Dungeon 12 Turn 46
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Cordy unties the bucket from the rope, then dips it under the surface of the water so it fills. It starts to sink to the bottom of the well. Cordy then heads to the room on the right.
Ricki swims down (consuming a clump of oxymoss) and takes out the final skull crab. This causes two pieces of raw meat to drop, which Amadeusz picks up after mending himself for another 1 HP.
Lara heads to the right with violence on her mind.
The bucket lands on the bottom of the well.
Lara attempts to approach the giant crab tactically, but it shows unexpected agility and snatches her right out of the water. With her gear and her huge Def buff due to the poison, she takes no damage. However when she hits the crab with her siegesword, it takes only modest damage in turn. It’s tough!
Lara tries to back away to reassess, but the crab holds on tight! She can feel it beginning to crush her with its powerful claw! Fortunately her helmet still has a little air left for her, since there’s no way she can swim up to take a breath like this…
Crab Grab attack confirmed. Glad we sent Lara first
Ricki: Move right. swim far over skulls and loot a chest. Drop the oxymoss to make space. Hop back in the water afterwards but stay by the surface.
Amad: Move Right. Swim far over skulls and attack crab
Lara: Attack Crab
Cordy: move down. Loot a coin
Lara was able to do some damage by herself so adding Amad should finish it (hopefully).
Killing the Boss will either end the dungeon (which is fine by me, I’m sick of this place) or we’ll still have to clear the left side. If dungeon doesn’t end then we can loot some more while we clear left side.
Ricki is not joining the fight since she’d be at 3 def and 4 hp after moving into the room and that crab has a second claw…
She’s dropping the moss since we dont really need it after this fight.
We’re running a little short on turns since we need to finish this before the upper sources respawn on T50
>We’re running a little short on turns since we need to finish this before the upper sources respawn on T50
I THINK we can just have have Lara double move to the left, crawl along on the ceiling (to avoid frogs) and attack the last source in the water if we manage to kill the crab within a few turns. I think she’ll take 2 unblockable damage from that though (one from blowfish, one from the source exploding) but I don’t think she’ll take any damage actually getting to that point.
I’m mostly worried about the skulls in the boss room at this point; someone taking unblockable damage could spell disaster. On the bright side, I think the skulls directly in front of the boss are safe, or else they would have probably attacked Lara with the boss. Speaking of…
The description of the boss crab’s attack seems like it could cause unblockable/stacking damage to Lara next turn since she can ‘feel it starting to crush her’ so if we think we can have Ricki attack it safely, it might be better to do that instead of looting a chest. Maybe have Amadeusz go in and attack first so he’ll get grabbed first, then have Ricki come in behind him? If the boss dies from the combination attack of Lara/Amadeusz/Ricki, then when Lara goes to pop the last source Ricki and Amadeusz can loot the two chests in the boss room.
I don’t think it’s worth trying to loot a bucket of poison at this point; I don’t think it’ll be very valuable or do a lot of damage. If we end up spending an extra turn in the dungeon to heal or something, then maybe we can pick it up, but I don’t think it’s worth worrying about when the boss is still alive and we’re this close to victory.
We cant have Amad engage first and ricki followup in the same turn. All actions happen at the same time so Ricki could still be a target. We’d need an ability like interpose for that.
If dungeon doesn’t end on boss death, we’ll need 2 people on the left side to clear before t50. One to distract frogs, the other to clear source.
Odds are good that those frogs will pull anyone moving across the ceiling/surface down into the water with them.
Hmm; well, even if we can’t specify that Amadeusz attacks first, I think logically the frog would go after him anyways. Assuming that it attacks reactively/instinctively like it did with Lara, Amadeusz probably looks like the bigger threat. In theory, it should also see Amadeusz first anyways since he’s ahead of Ricki in the last image of this update, but that might not matter. It’s also assuming that it can attack/grapple two different targets at the same time, which IIRC isn’t something we’ve seen before- but is still a reasonable assumption to make since this boss doesn’t seem to have any gimmicks otherwise.
My concern is that Lara could start taking unblockable (or at least increasing) damage from the crab due to the description of its attack. (“She can feel it beginning to crush her with its powerful claw!”) We need her to have at least 3 HP to safely deal with the last source of poison to the left of our current position since she needs to tank both the poison and the pufferfish, both of which deal deal 1 unblockable damage. She could theoretically eat raw meat to boost her HP, but I don’t think we’ve tested if she counts as a ‘meat eater’ post transformation yet. Logically she probably should, though.
I personally don’t think we need to worry about Lara getting attacked by the frogs; she should be well out of range of their tongue attack on the ceiling, if they can even detect her at the bottom of their pool. It feels more like they’re there to prevent swimming across easily, not wall-crawling.
