Dungeon 18 Turn 2
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Amadeusz repeats the sneaky magic lens technique, finally learning the exact stats of a vanilla Guard. He ducks back down to the bottom floor after.

Ricki pulls one of the levers in the new room, which seems to remove the steel bars from the door below. It can probably only be opened in this state. Seems she could set it back how it was by pulling the lever again.
Ricki then crawls up through the nearby tunnel.

She finds herself in a small closed-off section of a higher room.
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GUARD
HP: 8
Atk: 1
Def: 1
The Imperial Guard maintains order throughout the empire. They employ a wide variety of arms and armour in doing so. The Guard employs intelligent tactics when fighting, and will pick off weak targets or split attacks depending on what gives them the advantage. However, these low-ranked members are sometimes known to lose their heads if they see something they really don’t like.




Plan: Info
Amad: Open the chest on the bottom floor.
Ricki: Go back through the hole and activate that imperial-looking light switch.
We really need to know what those imperial switches do and see if they’re mandatory to completing the dungeon or not. We can flip the other lever next turn.
Thinking out loud here:
We can safely ignore the first hole as it only leads to the Blood rat King and a treasure chest.
Ricki cant go through last hole until Amad gets closer to the top and flips that lever.
We can feasibly get both the Dam treasure chest and the Owlbear treasure chest at the cost of 2 actions each if we have time with Ricki. If we do unlock the gate, then the owlbear will most likely attack each time we pass by (which may be an issue)
The guards do 3 damage each, so 12 in total in that group. Solar has 7 def and 18hp. Since it’s taking 5 dmg each turn, it should be defeated at the end of turn 4 provided no guards get KO’d before then.
Definitely want to barricade the door once Amad gets through.
Also:
There are two more mousetraps on this level, one right above Ricki and one on the other side of the steel wall. There’s also a pressure plate trap on the very top floor, in front of the Blood Rat King.
Both the hole behind the steel wall and the door behind the final solar guardian go somewhere not shown on the map. There must be another level (hopefully just one!) above the ones we can see so far, and that’s where Ricki and Amad have to meet.
Since Ricki’s not feeling weak, we can assume all the posters on level 3 are for Amad – yikes! Assuming the red ones are -2 (we still don’t know for sure, since the effects still aren’t being shown on the Current Party page), that’s -11 to atk and def, meaning Amad will be completely defenseless and unable to hurt any enemies up there. So we’re completely reliant on guards and chandeliers to clear the final solar guardian for him.
Edit: That means we might not be free to ignore the first hole, actually, since Ricki might need to go up there and drop a chandelier on the third solar guardian.
also:
We saw chandeliers on the very top level of a room, and now we see wingnuts on the very bottom level. I wonder, can we unscrew and count they hit someone in room below we don’t see..
The wingnuts in the owlbear room unscrew the chandeliers in the second solar guardian’s hallway. It’s a little confusing because the bottom picture here is the top floor of the dungeon (so far).
Plan: “help” the guards
Ricki: Go back down through the hole and then down the ladder into Amad’s room. Avoid the pressure plate trap at the bottom of the ladder and unfasten the chandelier over the guards and Solar. End turn at the bottom of the left most ladder (avoid the trap again please).
Amad: Open the chest. End turn in the middle hallway just in case a patrol comes in.
Based on Math, the chandeliers do at least 3 unblockable dmg (since Solar does 9 dmg and it normally takes 12 to one shot these guards). This means that since the guards are doing 5 damage each turn, we can help them finish off the Solar this turn by adding that extra 3 needed to reach 18. This will save us a turn of waiting for Amad since we want the guards to move on to the next Solar asap.
Presumably the chandelier will do some damage to the guards too, and that’s not a bad thing.Edit: It might be a bad thing. I think we do want all four guards to survive this encounter, at least. It will take all four of them three turns to kill the second solar guardian without help from Ricki, and that’s assuming the SG doesn’t one-shot one of them on the first turn. I haven’t done the math for the third SG but I’m sure it’s not any better.
I’m only counting on the guards to take out the first solar. After that, I think they’ll get wiped out by the second one. Ideally, I’d like Amad to just run past that solar or the guards and take out the next one that has a Corona shield we can smif later.
There’s no way he can take out the third solar with 0 atk (due to all the posters). And with 0 def he can only tank one hit from it, so if he’s going to try to run past, we’d better hope the door it’s guarding isn’t barred like the one below.
I wouldn’t be so sure about unblockable damage, “causing the chandelier to drop on the floor below and deal minor damage to all of them”. It does take 12 damage to oneshot a guard with a heavy shield (8 HP 4 Def), but this is damage on the same turn. I’m suspecting 5 regular damage, which is more in line with what traps we’ve seen.
I see, the Solar with a longsword deals 9 damage and also oneshot on this turn. Still, I suspect the “switch” is bolstering the Solar, a persistent +2 to Attack (or +1 to Attack with 6 damage from chandelier) would also check out while keeping “minor damage”.
This means the guards may have a little more life to them (especially since the Solar isn’t smart enough to focus fire), though it won’t matter much if the Solar just hits that hard. The bigger concern is on how much the chandeliers can do in isolation.
sidenote:
I know it’s probably already old news, but as a non-native-english-speaker, it took me so long to notice 😀
“Dungeon Eyes” and “Dungeonize” actually sound very similar 😀 nice word play, LSN!
I suspect the levers by steel walls will move the steel wall to the other side of the floor. This means Amadeusz would be locked away on the third floor when Ricki goes by through the hole (to presumably the fourth floor, which could ensure Ricki sees the top first).
That would also complicate getting the second-floor walled chest, if Ricki needs to flip the lever back to get access to the hole forward again. I think the lever by the second-floor chest would then move the door back so we can’t trap guards in there indefinitely.