Dungeon 2 Turn 53
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Ricki throws the lever back into open position. She can hear the pipes rattle as ale begins to flow up to the tavern once more. She immediately books it out of the hidden room, ignoring the thugs’ threats and protests.
Meanwhile, the guard and his faithful dog descend one more ladder into a small, dark chamber…
“Emperor’s mercy…”
“You’re twice the monster they said you were.”
“DIE, TRAITOR!”
“Sorry, already decided against it.”
Kamau leaves the guard dazed while the dog fights off the skeletons.
“Oh my god, are you okay?!”
“I’ve been worse.”
“I saw the guard headed your way, I was just about to go after you!”
“It was a close escape. We have to get out of here right away. The guard won’t be far behind.”
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure I got the ale flowing, though, so at least it wasn’t all for nothing.”
“I hope this will all serve as a lesson. Dungeons are dangerous. We were lucky to get out of this one alive.”
“You say luck, I say skill and planning.”
“…”
“And anyway, whatever may have gone wrong this time, it’ll just serve as a lesson to make us even stronger for the next dungeon! Right?”
*sigh*
Ricki and Kamau leave the tavern cellar.
Dungeon 2 is complete!
Alright, some lessons from this delve:
– There is more stuff in a dungeon than we can do. Pick and choose your battles. If we don’t get the primary goal then we don’t level up!
– Kamau can’t always help. Keep Ricki safe for when she needs to take risks.
– Fighting takes a long time, at least when playing it safe.
– Running by enemies is fine, they don’t seem to chase. However, this opens you up to lots of attacks on the same turn when moving.
– Ranged attacks (even improvised ones) let you fight from outside the battle, but you need something else to stop them from bringing the battle to you.
– Pay attention to hints. We were told that rolling the barrel wouldn’t help, tried it anyway, and got attacked for a round.
– Equipment opens up options. More defense greatly increases what you can safely do. More attack is useful, but that speeds up fights rather than making unsafe fights safe.
– Groups of animals like to split up when facing groups. They do seem to maximize our defense.
Couple more:
– Exploration is key. The instant we saw the last room of the dungeon, everything fell into place.
– Enemies don’t drop loot until you finish off the entire group. Whittling them down makes it safe to run by but it’s worth finishing a fight.
– We can move mobs with bait or attacks. Moving them through traps works well.
– Traps deal unblockable damage, but the right gear can still protect you. Some traps can’t be auto avoided even if we spot them, there’s a risk of damage.
– Even if a distraction item isn’t used up (the barrel), mobs can still lose interest.
– Dungeon Eyes are a big deal. The plot thickens…
Kamau used it, thus he was at 0 HP, thus it was e veeery close call. – Ricki: Good work with that lever!
Interesting, he was at 6 HP before so that was at least 9 incoming that turn. I’m guessing skeletons for 3, guard for 1+3, dog for 2. Confirmation that greatswords are +3 or more.
The guard might also have had great sword proficiency that could influence the damage dealt.
Also, from the description
it is possible that the skeletons did not attack Kamau at all. Unless that’s just for “story purposes”, too (like “knocking the drunks out”). But technically, judging from the way fights have worked for this dungeon up to now, Kamau should have been able to leave the room before the skeletons would get another chance to attack him.
The guard and dog however, are another story, because a) we haven’t seen their behaviour pattern yet, except avoiding floor hazards successfully; so we can’t really judge/gauge that and b) they were actively looking for #escaped prisoner, so they were likely “programmed” to intercept, if they run into him. (With “programmed” I mean the behaviour pattern that LSN usually writes for all the monsters, like “A large species of bat that appears in dungeons. They hang from high ceilings and are usually content to ignore trespassers. If one bat in a group is attacked, all nearby bats will swarm the nearest target, even if they were attacked by someone else. Once disturbed in this way, bats fly around and attack anyone who passes by.” for the bats.)
We don’t know if dauntless I triggered, too, or if we “just” saw a display of heroic effort I instead (e.g. with Kamau having 1 or 2 HP the guard would easily have twice as many, even if he had only 5 max like Ricki has).
On the Character sheets, Kamau is at 1 HP and the Dauntless icon was expended. I’ve generally planned under the assumption that enemies get a parting shot if we retreat; on turn 11, the rat added to Kamau’s damage that turn as he walked away to deal with drunks. Turn 24 didn’t mention Kamau being attacked by rats as he left with the bucket, but they wouldn’t have been able to deal damage. Turn 45 just says Ricki took no damage when closing the valve and leaving the rat room, though in that case we were taking an action near a fight before moving so we’d definitely be open to being attacked.
I’m pretty sure this was a cutscene fight; if the dungeon wasn’t cleared, then Kamau probably wouldn’t have been able to daze the guard like that. I do take this as a hint that Kamau is still holding back with us.
Side note, I expect that the reason why the Bond list hasn’t ticked up yet is because that will happen along with level up, in the Dungeon 2 Report. Same idea as how we didn’t actually get Kamau and recover HP/abilities until after Ricki picked a level up ability in Dungeon 1.
Cool, I missed that. Thanks for pointing it out.
I am a bit confused about how the whole “when do fights happen” and “will enemies still attack in the following turn” mechanisms work. I mean we have been able to safely swap equipment and even put on armour in between two rounds of battle. I kind of concluded that a fight happens “at the end” of one turn. And whether or not a fight will happen the next turn depends on whether or not our chars engage the enemies again. But if enemies get parting shots, even when we are not passing them and/or being aggressive towards them, then that clearly isn’t the case (or at least not all of it).
I really wish the section “how to play” was a bit more detailed/clear on these mechanisms, it’s much easier to sensibly plan the action of our characters, if you are actually able to understand what is going on and how.
Yeah, I’ve been very wary about switching equipment in combat, but it seems we can. Turn 21 is the example you gave, Ricki and Kamau swapping armor while Kamau fought the dog. On turn 33, Kamau was able to put on the oven mitts and get the defense bonus from them that same turn. Meanwhile, we played turn 6 safe by having Kamau intercede while Ricki left the fight.
In the cases where we’ve seen parting shots, we did still need to pass by the enemies because we ended our last turn doing something in that battle. Once you actually step away from the fight, they don’t seem to follow you. The issue is that fighting puts you in the middle of the fight.
I think that as long as you’re consistent about which item you use on a turn, then it’s generally okay. We can’t have Kamau wear armor, fight, then give the armor to Ricki who walks away and gets in another fight. Enemy targeting is supposed to be something that changes per enemy type as well, though we didn’t get many hints about attack priority from the Magic Lens.
I do count 5 dead drunks here in the skeleton room. Iirc, we “knocked out” at least 9 drunks (including the one that was poisoned that we only helped, but who was already knocked out). Even if there were 2 wandering drunks per “wave” in the turns 10, 20, 30 and 40 (50 was the guard and his dog), then we’d still have saved more lives than were snuffed out (provided they can somehow regain consciousness and eventually escape the dungeon, that is) during the time we were in there.
So I guess “yay us”?
I’m still confused about what happened to the Turn 10 drunks, they definitely didn’t go down to the skeleton death room since we were in the way, and we noticed on Turn 13 that they’d tripped a rat trap. The rat trap in the wand skeleton room was never tripped, though, and that was the dark room.
I do wonder how this would’ve gone if we’d gone for the skeletons earlier, discovered they weren’t a big deal, and wiped them out. An influx of wandering drunks down by the snale would’ve complicated that highly dangerous room.