Dungeon 2 Turn 52
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Ricki hurries to the right and then through the hole, emerging in the small chamber with the thugs. She’s prepared to reset the lever, but doesn’t have time this turn.
She sees the guard descending the ladder, following Kamau’s path by pure luck or possibly by some malicious sixth sense. His dog follows close behind, navigating the narrow shaft with a series of wall jumps and would be really impressive if not for the circumstances.
Kamau weathers the attacks of the three skeletons as he yanks on the lever. If Ricki’s worked this out right with her supervision, there should be no more cheese contaminating the ale. All that’s left is to turn the ale itself back on.
Kamau also tries to count the dead bodies in this room, but it’s too dark for him to see clearly.
Inform the thugs about the guard in the dungeon and suggest we work together to take them out of commission–not kill, of course, as that would be far too much heat.
I like this, I was against warning the thugs because they would probably kill the guard, but if they believe that it could cause problems later down the line maybe they would not.
…however, the guard is no longer in between them and the exit, so would they actually help?
If they have any doubts maybe telling them the dog could easily sniff them out would change their mood?
Ricki: Flip the lever, warn/negotiate with the thugs, and then go back through the hole
Kamau: RUNx2 towards Ricki, if negotiations are successful, you will face a better chance with 4 than if you exited by yourself now.
The guard+dog can’t chase you immediately after attacking, so you should be able to stay one room ahead of them after this turn. Don’t drink ale because that will cost an action and you won’t be ahead of them.
Ricki: ask the thugs if they would trade the crossbow for the coin. If they agree, do the trade. (Don’t hand over the coin first though, but make a safe exchange.) No matter if they accept this trade or not, flip the switch. (This has priority. If there’s not time to talk to the thugs AND make the trade AND flip the switch, then flip the switch.) Prepare to dig in at the tavern. 😀
Kamau:
Swap clothes with one of the drunk/dead bodies and clip the ball and chain onto the black person’s leg. Wait to be “teleported” out of the dungeon by completion of the main goal.Double move toward the exit (up and up).
As I quoted last turn already, both characters should be “magicked” out of the dungeon as soon as the ale flow is restored. So Ricki should hopefully be good even if the thugs try to get the coin violently from her… (Also, if the thugs had wanted her dead/attack her, they did have plenty of opportunity in the past, so I feel kind of encouraged to hope that they will continue not attacking her.)
Also she doesn’t have to worry about the guard and the dog on her way out.
Even if the guard and dog
catch up with Kamauor hit him while he is passing, he should be able to survive one round of damage from them.…Actually, seeing how he will have his defence value already pulverized by the skeletons, if he stays in this area, he might actually die, if dog and guard pile up on him afterwards. He has to book it!
I wonder if LSN will be kind enough to tell us about all the loot we weren’t able to pick up (e.g. like behind the anthro-rat or in the glass chest), once the dungeon is finished. And what the condition was to open the glass chest.
They had plenty of opportunities and means, but no motive. “I have treasure” gives them a reason to attack rather than just being annoyed at our inviting them to dungeon delve with us.
Just in case we need to fix the rat room lever:
Ricki: After flipping the lever, leave through the tunnel.
I feel similarly apprehensive (hence I wrote that Ricki shouldn’t hand over her good(s) first, only for the thugs to turn on her and say “we’re not going to give you the crossbow, after all”), but I don’t know if 10 gold is a LOT in this world or not. Like, is it “enough” for someone to kill someone else over it, and I know that depends massively on the “someone”, the “someone else” and their respective life situations, morals etc.
However, I think the crossbow would be of much more use to us in any future dungeons than the coin (I daresay it was specifically designed loot for this one and we are unlikely to have “free drinks” in most of them from here on out) and LSNs comment that the “thugs didn’t say no” kind of encourages me to think that they might be reasonable about a trade.
And having a (permanent) ranged combat option (that she doesn’t have to pick up after the fight time and again) would probably make a lot of fights so much more easy, not to mention that I am estimating the crossbow to make more damage than the dagger.
