Dungeon 15 Turn 55
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The drider high priestess quickly puts its chain armour back on, then immediately attacks the party. Ricki is quickly dismounted, barely able to protect herself from the ravenous maw snapping inches away from her face. This former spellcaster has become little more than a vicious and feral monster!
Fortunately, Ricki brought along a feral monster of her own.
After a brief but fierce battle, the high priestess is defeated once and for all. The party can feel the oppressive air of the dungeon lift almost immediately.
Elsewhere, Lara has retreated to one of the farthest corners of the dungeon, the room where the remains of the gargantula begin to moulder. She climbs up the ceiling and tends to the grievous wounds she has received over the course of this dungeon.
Suddenly, as she too feels the oppressive atmosphere lift, a strange gem appears in her hands out of nowhere.
Lara descends from the ceiling as she hears her friends approach.
“We did it! We beat the high priestess!”
I could tell.
“Yes, I too could feel the influence of the Goddess of Spiders diminish. I imagine it must be quite the relief for you.”
“Hey, what’s that, Lara? Did you find more treasure somewhere?”
This is a relic, given to me directly by the Goddess.
“Truly? That’s… odd.”
“Yeah, why would she give you anything? I thought she kind of… hated you? And probably does even more so now?”
It’s very simple. This place was her last source of power. After so many years with this cult dedicated in her name, she’s not used to surviving without worship any more.
So she used some of the last of her power to send me a peace offering.
She surrendered.
We won.
Dungeon 15 is complete!
Awesome work guys!
The art here is *chef’s kiss*.
Hmmmmmm…..hmmmmmmmm……..
HHHMMMMMMMMMMM…. suspicious.
Its pretty typical for gods to require a source of worship for them to maintain their power or sometimes even their life. So its not impossible that she straight up needs Lara. But it also 100% could still be a trap
Considering all that happened, if that was the last “main temple”, Lara might actually be the last actual self-aware sentient and not-dungeon-crazed arachnomancer.
Yaaaaaaaaay!
Is lara speaking audibly now, or using sign language? I know she was having trouble talking for awhile, and I’m not sure if she got better at speaking around the fangs, or if she and the others just got really good at sign language.
It’s sign language. LSN indicates that in the text by having her speech in italics and not in ludong quotation marks.
what is “ludong”?
Normally I’d snarkily say “google is right over there”, but brother, I don’t even know. I’m guessing bad decision has made yet another clearly bad decision in their word choice and they meant something else.
Ok. Now let’s fight the big spider.
One God down. One to go.
Its so cute when Lara’s hair looks like she spiked it because she is upside down
Wooohoo the goddess surrendered? surrendered! What a great training session, now everyone’s experienced in defeating a god, how cool is that? Hey Emperor Self Proclaimed Sun God! we’re the experts now! yo!
On the items page, something new showed up
Consumable/Treasure
This purple jewel is shaped like the Goddess of Spiders, and burns slightly to the touch. As part of an attack, you can destroy this jewel and sacrifice 2 maximum HP until the end of the dungeon. This adds 5 poison damage to your attack.
Oooh that looks really good with Kamau cleave
Sortof…. but it’s consumable, for lasts for one round, and maxhp loss is permanent-ish, and does not stack – quite harsh.. but if spammed well from all team members at onces, that makes +20 dmg on top of all normal damage and bonuses, that amount of bonus must be taken seriously
Hehe! So full confirmed sue is a furry. Go on girl! Honestly thought she liked both
She’s just like me fr
Lara, renew worship of The Spider Goddess, but in a good way. All orgies and raising thousands and thousands of children to repopulate the parishioners…
Stream wrap-up notes, from the temporary Twitch archive since I’ve a conflict and basically only step in at end of dungeon these days:
– There is a sprite for the drider high priestess. Beat her in one turn (38 damage) but it was close. Not too impressive for an act 3 boss, but the two phases (with the latter can’t be scanned ahead of time) make up for that.
– Puzzle chest: Clear dungeon of all spiders and killer spiders (not including purple widows, wolf spiders, or gargantula). Has pet spider, White Widow.
– Arachnomancer in the “waist” was there to throw sacrifices to the Gargantula.
– Preying man was kept away from spiders by webs
– Environmental storytelling with the skeleton with thieves’ tools.
– Pressure plate at top-left would extend a piston launching people into the spiderweb next to three killer spiders
– High Priestess – teleports randomly every 5th turn between braziers, ended up spending most of the time on the right
– Locked door to top right (with no key) kept summoned spiders from escaping to roam the dungeon… but that stacks them up there, if that was the last brazier then that could have built up an unwinnable fight
– Demon chest had demonfang dagger, brazier chest had ritual knife
– Bottom right had crawlspace to demon. Still don’t know what the deal does.
