Ricki finished a dungeon! She can gain one new ability from this list:
Ambush I: +1 Atk when attacking a target that hasn’t interacted with a character previously.
Backstab I: +1 Atk when attacking a target an ally is also attacking.
Big Haul I: +2 Enc.
Case: As an action can identify all items an enemy in the same room carries, even if some items are not visible. Once per dungeon can identify contents of a nearby chest without opening it.
Comforting Weight: +1 Def for each full stack of Gold Coins carried.
Crossbow Proficiency: +1 damage when wielding a crossbow or similar weapon.
Dagger Proficiency: +1 Atk when wielding a dagger or similar weapon.
Dash: +1 Mov.
Dodgy I: Incoming attacks have a 10% chance to miss.
Improvisation: Can use any type of dagger in place of Thieves’ Tools. Daggers always break when used this way.
Light Armour Proficiency: +1 Def when wearing armour with a base Def bonus of +2 or less.
Sneaky I: Once per dungeon can become undetectable by enemies until end of turn. Can’t be carrying any item of weight 3 or higher while sneaking.
Steal I: Once per dungeon in place of attacking, can try to take one item from an enemy. An item that is carried but not wielded or worn has a 100% chance to be taken successfully. An item that is held or worn has only a 50% chance to be taken successfully. Items have a -10% chance to be taken for each point of weight heavier than 1.
Trap Detection II: Can spot well hidden traps and point them out to allies.
Trap Disarming: Can expend Thieves’ Tools to render traps harmless, even if they can’t normally be circumvented.
Lots of options here that would have been good this dungeon (though not better, we made absolute bank with that second use of thieves’ tools by unlocking the chest and the ball and chain). With that in mind, I’m going to suggest Dagger Prof or Big Haul. Either would have had a major impact on how Dungeon 2 went, mainly in speed, but also what options we took.
We didn’t get a crossbow so we can’t make use of that, and Improv is good but we only found a single extra dagger this dungeon. We’d want a second armor before getting Light Armor Prof, and we’d want to stop being malnourished before that. Dash would have been useful but only for the last part of the dungeon.
Eh, we had a long span of time where Ricki had the Rusty Longsword and we didn’t bother using it in place of a dagger. That said, we held back in hopes of using the Rusty Longsword while Ricki was solo, and the extra point of damage each round would have given us back multiple turns from taking out drunks in a single turn.
Big Haul I would really have come in handy. It has my vote this time.
Trap Detection II, Sneaky I, Big Haul I, or Dagger Proficiency
Ambush I: +1 Atk when attacking a target that hasn’t interacted with a character previously.
-> would have been super useful for killing e.g. the dire rats in dungeon 2 (either of the ones by the rusty greatsword, the one in the key room, the ones near the cheez barrel), with a weapon of 2 attack value, even insta-killing a dire rat would have been possible.
Backstab I: +1 Atk when attacking a target an ally is also attacking.
-> we still need to find out if “interpose” from Kamau counts as “attacking” for this skill. It does for (not being able to) leaving the room afterwards, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it does for backstabbing, too.
Big Haul I: +2 Enc.
-> would be super useful PERIOD. Having to fiddle around with the inventory between Kamau and her is super tedious. Plus being able to carry more loot is always good!
Case: As an action can identify all items an enemy in the same room carries, even if some items are not visible. Once per dungeon can identify contents of a nearby chest without opening it.
-> would have been super useful to e.g. check what was in the blue chest in dungeon 2 and what the rogues were carrying (apart from the visible equipment).
Comforting Weight: +1 Def for each full stack of Gold Coins carried.
-> Ricki should have more Def already (no longer malnourished), but either this or light armour proficiency should make her much more durable (and keep Kamau from remose-ing). We still have to find out how much gold goes into a full stack, though and since we might not get a full stack now (9 rat tails in inventory), it might not help us in the next dungeon at all.
Crossbow Proficiency: +1 damage when wielding a crossbow or similar weapon.
-> would love that in combo with the crossbow from one of the rogues, but alas, we didn’t get it. =(
Dagger Proficiency: +1 Atk when wielding a dagger or similar weapon.
-> yes, more attack means less turns spent fighting.
