Dungeon 15 Turn 2
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The party descends together to the lower room. Sue and Lara both get caught in webs on their way to do other things. Both get cut free almost immediately by Ricki and Amadeusz, but the momentary immobilization is still enough to stop Lara from attacking the nearby arachnomancer, since he doesn’t advance to melee range like the killer spider did last turn.
The arachnomancer fires a volley of poisonous projectiles at Sue (perhaps recognizing that Lara is unlikely to be affected), dealing 2 damage while the web reduces her ability to defend or evade. Sue uses another magic lens to quantify exactly how much these bolts are capable of.
After the scuffle, Amadeusz returns to the room above.
Ricki passes the web that she destroyed and explores the room to the left. It consists of two hallways and a lot of solid dungeon walls. And more spiders, obviously.
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ARACHNOMANCER
HP: 10
Atk: 4, or 6 poison damage at range
Def: 1
Abilities: +1 Def per nearby spider, +3 Def against poison, revives as a Drider next turn when defeated
Drow that worship the Goddess of Spiders and seek to destroy the Empire are called archnomancers. They have an array of powers based around poison element spells and controlling spiders. They will seek to use their environment to increase their odds of success in combat, making up for their relative lack of brute strength. If they fail their Goddess, a terrible fate lies in store.
Plan: Clean up.
Lara: Squish the tiny spider.
Sue: Use Research on the tiny Spider.
Wolf: Move down. Attack Cultist
Ricki: Move Right. Attack Cultist.
That specific cultist takes 14 to one shot, or 17 if poison involved. Ricki and Wolf both do 11-12, lara does 15. Lara could smoke to 1 shot but that seems like a waste. Lara can also tank the tiny spider best and with animal intelligence it should target her back.
Sue is using research because the ability says at ranged, not through walls (despite how it kinda worked in Dragon dungeon, I think it was fluffed up for story reasons). I’d like to keep the lens for Ricki to lens High Priestess through whatever barrier they have later.
It is uncertain if drider spawns the turn a cultist dies or the round after. Either way we’re going to find out.
Also going to find out if cultist can direct the tiny spider. regardless, Ricki has dodge, amad has meat and lara has high def. We should be good.
Ricki: Wear your Evasion Ring in place of an Atk ring. Head right. Disarm the trapped chest. Head up, avoid the trapped ladder rung, then through the lower left tunnel of the entrance to scout leftward.
Sue: Move the Upgrade Press from Golly’s to your inventory for extra Collector defense Loot the (no longer) trapped chest.
Wolf: Move down. Attack the Purple Widow.
Lara: Attack the Cultist with your Siegesword.
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Lara can oneshot the Cultist because she has both Night Eyes (for +1 Atk) and the Rotfang Hood (Halvling the Cultist’s 3 poison defense to 1 or 2.)
Wolf has 11 Atk, probably enough to beat the tiny spider considering regular spiders only take 12 to kill. Not a big deal if the Cultist and Widow gang up on him since he has so much bonus hp and healing. It would even be to our benefit since we’d learn the Purple Widow’s atk stat, making future encounters easier.
I don’t mind spending Ricki’s lockpicks since we have extras and there’s even a 50% chance that we don’t end up using them due to careful thief. Trapped chests without any obvious triggers tend to have good shit in them as well. If we REALLY need more lockpicks later, we have the paw.
After this we can have a couple people slay the Drider while we continue scouting/breaking webs/looting crap/killing spiders.
This will become obvious soon anyway if correct, but the “oddly shaped” T1 room looks like a thoracic joint, and other rooms look like (pixel art) spider legs, so in another turn or two it’ll probably be fairly easy to make a solid estimate of the size and shape of the dungeon as a whole.
The braziers are reminiscent of the auditor of the month awards from EEAAO
I guess we have to extinguish/destroy those braziers for some effect. Quest chest doesn’t match their color at all, so maybe opening door or lowering some magic shield around the boss.
So, if we level up Venomous sting enough, it would become “twinned”?