Ricki finished a dungeon! She can gain one new ability from this list:
Ambush I: +1 Atk when attacking a target that hasn’t interacted with a character previously.
Backstab I: +1 Atk when attacking a target an ally is also attacking.
Big Haul I: +2 Enc.
Case: As an action can identify all items an enemy in the same room carries, even if some items are not visible. Once per dungeon can identify contents of a nearby chest without opening it.
Comforting Weight: +1 Def for each full stack of Gold Coins carried.
Crossbow Proficiency: +1 damage when wielding a crossbow or similar weapon.
Dagger Proficiency: +1 Atk when wielding a dagger or similar weapon.
Dash: +1 Mov.
Dodgy I: Incoming attacks have a 10% chance to miss.
Improvisation: Can use any type of dagger in place of Thieves’ Tools. Daggers always break when used this way.
Sneaky I: Once per dungeon can become undetectable by enemies until end of turn. Can’t be carrying any item of weight 3 or higher while sneaking.
Steal I: Once per dungeon in place of attacking, can try to take one item from an enemy. An item that is carried but not wielded or worn has a 100% chance to be taken successfully. An item that is held or worn has only a 50% chance to be taken successfully. Items have a -10% chance to be taken for each point of weight heavier than 1.
Trap Detection II: Can spot well hidden traps and point them out to allies.
Trap Disarming: Can expend Thieves’ Tools to render traps harmless, even if they can’t normally be circumvented.
I think we want Trap Detection II
Trap detection 2 or Dash seem useful, helping to build Riki out as a support scout to complement our DPS and Tank.
While i like the idea of ricki being a scout, we had a couple close calls this dungeon while she was doing that. Thank the gods the enemies werent high aggro. We should keep in mind she may not always be so lucky
I feel like we’ll get a lot of mileage out of Dodgy, because 10% miss chance applies to each attack–which could lead to Ricki soaking a full attack from a group of enemies. Would definitely fuck with, say, bats trying to swarm her, a good chunk of the time.
fuck yes on dodgy.
teammates getting damaged has already cost us kamau once, time to get tanky.
Keep in mind how bad ricki is with rolls… also having her in a situation where shes swarmed to that point is us already losing. Id aim for abilities that are more consistently reliable…
I admit, Dodgy is very tempting. But it’s only 10%. To get most of Dodgy, we’d need to have it at II or III (if it even exists), depending on how high % does it get to. And that means spending quite a lots of level up options. I’m on par with Dodgy-1 and Case as for what to take next time, but definitely TD2 first now.
You mean that she’d dodge every attack in a round? Seems unlikely at 10%.
Nah, but consider when there were 4 bats in the way and she had 3 defense. She only needs to dodge one of the four attacks to take no damage. Probability of failing to dodge four times is 0.9⁴ or 66%, so that works out to a 34% chance of being okay.
That said, not reliable in the slightest. Ricki was attacked for damage 3 times in that dungeon, and Trap Detection II would have negated one of those (as would have not giving away a shield). Planning and prediction have generally let us take the chance out of these situations.
10% is to ureliable. Can’t ever rely on it. It won’t affect what Ricki can do in any way. She still won’t be able to tank attacks
If you want to increase Ricki survivability Comforting Weight is far more usefull.
and I don’t think Ricki should be frontliner.
Trap detection II.
As much as I’d like for Ricki to be more Independent for those Ricki only areas, I think our best choice is Trap detection II.
The web and stalkroach were nasty surprises that we could have planned for if we could have seen them. Also, the Warren’s dungeon was described as full of rogues and kobolds. Both are known for their traps.
Big haul would be my second choice but if we have a 3rd inventory it’s not so dire.
Exactly my thinking. If we saw two relatively weak “non-poorly-hidden traps” in this stage, and one was for just 1 dmg (just like glass), and the other was -1a/-1d, that’s surely a nuisance, but not a powerful thing. I expect traps to get worse, and Warrens by their description really match that very well.
LSN confirmed Kamau won’t be getting a level up because he (functionally) abandoned the dungeon.
I’m thinking
Case: We’ll probably be going into the kobold warrens next, encountering enemies that aren’t mindless and that probably carry stuff. Having this ability will help us with our risk analysis; whether the enemy is a bigger threat, or a bigger reward, than it appears.
Dash: We spent a lot of time running back and forth in this dungeon, especially in areas that we cleared out and had confirmed safe. This could help a lot for fetching or pulling levers or such. The warrens may be labyrinthine, too, like the church. This would help a lot here too.