But there are quite a few unknown variables at play here, so I guess the only thing we can hope for is minimizing risk.
Depending on how the next few turns go we could end up losing Lara, and possibly the whole dungeon as a result. Having Ricki attack the boss feels like a reasonable risk, to me, with that in mind and given our current circumstances.
Ultimately, I think we still have a couple of turns to burn, so our main concern should be minimizing HP damage if possible instead of rushing for loot. Having Ricki attack could save us from potential HP damage…
…but it could also end the whole comic if the crab gets through her defense and deals enough damage to kill her. But she also has a 40% chance to negate all damage.
So I think it’s going to be a hard decision either way, but I just wanted to share my thoughts.
I’d like to add that the crab probably isn’t intelligent enough to target “a threat,” as it is an animal, its targeting is most likely to be rolled randomly.
Ricki: Go right, attack crab boss.
Lara: Attack crab boss.
Amadeusz: Go right, attack crab boss.
Cordy: Go down, grab a coin, come up for air so you don’t drown.
Same as Claudious’s plan, only with Ricki attacking too to try and ensure the boss goes down and with the added detail of Cordy coming up for air if necessary. Risky for multiple reasons, but IMO it might be worth it depending on how our unknown variables shake out. More details under Claudious’s original plan.
EDIT, per Kat’s suggestion: When Ricki and Amadeusz move right, they should swim over the skull pile like Lara did before attacking the crab boss. Amadeusz should also try try and aim for the crab’s other claw if possible, while Ricki attacks the main body.
Don’t forget about avoiding the skull piles on the floor.
If you really want to risk Ricki attacking, might as well try having Amadeus attack the free claw while Ricki attack the back. Probably wont help, but who knows?
I don’t think the skull pile in front of the boss matters; if it did, Lara probably would have triggered an attack after attacking the boss/being grabbed by it. That being said, I don’t think it would hurt to mention that. I’m not sure if targeted attacks will work or not, too, but I guess it’s worth a shot.
If crab attacks for 7 on Ricki it’s game over. I don’t care the odds, the reward is not worth the risk
How do we deal with ANOTHER stunlock enemy!?
I would like to point out that Crab has 2 claws and is holding Lara with only 1, and we already have Frog enemy this very dungeon that had grapple attack.
Somehow I doubt that a Boss is just a copy of previous enemy, but with higher stats.
Or the frogs could be foreshadowing, hammering in a point. That this dungeon might be designed to kill us by holding people underwater, efficiently drowning them in poison. We shouldn’t take it lightly.
This is high odds of game over if the boss has another claw available and goes after Ricki. Lara has absurdly high defense — Ricki will have 3 def remaining after ambient poison damage.
This calls for diplomacy. Lara, offer the crab aid in its war against the lobster menace if it lets you go.
Ricki, offer the skeletons non rusted armor if they help you help the crab fight the lobsters.
Cordy: go to the frogs in the room on the left and offer them mushroom snacks if they help the skeletons help you help the crab fight the lobsters.
Amadeusz: GOOD NEWS! Cordy’s former modelling agent has called and wants you to take over from the gig Cordy foolishly ignored. Agree on the terms the photographer will help the frogs help the skeletons help you help the crabs to fight the lobsters.
if I UPvote this in approval it just goes to 0, so should I DOWNvote it for more glory?
You should embarass him.
Ricki: Move right. swim far over skulls and loot oxymoss. Hop back in the water afterwards but stay by the surface.
Amad: Move Right. Swim far over skulls and attack crab while smoking
Lara: Attack Crab
Cordy: move down. Loot a coin
A compromise that does a little more damage than Claudious’ version without Ricki attacking because I’m paranoid about Ricki getting hit. Also Ricki don’t need to drop anything if she loots the moss.
Amy has the Mend Wand & shitloads of DEF.s it efficient for him to drop it for Ricki & go wail on the Gigacrab?Someone should hang back providing heals & looting the 2 chests(plus Amy atleast has his steaks to heal).
Yes, it would have been more efficient to have Ricki be the healer, but at this point it’s not worth switching out. By the by, the shitload of defense is due to the bubble wand bubble, which will pop the first time he’s attacked. So it’s really only defense for one turn.
Still enough to not be one-shotted.
Since when Lara has 1 DEF crossed out? Is it “normal” or can this be the effect of “begins to crush”?
I mean, if crushing incrementally (“begin”) strips off the DEF (“crush”), and with unknown ATK of the crab, when Lara takes her 1st point of damage, next turn it will be 2 points of damage, and so on.
Siegesword
Pheeew. Thanks!