– Wolf spiders would’ve been debuffed by Amadeusz even if he couldn’t get into the crawlspace
– Wolf spider chests had potion of greater healing + potion of poison resistance, and a potion helmet which could show up elsewhere so it’s a mystery but you can guess (my guess: beer hat, load up with potion and you can drink it later without an action, may or may not require an action to fill or provide extra inventory for potions)
– With perfect knowledge: The priestess was required to teleport every 5 turns, so with 2 braziers left you know her location. Also, wanted posters are powerful with low enemy variety, and consumables free up their inventory space when used…
– Giant spider might’ve started moving if we took too long
– Lara’s Fired Up trigger wasn’t really decided since LSN didn’t design this dungeon until after her transformation, but it would’ve been something like observing a sacrifice/ritual knife, or just encountering the High Priestess, they have history
– Pets are not safe when away from owner
– Brazier was +2 damage buff
– Turn 40 summons were stuck behind the locked door
– Lara hypnosis was funny
– Unaccompanied spiders would attack someone holding the idol, arachnomancers can direct spiders to different targets, driders target the weakest-looking which is usually the smallest
– The general +1/+1 buff to spiders does apply to driders, another way to punish taking too long would be to bump this to +2/+2
– There actually weren’t any driders in the dungeon before the Praying Man entered. This is the new lore
– No secret space behind the piston trap, there’s no explanation of how pistons fit in the wall. They could totally fit in a floor/wall too thin for them and it will be hilarious when someone finally gets hit by one.
– Juvenile gargantula is too big/powerful/uncontrollable to follow as a pet, same with killer spiders. Purple widows would follow (squishy but high damage!), as would wolf spiders (intended as a pet) and regular spiders (as we already have).
– Unwrapping the morsel or leaving the dungeon with it would have revealed that there was a giant fly inside (the ones who are regular people), who would probably give you some money to make up for the item. So we did technically feed a thinking being to a spider
– Bubble staff does protect your pet, it says so right in the description
– Driders don’t count as spiders for arachnomancer helm and idol, they’re in a nebulous space
– Idol damage doesn’t stack (my note: as with most item effects, identical items don’t stack)
– Pets jump after owner and take falling damage (if it’s funny) on case by case, Daisy followed thrown Ricki but pets that couldn’t follow Lara+Sue along the ceiling stayed at the last place they could stand.
– Driders revive with equipment partly as they’re not fully dead but also game design, PCs are very different from NPCs and don’t need to follow the same rules
– Juvenile gargantulas can go through webs, as can ranged attacks including shocktail (though you need to see the web or could get ranged weapons stuck in web)
– Crowstone beam of light could shoot through many webs, sure
– Cute ribbon applies to attack stat (my note: it doesn’t say that), abilities that deal fixed damage aren’t impacted but anything related to attack will be
– Turn 41 Amadeusz healing+damage – applied simultaneously for a turn but logically in order, if healing happens at different place (especially room) before damage then healing can be capped by max HP. If at 1HP and jumping to death next to character with healing item, then they could be saved if all were in the same room and ready to heal immediately, but with room transitions that wouldn’t be allowed, it’s case by case.
– Background walls are not climbable but spiders can jump
– Spiderbite staff can strip poison immunity from multi-damage-immune enemies like death owlbear or a theoretical immune-to-elements, but not the Tyrant Lizard King as a puzzle boss
– Spider jewel is a special reward for defeating both gargantula and high priestess, went to Lara as that fit best but if Lara wasn’t there then Ricki could’ve gotten it
– Lara can’t carry Princess while attacking the trap rung when (LSN feels like it) circumventing a dungeon feature feels like a technicality instead of being clever. Can’t do too many things at once even if they don’t explicitly take actions. Flying pets are immune to falling, as would spiders on the wall
– Attacking while on the ladder – maybe
– Throwing people – you can theoretically push/throw people especially when they’re next to ledges, but can’t just grab and pull people around the room
– Goddess surrendering is more a story beat, might’ve been written differently if Lara’s bond dungeon hadn’t been done yet
– With the Shrine, artifacts don’t have purchase limits. Infinite crow calls? If you pay for them, sure.
– Big gargantula can’t spit poison like the little ones because it can climb and reach you anywhere in the one room it appears, so that isn’t necessary. It probably could if it wanted to.
– Defiling the idols might’ve made arachnomancers mad, but not enough for mechanical effect
– Maybe there could’ve been a way to negotiate with the three arachnomancers locked away by the high priestess. Negotiating is most likely to be effective on enemies in bizarre situations. Don’t worry about accidentally killing NPCs that are only there to be rescued (unless they’re in a morsel), attacks won’t be counted.
– Any god you’ve received an artifact from is available for the shrine, so the goddess of spiders is an option now
– Arguing with letter of the rules will backfire, appeal to intent and what makes sense
– Cannot level the same ranked ability twice in one dungeon with Fired Up (like Venomous Sting II and III), can only pick from that list