Sneaky I: The lowest pick of my list, but still could have been useful. We might want Ricki to go do something very dangerous but for only one turn, and this might help. 1/dungeon is weak but this could come in clutch, especially in the future if we grab Dash for a triple move.
Trap Detection II: We saw our first level 2 trap here. Thankfully it was Kamau who got caught, and with no true damage, but the next one might not be so lucky.
I was afraid of that.
Here’s hoping that he’ll still get a point in “bond with Ricki”, even though he abandonned. I mean he was there most of the time, right?
Skills:
Ambush I: +1 Atk when attacking a target that hasn’t interacted with a character previously.
-> can be useful in certain situations, but only works for the first round of combat with any (non-attentive) enemy.
Backstab I: +1 Atk when attacking a target an ally is also attacking.
-> with the introduction of more allies, this becomes increasingly more interesting. (e.g. one character – Kamau for example, he’d be able to deal with any incoming attacks – goes scouting and Ricki and the other character – in this example Lara – can fight some enemy together for more oomph.)
Big Haul I: +2 Enc.
-> super useful. However, since Kamau “lost” this dungeon’s level up because (among other sources) of some damage that might have been prevented by the “trap detection II” (the hit from the stalkroach), I’m willing to postpone this former ability for the sake of the latter.
Case: As an action can identify all items an enemy in the same room carries, even if some items are not visible. Once per dungeon can identify contents of a nearby chest without opening it.
-> useful in (multiple) certain situations. Superuseful once per dungeon.
Comforting Weight: +1 Def for each full stack of Gold Coins carried.
-> will become more and more interesting, once we get more money (and more inventory space for Ricki).
Crossbow Proficiency: +1 damage when wielding a crossbow or similar weapon.
-> might become interesting if we ever get enough money to buy a crossbow (25 coins at Paws last time) and bolts (one coin each at Paws last time) and have inventory room enough for it, too.
Dagger Proficiency: +1 Atk when wielding a dagger or similar weapon.
->from all the combat skills to take, this is the one that will trigger most often (100% of the time), as long as we keep Ricki using the dagger we already got (unbreakable, thankfully!). Still, buying her a longsword (for 6 coins, if we had them) would have the same effect.
Also, we got the dawn mitre now, and if Lara can’t use it (because ex-arachnomancers or whatever she is can’t produce holy bolts) for whatever reason, then it would probably be best to have Ricki continue using it (rust pope Ricki :D).
Dash: +1 Mov.
-> becomes increasingly more interesting/useful, since I reckon the dungeons will only get bigger from here on out (more allies that all need to be kept busy, also the # of turns before soft/hard time limit has been steadily increasing).
Dodgy I: Incoming attacks have a 10% chance to miss.
-> very useful, because every hit that doesn’t connect with Ricki is one (or more) potential point of remorse that we won’t get. (and Ricki really got a knack for low % more often than not, we might as well benefit from that…)
Improvisation: Can use any type of dagger in place of Thieves’ Tools. Daggers always break when used this way.
-> seems we had “enough” thieves tools with us the last dungeon. Might change rapidly if a) more locks are around b) more traps are around that need to get disarmed (once we get “disarm trap” that is) c) less thieves tools appear as loot in chests and the like. Also only useful as long as daggers are plentiful as drops and/or loot. (then again, dagger did cost 3 coins in Paws “shop”, whereas thieves tools did cost 5, so it might even be worth it in the long run…)
Sneaky I: Once per dungeon can become undetectable by enemies until end of turn. Can’t be carrying any item of weight 3 or higher while sneaking.
-> superuseful ONCE per dungeon.
Steal I: Once per dungeon in place of attacking, can try to take one item from an enemy. An item that is carried but not wielded or worn has a 100% chance to be taken successfully. An item that is held or worn has only a 50% chance to be taken successfully. Items have a -10% chance to be taken for each point of weight heavier than 1.
-> possible game changer ONCE per dungeon. Chances going really low if items are worn and/or heavy, though. On the other hand, Ricki is really great at triggering even low % with extremely high probability…
Trap Detection II: Can spot well hidden traps and point them out to allies.
-> super useful, especially since it was kind of confirmed that Ricki doesn’t even need to be in the same room as the ally to see those traps (if she needs to be in the same room to warn them, might be another story…) My first choice for this level up.
Trap Disarming: Can expend Thieves’ Tools to render traps harmless, even if they can’t normally be circumvented.
->depending on what traps we’ll encounter, this might be also a game changer. Therefore we should probably get it sooner or later, but I’m hoping we will be okay for one more dungeon at least without this. Also, we’d need to be able to detect them first, before we can disarm them…
VOTE/TL;DR:
Trap Detection II is the skill I’d like Ricki to get this time.
