Ricki gained the Comforting Weight ability!
Lara gained the My Pretties ability!
Amadeusz gained the Wolf Speed ability!
Amadeusz’ bond level increased!
Ix joined the party!
Mushrooms 46 and 52 grew into Medium Mushrooms!
The Living Room has been built. Storage increases by 5 and new projects can now be built.
The Well has been built. All future Labour receives a bonus.
28 Gold Coins were earned through Labour.
All expended HP and abilities are restored.
Intermission 13 will now begin! (“Now” is a relative term.)
The dungeon 13 wrap-up stream will be this Sunday (September 29)!
Also note that the description of the Salveshell Armour has changed from how it worked this dungeon. I wrote it bad the first time and it didn’t do what I wanted, but I let you finish the dungeon with the busted version.
OOoohh.. not “by 3hp” but “to 3hp”, and the 2hp is the threshold, so we can’t end up at 6hp (has 3, gets +3), and not even at 5 (has 2, gets +3), we end up at exactly at 3hp. Ok. Now that changes a lot.
but… uh.. does it make the character immortal? I mean, if everything less-than-2hp is reset “to 3hp” then not only 2hp,1hp,0hp, but also any amount of overkill damage pushing hp into negatives would do so as well? that seems absolutely OP and kinda game breaking
If you have 0 HP at the end of the turn you’re dead, and dead character can’t heal.
This says it all, thank you!
For convenience:
Original description: from https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-turn-45/
SALVESHELL ARMOUR
Armour
Def +5, Mov -1 (to a minimum of 1). Recover 3 HP at the end of the turn if at 3 HP or less.
Weight 4, Cost 39
New description: from the Items page (right now)
SALVESHELL ARMOUR
Armour
Def +5, Mov -1 (to a minimum of 1). Recover to 3 HP at the end of the turn if at 2 HP or less.
Weight 4, Cost 39
How does someone join this “wrap-up stream”?
Link to his twitch is at the top of the page. He usually streams on Sundays starting at 6:00 PM CST.
You can also find him on twitch. The vod remains for a week or so after if you miss it
Question: We know that only a character with the Dual Wield ability (like Amadeusz) can benefit from two weapons in the same Turn, but what about two shields? Since the Drider Bite is presumably a zero hand weapon (and any character could presumably kick), does that mean that Lara (or any other character, including Amadeusz in bard form but not Amadeusz in werewolf form or Cordy since they cannot use shields nor Kamau who only has one arm) could equip TWO shields in lieu of equipping any weapon?
Update: If equipping two shields is not normally allowed without a special exception due to a character Ability or an Item description then please confirm that Amadeusz’ Dual Wield ability allows him to equip two Parrying Daggers (whatever they do, since they’re available from Paws for 6gc but we don’t have an Item description for them) and gain whatever their defensive benefit is from both of them. Finally, is there any way to get the Item description for a Parrying Dagger other than buying one from Paws or happening to find one in a dungeon?
Update II: I’m also curious if the rank and file normal guards all know the stats of all weapons in the game and know that a Siegesword gives a -1 Def, or that Heavy Greaves/Gauntlets give a +1 Def. Heck, do they all even know what the stats for a Parrying Dagger are and how much Def it gives (if any) and if so then why can’t Kamau tell us what a Parrying Dagger does since he was a rank and file guard before he became an Imperial Champion.
Just an FYI, LSN has answered this before. Like weapons and armor, we can only benefit from one shield at a time unless there’s another feature that says we can.
Thank you for the FYI ‘heads up’ but I’d prefer to see something ‘official’ in writing and have that written answer be available to others. Can you provide a link to where someone could find that information or does it just exist in the minds of those who were there to hear the answer before?
For me, this sort of issue has become a serious problem with trying to interact with DE in a dungeon (and why I gave up at Turn 13 in this dungeon); there seems to be a significant amount of information about how things work that is now ‘tribal knowledge’ that not written down or is inaccessible to new players. It is one thing if someone gives an answer and can provide a link or reference to the Dungeon Turn or Intermission Page or the How To Play page where the information exists, but it is a different thing if the information is just ‘tribal knowledge’ with no written record. I’ve already had the experience of multiple players writing different things about how something worked so I prefer to see an example in a previous Turn or something ‘official’ written down somewhere.
Just an FYI to the FYI a lot of our tribal knowledge is just questions asked and answered on discord. Link’s at the top.
Also, asked your question to clarify “Nearby” rules in the Wrap Up Questions thread in case
theDM/GM/author/storytellerLSN forgets to check here.Just a FYI to your FYI to the FYI…
One of the reasons I’m very reluctant to join the Discord is that nobody is summarizing and copying all of that knowledge on Discord to the Comments here on the website or to a document and posting a link to it in the Comments so that people who aren’t on Discord can know about it, so I’d probably feel obligated to do it.
After the wrap-up stream here’s a FYI to my FYI to the FYI of the FYI…
There is a Google doc that summarizes what the players know from previous turns and experiments that have been done that includes some of the ‘tribal knowledge’ from Discord and the wrap-up streams, it is located at
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H6jWaYKYt5_5SrnDJXSkLry5x5CbretMUpqM1g8dE5g/edit#heading=h.pkedm3nvbg6h
I appreciate the people who contributed to that document, but I don’t really want to spend a ton of time and energy trying to comb through Discord myself and get all the info that is apparently on Discord into that document. I may try to update it with a summary of the information from this wrap-up stream but I’m not planning on trying to keep it up-to-date in the future.
From the wrap-up stream, it was clear that
the DM/GM/author/storytellerLSN had seen a thread on Discord with questions for the wrap-up stream but had forgot to check here (the Comments on the website) and hadn’t read any of the questions here in advance before reading them in real time during the stream.For this particular question about equipping two shields, it could probably be tried fairly easily in a dungeon and that would be an excellent way of documenting the answer in writing such that it is available to others. If I’d continued reading or trying to interact with Dungeon 13 after Turn 13, I probably would have tried to get Lara or Ricki to pick up one of the Heavy Shields lying around and try equipping it when they were in defensive ‘tank’ mode. However, while actually trying to equip items that a character has in their inventory is a free action, it might take up an extremely valuable and precious action to pick up the second shield and from my experience some of the existing players are very reluctant to attempt anything in a dungeon that would require ‘wasting’ a valuable action, especially if they’re certain they already know the answer (even if they cannot point to an example or where it can be found in writing for others to read for themselves).
From whether Ricki’s Case ability can work through walls on chests, to whether a chest can be closed after it has been opened, to whether we could have loaded a Wisp Container onto Golly, to something like this question about two shields, to buying a Parrying Dagger to see what its Item Description is, some of the existing players seem to be uninterested (at best) to resistant (at worst) about experimenting if it will consume even the slightest amount of resources, such as an action or a few gold coins.
As an example of this indifference, there have been 13 Dungeons so far with more than enough opportunities to try equipping two shields and there’s probably been an opportunity to have tried it without ‘wasting’ an action, yet apparently nobody has ever tried it (or at least nobody has yet provided a reference to the Turn where it was tried). Possibly that’s because anyone who cared had already heard the answer on a “wrap-up stream” or on Discord and it was thus already ‘tribal knowledge’ among those who cared.
Perhaps if we don’t get an answer about equipping two shields then we can just try it in the next dungeon. I assume we are fairly likely to use the Upgrade Press on two shields on Turn 1 to produce an Upgraded shield so it would be easy to specify that whoever is using the Upgrade Press tries to equip both shields before unequipping them and putting them into the Upgrade Press (or perhaps this is impossible because an Item cannot be both equipped and unequipped in the same Turn, there’s another question about the esoteric inventory mechanics). For more information and a bit of humor they could also try to equip the single Upgraded shield on the same turn after they’d been Pressed together to demonstrate if Pressing the shields together prevents them/it from being equipped and used for defense in the same Turn.
Answer from the stream:
A character can have 2 shields in their inventory but cannot equip/benefit from more than 1 shield.
Amadeusz can benefit from 2 Parrying Daggers (although LSN didn’t tell us what Parrying Daggers do, he read the item description and said Amad could use 2 of them)?
We will only know what a Parrying Dagger does when we find one in a dungeon or buy one from Paws, that’s just how DE works.
Guards’ knowledge is not consistent, they know what they know. It sounded like it would be a case by case basis what guards know what. It definitely sounded like the rank and file guards do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of all weapons, armor and defensive accessories in the game.
Question: In Dungeon 13, in the center top “Death Owlbear” room, I think Ricki could have used her Case ability on the “Death Owlbear” itself (not that it was likely to have anything) but could Ricki use her Case ability on the lone chest in the Owlbear’s sealed room while standing very “near” (in pixel terms or % of screen terms) the chest on ladder just to the right of the chest but on the other side of a wall from that chest? If not then what is the problem with that and how “nearby” does she have to be to Case a chest, does she essentially need to be right in front of the chest like where she’d be if she was opening it or picking the lock? If Case on the chest would not have worked while the “Death Owlbear’s” room was sealed then if the sealed room had been blasted open then could Ricki have used Case on the chest from the ladder to the right of it, or would she have needed to be somewhere else to use Case and where would that ‘somewhere else’ have been? Can we get any other tips on how to use Case on a chest and what “nearby” means in that context?
Just out of curiosity, what was in the Death Owlbear’s chest? If not the specific item (due to it being unique or just a secret) then was it ‘schmuck bait’, a fairly ‘normal’ treasure, or something unique/special.
[I’m putting these questions in the Comments so that you’ll have time to read and think about them before the stream, so that someone else can ask in the stream if I don’t make it, so that you can just answer them in the Comments if you don’t want to ‘waste’ stream time on that issue, and so that there will be a place to store the answer for those who do not attend the stream and only participate on the website.]
In the past a stream participant (traditionally KingMarth, but could be anyone) has posted a summary on each dungeon report page.
I have seen at least one of those stream summaries. If LSN doesn’t just answer the questions with a Comment and we get a stream summary, I’ll copy the relevant part as a reply to each question just so there’s some organization. Also, having the questions separated facilitates people replying if they already know the answer, adding additional related questions, and giving the question a ‘thumbs up’ if they want to see the answer, making jokes about the question or possible answer… or even laying odds on what the answer will be (LOL).
Some random assorted info from the stream (I’ll try to edit to add more when I re-watch it again):
According to LSN, there were 6 dungeons in “Act 1” and 6 ‘normal’ (non-bond) dungeons in “Act 2” and there will be 6 ‘normal’ dungeons in “Act 3”, plus however many Bond dungeons you can get. There will be a 2-week hiatus to get ready for Act 3.
LSN said we (the audience/players/people who vote on the website Comments) are in charge of determining which characters to bring into dungeons and that maximizing a few characters is a valid and acceptable strategy (however LSN likes Coccyx and is vaguely annoyed we’re not using them).
All 3 of the Solar Guardians in this dungeon were non-hostile to the Imperial Guards due to Elemental Hearts being used on them. They were intentionally positioned at choke points to serve as guardians. Destroying the Solar Guardian at the bottom of the middle room was something that they would notice as being out of place and would put the Turn 20 & 40 patrol on edge*, but it takes three things out of place for the patrol to become fully alert and wandering.
The guard patrols go down to collect the dungeon’s output so the party could have taken their time and totally cleared the upper 3 rooms as the Turn 20 patrol was going down to pick up the dungeon’s output. [We might have even had enough time to ‘waste’ actions on things like having Ricki Case the chest in the Death Owlbear room through the wall, which would have worked.]
Ricki could have used Case on the Death Owlbear’s chest if standing on the ladder just to the right of that chest*. That chest contains a special item, a Wand of Deathstrike, which can do 7 ranged unblockable damage once per dungeon. The Death Owlbear has the same stats as a regular Owlbear but all damage it deals is unblockable and it can only be hurt by unblockable damage.
In the upper right room that Lara died in, we should have hit the Justicar with more damage in our first attack, or bypassed him and the skeletons and hit the Elite guard with a bunch of damage. Not killing one of those two on the first turn makes the fight much tougher. The guards attacked Lara because she was a big scary monster with a huge sword and the guards were afraid of her and wanted her dead (it had nothing at all to do with which character had the least armor or lowest Defense*). The idea of the room was that since they had to take the Staff out of the chest to move it over the ladder to block the wisps below, the Justicar had decided to just go ahead and use it. An opened chest can be closed again but it needs to have something in it.
Justicar is pronounced Just-assure, not Just-ick-car.
The chest in the upper left (dog production) room we didn’t open has a healing potion and a cozy hat (a cold resist item, like the oven mits). The “Lightning Bug” is an electric themed Buzzer — like a normal Buzzer it flies around and alerts enemies so that they can attack immediately and don’t give the one Turn grace period with a ! over their heads.
The players alerting the guards and Supreme Justicar in the lower left room (where they were gathering Holy Wisps) made that fight harder. It would have been easier if the party would have charged in and taken out the Supreme Justicar by surprise.
Plague Rats can be created by merging Dire Rats with a purple Poison Wisp. The 3 remaining Plague Rats were apparently the last survivors of the experiments before they stopped trying to work with Poison Wisps.
The chest in the lower middle room that we didn’t open had a Shockroach (an electric-themed Stalkroach, just a kind of strong monster to fight). The chest contained some Grounded Gloves that are like the Boots that give some electric protection and a 50% chance of a Wand not using a charge.
The 3 Magicrows (2 normal, 1 Elder) in the lower right room were guarding a nest with a pet egg in it. Their pet egg could be gotten by killing them, stealing it, or by them seeing the party fighting guards since these particular Magicrows were not friendly to the guards. Pet eggs that the party does not get go into the random rotation of the eggs that Pet Master will give out.
The guards and Justicar in the lower right room were making healing potions from green Life Wisps. Depending on how many Life Wisps were created there could have been a lot of Healing Potions in the chest in that room, but if they get more than 3 potions they’d have sent the extras to the lower left room where the Holy Wisp containers are collected.