Therefore I’m willing to try it, especially since 53 should be our very final turn in this dungeon and the fallout if things go wrong (if any, they might just tell us that this is not valuable enough and/or that they don’t want the coin) should be very limited. *keeps her fingers crossed*
Fair. Yeah, I’m under the impression that 10 gold is a stack, it’s enough to buy a potion of healing but not quite enough for leather armor. Even a broken wand is worth twice as much. Since we did get the hint that trading is possible, it’s worth a shot.
Unfortunately, crossbows do require ammo, and that was part of the potential trade hint – the thugs may have been bluffing about how many bolts they had left. Agreed that a proper ranged weapon would be nice, especially since Ricki can learn Crossbow Proficiency to contribute a lot of damage at range from safety (as long as something or someone else stops enemies from just walking over and closing the range, like with the wand).
Often in games like this, you only need the ranged weapon, but not the ammo for it as a separate item, because keeping track of ammo can be quite a hassle.
We don’t know if it works like that for our characters (only, so the thugs could run out of ammo, much to our advantage… :D), or for everyone, or if bolts/arrows are a thing that is needed to use a (cross)bow, too. Only way to find out, though, is either to accquire such a weapon, or if LSN spills the beans. ^_^
Furthermore, acquiring (buying) bolts (ammunition) might be easier than acquiring a crossbow (weapon). As long as the crossbow is not a breakable item (…), trade for it – after switching the lever, of course!
How To Play:
> Ranged Weapons: (snip) Many of them require ammunition in order to use, while some are expended upon use.
> Ammunition: Used in conjunction with ranged weapons. Ammunition almost always stacks, allowing a character to carry a lot of it.
Turn 28:
> Ricki can’t help but notice they didn’t actually say no. She wonders how many bolts they even have left with all the dire rats and snails running around down here.
Agreed that bolts should be easier to get than a crossbow, they might even start appearing in chests once we have a weapon using the ammo. We’ll see, priority is getting Kamau not killed by this guard.
thanks for looking that up. I guess we’ll have to deal with ammunition, too, then. Still, that is something we can figure out/worry about when/if we get a ranged weapon. ^^
Some certain eladrin A. comes to mind… (“Huh, I get gold for having them killed? Double nice!”)
Oh, possibly-unnecessary escape thought:
Kamau: Head up the ladder, then up the ladder on the left and wait to see if the guard misses you and heads further down. Extra move up another room if spotted or after the guard passes through.
Ricki could additionally throw the keys into the deal – we will not have the chance to use them in this dungeon, and they will automatically vanish from our inventory when leaving the dungeon. But switching the lever has first priority!
Kamau doesn’t have the Dungeon Eyes to know this, but the valve in the rat room shouldn’t be open like that. She definitely got the lever turn 45… Perhaps the dire rat turned it back under rat king direction? I don’t think this would have a mistake, the text directly mentions Kamau wondering if this was worked out right.
Even if that’s a mistake, we might still need to check at the tap. Kamau can run up two rooms and be in position to go for the tap, though then he’d be at a dead end after passing by the guard.
Assuming we need to send Ricki back in to fix the rat lever, that’s another 3 moves and an action away after leaving the thugs. The skeletons might also be programmed to flip the lever back, for all we know. We would find out when Ricki went for the rat lever, but I don’t think we could fix it at that point.
Since this matters imminently I will confirm that this is an art mistake. Both levers in the bottom right room should be horizontal as of this turn.
Thanks for the confirmation! That’s a downside to running a game where an intended mechanic is noticing little details, mistakes are hard to distinguish from challenges.
I wonder if there’s some way to get the guard to think the two thugs are the two fugitives he wants… desperate bluff if we’re desperate I suppose.
Interesting, but IMHO, usually the search teams know who they look for. I suppose the guard has at least a vague general description like “a kobold in rags and a battle veteran missing one arm” 🙂 OTOH, the dog probably doesn’t follow the scent trail (that would require someone to let it sniff at the source, and it would have to be trained, etc) and just follows the guard as a support, so fooling the dog to run after something else could be actually easier.
Ricki is a goblin, not a kobold.
That’s the joke, the people in charge care that little.
Thus, a halfling passes as one of the fugitives. But he probably does not want to turn himself in to the guard.