“Comforting Weight: … we get more money” more money?! We have any money? Where? Does Ricki have a hidden bank account I don’t know about? 😉 I got the impression, that we were struggling to think about what to sell and what to buy, because we cannot even afford the things we think we should better get before the next dungeon. Carrying stacks of coins does not seem … to be a subject of near future to me. – Otherwise: good reasoning!
20 coins is MORE money than 0, is it not? 😛
And yes, we got money (remember that ONE coin we got for the rat tails side quest?), but atm it is invested in items. We can change that again, when/if we come into another “shop” situation.
And we will maybe even get more money from the “skeletons get away” bet.
Judging by the votes that are already at counts of 7-8 for TrapDetection, it’s probably settled already, but I just want to point out that:
“Thankfully it was Kamau who got caught, and with no true damage”
Not really. The first non-poorly-hidden trap was the StalkRoach, which costed as just 1 dmg, but at Ricky — and frankly, that one point could mean Kamau not spacing out. Yes, I know that’s overthinking it, if we were not hit like that at the very beginning, we’d probably be more risk-taking later and got kicked in our asses in some other way, but still. Traps will get worse and we might have +1 part member that can collect remorse points as well.
About Kamau, that kind of sucks. Like sure mechanically he abandoned the dungeon….but only like one or two rounds before we cleared it after he did a ton of the work and to be honest feasibly he couldn’t have even gotten out of the dungeon *to* abandon it if he’d been leaving physically.
But that is just a “feels” statement. It’s still hard to complain about our current state of having two companions (both stronger than Ricki in some ways) and a magical pope hat of infinite ranged attacks.
It feels a little unfair to me to lose the level up to Remorse in that our strategy didn’t seem to be opening up Ricki to harm and the sudden target shift was basically calculated (with full knowledge of our abilities) to have this cool thematic result. This is the first enemy to attack one target two turns in a row and then shift to another target, and even though it’s a new enemy we just spent 15 gold on learning about it.
It further devalues ranged weapons to have no stickiness to melee, lots of times where we threw the dagger in an attempt to keep Ricki out of trouble. Of course, if Lara can do cool spider climbing to get to places enemies can’t reach (and bring Ricki along), then range will have a chance to shine.
That said, we totally could’ve had Ricki retreat once we figured out stats, her damage wasn’t needed to finish off the blob; similarly, I think we accidentally got by some glass on turn 2 for free. As I mentioned before, if enemies played to win and ignored Kamau more often then we wouldn’t be able to use Ricki at all. We exploit enemy “AI” a lot, and this was a more interesting story than watching the plan unfold without a hitch – especially since there wouldn’t be nearly as much narrative reason for Lara to stick around once the fight was over if Kamau proved he could’ve handled it by himself. When all hope was lost and Lara could’ve walked away with our stuff, she stood up for Ricki.
I’m pretty sure the “free glass” in turn 2 was LSN trying to find out if the glass is “visible enough” on this new background. It wasn’t until turn 3 that someone pointed out the patches, iirc.
My vote is case or big haul.
Being able to see into magic chests to determine if the quest to unlock is worth it would be great.
We have learned that kamau can potentially lock us out of items if his remorse removes him. Ricki needs to be able to hold more.
Special mention for trap detection 2. Its a good point not being able to see the trap was bad, and we will likely see more of that lvl of trap in the future.
Sneaky I.
Previously we’ve had people dismiss this because it doesn’t let us bypass entire sections of dungeon without supporting skills. This is a mistake. It misses the biggest value of this skill.
This is a get out of death free card.
Disengage from any enemy. Run through a swarm of venomous bats. Dash past an angry guard with a greatsword.
The game ends if Ricki dies. It’s probably not critical in any given dungeon. I hope it doesn’t come to that. But if it is important, this is the most critical skill on the list.
Lots of dual encounters with Kamau, I’d go with backstab.
Voting for, in that order:
Why TrapDetection2? Well. Stalkroach and SpiderWebs were not poorly hidden, and we didn’t saw them. And TD2 says “well hidden” which is a very wide term. We may see further masterfully-hidden or epic/legendary/etc traps, but I suppose that will be very rare events.
Why Case? Because at the expense of SOME TIME, we learn WHO TO KILL NEXT. This won’t always be needed, but as we saw in the last dungeon, that may be very important when we’re in pinch. And as a bonus, we even get to peek a chest. I just noticed that it doesn’t say “ordinary chest” so MAYBE we even could peek into a SPECIAL chest. That’d be awesome to learn what we can fight for.
