Lara finished a dungeon! She can gain one new ability from this list:
Antivenom I: Once per dungeon can restore 2 HP to a nearby living creature that was damaged by poison on the current or previous turn.
Cloth Proficiency: +1 Def when wearing armour with no base Def bonus, or when wearing no armour.
Drider Bite I: Deal +2 poison damage when attacking unarmed.
Drink Poison I: Once per dungeon can consume carried venom to recover HP equal to its damage.
Frenzy I: Can make an attack at +1 Atk, but target is chosen randomly between those in the area.
It Can’t Get Any Worse: Once per dungeon can sacrifice 5 HP to use a 
ability.
My Pretties: When an owned pet deals poison damage it deals +1 poison damage.
Poison Use: Can use venom when attacking.
Spider Sense: +1 Atk and Def against spiders.
Venomous Sting II: Makes a ranged attack that deals 2-3 poison damage.
It Cant get any worse:
That’s a use of Web walls, Tame spider or a 10 dmg Poison ranged attack option. Since we use Kamau a lot, we’ll have a lot of spare HP on side characters so this is quite manageable.
She still has Make it Count. That’s an extra 2 Atk for the rest of the dungeon after one of those powerful effects. -5HP/+2ATK is almost worth considering for level up on its own.
Also, from max 13 HP, that puts her at 8.
Drider Bite could eventually get somewhere for a no-equipment build, but Lara still has the second-largest inventory and weapons are light. Frenzy is promising as that’s a damage boost with no downside against identical groups when alone, but risk of hitting friendly targets makes it a lot more limited than it first sounds.
I’m not convinced frenzy can hit friendly characters. It says the target is chosen randomly from those in the area, but we generally aren’t allowed to target friendly characters.
LSN confirmed it can target allies.notnsure about non attacking pets though
its funny bc frenzy unlocks the opportunity to see the Worst Ending where Lara accidentally kills Ricki
re: “Also, from max 13 HP, that puts her at 8”
Do you think it’s permanent, or permanent-per-dungeon-and-reset-afterwards? The way I understand “sacrifice”, it’d be just def-bypassing unblockable damage. I don’t think it lowers the max-hp and prevents healing.
I don’t think so either.
Agreed, this just pays HP and could be healed.
I was more calling attention to another 8 on the spider girl.
Why not “drink poison to heal”?There’s not a lot of self-healing abilities across our squad.
It does require actually having poison to drink, though, and is just once per dungeon. I can’t help wondering, though: in the last dungeon, could she have had a drink of the poisoned water to heal?
Maybe?I still think ICGAW is a better Ability,but self-healing is a necessity without Lohk,Botanya or Ricki using their abilities.
I was going to suggest Venomous Sting II,because it’s “Boring but Practical”.
Does the self-damage trigger Kamau’s Remorse,though?
Self damage doesn’t count, starting with Lara’s cigarettes and including Cordy’s Spore Touch. Permanent enchantments are also okay to sacrifice HP, though for our enchantments either Kamau wasn’t there (Shocking) or we used Kamau anyway as he has tons of HP (Venomous).
I was aware of THOSE,I just wasn’t 100% sure if the courtesy would extend to ICGAW.I saw enough D&D posts to understand “Exact Words”.
Valid concern, but the words are the same: “sacrifice 5 HP” for ICGAW, “sacrifice 3 HP” for Fungus Among Us and “sacrifice 1 HP” for Spore Touch.
Yea,I get it now.Chances are Feenzy I will definetly trigger Resorse,I don’t know why that’d be an option,& where it’d be useful.
Frenzy would trigger remorse if she hit an ally, yeah. Also might kill that ally, since Lara already hits like a truck and sometimes we bring squishier allies along.
The use case would be when Lara is fighting alone. Which she could viably do, given how BS strong she is. But probably not worth choosing Frenzy regardless.
Wow, it looks like for once everyone agrees on something… after the Poisoned Well, It Can’t Get Any Worse! for Lara.
I guess that Lara needs a souvenir T-shirt that reads, “I just barely survived the Poisoned Well, It Can’t Get Any Worse!”
Can Ricki get a matching one for being stun-locked?Identical shitst is something couples do all the time.
Now that the Poisoned Well has been dealt with a new dungeon erupts — the Active Volcano!
Explore steam vents filled with hot toxic fumes to find a lake of boiling poisonous water and then on to lava tubes half-filled with molten magma in search of the fabled mythical lake of molten gold… all before the volcano erupts and buries the nearby town of Wontpay with seating ash and flowing lava.
Hey where is everyone else going…
Wow,almost all of these are complete shit.When were we ever in a position where we had “armor” with +0 DEF???How is that an option?
Robes. For this Dungeon Lara was using Poison Dragon Robes for +1 poison damage, +0 Def, and +3 Def vs poison.
It’s a much better ability on Lohk who has 4 usable equipment slots and may not be able to fit armour at all.
Fair,but I feel like she only too the purple robes out of necessity.She switched to the Crab Platemail as soon as it dropped.
And hey,just because I singled THAT ability in particular doesn’t mean I like Drider Bite or Frenzy more!How often is 2 poison damage going to be better than just swinging the Poisonous Siegesword?Why have a move with a % of friendly-fire?
I think most of us agree that Lara’s upgrade tree is the most lackluster. Every other character it’s “Sneaky would be really useful, but I want the extra damage of Backstab! Or maybe the safety of Dodgy?” Lara it’s “Well, we could get a once per dungeon highly conditional heal… The ability to use a resource (poison glands) that we don’t even get every dungeon… Or a bonus only when not wearing good armor…”
Honestly “It Can’t Get Any Worse” makes this upgrade pool less disappointing than most of the ones Lara has gotten in the past. Otherwise we’d just be upgrading her Venomous Sting a little probably.
That’s the exact reason why I said MOST of her abilities seem shit.We needed the Poison Dragontamer Robes now due to the nasty water,but any other time she’d be wearing something with a bigger DEF stat.Lohk atleast has the excuse of “Robes are the only thing I can wear due to having a measly 5 ENC”….
Frenzy also sucks,because Lara deals so much damage that the +1ATK isn’t useful if there’s a chance of friendly fire.Drider Bite for the same reason,because Siegesword is enchanted with Venomous.This is near-unanimous.
It’s funny how her skill tree says “support party member mage” but with the Siegesword & armor,she’s the 2nd best tank next to Kamau.
There’s a respectable chance LSN made the upgrade tree a while ago, and decided not to modify it based on how we’ve happened to build Lara. We easily could have missed out on the Venomous scroll, or taken Cloth Use earlier and therefore given the armor to someone else.
It can’t get any worse but without the part that lets us use a ️ability. Just once per dungeon sacrifice 5 hp.
Funnily enough,I was going to snark that it’d be simpler if she just hits herself,or if maybe YOU could have that ability IRL…But there ARE some class archetypes that get boosted stats for losing HP.Just a month ago I saw a guy playing Payday 2 throw a molotov at his feet to get a movement speed boost.So by great chance,you aren’t stupid right now.
My man, he clearly isn’t stupid. His posts very frequently show that he knows what is a good decision. He just enjoys posting in a silly manner.
So do I,my ones just involve more snark (blame Machinima/Happy Hour for teaching me that).