it if we take more turn to do so (*), but I don’t see that text in Amad’s skills, so maybe my memory made it up. I hope so. I’m just worried because the DM took the effort to remove Lara both from CurrentParty and also from main Characters page.. I hope that’s just to get the adrenaline flowing. If I remember this “only turn after” wrong, then by the text of that ability, we could let Lara lie there indefinitely and raise her back one turn before finshing the dungeon. Not that I suggest doing that. But it sounds … sketchy? To be able to hold it off that long…
My memory also made up the same thing, what a coincidence. Maybe LSN decided not to actually have a character be such a painful nonbo with his own other half
I think “the next turn” comment was in regards to if Ricki goes down. That amad would do/move as much as he could to Rez her
There is no time limit on Amad’s revive. I think youre thinking of reviving our rat with cheese?
Yeah, I probably mixed up things with that
“Requiem of Resurrection ♪: Revives a dead ally in the same room with 1 HP. Counts as three ♪ uses. Used automatically if Ricki dies, if possible.”
There is nothing in the description of Requiem of Resurrection about needing to use it the next turn after death. The GM left the body of the dead potential new character in the room back in the Guard Outpost on D11T34 and everybody has been assuming we could have revived him if we’d had Amadeusz there in D11. One of the reasons we brought the much hated Sketchy Amadeusz to this dungeon was so that we could potentially avoid a repeat of that scenario and resurrect the potential new character in this dungeon if they got killed.
I assume that even though Lara has been removed from the characters list, Lara’s body will be on the floor of this room and will remain there until we leave the dungeon.
If anyone wants to see what Lara’s stats and abilities were, there is a copy of them as of when we entered this dungeon posted in the Comments under I12P19, see https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-19/#comment-15410
Which character could we have brought in place of Cordy that would have given us a better result? Would Lohk, Macadamia, Coccyx or Botanya been better on Turns 7 & 8 than Cordy was? Other than bringing Kamau in place of Cordy, what would have been better?
Given how much area affect damage we’ve already seen from the Magicrows and Winter Wolf, it seems to me that if we had Kamau with us he’d be at risk of leaving due to Remorse if we made a mistake or two.
I’m new to the gameplay side of DE as of midway through The Poisoned Well (dungeon #12) when Lara almost got killed, but I saw plenty of discussion about Cordy’s limitations during the intermission such as a “slow burn” when played without starting pets. The GM chose to give us Cordy for this dungeon (based on a lengthy lack of agreement back on I12P14) but we chose to only start them with one medium mushroom pet so we could ‘farm’ for extra labor, to not bring the Rotfang Hood in order to have more inventory space for loot, and we chose to rush into this potentially risky fight rather than having Cordy ‘farm’ bats for mushroom pets in the first two rooms (perhaps while others gathered info or picked the lock on the door above the Death Owlbear). What’s done is done but it is up to us if we learn anything from it.
HOLY SHIT. I am SO happy we have Amad.
Cordy: Keep new mushie. Spore Touch a guard for a mushie
All mushies: Attack Cordy’s guard. Any dead explode to replace yourself.
Ricki: Drop oven mits for Lara among her dropped gear. KIll a skellie.
Amad: Shapeshift
We want to revive Lara ASAP so she starts getting turns again. She can grab her dropped gear back on her first action and LSN has confirmed theres no spawn killing on discord before.
Idea for next turn:
Cordy spore touch again last guard for another mushie while Ricki finish last skeleton
Amad revive Lara
Lara grab her gear back?
Why the rush for Amadeusz to switch? Lets finish this encounter first so Lara doesnt die again during it.
Reviving her a turn earlier is like getting a free extra action. The longer we need to stay, the more dangerous dungeons become so we dont wanna waste actions.
I already gave my reasoning why she wont die again.
Also, we cant finish this fight until next turn anyway.
Reviving her too soon, before we are sure enemies are gone, allows enemies to kill her again, and this time for real.
I’m going to have to agree with que, not because I’ve done the math or anything but just because I’m tired of trying to squeeze the most actions out of every single turn and the most effect out of every single action (even if it gets a character injured or killed). Rushing to get the most effect out of every possible action seems to be what gets us in trouble. Besides, Turn 10 is when the wisps are supposed to spawn and we don’t know how that works yet.
If we ARE going to revive Lara immediately I highly recommend dropping the Tower Shield that is on Molly beside her so that she can have an impressive Def if she needs it when she’s at 1 HP.
Holy mother of FOCUS FIRE how did that happen.
HOW THE FUCK DID THIS HAPPEN!?