Voting for Trap Detection II: We need to be able to spot traps that could cause damage to Ricki. We also need to keep track of them once they are spotted. We lost one point on Ricki because we missed mentioning to avoid the glass once.
I wonder how much a good broom costs.
Lol. Yeah, we had brooms in the tavern, now thinking about it, I wonder if we could have taken one with us, or would the tavern owner halt us 😀
I wonder how this dungeon would have gone if Ricki and Kamau had split up the other way on turn 2, so Kamau was the one hit by a ranged attack from an enemy we hadn’t bothered who was guarding the hallway in front of it instead of the chest behind it. I probably would’ve pushed for Kamau to clear the skeleton dogs while Ricki went for the chest with the stalkroach, which might’ve not dealt any damage with a buckler, and then Kamau would’ve had leather armor for that first sun-head fight. Imperfect information is huge; some of these we had no way of knowing, but some we might learn from. In retrospect, we had the tools at the time to have Ricki and Kamau back off from the sun-head mid fight to grab the “unguarded” chest.
Still, the most important thing is that we won.
Stalkroach was a trap-like danger. It puncher Ricky right into her face, when she was looking into the chest. There’s no way a buckler would lower that damage, just like no amount of body armour helps against glass. You need boots for glass, she’d need a full helmet (covering face) against that punch. IMHO ofc 🙂
Turn 5, glass deals unblockable damage. Turn 10, bop to the nose for 1 damage. Armour works perfectly well against bats that can only reach the head in those crowds.
It is now very interesting that we have to keep in mind the amount of damage that the party takes if we want Kamau to level up. We can’t be as risky in the future or he will start to lag behind and we need him to be at peak condition as or prime damage dealer.
I will suggest Enc +2, just because we can not se a trap that doesn’t mean we can figure out there is a trap!
It was obvious the spider web and thinking the next dungeon is at the same level we sould be fine for more insidious trap …
Yet is a Dungeon of Kobolds wich are notorious for trap…
Maybe Trap disarm could came handy.
Sure, we know now that traps can exist on chests (mentioned in the dungeon 2 debrief but this is our first time actually seeing one) and near spiders. There’s a lot of chests, and knowing exactly which ones are trapped is a big deal.
Trap Disarm won’t be useful until there are traps that are worth disarming. Agreed that kobolds are a likely place to find those traps, but we also need to be able to see a trap to disarm it.
I vote for Trap detection II
A case could be made for sneaky
Ricki suddenly running into enemies and taking damage is what cost us Kamau’s level up
Having a get out of jail free card each dungeon doesn’t sound so bad
Better trap detection also works
After Trap Detection II, my priorities:
1. Big Haul I. I pitched this for the first level up and still think that more space for equipment is the most flexible and powerful upgrade we can get – both from the gear we use and the space to bring loot back to get better gear.
2. Dash. 2 movement is especially powerful as we can keep tabs on an adjacent room by going back and forth, and even still attack after movement. This also lets us move items on the ground between rooms, basically for free. It also makes it much less painful to backtrack.
From there, we’ll see what we encounter. Trap Detection III and Trap Disarming may be good to get before they are proven necessary. I still don’t like one-per-dungeon abilities. I agree that Sneaky I serves the same role as Dauntless I, we don’t want to use it but having the option lets us push a little farther than we could otherwise. This dungeon was the first case where I could see Sneaky I being useful, by running by the bats at the end to get in position to abandon instead of dying. Still, I feel like that was a cinematic setup, and just like last dungeon we had a plan for winning when our escape route was cut off. Sneaky I also gets much better with Dash to get more use out of the one free turn.
Improvisation is expected to be worse than Careful Thief for buying equipment, as a set of tools working twice is 2.5 gold per unlock rather than 3 gold for a dagger. It does let us squeeze gear into fewer slots (go into a crawlspace with dagger to kill rats, then use dagger to unlock chest) which is also the main reason why Dagger Proficiency isn’t completely useless when we can just get a longsword.
Dungeon 3 debriefing stream notes:
– How do skeletons: Every 5th turn, each grave had 30% chance to spawn, with 25% chance of small skeleton. Each planted flower drops spawn chance by 10%, so we started with 4 effective spawns and picking flowers added a 20% spawn point. Graves can’t spawn skeleton dogs. Flower skulls weren’t planned ahead of time, our idea got a ruling.
– With 5+ skeletons in a room, 20% chance per skeleton to move left. Skeleton dog doesn’t move but counts for group size. Skeletons trapped up on the chandelier don’t count towards this. Destroying the lectern wouldn’t have been possible as that would completely negate time limit, and this is a building under divine protection.