The 3 scientists in labcoats are being held against their will. The keys in their room were to the barred door in the lower middle room. The chest in the room with the scientists contains a Wizard Hat that buffs wands and staffs. If freed they would have helped the characters by making potions or a wand with the equipment and supplies in the lower right room. Life Wisps create a Healing Potion and other Wisps make Elemental Resistance potions (except Death, which was not canonized). They need 1, 2, or 3 Wisps of the same type to make a wand so the party would have needed to do some work to get enough wisps to that lower right room to take advantage of this. Each scientist could make one potion or wand but there’s only supplies for one wand. The scientists would also have showed up at the manor later and unlocked some sort of room upgrade for them.
The Upgrade Press can smush a Venomous Siegesword and a plain Siegesword bought from Paws together to get an Upgraded Venomous Siegesword. The Upgrade Press functions separately from any enchantments like Venomous or Shocking*.
etc.
*these are some of the things that people who were ‘explaining’ how things worked to me had wrong. I might be a tiny bit bitter about that.
Also, it’s spelled “justiciar.” The correct pronunciation makes much more sense if you don’t overlook that second i.
Here’s a second comment with more assorted info from the stream (since the first comment was getting pretty long):
Increasing penalties for remaining in the Dungeon too long are definitely something LSN has planned and will add more if needed in an ad-hoc manner.
A random type of Wisp appears in each workroom on every 10th turn if the valve to that workroom is open. For every closed valve the Elemental Marauder gains HP/power and can break free when it gets enough power or if all 4 valves are closed when a Turn divisible by 10 arrives. If we’d used a GolemCoreBomb to blast open the big tube in the center right room, we could have been dealing with the Elemental Marauder by Turn 5 or so.
Regarding the Death Owlbear, LSN said it wasn’t his job to figure out if or how the players could defeat it, although that’s why there were so many things with unblockable damage lying around the dungeon. The Guards had been preparing for an expedition to kill the Death Owlbear, which was why the Deadly Dagger and Death Arrow were near that area.
If you release the Death Owlbear by opening the door (with the lever in the room to the left, or blowing open the door) and aggro-ing it, then it wanders the dungeon. If it wanders onto the indented floor in the lower center room it is heavy enough to fall through into the secret room and will fight with the things in that room. [I have to wonder if you could have gotten it to clear out a lot of the dungeon for you, since the guards couldn’t damage it… that might have been one way to do the dungeon with a weaker team.]
Otherwise, getting into the secret room requires using Mac’s Dig ability that is available as an upgrade to Mac (which would not expend the ability) or a GolemCoreBomb since there’s no way to drop something heavy onto it from a great enough height.
By the end of the dungeon there were two Wisp Containers by the red pipe in the upper right room. If one more Wisp Container had piled up there without a character moving them to somewhere else in the room (taking an action to move) then all 3 would have broken, releasing their 3 wisps to wander.
The two cracks in the pipes just change the type of the elemental dogs below the cracks to the element of the big tube in the center right room on turns divisible by 10. There was not a planned mechanic about the cracks breaking. The big tube changes between fire and ice every 10th Turn. IX is fire and ice only, no other elements can be added.
The upper left room had a large supply of dogs in the foreground. When the guards in that room had made 3 elemental dogs from fire or ice wisps they’d release them to wander the dungeon. There was no way in this dungeon to get a fluffy blue dog pet. Groups of dogs could be made less dangerous on the first combat action by feeding one or more of them some meat so that they’d eat it rather than attacking.
IX cannot see in the dark. Note the Turn where the Elemental Marauder wiffed an attack [Turn 52]. The chance to miss for darkness is 50%.
The Wisps can see in the dark, or rather they don’t use normal senses.
Cordy will retain the Abilities their previous level-ups if/when a Big Mushroom grows into a new Cordy.
We have unlocked a reward because Amadeusz asked us to F-up the Research Facility and we F’ed it up… (LSN has a bit of a foul mouth on streams). [Ye gods I sure HOPE that reward is that we get rid of Sketchy]
If the Elemental Marauder escaped the dungeon, then that would have been a dungeon failure so no level-up, but you still could have kept all the stuff you got.
The harder stuff for doing this dungeon second (after the Guard Outpost) was that the patrols were a bit beefier and there was a wanted poster for Ricki in every room except the secret room.
Here is some more info from the dungeon 13 wrap-up stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2263783910
Usernames that appeared in the Twitch chat window: nekpot, claudiousdark, sickozed, Royvanne, darmusmul, …
We’ve seen most of the things that are on LSN’s big spreadsheet of DE stuff. The implication was that there are not a lot of planned DE graphics that we have not seen yet.
There’s a secret character named “Sue” that has not been unlocked yet.
“I will also be answering questions. Mostly from the Dungeon Eyes Discord.” — LSN [at about 00:08:35]
“Um, but there’s one guy in particular who’s, uh, scared of Discord, I guess.” — LSN [at about 00:08:40, I have no idea WHO that could be, maybe he’s talking about Bruno or Spider Minstrel? Nah, he must be talking about “I Make Bad Decisions” for making the bad decision to not join the DE Discord.]
“I’ll also be taking a look at the… uh. Oh, you know what I forgot to do. I’d better do that. I’ll also be taking a look at the comments.” — LSN [at about 00:08:50]
There was a Staff of Animation hidden in the Manor (D6) way back [~00:10:00]. There was a special interaction with it available in that dungeon. We could have used it to animate one of the canine skeletons laying around that dungeon (you know, they ones we destroyed) which would have given us a permanent skeletal dog pet. There are lots of dog pets because dogs are cool. It was in that high up chest above the door that we couldn’t reach.
There were lots of Notes to read in D13. Like the other guard-oriented dungeon, LSN wanted to give the impression that there are different forms of Dungeon madness and the human form is posting Notes everywhere obsessively. Part of it is that it is just a way to give out hints but it is like mystery games where everyone left notes.
LSN made it a square dungeon to give it the impression that it had been purposely built.
Other than the deaths you did a pretty good job, you got most of the treasure. You missed some pretty big ticket items but you never get all the treasure, although you tried in the Poisoned Well and we know how well that went. — LSN
The Turn 60 patrol we would have needed to deal with was 2 Justiciars (with Imperial Chainmail and Imperial Heavy Shields) and 5 Guards (all with Imperial Chainmail, Imperial Longswords, and Imperial Heavy Shields). “Absolute death squad.”
I say we dust off and nuke the place from orbit… [not said in the stream anywhere]
Was it possible to aggro only one red dog at a time. Sort of, by feeding the other(s) meat.
The Wisps were non-hostile and in fact helpful towards IX. [~00:16:30] If you’d have left all 4 in the room with the big tube (containment vat) they’d have been killing guards for you. If you’d have left all 4 alive then recruited IX you would have had some more allies to stave off the guards or distract them. They wouldn’t have followed IX as pets, however.
On every 10th Turn the containment vat would switch between fire and ice elements. [~00:18:00]
The types of wisps generated every 10th Turn at the different rooms that are connected to the containment vat by pipes were completely random, LSN just rolled for them. The guards in the various rooms would then behave differently based on which sort of Wisp showed up in their room.
The community correctly guessed that the guard patrols would not go up if they did not find anything out of place. [~00:19:35] So you guys could have completely wiped the top level and got all the treasure there and not have alerted the guards at all as long as you kept the first two rooms and the bottom rooms unaltered. [~00:20:50] The patrols needed to see three suspicious things before they became fully wandering.
The patrol wasn’t worried about the bats, they know that there are random monsters wandering around.
There were also questions about why the pigeon thing worked the way it did. The answer is that it was 50% mercy and 50% I goofed. — LSN [~00:22:30]
The guards also knew where the traps were by the way, you couldn’t catch them with those. [~00:23:00]
Obviously, people want to know about the Death Owlbear… [~00:25:20]
You can take whatever characters you want, it is 100% valid strategy to only level-up a certain group. [~00:29:00]
“Kick them [the dogs] out of the door and then close the door again. So then you could have wandering dogs.” [00:29:30, this implies that doors can be closed again, at least by guards]
“I like the bony boys. Don’t take that out of context. Actually go ahead, it would be funny.” — LSN [00:30:23]
The regular insectoid flies are called Buzzers. This one is called a Lightning Bug, like the Buzzers if you interact with it but fail to one-shot it, it will zip around the room or as much as it can reach without leaving and alert enemies so that you don’t get the one-turn grace period where they see you but don’t attack you.
Since the guards in the dog room had been alerted they were just holding position. If a patrol had made it there they would have told the patrol about the party and might have given the patrol some new equipment. [I think the implication is the Hunting Bow and Death Arrow]
“And you get a bonus reward later because Amadeusz asked you to F’up this facility and you sure as h*!! F’ed up this facility.” [00:34:02-00:34:10]
…King Marth finally posted a proper summary, so I can stop re-watching the stream recording now!
Answers from the stream:
According to LSN: Yes, Ricki could have used her Case ability on the chest in the Death Owlbear’s sealed room if she was just a wall’s width away on the ladder just to the right of that chest!
From a more general question about what “nearby” means in the rules and ability and item descriptions. “Nearby” (in general) isn’t a specific number of pixels, but since the first thing mentioned was pixels rather than being able to attack something it seems like nearby is a distance first and the stuff about “being able to attack it” (which was also mentioned) is another secondary rule-of-thumb about “nearby”.
It sounded to me like the definition of “nearby” is a bit situational and more follows the guideline of “does this make sense”. [Personal note: obviously this means “does this make sense to LSN” since Sick and I both had different opinions of what might “make sense” and I thought it was at least worth a try to see if it worked; however by waiting and asking in the wrap-up stream we didn’t waste a valuable action to find out how Case works on chests.]
The chest by the Death Owlbear contained a Wand of Deathstrike, which can do 7 ranged unblockable damage once per dungeon.
The Death Owlbear has stats that are identical to a normal Owlbear but deals unblockable damage and can ONLY be hurt by unblockable damage. That’s why there were so many items around the dungeon that did unblockable damage (like the Deadly Dagger and the Death Arrow).
The lever on the right wall of the room to the left (the dog production room) was what opened and closed the door to the Death Owlbear room.
Does the -3 to Atk and Def debuff from Lara’s Web Binding spell take effect before physical combat is resolved for the Turn?
This was answered here https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-turn-58/
Otherwise Lara would’ve died.
Thanks!
I saw she used her Web Binding spell when I read through all the pages from Turn 13 to the end after the dungeon was over. The graphic was hard to miss. However I didn’t try to do the math to figure out that she would have died without it. I’m glad my questions about that strategy may have ended up saving her life.
Actually I think that page is a bad example because the Justiciar decided not to light beam her, so she would’ve survived either way, but in an earlier turn Lara got hit by the Frostbite Wand and its -3 Def effect was immediate. Web Bind is very similar so we can assume it works the same way.
I assume you are referring to D13T54, https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-turn-54/ (it is really helpful to provide the reference).
The answer from the stream was, Yes.
Also, as an example, if Lara uses Web Binding on a target (on Turn X) and someone else attacks the target (on Turn X) then that target is at -3 Def (on Turn X).
Can an open chest be closed again? If so does it become unmovable when it is closed?
“I suggest trying to say that Ricki closes the lid of the chest after looting it just to see what happens and if that works or maybe we get a tip from the GM about whether closing the lid of a chest that has been opened is going to be possible at all. If it does happen to work then there’s a chest down in the bottom-left room that is potentially lootable before Turn 22.” — D13T11 https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-turn-11/#comment-15828
The answer from the stream was: Yes an opened chest can be closed again but the chest has to have something in it.
Is the Shocktail Javelin usable by IX in their fire form (it isn’t clear what exactly that Javelin is made of, other than magic)?
Fire Form: +3 Atk, +1 Mov. Cannot wear or wield items not made mostly of metal. Unarmed attacks deal fire damage. Enemies who attack in melee take 1 fire damage. Can’t enter water. Not harmed by fire. Takes 2 extra damage from ice.
SHOCKTAIL JAVELIN
Weapon/Ranged Weapon
Atk +4. Deals lightning damage. Can be thrown to deal 5 lightning damage at range. Regrows at the end of the turn when thrown.
Weight 1, Cost 25
The answer from the stream was: Yes, IX can use the Shocktail Javelin in fire form (even though it technically isn’t made of metal). It seemed like LSN hadn’t really considered that and was making up the answer on the spot.
At D13T8, why did all of the guards (and even the skeletons) attack Lara? This is important for understanding the “targeting AI” of the guards, which is very important because of how the guards all tend to attack the same target in a group, making them very dangerous. Also, if intelligent enemy leaders can direct their underlings then we may need to know the leaders’ targeting logic as well.
I was told that it has been said that guards attack the target with the least armor. I don’t think Lara had the lightest armor of the group on Turn 8 by any accounting that I could figure out, see https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-turn-8/#comment-15761
I remember something being said about Guards concentrating their attacks on the “least armored opponent” (apparently on Discord or a dungeon debrief), but looking at Armor alone Lara has the heaviest armor of the group (Chain) while Ricki only has Hide and Wolf and Cordy are unarmored. Counting the visible shields, helmets, heavy gauntlets and heavy greaves (without knowing what their special powers are) makes Cordy the least armored character present in this fight: Ricki = 2+3=5, Wolf = 2+1+1=4, Lara = 3+1=4, Cordy = 2, even if you included the -1 Def from the Siegesword Lara would still have 3 visible Def from Armor and protective Items and Cordy would be lower at 2 Def from visible armor and worn items. If the Guards could somehow ‘sense’ the -2 Def penalty Lara got on a Turn where they could not see, then Lara would clearly be a better target than Cordy.
