Dungeon 15 Turn 24
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Amadeusz chews on a raw steak as he crawls away from the battle, while Sue desperately bludgeons some healing into his skull with her second wand of heal. In total he recovers 7 HP. Both remaining spiders pursue him, however, and deal a total of… 7 damage, negating all of the healing he just got, but leaving him barely alive. Ricki and Lara then finish the spiders off.
In typical giant spider fashion, they drop no venom glands.




Okaaaay. Seems the spiders had been pulling their punches…
Plan: BRAZIER!
Ricki and Lara: Attack the Brazier before the spiders come back to finish Amad.
Sue: Mend Amad
Amad: Eat MORE
Good thing we opted to heal instead of mend Amad last turn. And this most likely confirms that the Idol is a lure (or the spiders always try to finish their target but that seems very specific AI).
Idol working as a lure sounds really plausible. To work around this we’d need to have the character carrying it always be away from the fight and probably even out of enemies’ POV.
If we find a lone non-vigilant idle spider we could test it I guess.. give it to tank, gang up everybody on the spider, see who is bitten. Maybe without ppl and pets who could die, depending on spider’s attack.
Strategy Meeting!
We have 2 options here:
Summon Paws and sell the idol (and pickup some supplies as well)
OR
Move the Idol to Lara so she can Tank up and Interpose this dungeon.
We don’t know for sure if it is just spiders or if Driders and Arachnomancers will also target Lara. We may make some bad AI assumptions later.
Curious to hear what everyone thinks.
Do we sell Idol?
We don’t need the gold. It would be nice, but not worth the risk, imo. We get plenty of income from labor and other things.
We NEED some gold. We could immediately exchange the gold for healing items. Ultimate healing 10hp for 25hp, greater healing 5hp for 17gp. The only question is, will the idol sell for “full value” (because it’s treasure) or much less, because it’s sold in dungeon.
Treasure is always sold at full value. Even in dungeons.
Non treasure is sold at 1/4 value instead of 1/2 in a dungeon.
Gold is always useful.
Yeah sell it if we think we can afford the turn to do so.
I’m for selling too. We should be able to get 70 gp or so for the rest of our extra loot, on top of the 50 for the idol. We can buy a lot of healing for that.
I had been assuming that if the idol actually attracted attacks (rather than just making attacks deadlier), that would be in the item description. I’m a little annoyed that that important piece of information was left out, but it does make sense that carrying it would make you a target.
And as annoyed as I was that Amad got picked for this dungeon, I’m glad he didn’t die.
> that would be in the item description
Kinda yes and no.. We already had monsters that had ‘triggers’, so it could be a monster-specific trait (KillerSpider hates being depicted, so it first focuses its attacks on people carrying anything that looks like a spider, etc) or it could also be a dungeon or room rule.. much like braziers, they could induce behavior in nearby spiders.. but we know all rules related to braziers thanks to Sue, so I guess, it could be a dungeon rule then
Do we try to tank with Lara?
As soon as I posted that I was in favor of selling the idol, I realized what you were proposing here. It’s an interesting idea – using the idol to effectively give one character the Interpose ability, except that unlike Kamau, that character can also attack.
I just wonder if Lara is the best character to use for that. On the plus side, she has the most life and super high def vs poison. On the minus, if we max her defense, we lose some of her damage-dealing ability. I was also worried for a minute that the idol would trigger her Skeptic (dis)ability, but she wouldn’t be “wielding or wearing” it, just carrying it, so I think we’re OK there.
I guess I’ve just convinced myself 🙂 I think this could work and would actually give us some control over enemy targeting.
We can also just drop the idol. Like NZG said, we don’t need the gold, and from what I’ve seen with Amadeusz getting walloped, I reckon that thing’s more trouble than it’s worth.
If we want to risk for an experiment, we could put the idol on Golly. Pets are safe from attacks unless they deliberately go into combat (or are hit with AoE). So, even if idol infact aggroes monsters, if we don’t ask Golly to attack, we’d effectively shut it down.
The only risks here are:
we could test it if we find a single weak spider… or just sell the idol and buy some additional healing as an extra safety net
On Discord we’ve been explicitly told that if we gave Golly the idol they would be vulnerable to attacks, whether they made their own attack or not.
aw crap, one loophole gone 🙁
oh god what a turn to come back to >.<
Anyway, small optimizations to Claudious plan because I like having Amad out of the room before the revived spiders get to attack (they get revived on 25 even if we destroy brazier and can attack again from turn 26).
Also I think the hole lead to the cave a room right but checking to make sure. If not, we get valuable scouting.
Ricki: Attack brazier then go in hole and come back and move right. Point pressure plate trap.
Lara: Attack brazier then move right. Avoid trap to move down.
Sue: Mend Amad then move right.
Amad: Eat MORE then move right.
This gets us in better position for whatever we want next turn too
We havent seen spiders respawn on the same turn their brazier has been broken before, and since spawning like that happens at the end of the turn I think its unlikely these spiders will revive. Buuut no reason not to be cautious and move us into a better position when theres nothing left to do in here.
Could we also have Ricki point out the pressure plate trap to everyone and have Lara or Wolf check on the entrance room as well to see the status of the puzzle chest / potential spider respawns?
My logic is that Sue said they come from a summoning spell instead of like, the dungeon itself and actions happen at same time so the big bad get to cast at the same time as we attack brazier. But yeah I could be wrong.
Okie edited to check out center room.
Plan: once more into the breach. Amad: scout ahead. Everyone else: twiddle your thumbs.