Dash: +1 Mov.
-> would have been super useful in dungeon 2 to e.g. get back to the tap quicker and get more ale.
Dodgy I: Incoming attacks have a 10% chance to miss.
-> YES, missed attacks don’t cause damage/remorse.
Improvisation: Can use any type of dagger in place of Thieves’ Tools. Daggers always break when used this way.
-> apparently daggers are fairly common (the rogues had one more and in the jail we could have gotten one more from the cell with the two dead inmates). We should get this sooner or later (and in combo with trap disarming). We already have 2 daggers handy, that means with the “always prepared” we would be able to unlock (at LEAST, depending on the dice rolls with the tools) three locks in the next dungeon, if we pick this (and she could keep on fighting with a torch or something, once the last dagger is spent).
Light Armour Proficiency: +1 Def when wearing armour with a base Def bonus of +2 or less.
-> YES, make Ricki more tank-y with the one item we have atm that won’t break!
Sneaky I: Once per dungeon can become undetectable by enemies until end of turn. Can’t be carrying any item of weight 3 or higher while sneaking.
-> would have been very useful in dungeon 2 (e.g. sneak Ricki past the skelly family to throw the switch without needing Kamau, or sneak past the rogues to the chest and back with the loot, but that would proabably have taken 2 turns since that was a locked chest and also we didn’t have anything to pick that lock), but once a dungeon is still a drag.
Steal I: Once per dungeon in place of attacking, can try to take one item from an enemy. An item that is carried but not wielded or worn has a 100% chance to be taken successfully. An item that is held or worn has only a 50% chance to be taken successfully. Items have a -10% chance to be taken for each point of weight heavier than 1.
-> would have been very useful in dungeon 2 (e.g. steal the crossbow from the rogue. But then again, with how Ricki rolls dice, that probably wouldn’t have ended well). Also once per dungeon.
Trap Detection II: Can spot well hidden traps and point them out to allies.
-> we should get this sooner or later.
Trap Disarming: Can expend Thieves’ Tools to render traps harmless, even if they can’t normally be circumvented.
-> we should get this sooner or later, especially in combo with improvisation.
In summary, I think we should invest into something combat oriented in order to deal with enemies more efficiently.
Since we don’t know yet, if the tavern keep will keep (pun intended?) his word and feed Ricki and Kamau, seeing how they clearly are injured and the guard that went down into the cellar didn’t return (yet?), it’s not guaranteed that she will finally be able to get rid of that “malnourished” status. So I vote we make the ONE item she can’t break (the leather armour) more useful, by picking “light armour proficiency“. If there’s no food after all, she’ll still be at 2 Def with it, and if she gets food she’ll have 3 Def and be on par with Kamau.
If Ricki is able to help Kamau in fights, without having to worry about remorse, we should be done (a little) quicker.
The skills big haul, dagger proficiency, improvisation and dodgy would also be very good choices.
Hrm, I wonder if picking “dagger proficiency” might unlock another (advanced) skill that would allow us to have Ricki dual-wield daggers efficiently. It’s a common concept in games/D20 systems to gate higher/better/more advanced skills behind more basic ones.
However, we wouldn’t find that out until the next dungeon is successfully completed, after picking “dagger proficiency”.
And after checking out Kamau’s skill options, apparently “heavy armour proficiency” is NOT gated behind/an improvement of “light armour proficiency”, so that specific idea/theory/assumption (I voiced it at the end of dungeon 1, iirc) was wrong. However that doesn’t mean it could not be true for other skills.
The problem with Dodgy is that it’s a low chance, and it’ll only come up if we send Ricki into unsafe fights to begin with.
I will note that Dash is deceptively useful – the best part about 2 moves is that you can step into an adjacent explored room and then immediately step back, giving us Dungeon Eyes on more of the dungeon. This even works with combat, as you can leave, return, and then attack. More mobility also makes it less costly to skip sections as we can backtrack with less trouble. That said, I think we can do better than Dash right now.
Light Armor Proficiency is very good, more so now that it’s implied that armor typically weighs 1 per point of defense, and there’s several cues that Ricki doesn’t want to carry around items weighing 3 or more (like Sneaky, and also having only 5 Encumbrance). Ricki can’t afford to spend HP like Kamau can. Of course, while we only have one suit of armor it’s also desirable to set up Kamau as a tank which makes Ricki’s defense irrelevant. That also becomes far less necessary when Ricki can take a hit.