Maybe it was just a tossup between them all attacking Lara or Cordy and Lara got unlucky. Maybe if Cordy had unequipped their helmet or if Lara had unequipped her Siegesword (and maybe equipped that Tower shield she didn’t pick up) then Cordy would have drawn all the Guard attacks on Turn 8 instead of Lara.
I’m also curious if the rank and file normal guards all know the stats of all weapons in the game and know that a Siegesword gives a -1 Def, or that Heavy Greaves/Gauntlets give a +1 Def.
BTW: If the answer is that somebody was going to die on Turn 8 and it was more ‘dramatic’ if it was Lara (compared to the “immortal” Cordy) and it would have been disastrous if it was Amadeusz since he was the one with Requiem of Resurrection (or not ‘fun’ enough if it had been Amadeusz since then we wouldn’t need to continually argue about him being Sketchy), I’m fine with that answer. Drama is an important part of storytelling.
Very curious about this one as well. Not sure if LSN will answer it directly, but
My best guess is that Lara was the only one directly attacking the Justiciar and he wanted to keep himself alive, so he put his debuff on Lara. The RSkeletons as unintelligent characters will attack whoever their intelligent master attacks.
After that, their visible defense was as follows:
Ricki: Hide Armor (+2), Magma Shield (+3) = 5 visible armor
Cordy: Full Helmet (+2) = 2 visible armor
Amadeusz: Full Helmet (+2), Gauntlets (+1), Greaves (+1) = 4 visible armor
Lara: Helmet (+1), Chain Armour (+3), Siegesword (-1), Justiciar Curse (-2) = 1 visible armor
Is the way I’d justify it if LSN doesn’t want to answer this directly.
Your logic that computes Amadeusz at 4 visible armor and Lara at 1 visible armor seems to rely on two potentially questionable conditions:
1) ALL guards know that Heavy Gauntlets and Heavy Greaves each give the wearer +1 Def and how to tell the difference between Heavy Gauntlets/Greaves and Crit Gauntlets/Greaves and that a Siegesword gives its wielder -1 Def. However, we have a former Imperial Champion on our team and we didn’t even know that something like a Siegesword existed until we got one, and Kamau didn’t tell us what its stats were or that it gave the wielder -1 Def before we defeated the creature and got to see its description when it dropped. Also, if this is true and ALL guards know the stats of all weapons then I want Kamau to tell us what all of those Daggers that Paws has for sale actually do!!! — https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-15/#comment-15175
2) Guards can somehow mystically sense which character has been Cursed by the Justicar, even though the guards on the floor below didn’t see that happen on Turn 7 and arrived later. I don’t recall the Justicar’s curse on Kamau in the Kobold Warrens leaving a visible indication on Kamau for the rest of that dungeon, nor can I see a visible indication on Lara in the artwork in D13T8. Also, if guards do gain mystical senses to tell who a Justicar has Cursed, then Kamau should know that and be able to tell us that. In fact Kamau should be able to tell us the general “targeting logic” for all of Imperial guard types, since he worked his way up through the ranks.
Both of these get into a potential DM’ing issue where the NPC’s inadvertently or intentionally gain some of the omniscient knowledge of the DM. While LSN could say that 1) and 2) are true those have consequences and I’d actually be much happier if the answer was either just “that made the best story” or “oops, I messed up, but hey it made a better story that way”.
Issue 2 actually also gets into a bigger issue that Kamau should be able to tell us about all the various types of Imperial Guards and Justicars and what their abilities are but he hasn’t done so and LSN seems to enjoy surprising us with them in dungeons when they really shouldn’t be a surprise given who we have on our team and what their background are. Frankly, LSN’s love of withholding information and surprising the players has reached the point of being nearly nonsensical to the storyline. Perhaps we should just lay it on the line and tell Kamau to fill in all the blanks in the various Imperial Guards and Justicars on the Enemies list as if we’d used a Magic Lens on them all and to add any other types of Imperial Guards, Justicars, etc. that he knows about that aren’t already on the Enemies list !!!!
It is not hard to assume that intelligent enemies are intelligent and know what weapons, armor, and accessories do.
I don’t think we ever asked Kamau what a Siegesword was. If we did, he’d probably say something like “They can be used to do a lot of damage, but their unwieldly and can leave you open to attacks.”
??? The Justiciar knows that Lara is cursed, because the Justiciar cursed Lara literally the turn before. What are you on about?
Intelligent enemies tend to target the character with the least visible defense.
Intelligent enemies, especially the guards, probably know what weapons, armors, and accessories do.
Intelligent enemies tend to focusfire. Unintelligent enemies will also focusfire when they fight alongside an intelligent enemy.
The Justiciar knows Lara has the least visible defense, so he attacks her. The guards focusfire Lara because the Justiciar is attacking her. The RSkeletons focusfire Lara because the Justiciar is attacking her.
There’s no huge leaps in logic being made here.
Talking is an action. If we have a question for Kamau, we can spend an action to ask it. He’s not going to fill out our enemies list as if we used a Magic Lens, because Kamau isn’t using a magic lens. But he can tell us that Justiciars have a weakening curse and they have a powerful light beam attack. And that Elites can direct their subordinates to make them more effective in combat. And that Supreme Justiciars can frikkin’ fly. We just have to spend actions to ask him about those things.
We do not know what all the weapons, armor, and accessories do… does that mean that we are not intelligent?
Well that would explain a lot…
We know everything that Ricki does. That’s the point of the game.
The guards don’t have Dungeon Eyes to have seen the Justicar curse Lara on Turn 7, they hear the sounds of battle but don’t arrive on the scene until Turn 8. The Justicar didn’t shout out, “Foul Drider I curse thee in the name of the almighty Emperor!” on Turn 7. NPC characters should only know what is in their line of sight and what they can hear.
Sigh… Ok, since you asked “What are you on about?” let me spell this out in painstaking detail for you. Look at D13T5, there is a Justicar and 4 Reinforced Skeletons on a ‘platform/floor’ and there are 3 guards below the ‘platform/floor’, one Elite with Imperial Chain Armour and an Imperial Greatsword and two normal guards wearing Imperial Leather Armour and unarmed. The 3 guards cannot see the Justicar and 4 Skeletons. On Turn7 the party charges into the room and attacks the Skeletons and Justicar on the platform/floor based on the assumption that the 3 guards below will not climb the ladder to join the fight because according to the Comments on Turn6 when that course of action was selected:
On Turn7 the characters attack and the Justicar curses Lara in response. The 3 guards do not join the fight on Turn 7 but they show red ! over their heads and the DM’s text states that, “Ricki can see the guards below have been alerted by the battle. They’ll likely get involved next turn!”
So the 3 guards below did not see the Justicar curse Lara on Turn 7 because it was not in their line of sight, although they were alerted by the sound of the battle happening on the platform/floor above them. There’s no way the 3 guards could know which character the Justicar had cursed on Turn 7 unless 1) they have Dungeon Eyes like we do, 2) the Justicar yelled out that he was cursing the Drider, which he didn’t, 3) the 3 guards possess mystical senses that allow them to determine who the Justicar cursed. In fact how would the guards even know that the Justicar used his Curse attack on Turn7 rather than a Light Beam or something else, unless the guards know the attack pattern of a Justicar is to always use Curse on the first turn, but that’s just a minor detail.
On D13T8 the 3 guards climb the ladder to the platform/floor, push their way past Ricki and Amad/Wolf and charge into battle, with the DM’s text reading, “The two normal guards and the armed elite run up the ladder to join the fight, despite Ricki and Amadeusz’s attempt to hold them back. All of them attack Lara, as do the skeletons, as does the justiciar.” While the Justicar certainly knows that he cursed the Drider on Turn7, the 3 guards should not know that and should thus not be able to select their target based on that knowledge. Now the 3 guards COULD certainly just attack Lara on Turn8 because the Justicar decides to attack Lara on Turn8 (although the DM’s text doesn’t even remotely hint at that, mentioning who the 3 guards are attacking first and only mentioning who the Justicar is attacking last), but they cannot be attacking her because they know she has the lowest armor because she’d been cursed on Turn7 unless they have some mystical sense that allows them to know the Drider had been cursed, for all they know the Justicar cursed the Goblin or Mushroom Man or Werewolf on Turn7 and then switched targets to Light Beam the Drider on Turn8 when they arrived to the fight already in progress. However, that would imply that the guards’ “targeting AI/standing orders” are something like “attack the same target as any higher-ranking guard and if no higher-ranking guards are present then attack the least armored target”. That’s fine but it is important for us to know that, especially since guards are so dangerous… and the DM’s text didn’t even hint that was what happened, mentioning who the Guards were attacking first before mentioning who the Justicar was attacking.
Sigh, it almost pains me to point out the other problem with what you’ve written:
That would apply to Turn8 after the Justicar has already cursed the Drider (which he certainly remembers that he did on Turn7), but the Drider didn’t have the least visible defense on Turn7 before she was cursed which means the Justicar’s targeting on Turn7 is different than the guard logic of “least visible defense”, which would have been Cordy on Turn7 (2 for Cordy’s Full Helmet vs 4 for Lara, or 3 if the Justicar knows about the -1 Def for Siegeswords).
It actually appears to me that on D13T7 the Justicar may have been employing the idea I had suggested a while ago (I12P17, https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-17/#comment-15308 ) to use a Debuff for defensive purposes and Debuffing Cordy wouldn’t have protected the Justicar because Cordy was firing a wand. HOWEVER, doing that would require that the Justicar to intelligently choose their actions after knowing what all of our characters were doing, who they were attacking and with what sorts of attacks, which is something we cannot do… we don’t get to read who our enemies are attacking and with what attacks and then determine our actions for the Turn (we typically have the initiative instead, which is a different sort of advantage). Intelligent enemies being able to select their own actions after they already know what all of our actions are (if they really can do that) is a significant advantage that we’d need to account for. I’d find it more likely that the standard Justicar attack pattern is to use Curse on their first attack and the target of their Curse will be any priority criminal they are on the lookout for (e.g. Ricki) or anyone who is directly attacking them with a preference on melee attackers over ranged attackers because that’s where their Atk debuff is most likely to make a difference.
In summary, while the 3 guards might be attacking Lara on Turn8 because the higher-ranking Justicar is attacking her, or because (like the Skeletons) they are trying to ‘protect’ the Justicar (which doesn’t work anyway, as we discovered you can’t really ‘protect’ anyone because all attacks are simultaneous), they really should not be attacking Lara on Turn8 because they know she has the lowest defense due to the Justicar’s curse on Turn7.
Yeah, NPCs don’t follow the same rules as players. They get to react to our actions for the most part. This is known and it’s a good thing. Would it be better for the game if we just got a full free round of attacks while NPCs did nothing?
Also again, the guards don’t need dungeon eyes and they don’t need to know exactly that Lara has the lowest visible defense, because the Justiciar knows and the Justiciar is actively attacking Lara. The guards join the fight, see who the Justiciar is targeting, and pile on as intelligent enemies tend to do.
I don’t know what’s confusing about that.
ALSO AGAIN, on D13T8 the 3 guards climb the ladder to the platform/floor, push their way past Ricki and Amad/Wolf and charge into battle, with the DM’s text reading, “The two normal guards and the armed elite run up the ladder to join the fight, despite Ricki and Amadeusz’s attempt to hold them back. All of them attack Lara, as do the skeletons, as does the justiciar.”
Please read what the DM wrote several times and tell me if you can honestly and with a straight face say that text describes the 3 guards running up the ladder and seeing the Justicar attacking Lara and them deciding to attack Lara solely because the Justicar is attacking the Drider on Turn8!!! The order of the text clearly describes the guards acting and even choosing their target before saying who the Justicar is attacking. Perhaps that’s just hurried and sloppy writing on the part of the DM.
I read some meaning into the way the DM’s text is written. You clearly don’t. That doesn’t make one of us dense and the other clever. I recognize that my interpretation may be incorrect or ‘reaching’ but I can only work with what little scraps of information the DM chooses to bestow upon us.
Hopefully this excessively long ‘discussion’ between two players/readers in the Comments section will at least encourage the DM to tell us whether the text for D13T8 is poorly worded and should have mentioned who the Justicar was attacking before mentioning who the 3 guards were attacking.
Guards “!”, hear that their boss needs help. They push past everyone else to go help their boss. They then help their boss kill Lara.
One minor issue with this particular narrative is that it is virtually impossible to “help” someone else in a combat in DE, at least in the sense of being able to protect them from damage (except if you have the Interpose ability). We clearly showed that on D13T8 (the Turn we are discussing), when Ricki and Amad/Wolf tried to “help” Lara. The 3 guards arrived to “help” the Justicar on Turn 8 but all they succeeded in doing was killing the Drider since the party’s attacks killed the Justicar anyway since combat is simultaneous. A variation of this narrative that might work somewhat better is that the guards wanted to avenge the death of their boss, who was almost certainly doomed in the position he was in on Turn 8.
The guards may have “standing orders” or “standard procedures” to attack whoever a superior ranking Imperial is attacking or whoever their direct commander is attacking, but if that is indeed some sort of standard procedure we should be able to ask Kamau about it (and as I’ve pointed out before, it is odd that he wouldn’t have mentioned something that important over dinner at the Manor sometime). I’d recommend doing that before the next time we have a dungeon where we might encounter large groups of guards.
I find is somewhat funny that you initially said you were curious when this ‘discussion’ started but now you don’t seem very curious and are eager to tell me and everyone else how things (probably) work and how reasonable that would be.
You are starting to cross the line between helpfully telling less experienced players how things have worked in the past (preferably with reference or links to the example) and playing a “white knight” and apologist for a DM that chooses to only very rarely post in the Comments section, just like I’m starting to cross the line between polite hints, constructive criticism and honest feedback to being quite blunt bordering on rude as my frustration level increases. The DM is perfectly capable of explaining or defending themselves in the Comments section if they want to.
I gave a possible explanation, one that I thought was reasonable enough in case LSN didn’t want to answer it directly on stream (cuz he does that sometimes). You then went on a 4000 word rant about how the guards must have mystical knowledge, omniscience, and that Kamau should be telling us what siegeswords do between bites of dinner and that it’s bad DM’ing because he doesn’t.
Obviously I can’t tell you exactly what happened since I’m not the DM. But we can infer based on the facts of the combat and previous ones and come up with a likely explanation. And if we do that, the explanation wouldn’t be “Oh, you killed Lara because you wanted to. Glad to know THAT’S gonna be a regular thing.” and “Oh, Lara died because we were reckless and she happened to have the least defense at the time. We should probably be more careful in the future.”
I’m sorry that I’m frustrating you, that is not my intent. Just defending a point. And maybe I think the dress is black gold, and you think its blue white, but honestly it’s probably just green.
Yet we don’t know what common weapons, armor, and accessories do until we’ve seen one drop from a defeated enemy or we’ve bought one from Paws?!? This would make sense for uncommon items, like the Swiftblade, or for unique items, like Sun’s Raze or Corona, or for something that had recently been invented and thus nobody in our group was familiar with it, like a Flintlock Pistol, but it doesn’t make sense for pretty basic items that should be in the basic Player’s Handbook, like a Throwing Dagger or Parrying Dagger. The DM withholding very basic information about the game world by this point in the story, where a group of diverse characters who have grown up in that world have been together for at least four months or so (home renovations take a long time) and are capable of talking to each other, is just silly and frankly either lazy or spiteful.
Forcing the players to use a valuable action to get basic information that all intelligent guards in the world supposedly know or what their friends know and should have told them over dinner conversation sometime in the last four months is bad DM’ing IMHO. Back in the first few dungeons when we saw first something new on the screen the DM would include a sentence or two about what Ricki (or any normal person in the world) knew about it. That isn’t happening nearly as much anymore.
Back in what I’ve seen referred to as “Act I” (up to dungeon 6, The Manor), when the characters had only been together for a few hours or days and had not opened up to each other yet, it made sense that we would need to take an action in a dungeon to get fairly basic information about the setting/world that another character knew. BUT by late in “Act II” when the characters have been living together for months in the same house it does not make sense for the extroverted, bubbly and garrulous Ricki to have not talked with her new friends and gotten some helpful information from them.
Needing to use valuable actions in a dungeon to get common information that our friends know and should have told us over dinner conversation, especially when we’ve known about something like the Guard Outpost and Research Facility for weeks/months and should have been preparing for them, is asinine. I don’t care if the Enemies list isn’t filled out like we’d used a Magic Lens on everything that our friends should have been able to give us some basic information about, but at least each entry should have a quote from one of our friends about that creature/being. So rather than just being blank the various guard entries should have some quote from Kamau about what he can tell us about them and the various spider entries should have some quote from Lara about what she can tell us about them, etc.
When we encounter a new enemy that is something that normal people in the world should at least know something about or that one of our friends should have mentioned something about in the last several months they’ve been together, the DM should include a brief sentence or two about it. When we see something like the fancy new type of Enforcer/Justicar in the lower left room of the Research Facility, the party shouldn’t be left guessing about what it is from the graphic without a single frikkin’ clue from the DM, the DM should mention something like, “That looks like how Kamau has described a Supreme Justicar. He’s said they’re really nasty, as tough as Guard Enforcers, can curse enemies and bless friends at range, and can fly and dodge attacks.” There, that wasn’t so hard and would make the story more realistic and believable, rather than requiring Kamau to be present and specifically asked in order to get information he should have told the other characters over dinner when we were preparing over the last weeks/months because we knew we’d be dealing with an Imperial Guard Outpost and Research Facility.
I think I’m just a bad sort of player for this game so I should leave before I annoy people more than I already have. You are clearly a more appropriate sort of player for this game than I am so I wish you the best of luck and I hope things go well for the group and that you have fun and make their story an interesting tale.
The answer from the stream was: Lara was a big scary monster with a huge sword and the guards were afraid of her and wanted her dead.
[All of the discussion about guards attacking the target with the least def was apparently not really relevant. LSN said that guards could attack the target with the least defense (they were smart enough to do that). Apparently the guards don’t have any consistent rigid targeting logic. It sounded like the guards target whatever LSN decides.]
[Personal note: After we messed up on Turn 7 by not killing either the Justicar or Elite in our first surprise attack, some ways to have avoided Lara dying on Turn 8 would have been switching her equipped items to improve her Def (such as switching from Siegesword to Tower Shield and Deadly Dagger which we could have done if she had picked those items up) or her having a Ring of Evasion (which will probably require Mac making some Rings of Evasion from Shields), since even a small amount of evasion like 20% makes it very likely that at least one attack will miss and reduce the overall damage from a large group of attackers. If we don’t have Kamau with us then the characters we are planning to use for attacks should probably have a Ring of Evasion in order to have a chance of surviving a large group of focused attackers.]
In dungeon 13, could one (or more) of the Wisp Canisters have been loaded onto Golly (possible by a pair of characters) or would it have been too much even for the pack mule’s Distributed Weight ability and 5 slots? See https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-turn-13/#comment-15895
From the structure of the dungeon I’m guessing that this wouldn’t work since it seems like we weren’t intended to carry them out of their room except by using the red pipe to send them to another workstation room, but from the introduction and all the Notes and looking at the composition of the Turn 20 patrol it was clear that a pair of guards could carry one of the Wisp Canisters with a Holy Wisp out of the dungeon. From the fact that they had two unarmed, unarmored guards to maneuver the canisters, I assume their ENC is ~16 (or maybe even 20, depending on how many ENC slots a guard has).
D13T14: “Cordy messes around with the wisp canister. It’s too heavy and bulky to carry in their inventory (even if they drop everything), but it can still be moved around as an action. Looks like it can be connected to or disconnected from the nearby pipe, but there’s no obvious way to use it otherwise. Unless they wanted to smash one open, which they could probably do pretty easily.
Cordy also notices that there are dozens and dozens of additional empty canisters in the foreground of this room. In the event that they needed another one to use with the pipe or something, they could grab one and put it into place. However, since those spare canisters have no other use (seriously don’t bother asking), they decide not to meddle with them for now”
The answer from the stream was: No. The characters can move the canister around as an action, but it couldn’t be loaded onto Golly.
In Dungeon 13, on Turn 2 & 11 people were trying to explain the current rules about one character dropping an item as a free action and another character picking it up as an action, including if that is impossible on the same turn and can only be done on separate turns, drop as free action on one turn, pick up as an action on the next or subsequent turns. https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-turn-11/#comment-15841 and by https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-turn-11/#comment-15851 I wanted to see a written description of some sort, “I don’t want to take a lot of back and forth trying to explain the game rules for managing inventory and using so I would be very grateful if the Discord folks could put together a summary and all proofread/agree upon it and then point me to it.”
Perhaps the esoteric inventory management mechanics and current rules about dropping items and picking them up can be discussed in a recorded session that other people who are interested could watch later.
In the stream LSN seemed to think that inventory management, dropping and picking up items was completely covered on the “How To Play” page.
One additional piece of information was that LSN dislikes having the characters change their inventories frequently because it is a pain to redraw them. The Kobold Warrens was specifically mentioned as a problem.
That’s correct. I looked at your discussion of this on D11T13, and I think the answer you got from que was unfortunately way overcomplicated and partly wrong. How to Play says:
I’m pretty sure that covers it.
Please also look at the discussion at D13T1 around this comment https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-turn-1/#comment-15477 where Kat and Sick try to explain the rules to me. There is another exchange in the comments of D13T11 with que (that you accidentally referenced as D11T13) and yet another on D13T12 where Sick, que, Claudious and I get involved.
The confusion started back on D13T1 with the idea of trying to get a single item from one character to another character. While intuitively this seems like it would only take an action from the receiving character, apparently it is considered “swapping an item between characters” which takes both character’s actions for the Turn. Apparently there is furthermore some sort of anti-abuse mechanic which says that if a character drops an item as a free action then no other character can pick it up in the same Turn (because if they did pick it up then the action of dropping it wouldn’t have been free). Presumably this would even extend to enemies such as Guards, so if a character dropped a Deadly Dagger during combat, a Guard could not use their action to pick it up that Turn. Essentially an item that is dropped using a free action on one Turn then effectively exists in a state of intangible limbo until the next Turn (or at least that’s how it was explained to me).
Going from memory, this all got explained to me as something like: only one character can interact with a given item in a single Turn unless both characters use their actions to “swap” the item, in which case only one of them can actually benefit from it in that Turn (and the benefit would need to be passive or a free action, since both characters used their actions to “swap” the item).
Apparently the only way to pass an item from one character to another character in a one-way trade that only uses one action is to use two Turns and the floor; the first Turn one character drops the item as a free action (and the other character cannot interact with it because that would be “swapping”) and then on the second Turn the other character can pick the item up from the floor as their action for the second Turn, thus only one action total has been expended by the one-way trade via the floor.
The anti-abuse mechanic also leads to some counter-intuitive consequences, such as if one character drops an item on the floor as a free action before moving and another character moves into that room where the item is (or perhaps “will be”) then that second character could not pick the item up in the same Turn it had been dropped, they’d have to wait until the next Turn.
Apparently there are also esoteric restrictions on dropping an item that has already been “used” that Turn. So if, for instance a character wanted to flee a combat then they could not run away and then drop the armor they were wearing at the end of their move if they had benefited from the armor during the final ‘parting attack’ when they fled.
Furthermore, there appears to be some sort of special rule about “using items from the ground” that allows a character to pick up and use an item in the same Turn even though picking it up and using it are normally separate actions.
I’d like to see all of that explained somewhere ‘official’ like the “How To Play” page.
Thanks for the corrections and additional turn references. You’re right, there do seem to be some rules around item handling that aren’t included in How to Play. Here’s a suggested edit that would address what I think is the main point (changes in bold):
Note that picking up an item or swapping an item between characters takes one action from each character involved, but dropping an item on the ground does not. If one character drops an item and another picks it up in the same turn, that counts as swapping between them.
Regarding some of the other points in your post:
I’d say this falls under the more general category of “What happens when we give the characters illegal instructions?” For example, if we say “Ricki drops her helmet and Cordy picks it up, then Ricki attacks the owlbear,” we’re effectively having Ricki perform two actions in one turn, since dropping and picking up in a single turn counts as trading.
LSN then has to decide which of those instructions to ignore: Either (A) Ricki doesn’t attack the owlbear, or (B) Cordy doesn’t pick up the helmet. I’m not certain he always resolves these situations by leaving the dropped item on the floor; I think he decides case by case (although in this case, option B certainly seems preferable to having Ricki just stand there while the owlbear mauls her).
But assuming LSN does choose option B, the helmet is not “in intangible limbo,” it’s just on the floor. Our instruction to Cordy to pick it up is ignored, but a wandering rust monster could easily come by and eat it.
I’m afraid I’m no help here, sorry – this one’s not ringing any bells for me.
I think I’ve only seen this happen with food – for example, when Lara eats a steak off the floor on D6T21. From the comments on D6T20, it seems like people knew she’d be able to do that, so I guess it must’ve happened before, but I don’t remember when.
In the past LSN has made mistakes/let us get away with picking up and using an item in the same action, but has officially stated on discord that the rule is using an item from a floor and picking up an item are separate actions, like what happened here:
https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-12-turn-42/
“He’d like to also heal himself, but picking up and using the wand are both actions. He can pick it up and keep it, or use it and leave it on the ground, but can’t do both on the same turn.”
What I am probably thinking of is using expendable items from the ground, like food and potions, since if an item is expendable it doesn’t really need to be picked up and put in inventory if the character is going to use it immediately anyway. I’m pretty sure that works for food like meat and birthday cakes. I think it works for potions. I’m less sure if it works for other expendable things like Magic Lenses and Crowstones and Thieves’ Tools. I’m curious if it works for non-expendable things like keys.
That leads to the question of whether if character A drops a Healing Potion (or a Magic Lens) on the ground as a free action, then character B can use it from the ground on the same Turn as their action. I was told this is supposedly not allowed and is what led to the idea that a dropped item is intangible until the next Turn. I don’t know if that’s true or official.
A similar situation would be that character A has a key and is going to take an action but could then move to a door (but not be able to use the keys on it) and drop the key by the door. Could character B use their action the same Turn to use the keys from the ground to open the door? Does the answer change if character A’s action was to pick up said key (this forms a ‘relay’ that would allow the key to be picked up, moved, and used in the same Turn).
From memory, the inventory rules on the ‘How To Play’ page don’t cover using items from the ground without picking them up.
I think the only iffy one is Crowstones. Lenses I don’t think we have used from the floor before, but I don’t see why not. Keys and healing items we’ve used from the floor before. Using a crowstone often also means attacking with it. It doesn’t sound unreasonable, might be worth trying.
Gut reaction is no, since this is basically just trying to skirt around the fact that trading is an action. If we want to move an item from one character to another in a single turn, it costs an action from both of them. We can’t come up with clever ways to bypass that.
Here’s another example/question:
Ricki has a stack of 3 Raw Meat in her inventory and needs to deal with a group of elemental dogs. She could use an action to feed one piece of Raw Meat to one dog (using both her action and that dog’s action), but could she use one action to feed 3 pieces of Raw Meat to 3 different dogs (maybe considered a group trade?). Instead of using an action to feed the dogs could Ricki just drop the stack of 3 Raw Meat on the ground as a free action and then run past the distracted dogs? If dropping the Meat on the ground as a distraction as a free action works then can the dogs eat it from the ground on the same Turn she dropped it??? If they can then they’re essentially trying to bypass the “trading takes an action from all characters involved rule” since Ricki didn’t use an action to drop the stack of Meat. If the dogs cannot eat the dropped Meat the same Turn as Ricki drops it due to arcane inventory rules then what do they do with their actions on the Turn Ricki drops the stack of Meat and tries to run past them??? Do they attack Ricki or just sit there and stare at the Meat, salivating like Pavlov’s dogs, or do they start fighting with each other over the stack of Meat that they cannot eat until next Turn?!? Does the answer vary if the group of dogs is 2 dogs, 3 doggos, or 4+ doggies?