I think Defense is much more valuable than Attack. More Attack can make fights possible or fast, but Defense makes fights safe. Still, we went too long on this one, safely taking our time saves HP but we get our HP back at the end of the dungeon as long as we survive.
My vote goes for “Light Armour Proficiency”. We already know that defense is VERY important, not only for simple surviving fights, but also to ignoring them, thus acting faster when in race against time, and — it just opens more options (think Kamau tanking against the snales while Ricky acts, etc).
I say light armor prof. Ricki can actually join Kamau in a fight and help take down enemies faster. Although encumbrance up would be nice too. We already have a open lock upgrade so I say no to the daggers in place of lockpicks
In general, +1 Def is way more impactful than +1 Atk. Every point of defense is a huge difference in the challenges you can safely take on.
Big Haul I. More inventory space is extremely flexible.
Backstab if interposing counts as attacking. Dash or Improvisation if it doesn’t.
I feel like Trap Detection II is going to sooner, rather than later, be likely to save either Ricki or a companion’s life. So that has my vote.
I wasn’t sure how to evaluate this one since we obviously won’t know what well-hidden traps exist until we trip one. However, in LSN’s stream talking about the hidden secrets for this dungeon, he mentioned that a couple of chests were trapped and there’s no way to tell because we don’t have this ability.
Even so, I still think raising base stats is still worthwhile right now.
Can we PLEASE take Sneaky this time? We could have used it quite well this dungeon if we had it before.
When? We were in there for 53 turns and could’ve only used it once. To be fair, we only reused lock picks once, getting armor that didn’t change anything until Ricki broke it and a consumable magic lens.
Re-reading, it does sound like Sneaky isn’t an action so we could do something else on the same turn, which helps. The other problem with only having this power for one turn is that this can get you past trouble but with no way to get back. We could’ve snuck past the king rat and gone right to the treasure room, but then we need to run past on the way out, so what’s stopping us from running past on the way in? What if we need to do two things in a guarded place, like getting keys and closing a valve?
Trap Disarming. Let’s go thieves’ tools route.
Light Armour Proficiency: There were a lot of areas that Ricki could reach on dungeon 2 that Kamau could not. If Ricki has to go it alone, more defense prevents Kamau from gaining Remorse and leaving the dungeon.
Exactly. I tried to say the same, but you worded it so much better.
It’d go for Steal I. The greater enemies we face the better loot we can get!
Also Imagine Sneak + Steal, could rob even otherwise impossible enemies.
“Steal” sounds fun, but it could work only to (a) disarm enemy (b) steal keys (c) steal suport items like healing potions. But that’s doesn’t sound like making much difference or profit, to make it 50%-chance or “once per dungeon” (yeah, I noticed it’s steal-1, so it has higher levels). I mean, not at this early point.. Maybe higher levels of ‘steal’ would be so much better, don’t know that. But for sure it could be a great profit-making skill if it goes with “Case”, with which we can slowly but steadily inspect every single target in the dungeon (remember: Ricky and Dungeon Eyes and “anyone in the same room”). This however means, that we need to invest 2 level ups for that. Actually, IF we even go for Stealing now, then I’d vote for taking Case first instead, as it allows us to inspect and plan ahead. I still think that amour proficiency is more important.
Also, I just noticed that armour proficiency says “BASE def”, that means, any makeshift improvements, enchantments, etc, doesn’t prevent it. Nice.
The problem that I have with Steal I is that there are dice involved if the item is worn.
And the DICE have NOT been friendly to our poor thief.
The dice will only come into play if we have Ricki try to steal equipped items and/or items that have a weight of 2 or more (which in turn might give us inventory problems to stash the loot away on Ricki’s body). If we have her try to steal stuff that is carried but not equipped, the success is automatically a given (100% – at least for items that have a weight of 1).
However, I very much suspect that the most interesting items for Ricki to steal will be the ones equipped by enemies (and/or ones that need more than 1 inventory slot), so your point remains valid.