What if there’s only two dogs but Wolf(were-Amadeusz) is with Ricki, can Wolf wolf down one of the three Raw Meat that Ricki just dropped on the floor as a free action while the two doggies eat the other two (thus violating the trading rule) or can the doggos eat but Wolf cannot due to arcane and arbitrary inventory rules, or can none of them eat the Raw Meat on the same Turn that Ricki dropped it as a free action… because items dropped as a free action are effectively intangible until the next Turn???
Sigh…
…
(Note that all of this weirdness could be resolved by just having a one-way trade between characters only use the action of the recipient, rather than the actions of both characters.)
https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-17/#comment-15332 — “Just a heads up, LSN revealed on Discord that miss chance caps out at 70%, even if someone is in the dark, wearing a bucket on their head and attacking someone with 2 gold evasion rings.”
Please officially confirm that this is how dodge/evasion/miss chance works, capping out at 70% (on someplace ‘official’ where people who don’t participate on Discord can read it and I can point to if questioned about it).
From the stream: LSN wasn’t sure off the top of his head, but said that if that’s what it says on Discord then Discord is correct. LSN then confirmed that miss chance tops out at 70%.
Not sure where you got that from.
The question was
“Can you officially state that Miss Chance tops out at 70% ?”
And the answer was
“If I stated it on Discord, then it is stated officially. And yes, that is correct.”
Also, back in the Poisoned Well, could a character have worn the bucket as a makeshift diving helmet to avert drowning for 1 turn? — https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-15/#comment-15207
The answer from the stream was: No.
Do you think we’ll get lore on the ring? Why is the Empire so interested in it? — https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-17/#comment-15318
Yes… or at least we should. Logically something that big that can be seen from far away should be a well known landmark and a local legend. As far as I understand it isn’t all that far from the Imperial capital so someone like Ricki who grew up there should have heard of it. Otherwise it would be like someone who was raised in the US state of Missouri who had never heard of the Gateway Arch.
The answer from the stream was: What ring? (with implication of sarcasm)
LSN is the Monster In The Dark, confirmed.
Here’s a possibility: Ordinary folk can’t see the ring and have no idea it’s there. Ricki and Amadeusz can only see it because of their special powers. In fact, Amadeusz might have thought he was the only one in the party who could see it. Their dialogue at I12P17 can easily be read that way:
R: “Huh. I didn’t realize how close this place is to the guard outpost we already went to.”
A: “I was wondering when you’d notice. … Out of curiosity, what made you realize the nearness of the two locations?”
R: “…Are you serious?”
A: “My apologies. I suppose it wasn’t much of a joke.”
Maybe he wasn’t joking, but testing to see if she could see the ring, in a way that wouldn’t give away its existence in case she couldn’t. And, cagey as he is, when she answered in a way that didn’t conclusively answer his real question, he passed it off as a joke to end the discussion.
In any case, we don’t know for certain that anyone else can see it. It appears in the art at the end of I10 and the beginning of I11 (when Amadeusz is staring up at it lost in thought), but it’s not actually mentioned in any of the dialogue. Might be worth having Ricki ask one of the other characters about it in our next dungeon. Amadeusz and Kamau seem the most likely to know something, but of course it depends on who we take with us.
That’s a decent theory that fits the available evidence we have. It is even possible that Amadeusz cannot actually see it but knows it is there from intel reports.
That would, however, assume that Ricki never asked her 3 traveling companions about the giant broken arch/ring even once during their journey to both the Guard Outpost and the Research Facility and that the topic of that intriguing enormous structure never came up even once in casual or ‘dinner’ conversation at the Manor between the returning from the Outpost (D11) and leaving for the Facility (D13). That would imply some rather interesting behavior on the part of our group, they don’t talk to each other when they’re offscreen, or perhaps they even cease to exist or go into a sort of stasis/hibernation when they’re not onscreen.
An even more extreme version of this theory is than only the audience can see the enormous ring structure and none of the characters can see it, which would at least explain why none of them ever asked about it.
Yet another possibility, one that might make more sense in the context of what we know about the world of DE and the new sun-god Emperor, is that the broken ring/arch isn’t invisible per-se but people cannot remember seeing it, similar to how people cannot remember the names of the old gods.
Another possible theory is that LSN didn’t understand the question.
Ooh, that’s even better! 🙂
I like this theory a lot too.
I get what you’re saying, and I can even imagine a version of this game in which LSN periodically gives us some fresh lore that Ricki has gleaned from dinner conversations, etc. But that would put him in a position of answering questions we didn’t ask, and I feel like that would make things too easy for us. Honestly, I prefer that the onus is on us to pay attention and ask questions, even if in a way it’s not as realistic.
Can you confirm that some opponents can have Abilities just like our characters do and what level of Guard/Justicar is required to have Abilities? Can plain guards (no armor or leather armor) or the sergeants (in chain armor) have Abilities or is it only the Elite sorts? What about Bruce?
from https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-17/#comment-15314
I’m re-reading the Guard Outpost before we enter the Research Facility. Over at D11T25 the text we got for our first turn of fighting the Enforcer says,
“…she nimbly jumps off of the parapets and avoids almost all of their attacks! Only Ricki and Macadamia connect, dealing minor damage. She makes a heavy sun-powered strike against Kamau in midair.”
From the description text I suspect that the Enforcer may be using Abilities, like the Heavy Strike I Ability that Kamau can buy and possibly the Dodgy I Ability that Ricki can buy. There is no reason the high end opponents can’t have Abilities just like our characters do. This may be what Kamau was referring to last Turn (D11,T24) when he said, “The real problem is we won’t know exactly what she can do unless we DO fight her. Everyone learns different combat styles, you know?”
If we got two Siegeswords and used the Upgrade Press to smush them together to get an UPGRADED Siegesword then we could obviously use an Enchantment Scroll to put another Enchantment on it to produce something like an UPGRADED Venomous Siegesword, but it isn’t clear if that works in the other order.
The description of UPGRADED does clearly say that it is an Enhancement and that it “Stacks with other enhancements”. I’m sure that will be very handy if we get another Venomous Siegesword, but it doesn’t really say for certain if we could just use the Upgrade Press to press an unenchanted Siegesword with a Siegesword that has another Enchantment (like Venomous).
Would you please clarify whether or not an unenchanted Siegesword purchased from Paws can be combined with our existing Venomous Siegesword using the Upgrade Press.
I am/was curious about that as well, but someone pointed out that the description of the press requires identical items.
That’s enough for me. Same means same, identical means identical. Plain sword is not the same as poison-upgraded sword. Yes, upgrading math does not compute equally. Upgading and magic is not math. Some combinations of actions are better than other. AABB may result in a different effect than ABAB than ABBA than BABA than BBAA. Heck, in the real world, if you go forward, forward, left, left, you will end up in a different place than if you go left, left, forward, forward. No surprise that if we enchant first with a scroll we end up with an item that is harder to upgrade-via-magical-merging-press than a plain item!
Are you so certain that you feel it is not even worth asking the question?
Not really, but I thought we have a lot of more-important ones! Still nice to hear this one adressed!
The answer from the stream was that you can use the Upgrade Press to smush a Venomous Siegesword and a plain old Siegesword you can buy from Paws together and get an Upgraded Venomous Siegesword.
Lots of examples of different orders were given and the result is the same, enchantments like Venomous are totally separate from what the Upgrade Press does.
According to LSN’s answer, while you certainly could smush two Venomous Siegeswords together with the Upgrade Press to get an Upgraded Venomous Siegesword that would be a waste of a Venomous scroll.
We started Dungeon 13 with 6 pieces of Raw Meat. We found 6 more pieces of Raw Meat in a chest on D13T37. Amadeusz dropped a piece of Raw Meat on D13T55 to pick up the gear that dropped when Cordy perished/died/went to that great salad bowl in the sky and the color of the meat on the floor on T55 & T56 still looks like Raw Meat. On D13T59, “Ix picks up the rest of Cordy’s dropped items” and the picture shows fire form Ix has also picked up the items that Amadeusz dropped to pick up most of Cordy’s items, including the Raw Meat since it is no longer on the floor. On or after Turn 60, after the deadly Dungeon 13 has been exited, Ix changes from fire form to ice form.
The new character, IX, currently has 1 Steak in their inventory according to the Characters page.
Please confirm whether or not fire form IX can intentionally or unintentionally cook Raw Meat into Steaks by holding Raw Meat in their inventory (or some other mechanism)!
[BTW, cute touch and very subtly done, bravo]
In the stream LSN said he did it as a joke on a whim and is probably going to regret it, but (at least for now) it is canon that fire form IX can cook raw meat into steaks.
If it is not already clear from reading all of my questions (most of which went unanswered during I12 and D13) and “4000 word rant” (sic), I consider LSN to be rather rude for an author who is running an interactive story for not replying to website Comments at all, or at least very VERY rarely, and then often only in an administrative role.
For me it would go a long way if, when the intermission or dungeon was posting new pages, LSN would at least occasionally make a Comment that said something like, “I’ve read all the Comments on this page as of when I wrote this and I’m not going to answer them now but you can ask again during the wrap-up stream,” or at least did something that acknowledged the existence of players who have questions, especially questions about the game mechanics that other players are taking it upon themselves to answer in the DM’s place (and sometimes answering incorrectly).
I realize that there is a Discord where questions might be getting acknowledged and answered more frequently than they do in the website Comments, but unless someone from Discord takes the time to copy the question and answer to the Comments here on the website then others don’t know about it. A significant reason I don’t want to join Discord is that I don’t especially want to end up in that role myself of copying the questions and answers that appear on Discord over to the Comments here on the website.
I’m somewhat curious why the author doesn’t just take the gameplay regarding the actions for a Turn over to Discord since it seems like that is where more interaction takes place and questions get answered, but that’s the author’s choice and really not my concern.
In the wrap-up stream LSN said that Discord was the place to ask questions, especially about the rules, and that he checks Discord much more often than the Comments on the website, since he uses Discord for other reasons. Apparently when the number of Comments exceeds 60 or so he only skims through them and mostly ignores big threads of people discussing things in the website Comments.
During the dungeon 13 wrap-up stream, it was clear that LSN had not read the Comments here on the website beforehand, so I was curious what was going to happen when he got to this one. He answered the questions from the stream chat and from a Discord thread before finally coming here to the website to read the Comments on this page. When he got to this comment, after a pause to read the Comment his on the fly response was, “I think it’s rather rude to… say that… an author… is rude… because they’re not… running their interactive… thing the way that you want them to after you joined halfway through and refused to use, uh, the specific resource for people who want more information about the specific mechanics of the thing!” — [1:51:10 to 1:51:45 in the stream recording]
Looks like a bunch of other comments have wrap up notes, but here’s mine.
– Staff of Animation was hidden in the Manor, and could’ve animated canine skeletons into a permanent pet. Hidden in the chest above the door/picture
– As with the guard outpost, lots of notes. Kobold Warrens suggested that different people get different dungeon madness, and apparently human madness is obsessive note posting.
– Other than the deaths, pretty good job
– Entry room cleared out
– Possible to distract one dog at a time, perhaps same for aggro
– Second room – wisp was non hostile and helpful to Ix. If wisps left alive they’d fight guards. Not unreasonable fear that they’d attack new character
– Third ground level room on containment vat – every 10 turns, element would flip and completely random wisp spawns at each pipe. Cracks in the pipe would swap elemental dogs. Ix is a two-element character and wouldn’t unlock anything else if hit by other wisps.
– Top middle room – guards wouldn’t go up if nothing was out of place. Could’ve wiped out the top without tipping off guards. If guards which saw the party met up with other guards, then they’d share information.
– Guards could see up to three suspicious things before wandering. Pile of equipment was suspicious, missing solar guardian (not hostile to guards, perhaps by elemental heart), and loose keys on floor.
– Pigeon 50% mercy 50% goof: one room to the right due to partial movement that turn. Next turn, movement miscounted and then didn’t want to take that away. Mistakes are corrected when not that important but this one gave the interesting option of chasing down reinforcements.
– Guards knew where traps were.
– Tank explosion also alerts guards to patrol.
– Death owlbear was bonus boss. Identical stats to regular owlbear except it deals unblockable and is immune to non-unblockable damage. The death arrow is a clue the guard are preparing to fight it. Treasure was a wand of death strike – 7 ranged unblockable damage once per dungeon.
– Upper left – guards using ice and fire wisps to make hellhounds and winter wolves, with an unlimited supply of dogs. Other wisps sent to top right room.
– “I like the bony boys. Don’t take that out of context. Wait, do, that’s funny.” -LoneStarNorth
– If buzzer isn’t one-shot then they buzz around and alert others. Lightning bug also deals lightning damage to everything, including enemies.
– Chest behind winter wolves had potion of healing and cozy hat (ice resist item)
– One more wisp through the top right pipe would’ve broken all three canisters, leaving wandering wisps. Same if new wisps came into filled containers, plus without a container any new wisps would pop into
– We get a bonus for breaking the facility
– Fire ice healing holy wisps sent to appropriate stations, otherwise trying to convert wisps randomly in hopes of useful types. The open chest had the staff of animation, needed to be opened to move to block off the loose wisps downstairs.
– Lara death – fully wiping out the justiciar or greatsword guard would make the encounter much more manageable, as figured out
– Barrier blocking rat hole, presumably guards sick of rats. Plague rats seem to come from dire rats exposed to poison wisps.
– Bottom left room – collecting holy wisps to be picked up by a patrol. Fight would’ve been easier if not alerting them
– Bottom middle – Shockroach chest with grounded gloves, 50% to not consume wand charge
– Bottom right – making potions out of life element wisps, gathered in chest. With three or more potions then they’d be carried over to the holy wisp collection for export.
– Scientists locked in room have keys to the barred doors, other keys were to wooden doors. They are friendly, locked because they’re not cooperating with the guard because they’re worried. They would each give a benefit, 3 scientists so 3 items crafted total: turn any wisp into potion (healing or elemental resistance, or figure something out for death wisp), or make up to one wand out of 1-3 wisps of the same type. Their chest has a wizard hat which buffs wands and staffs. Saving scientists would’ve unlocked some kind of manor upgrade for them to stay, maybe potion discount, wasn’t decided.
– Magicrow nest has a pet egg, they didn’t want to fight if they could avoid it. Could’ve given them stuff but they only have the egg. If they had seen us fighting guards then they might have entrusted the egg to us as it’s safer than here.
– Reminder that Pet Master eggs are random and can roll missed pets like this one.
– Dragon room – intended way to get in is either Macadamia or dropping something very heavy very far. Death owlbear would roam the dungeon if released and aggroed, and would be heavy enough to drop into that room and wreck it.
– The turn after the elemental marauder was freed, it wrecked the container, covering the floor in broken glass. If nothing was there to fight in the middle room, it would break the ladder.
– Marauder was unstable and losing health every turn. Ways to recruit: on 0 health, transforms back into Ix and can be recruited with healing. If the guard had a turn after dropping the marauder then they’d kill Ix. If the marauder escaped the dungeon then that would be a failure, no level up.
– Difficulty increase: Tougher patrols and wanted posters everywhere. Posters were for Ricki, not just goblins.
– Two weeks off as this is the end of Act 2, need to prep for Act 3.
– Cordy will retain level ups when regrowing. Bonus characters are OP
– Pigeons have same escape rules as us to leave the dungeon
– Death owlbear drops regular owlbear items
– Wisps would not follow out of dungeon even with elemental heart
– Could not enchant guards/dogs/pets with top left room.
– Generally, written down rules are respected until the end of the current dungeon even if there’s instant regret (salve armour)
– For every closed valve on the 10-turn pulse, the marauder gets bonus HP, and could break out without all valves closed if gaining enough HP
– Bombing the reactor releases the marauder early, could have unlocked Ix early but then need to protect them the rest of dungeon
– Shocktail lizard immune to lightning
– Marauder focused big targets first above pets
– Interested in making a Dungeon Eyes board/video game, but don’t hold your breath
– Elemental heart didn’t stop attacks on the same turn because it’s mean. Dogs want steaks but the marauder doesn’t want to be pacified.
– Breaking pipes would probably be allowed, resulting in more places wisps could get loose
– Good idea to use the red pipe to scout rooms, unfortunate we picked one in line of sight of guards
– How many more non-bond dungeons? Act 3 is the final act and each act has had 6 dungeons.
– Ricki likes her clothes, there’s no upgrade to change
– Fire breath might have cooked meat, wisp attacks not so as they’re pure magic
– Miss chance without light is 50%.
– Ix pronouns they/them. Narration is generally correct, unless a character is intentionally misrepresenting identity
– Ix still form changes if all damage blocked.
– Ix transforming to fire underwater would be a bad time.
– As an exception to the general ally attack rule, low damage from allies is allowed to transform Ix.
– Ix drops random items when losing encumbrance, unless items to drop are specified
– Ix can’t see in the dark but wisps can.
– Ix cooking steak is a joke. It’s part of the action to pick up the item.
– Upgrade press doesn’t need to have enchantment match. Enchantment is inherited by the upgraded item, if both inputs are enchanted then only one enchantment is kept.
– Wisps are immune to their element, but undead may be vulnerable to death magic
– Magicrows have one spell each they can use freely, strength of spell isn’t known until seen
– Adding defense during the turn may be usable that turn, it depends on how the defense is granted.
– Trapping guards with the death owlbear would be funny
– Macadamia can dig through intended floors without using the ability charge. Raw damage from normal attacks can’t break dungeon walls but something else clever might do it
– Fall damage is based on which of the four vertical levels in the room, Lara falling from a ceiling in the second level to the floor of the first level is just as safe as jumping down from a floor in the second level
– Not everything is suspicious to guards, broken torches could’ve been done by dungeon monsters. Even some opened chests might be written off as dungeon oddities, though not locked chests
– Ix transforms at end of turn, use previous stats for that turn
– Justiciar had a beam of light not in the visible spectrum (forgot to draw it)
– Ix, Botanya, Cordy, and Coxxyx can’t eat steak.
– Feeding someone else takes an action from both.
– Trading with others and floor is okay if it gets back to the game, actions for trading are to reduce how much inventory redraw happens
– Dual cast works with the cane
– Typically reads all comments, but at 50+ or very long comments, maybe not.
– Open chests can be closed if something is inside. Dungeon logic!
– Ix can use shock javelin
– Can carry two shields but only benefit from one at a time
– Guards focus on Lara as a big scary monster. They make targeting decisions based on observed outcomes – visible equipment is part of that, rings aren’t visible but stat implications come out in combat. There isn’t a flowchart, they do whatever makes the most sense given what they know.
– Ix can cook, it’s canon and already regretted. Mac is better.
– Lots of specific Discord question answers
Thanks!
I’ve been eagerly awaiting your post. Your notes are probably better and more concise than mine.
Thanks again Marth!
Just thought I’d point this out as it can be easy to overlook on the manor page, especially since I just made it up 🙂
Dont we have already an oven/stove? 😉
Ricki, paint your eyeballs blue! Oh. You already did? Good job! Way to think ahead.
I know we can’t get Bond for everyone, but can we PLEASE stop picking the same three characters this time? We only need two more Bond for Kamau and Mac. Let’s at least get them settled away. Kamau’s been our loyal companion from the start; are we just gonna ignore him? We can give Ix a try, too, since that’s a decently powerful character that won’t instantly die on us. Botanya needs one more Bond for a room that will upgrade her HP. If there’s another zombie or undead dungeon, she’ll be perfect for that.
Let’s also pay attention to the TYPE of dungeon, since I still remember thinking how perfect it would be to bring Coccyx, the long range skeleton that doesn’t get affected poison and water, to the Poison Well, and sure enough, they would have been perfect, and it would have made a lot of difference, and we didn’t.
I swear to God if there’s, like, an Ice Dungeon giving us all the signals we should bring Ix and we go “Nah, let’s bring Cordy again” and don’t bring Ix that’s just ridiculous.
If we want to max Bond with Amadeusz and get the Secret Ending or whatever that’s fine, but let’s get Kamau and Mac’s Bond finished first. With Ix as a new character that requires four Bond, we KNOW there’s at least four non-Bond Dungeons now.
I also suspect the game is kinda designed so that you will strengthen all the characters to some extent, and not just min-max three. With the sentry post, there may come a time where there’s a surprise attack on the manor, which we will want the other characters to be prepared for.
Yeah, I know I don’t control the narrative. It’s all democratic. That’s fine. Just stating my opinion. I still remember someone being upset yet begrudgingly accepting the character choices for Poison Well, and the DM entering the chat to scold them for it.
Also I literally donated a decent chunk of money to KoFi specifically towards getting the new character and maybe even new dungeons in the hopes of switching up our strategy. Hoping it was worth it. I’ll donate more if I know we can get more dungeons.
Yes to all of this.
Let’s clarify that it was the DM/GM/author/storyteller who decided that the characters who would go to dungeon 13 (The Research Facility) would be the same group of characters who went to dungeon 12 (The Poisoned Well). The players essentially stalemated in a voting war with multiple groups repeatedly upvoting and downvoting several different party compositions.
Perhaps fortunately, we cannot take the exact same three characters (Amad, Lara, Cordy) into Dungeon 14 because Cordy is currently dead, or perhaps a better way to word that is that there isn’t currently a Cordy. They don’t even exist on the Characters page so if someone wants to see Cordy’s stats and abilities they’ll have to look here: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-19/#comment-15404
So I assume that this isn’t really about Cordy (at least for Dungon 14) and probably not specifically about Lara (who is at max Bond) but rather about everyone’s most favorite or hated character, Amadeusz, and more specifically his universally despised Sketchy ‘ability’.
Sigh, we’re starting up this conflict about party composition, Bond, and Sketchy again pretty early, but I see people were already making comments about giving these characters a break towards the end of dungeon 13.
One of the things we need to consider but don’t have an answer for (and may not know until we try) is whether getting full Bond with Amadeusz will remove his Sketchy ability or not. If getting to full Bond with Amadeusz will get rid of Sketchy then it actually makes sense to bring him on the next 3 dungeons (he started needing 6 Bond and now only needs 3 more) and then do his Bond dungeon. After that there would then be at least two more dungeons where we could bring Kamau and Mac to get their last two Bond points and be able to do their Bond dungeons too before the grand finale.
Frankly, it makes complete sense that getting to full Bond with Amadeusz would remove him being Sketchy, but the author has already screwed with the players/audience so much regarding Bond that I’m not going to assume anything or take anything that hasn’t been explicitly stated for granted. At this point it wouldn’t even surprise me if we got Amadeusz to full Bond but still didn’t get a backstory for him, still didn’t get rid of Sketchy, and had him unavoidably permanently lose one of his two forms during his Bond dungeon (whichever one we’d bought more Abilities for) leaving him significantly weaker, and half of the audience/players rage-quit.
We’re probably going to get Kamau and Mac to full Bond one way or another before the end of the story, since they only have 2 points to go, it is just a matter of when.
Another major thing that needs to be considered is that Amadeusz has Requiem of Resurrection which can salvage a lot of surprises and bad situations, including Ricki getting killed and ending the game right then and there. If we hadn’t had Amadeusz with the group for dungeon 13 then Lara or whoever we brought instead of Amadeusz, such as Lohk or Kamau, might have been permanently killed at D13T8. The Requiem of Resurrection can also save a weak character like Mac or Lohk that we bring and accidentally get killed so that they are still alive and still get an Ability from that dungeon, and possible a Bond point too if getting Amadeusz to full bond removes being Sketchy.
Note that we can still ‘strengthen’ any characters that go to a dungeon with Amadeusz because they will get an Ability from the dungeon if they survive and the dungeon is successfully completed, and in fact they are more likely to survive (due to Requiem of Resurrection) and the dungeon is more likely to be completed (due to not losing a character in the dungeon), and the game is less likely to come to an abrupt end (due to Requiem of Resurrection). So this isn’t about strengthening the weaker characters, it is about Bond and Sketchy.
It wouldn’t matter much if getting him to full bond removed sketchy. That would be so late in the game there would be no reason to care anymore.
A better choice would be bonding all other characters first, and then sketchy no longer matters. We could take Ama with fully bonded Lara, Kamau, Mac, Lohk, etc, without sacrificing bond.
If there were unlimited dungeons remaining in the storyline that would work and could be a viable option (except for not having Requiem of Resurrection, so we’d might lose a few characters along the way and the game might just end early if Ricki got killed).
The remaining amounts to the “Bond dungeon” on the characters are:
Kamau: 2
Lara: 0
Macadamia: 2
Lohk: 4
Botanya: 3 (and has a vertical bar showing a limit/condition after 1)
Coccyx: 4 (no vertical bars?? even though a room for them is an option)
Amadeusz: 3
IX: 4 (no vertical bars)
Thus there are 19 points of Bond needed plus 3 for the Sketchy Amadeusz.
One major option for the next series of dungeons would be something like this:
— Plan “A”, a tentative plan for bonding Amad, Kamau & Mac —
14) Amadeusz, 2 others
15) Amadeusz, 2 others
16) Amadeusz, 2 others
17) Amadeusz’ Bond dungeon (and maybe getting rid of Sketchy)
18) Kamau, Macadamia, 1 other (could be Amad if non-Sketchy)
19) Kamau, Macadamia, 1 other (could be Amad if non-Sketchy)
20) Kamau’s Bond dungeon
21) Macadamia’s Bond dungeon
22) Amadeusz, Kamau, Lara (for the 6th dungeon of the next series and possibly the Grand Finale, with 4 characters at full Bond)
In that “Plan A” option (the “A” was for Amadeusz) the Amadeusz and the Kamau & Macadamia dungeons can be switched around, so we could take Kamau & Macadamia on dungeons 14 and 15 to get them to full Bond earlier, which some people might prefer… ok a lot of people might prefer. The biggest advantages of “Plan A” are having a good fighter with Requiem of Resurrection around for many of the dungeons and having a lot of flexibility in who the other characters are, and the biggest disadvantage is we only get 4 characters at full bond by the 6th dungeon of the next series: Lara, Kamau, Amadeusz, Macademia).
Looking at how much Bond each of the characters needs, even if just ignore Coccyx and leave Amadeusz behind until the remaining 6 characters are at full Bond and we brought 3 characters who are not at full Bond on every dungeon (which may not be very practical due to how weak they are) and we succeeded at every dungeon (which isn’t likely due to how weak those characters are), it would take 5 dungeons to get them all to full Bond before we started bringing Amadeusz. More importantly the party composition for the next dungeons would look something like this:
— Plan “B”, a tentative plan for bonding as many as possible —
14) Kamau, Macadamia, IX
15) Kamau, Macadamia, Lokh
16) Kamau’s Bond dungeon
17) Macadamia’s Bond dungeon
18) IX, Lohk, Botanya
19) IX, Lohk, Botanya
20) IX, Lohk, Botanya
21) Lohk’s Bond dungeon
22) Botanya’s Bond dungeon
23) IX’s Bond dungeon
24) Amadeusz, Kamau, Lara (for the 6th dungeon of the next series and possibly the Grand Finale, with 6 characters at full Bond)
In that “Plan B” option (the “B” was for Bond), in addition to needing to do 3 dungeons with the team of Ricki, IX, Lohk and Botanya, there are several potential problems with this tentative plan, including Kamau remorsing out, failing to complete a dungeon, a character getting permanently killed due to not having Requiem of Resurrection and Ricki getting killed and the game ending early due to not having Requiem of Resurrection, as well as the DM throwing us a dungeon that either seems to be perfect for or actually need a character who is already at full Bond or just outright requiring us to bring a particular character. So if you think that there are going to be only 5 more full dungeons until the Grand Finale then everything has to go perfectly and we’ll be able to have everyone but Amadeusz and Coccyx at full Bond. If we failed at even one of those dungeons with Ricki, IX, Lohk and Botanya then those 3 wouldn’t get to full bond by the 6th dungeon of the next series and we might be doing the Grand Finale with only 3 characters at full bond: Lara, Kamau, and Macademia rather than the 4 characters at full bond that we’d get from “Plan A”.
I actually only made Amadeusz “Plan A” because it was funnier and more mnemonic that way. I’m actually fine with either “Plan A” or “Plan B”, especially if it ends the interminable and caustic arguments over which characters to bring and who to Bond.
I’d be very interested to read about other possibilities and another viable plan, because I think otherwise the “Plan C” is going to stand for Complete Chaos.
Give this a “thumbs up” and make a reply if you like “Plan A”
Give this a “thumbs up” and make a reply if you like “Plan B”
Give this a thumbs up if you like “Plan C”
With plan C (the “C” is for consideration of circumstances) being choose characters suited to the particular dungeon, excluding Ama and fully bonded characters unless the dungeon looks like it will be unusually difficult.
If we don’t rush both Mac and Kamau immediately, we can mix things up more. For example, have a party of Ix, Lohk and Mac if we need element maxing, or Kamau, Botanya and Cox if we need heal range and tank.
This dungeon we used Requiem pretty early on. We likely would have played more cautiously if we didn’t have it, instead of justifying weird risks that depleted our health pool due to having it. Frankly the Requiem isn’t Ama’s strength, the meat eating is. And Ix (or Lohk?) might be able to fix that for us with some cooking help.
Thanks for taking the time to write up a “Plan C” and give it a better name and better treatment than my first comment did.
Note that “Plan A” is really quite flexible about which characters we bring and we can bring the characters that are most appropriate for that dungeon (like you prefer) and those characters can get an Level-up Ability from the dungeon if we succeed at the dungeon, just not a Bond point (sadly). “Plan A” is also flexible enough that the two dungeons with Kamau and Macadamia and one other character can be whichever ones seem are going to be the most appropriate for that pair. If we do the two dungeons with Kamau and Mac (and without Amadeusz) fairly early on then we’ll have full Bond with those two and the only character that would be questionable about getting full Bond if things go wrong would be Amad. So with “Plan A” by the time we enter the 6th dungeon of “Act 3” (and apparently the last of Act 3 from what LSN said in the wrap-up stream) we get full Bond with Lara, Kamau, Mac for sure (if they don’t die) and also Amad if nothing goes wrong, for 4 full Bond characters almost for sure and 1 tentative (Amad).
Plan A full Bond: Lara, Kamau, Mac (pretty sure); Amad (maybe); Lohk, Botanya, IX Coccyx (not at full bond). For 3 or 4 characters at full Bond by dungeon 6 of Act 3.
“Plan B” shows the maximum possible number of characters we can get full Bond with before entering the sixth dungeon of “Act 3”. I wrote the tentative example of “Plan B” to illustrate that we’d need to do at least 3 dungeons with a team of something like: IX, Lohk, and Botanya. There’s some flexibility in that and some of those 3 could be something like IX, Lohk, Macadamia or Lohk, Macadamia, Botanya, but the point is we’d need to succeed at 3 dungeons without having either Kamau, Lara, or Amadeusz with the group in order to max out the number of characters with Bond and even then we only get 6 characters at full Bond if we never bring Amadeusz or Coccyx and everything goes perfectly in dungeons we’d be bringing a fairly weak team into. Plan B also has limited flexibility in which characters are brought into a dungeon, compared to Plan A.
Plan B full Bond: Lara, Kamau, Mac (pretty sure); Lohk, Botanya, IX (maybe, and likely all 3 or none); Coccyx, Amadeusz (not at full bond). For 3 or 6 characters at full Bond by dungeon 6 of Act 3.
If we bring Coccyx even once in the next 5 dungeons then the maximum number of characters who can get to full Bond before we enter dungeon six of “Act 3” is five.
“Plan C” seems likely to get the group to the start of the sixth dungeon of Act 3 with Lara, Kamau, Mac at full bond, and probably only 1 or 2 out of Lohk, Botanya, IX, and Coccyx, with only Amadeusz not at full bond for sure (that probably means Lohk and either Botanya or IX get to full Bond and Coccyx only gets 1 or 2 Bond). If Amadeusz gets brought even once by the voting then probably only 1 at best of the other 4 (Lohk, Botanya, IX, and Coccyx) would get to full Bond, making it like Plan A but with some other character than Amad being the one to get to full Bond before dungeon 6, probably Lohk if people are dedicated to going for the “story character”.
Plan C full Bond (realistically): Lara, Kamau, Mac (pretty sure); Lohk, Botanya, IX (probably only 1 and maybe 2 of these three… if we somehow got all 3 to full Bond it would just be a variation of “Plan B”); Coccyx, Amadeusz (not at full bond). For 4 or 5 characters at full Bond by dungeon 6 of Act 3.
Plan C does have a realistic chance of giving us 5 characters at full Bond if things go well, and probably giving us 4 characters at full Bond even if things don’t go so well. That actually is an improvement on Plan A and B which tend to only get 3 characters to full Bond if things don’t go so well. Plan C isn’t as flexible as Plan A about which of the characters who are already at full Bond that we bring but it has more flexibility than Plan B (which has no flexibility, full Bond characters or Amad can never be brought in Plan B). With Plan C we’ll probably be able to bring a non-Amad full Bond character 2 or 3 times.
Here’s possible example of how “Plan C” might go down (it is extremely variable so this is just an example to show how it might go):
— Plan “C”, a very rough possible example —
14) Kamau, Macadamia, IX
15) Ix, Lohk and Macadamia (your example)
[at this point Coccyx cannot get to full Bond]
16) Macadamia’s Bond dungeon
17) Kamau, Botanya and Coccyx (your example)
[at this point Lohk cannot get to full Bond]
18) Kamau’s Bond dungeon
19) IX, Botanya, 1 other (could be a full Bond char: Kamau, Lara, Mac)
20) IX, Botanya, 1 other (could be a full Bond char: Kamau, Lara, Mac)
21) Botanya’s Bond dungeon
22) IX’s Bond dungeon
23) Kamau, Lara, and 1 other (for the 6th dungeon of the next series and possibly the Grand Finale, with 5 characters at full Bond… or if you don’t bring both IX and Botanya on dungeon 19 then you’ve only got 4 characters at full Bond… or if someone votes to bring Amadeusz on dungeon 19 or 20 then you’ve only got 3 characters at full Bond).
I hope that does a better job of illustrating the strengths and weaknesses of “Plan C”.
I believe you may be trying to refer to this: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-11-page-6/#comment-13137 , if so it appears to me that the issue at stake there was how the voting works. If not, please provide a link to what you are referring to.
I think it was well recognized during all the arguing about party composition for dungeon 13 that The Research Facility was going to be an ideal place to bring Lohk, yet the player/audience group couldn’t even agree on bringing Lohk and the DM decided not to include her in the party composition.
The issues involved aren’t just the advertised TYPE of dungeon but also about its advertised or perceived DIFFICULTY.
When a dungeon appears that it is going to be difficult there is a very good reason to bring one or more of our most powerful characters, who also happen to be the ones that are either at max Bond (Lara), don’t have Bond (Cordy), or prevent anyone else from gaining Bond (Amadeusz), and if Amadeusz is selected then Bond becomes a non-issue due to him being Sketchy. Kamau is a good choice for a powerful character but his Remorse ‘ability’ makes it very risky to fully rely on him in a difficult dungeon, he has already ‘remorsed out’ twice, so bringing another character who is a decent fighter as a backup seems prudent. If we bring three of our weaker characters into a difficult dungeon “because they need more Bond” and one or two get permanently killed and then we have to abandon the dungeon unfinished so none of the remaining characters get any Bond anyway then what have we accomplished?
Part of the problem is that we need to bring enough power into dungeons in order to be able to complete them successfully without anyone getting permanently killed. That need somewhat conflicts with trying to accumulate as much Bond with as many characters as possible.
In the case of Cordy, the issue was also about getting extra pets who could provide Labor at the Manor for the remaining dungeons to bring in a consistent income. The best example quote of this camp was, “It’s Cordy time, one last time. For Capitalism!” — Zuvatan, on https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-14/ Since the value of extra Labor decreases with how many dungeons remain, hopefully that motivation for bringing Cordy is now diminished.
It was argued that the poisoned well was going to be easy since it was available at the start compared to the guards dungeons. With every positive assumption we make, we need to also consider the outcomes if our assumption is wrong.
The main drive behind the party comp was that people wanted to build up our labor. We did that, and Cordy’s dead. We probably wont see Amadeusz for a little while at least. I also would like to build up Kamau/Mac/Lohk’s bond. And Botanya, if we can swing it.
It looks like you are a proponent of “Plan C”, with prioritizing Lohk and Botanya as the 1 or 2 other characters we can get to full Bond with and giving IX and Coccyx low priority.
Here’s possible example of how that version “Plan C” might go down (it is extremely variable so this is just an example to show how it might go):
— Plan “C”, an ‘ideal’ example giving priority to Kamau>Mac>Lohk>Botanya —
14) Kamau, Macadamia, Lohk
15) Kamau, Macadamia, Lohk
[at this point IX and Coccyx cannot get to full Bond]
16) Kamau’s Bond dungeon
17) Macadamia’s Bond dungeon
18) Lohk, Botanya, 1 other (could be a full Bond char: Kamau, Lara, Mac)
[at this point Amadeusz cannot get to full Bond]
19) Lohk’s Bond dungeon
20) Botanya, 2 others (could be a full Bond char: Kamau, Lara, Mac, Lohk)
21) Botanya, 2 others (could be a full Bond char: Kamau, Lara, Mac, Lohk)
22) Botanya’s Bond dungeon
23) Kamau, Lara, Lohk (for the 6th dungeon of the next series and possibly the Grand Finale, with 5 characters at full Bond: Lara, Kamau, Macadamia, Lohk, Botanya)
If things go wrong, such as Kamau remorsing out or the group failing a dungeon or the voting mayhem decides to bring Amadeusz at least once then we may get to the end with only 4 characters at full Bond (which is the same number as “Plan A” but with Lohk instead of Amadeusz). There’s some room by the 2 penultimate dungeons to bring IX or Coccyx if it seems like it would be safe and they might be helpful. One significant downside is that without Requiem of Resurrection a character might get permanently killed if we aren’t both careful and lucky.
Here’s another example version to show the flexibility and some realism:
— Plan “C”, another very rough possible example —
14) Kamau, Macadamia, Lohk
15) Lara, Lohk and Botanya <– assumes we get a dungeon with lots of AOE damage
[at this point IX and Coccyx cannot get to full Bond]
16) Kamau, Macadamia, Lohk
[at this point Amadeusz cannot get to full Bond]
17) Kamau’s Bond dungeon
18) Macadamia’s Bond dungeon
19) Kamau, Lara, Lohk
20) Lohk’s Bond dungeon
21) Kamau, Lara, Botanya
22) Botanya’s Bond dungeon
23) Kamau, Lara, Lohk (for the 6th dungeon of the next series and possibly the Grand Finale, with 5 characters at full Bond: Lara, Kamau, Macadamia, Lohk, Botanya)
I showed bringing Kamau and Lara on dungeons 19 & 21 to show what happens if those seem like they’re going to be difficult and we want a powerful group, but Kamau and Lara could be replaced by any 2 characters (except Sketchy Amadeusz) if those characters seem like they’d be more appropriate to the dungeon.
I’m trying to be fair to these plans and show what they could look like in practice.
Right now I’m definitely more for a “wait and see” sort of plan. I think Kamau & Mac are locked in for the next two dungeons, and I’d like to bring Lohk along with them. I’m really hoping the living room or something can provide an alternate way to boost bond since at the moment there’s no way to max bond on both Lohk and Amadeusz, the two characters who, in my opinion, are most relevant to Ricki’s story. If not, then I guess we’ll see after we finish K&M’s bond dungeons. Maybe we find some crazy good item that makes Lohk (or Botanya) too good not to use. Or maybe Lohk dies in her next dungeon and the decision is made for us. Who knows.
I’m fine with giving up on Coccyx bond if it means other character will get theirs.
My preference levels:
Lohk > Kamau > Botanya > Cox > Ix > Mac > Ama.
Lara would have been lower than Lohk, higher than Kamau, but is already done.
My preference levels:
Kamau > Wolf > Macadamia > IX > Botanya > Lohk > Coccyx
I’m somewhat worried about Mac’s full Bond result. His story hasn’t been happy so far and I think we may want to do some story stuff like build the Kobold Den at the Manor and hopefully find more ‘dirt’ about the Empire before we full Bond him.
I’d put Lohk before Amadeusz/Wolf IF it were possible to get them both to full Bond in 5 dungeons, but that isn’t remotely possible. This story has been set up such that you can only get one or the other to full Bond by the sixth dungeon of “Act 3”. For people who write their preference levels like this, one of the most important things is where your put Amadeusz relative to Lohk.
I put IX before Botanya simply because IX is a decent fighter and a pretty flexible character. Botanya’s pacifism makes her a somewhat difficult character to bring to a dungeon and really bad to mix with Kamau while he still needs to worry about Remorse (due to a lack of backup fighters, unless we brought Lara, Amad or maybe IX). Also, Botanya’s general “save the world” plotline makes me worry that if we mess up her Bond dungeon the world might end.
I thought I’d show an example of a priority order that gives a relatively high priority to Amaduesz/Wolf.
LSN said in the wrap-up stream that we’ll be getting an unlock/reward for doing what Amadeusz asked us to in dungeon 13, we can only hope that the reward is getting rid of that accursed Sketchy Ability.
[Edit: I noticed that Jing’s Comment had developed a negative vote total so I upvoted it. I respect Jing’s opinion and preference order and I don’t think it deserves an ‘anonymous’ negative vote total just because some people have a different opinion.]
Here are the initial stats for our new character (including the items they left the Research Facility with), which appeared on the Characters page when the Dungeon 13 Report appeared saying that IX had joined. Having a record of their initial character sheet can be useful later if there are significant changes and this also shows the remaining items/loot that the party left Dungeon 13 with, including a Steak (LOL), it appears that our new character’s fire form may have the ability to cook Raw Meat into Steak which would be an awesome source of healing if that works again:
IX
Unstable Elemental
[picture of IX showing both fire and ice forms]
[currently in ice form]
HP: 10 (10 red)
Atk: 6 (2grey + 4white)
Def: 9 (2grey + 3blue + 3purple + 1yellow)
Mov: 1
ITEMS [10 slots in ice form]: helmet(1) , crowstoneinferno(1) , potionbandolier(1) , steak(1) , heavydutyovenmitts(1), heavyshield(2) , empty(3) .
WORN RINGS [2 slots]: silverringofaggression , silverringofaggression .
ABILITIES
Fire Form [fire form symbol]: +3 Atk, +1 Mov. Cannot wear or wield items not made mostly of metal. Unarmed attacks deal fire damage. Enemies who attack in melee take 1 fire damage. Can’t enter water. Not harmed by fire. Takes 2 extra damage from ice.
Ice Form [ice form symbol]: +3 Def, +2 Enc. Cannot wear armour. Unarmed attacks deal ice damage. Not harmed by ice. Takes 2 extra damage from fire.
Instability: When healed, randomly recover 1 less or 1 more HP than normal.
Mutable Body: Has a fire form which can only use [fire form symbol] abilities and an ice form which can only use [ice form symbol] abilities. Switches to fire form after taking fire damage, switches to ice form after taking ice damage. Can choose which form to take at the start of a dungeon.
BOND
◯◯◯◯|◯
Hey nekopt, please reply to tell me if you can see the updates I wrote on the Google doc for the Dungeon 13 wrap-up stream.
Dungeon stream wrap up notes are going to show up here soonish (I think?) but there was one big takeaway is:
6 dungeons left (not incl bond)
That’s 5 bond opportunities, (since last dungeon ends the comic)
Here’s our bond status:
Kamau: 2 left
Mac: 2 left
Lhok: 4 left
Botania: 3 left
Ix: 4 left
Cyx: 4 left
Amadeuz: 3 left
We need to make some hard choices, since Amad’s sketchy ability means if he gets max bond, we cannot do anyone one else’s except kamau and max. Even if his max bond removes sketchy, that’s still not enough time to max anyone different.
So the choice is this:
Amad’s bond?
Or
2-3 other chars? ( Ix, botania, lhok, cyx)
Naturally this decision doesn’t account for dungeon themes (I suspect another underwater dungeon).
I put a bunch of notes from the dungeon 13 wrap-up stream up above. Hopefully KingMarath or someone will write their version.
Regarding Bond, see the interaction between Jing and myself above regarding the main options (which I’ve currently nicknamed “Plan A”, “Plan B” and “Plan C”) and what they look like: https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-report/#comment-16972 (and the comments below it).
Some of the key advantages of “Plan A” (bond Amadeusz) are that there is excellent flexibility to decide which other characters we will bring to the various dungeons and can optimize them for the theme of that dungeon if we want, furthermore we get to have Requiem of Resurrection with us for most or maybe even all of the remaining dungeons to help us avoid losing any characters if we mess up.
I’ll let you go read about “Plan B” (go for max possible full Bond) and “Plan C” (consideration of circumstances) above, but unless everyone is on board for “Plan B” and can stick to it without exception and nothing goes wrong then it is realistically going to be a choice between Amad’s bond (“Plan A”) and full Bond for 1-2 others (“Plan C”).
Sigh… here we go again. It’s the Discussion of Doom. The Acrimonious Argument about Amadeusz. The Viperous Invective about Vetting Voting.
—
Back at I12P14 I had actually voted for Claudius’ initial suggested group for dungeon 13 (Ricki, Kamau, Lara, Lhok) before that idea got lots of downvotes and the bitter fight over whether to bring Amadeusz and/or Cordy really got underway and I got frustrated and switched to the Amadeusz camp because at least that would stop the arguments over who to Bond and bringing weak characters into difficult dungeons “because they need more Bond”.
I really should mention that once I decided to stand up for Amadeusz in the Comments I actually had very VERY little desire to join something like Discord where I could potentially get Private Messages full of Hate and possibly profanity laden rants. At least by only interacting here in public in the Comments on the website people need to at least be somewhat civil. Maybe the DE Discord isn’t like that but given the amount of flack and ire I’ve gotten here for just pointing out the positive side of going for full bond with the game’s most hated character I’m not really interested in taking my chances on a platform that is named DISCORD.
Given the difficulty of the poison well and research facility, I’m inclined to agree that amad is a good choice for hard dungeons and flexibility.
That said, we don’t have to decide just yet, and id prefer to get Mac and kamau maxed before so we can add them to the amad roster. Then we can make the choice
That’s one of the versions of “Plan A” that puts priority on getting Kamau and Mac to full Bond sooner, by taking the pair of them to dungeons (without the Sketchy Amad) as quickly as the dungeon descriptions allow. Maybe we should call that version “Plan A2” (Bond Kamau and Mac as quickly as safe and practical, then go for full bond with Amadeusz). I think it is an excellent choice.
In the absence of anything specific about the dungeon circumstances, the ideal third/backup character for the Kamau and Mac pair seems to be a decent backup fighter like Lara or IX. Since Bond isn’t really a consideration in the “Plan A” variant, Lara can be taken whenever we want.
Regarding Mac, I think we need to Smiff some Rings of Evasion soon since that is one of the few ways other than Kamau’s Interpose to survive a big group of focus-targeting guards and even Kamau probably needs a Ring of Evasion.
Another reason for bonding kamau early is that if he remorses out once, then we’d have to choose between him or amad for full bond.
I hope we dont have to do that.
Another thing to point out is that all we know from maxing bond is it gives the bonded char a new ability, and grants both Ricki and the bonded char new lvl up options.
If we do go with amad after kamau and mac, he won’t have a chance to pick any of his new abilities besides what is unlocked automatically.
There has also been speculation of “secret Amad ending” or ” unbonded chars abandon us at final dungeon ” similar to what some video games have done.
We have 0 evidence of any of these being a real thing. So keep that in mind when making decisions.
Yeah, that’s the key difference between “Plan A1” (give priority to Amadeusz in advance) and “Plan A2” (give priority to getting Kamau and Mac up to full Bond and then give priority to Amadeusz). Plan A1 makes that choice in advance, while Plan A2 puts off that painful choice until after we fail to complete a dungeon or Kamau remorses out once.
Me too, although if it comes down to a choice of getting full Bond with Kamau and full Bond with Amadeusz then I’d personally go for Kamau.
Getting full Bond with Lara also gave Ricki +1HP and improved Ricki’s Grit ability and according to its new description further Bond will improve the results of her Grit ability.
When we got full Bond with Lara, Ricki gained access to the Poison Use (Lara Bond) ability the next time Ricki got a Level-up (we’ve been really thrilled with that option and have been rushing to buy it for both Lara and Ricki… not). I’m not sure what ability Ricki might gain access to from getting to full Bond with Kamau but I suspect that getting full Bond with Amadeusz may give Ricki access to Dual Wield.
I haven’t seen much speculation on that, so that must be over on Discord.
Hey, I’m super late to the party, but I just wanted to address your speculation about Discord. I can see your concerns and why you’d have them (lol the very name “discord,” — not sure why they went with that) but it’s really not as bad of a place as you fear. It’s easy to disallow direct messages from others in any given server (you have to look at the tabs across the top within the Privacy & Safety section.) You can’t get direct messages from anyone who isn’t a friend and doesn’t share a server with you. You can disallow all friend requests and make any access to yourself public-only. And in public, it’s easy to block, and stop seeing messages from, anyone, even within the server. And if you do give it a try and decide it isn’t for you, you can leave any time and we can’t stop you.
The culture on this particular server is relaxed (read: collectively we like jokes and are generally helpful) and mature. Not hateful and defamatory. LSN has and enforces standards of decency, even if his streams are casually peppered with profanity. You could set reasonable expectations with other members as to how you want to be treated, and reasonably expect them to be respected. Discussions on more divisive topics, like Amadeusz and what to do with him, or what to do on a turn where the stakes are particularly high, or what to do ANYTIME in some more challenging dungeons or situations, may get heated yes, but our “heated” doesn’t look any worse than it gets on these comment pages. It’s about the same heat level, and you’ll have to take that from me as a general observation in this case because I can’t link references, sorry (or point me to some specific ire you received and I’ll say “yeah it’s about like that” or “no this example is worse than I usually see.”) Furthermore, those who work and play well with others usually come back to apologize for losing their heads, as is only good and proper social etiquette anywhere. The upside of the game community being a bit tribal is that everyone has experience working with everyone else and it adds to a sense of social accountability to the person on the other side of the screen, sometimes even moreso than in the comment section. The people are generally trying hard to make themselves understood and to understand others’ ideas.
Not trying to twist your arm (though I could do that if you’d let me! But I am aware of your feelings on the discrepancy between the level of detail in information available to those who participate in discord and those who choose to only interact with the website and streams and I would not take up the job myself, so again, no arm-twisting from me.) I just had to speak up as a member of this discord server. Everyone who participates there wants the game to succeed, even if they want individual goals (bond stories) so much that they sometimes forget that. And yeah, Sketchy sucks and could be a contender for biggest author troll in the history of games like this.
Since the voting system is sort of messed up I had tried to figure out where the more active players really seemed to stand on the topic of Amadeusz. I didn’t really finish it and I didn’t go back to dungeon 12, but from dungeon 13 here’s what I had come up with….
Players who seem to HATE Amadeusz with a passion and are vocal about it: Jing and Darus Mul
Jing: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-14/#comment-15092
Jing: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-15/#comment-15129
Darus Mul: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-15/#comment-15163
Darus Mul: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-16/#comment-15263 (actually just hates the bard, thinks that Wolf is a good boy)
Other players who seem to dislike Amadeusz include: Claudious , Brunothecroatiandragon, Papergrin, DerringerJones, and others…
Claudious: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-14/#comment-15030
Brunothecroatiandragon: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-14/#comment-15047
Papergrin: https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-report/#comment-16956
DerringerJones: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-15/#comment-15118
Players who don’t seem to despise Amadeusz but aren’t thrilled with him either: Kat
Kat: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-14/#comment-15084
Amadeusz’ fans include: Krakabooom, Zuvatan, Arch, BlackDragun (or at least they’re the only ones who will publicly admit it)
Krakabooom: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-14/#comment-15071
Zuvatan: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-14/#comment-15089
Archanalach: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-14/#comment-15108
BlackDragun: https://dungeoneyes.com/intermission-12-page-14/#comment-15088
I Make Bad Decisions: https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-11-report/#comment-12887 (LOL)
[I know this Comment will get caught in the spam filter because of all the links, but this Comment really needs all of those links, perhaps people will be able to see it while it is in the orange potential spam limbo or LSN will approve it sooner than next week]
I don’t necessarily HATE Amadeusz. I do dislike the idea of ignoring the other characters’ bonds, stories and level ups in favor a single edgelord furry douchebag, I mean, in favor of a single character.
LOL.
We’re reasonably likely to get Kamau and Mac to full Bond regardless, so realistically, the choice is between the single sketchy edgelord furry douchebag (esquire) and 1 or 2 other characters since the opportunity to get 3 other characters is quite slim (see “Plan B” in the comments above).
I’m for Amadeusz as form of wringing some progress from taking maxed Bond characters to dungeons. (Amadeusz Bond should be consider worth 3 Bonds of non-sketchy characters)
Considering that succesfully doing someones dungeon then unlocks an new skill that we then need to get from a mission we are incentived to bring max bond people into dungeons. If we max Lohk we will bring her again for the skill, I see no other possible outcome. That’s a waste of Bond. With Amadeusz it’s less of a waste since he would block any gains anyway.
and then there was Cordy (but no more!!!) that simply had no bond.
Ama was just sooo efficient, ironically enough
TL;DR I want to bring Amadeusz with us whenever we bring characters with maxed bond. Like if we success at Lohk and Mac personall dungeon. Then we bring them + Ama to get their new skills and get maximum bond gains.
So yea, im in Amadeusz fans club 😉
I’ve turned around on Amadeusz. He gave us a place to live and saved Lara’s life twice. Since we seem to be investing in him a lot, I figure we might as well Bond all the way at this point. I’m mostly frustrated we’re ignoring the other characters.
To clarify for those who missed the stream, LSN confirmed that he does not decide when it is October.
I dunno man, seems pretty suspicious. I think maybe he might have influenced Julius and Augustus to slam their own months into the calendar…
I’ve posted a new bonus panel on Ko-Fi as thanks for everyone’s donations thus far: https://ko-fi.com/lonestarnorth/gallery#gallerytab
The next reward unlocks a new secret character!