– Ghoul Pope command – would’ve gathered up to 12 skeletons and send onward any beyond 12. If we managed to take it down by going around the back, then the dagger skeleton would’ve forgotten its command to alert the bats.
– No skeletons escaped. At end, 2 in front, 9 in chandelier including trapped (so 5 could move), 4 in cemetery. Clearing out everything like we did set us up for a long time.
– Turn 50 ominous feeling stepped spawn up from 30% to 50% chance. Ghoul would’ve launched assault then if active.
– Rope from graveyard balcony was the backup abandon path.
– Opening rat treasure room was connected to above chandelier as expected. Three chests: Locked had 2 items, Wooden Stake and Dawn Robes. Wearing Robes with Mitre would allow you to walk by sun-heads, but they used the armour slot. Unlocked chests had potion of healing and 5 gold.
– Rooms room: Rusty chain with wolf spider. Spider chest had another magic lens and healing potion, and it had a web.
– Wolf spider was potential pet. Would chase rats, survivors would run to next room over leading to a fight with the dire rats, which would kill the spider while leaving them weakened if left alone. If we helped and it survived then it would take a nap and Lara could tame it (if brought down past the Faithless…)
– Maggot was a quest. Any interaction with the flies would’ve gone from combat to chatting since they were friendly NPCs, missing one of their kids. Can then tell the maggot that they’re looking for them, then escort quest to the top (would wait for us to clear enemies in the way as it crawled along walls). Had a special item which might return.
– The fly that looked like a person was a monster and the flies that looked like monsters were people. Insectoids will return.
– Locked chest behind rats below winch had 10 gold coins and 2 cloves of garlic, +2 defense vs undead for 5 turns, stacking. Stalkroach got into there even though it was locked.
– Stalkroach will be visible to Trap Detection II. Still need to notice it.
– Armed ghoul locked chest had a wand. Holy water in the sun-head chest. We could’ve taken the ghoul.
– Solar Armour was 50% drop rate. 1/3 wasn’t lucky, but at least we got the first one
– Bird was a crow, the keys worked on all doors. Ricki couldn’t have gotten to the window on her own, taller characters could’ve climbed. We may deal with more crows.
– Sun sphere was made up because we looked!
– Initial attempt at contacting Lara tried to indicate we had to come back later, not that we needed to change the immediate approach. Expect to get the benefit of the doubt when trying things, if it doesn’t work then we need to change something elsewhere rather than immediately trying again in a different way.
– Ricki needed to be the one to recruit Lara. This will be the general rule for new party members, Ricki is the main character.
– Gold chest challenge was indeed to kill all sun-heads, had the Solar Tome which might return.
– Ringing the bell did force out the Faithless. It was a coincidence this happened turn 60.
– Rat hole with centipede accidentally aligned with windows…
– We did okay. The active sun-head was intended to trip us up, no way to tell. We got away with glass once. We did need to go up to talk to Lara, otherwise killing the Faithless first would have ended the dungeon without her.
– Our listed actions would’ve defeated the Faithless, so Lara’s spell was a cool alternative (and won’t be held against us).
– Faithless tactics weren’t intended as cinematic, just the first time we fought something intelligent. The non-Euclidean nature was supposed to be a hint that it could switch targets, not an explanation of how something has 5 attack/defense.
– Sun-heads are solar guardians.
– Magic lenses are intended to be used, the high cost might be changed.
– A couple previews kept exclusive to the stream at LSN’s request. The replay is available on Twitch and everything previewed will be posted this week.
Many thanks for your summary, very informative.
And yay on ZERO skeletons escaping. Take that, gesturing monkey! 😀
I really want to know if after we figure out the dungeon LSN think that we should try to go as close as we can to 100% or just finish it and move on or he doesn’t hold an opinion. Also thanks for posting this info.
LSN has mentioned in the wrap-up for Dungeon 2 that 100% would only even be possible with both perfect information, good strategy, and luck. There’s definitely more in dungeons than we are expected to do and the time limit is designed to push us to move on. We can do anything, but not everything.
He remarked that in this last dungeon he’d have probably put the solar armour and longsword on Ricki to go into the rat room from above the chandelier, or used the solar sphere there. His input there is likely influenced by how he knows there was only one stalkroach and how he’s the only one to know for sure how retreating works when armour breaks mid combat (which might be an indication that we can relax a little about being allowed to retreat).
I think he also overestimates how clear the dungeon mechanics are. It’s practically impossible to experimentally determine any probability with the number of data points we get, and even when he thinks he’s directly telling us something (“you can’t recruit Lara yet”), the cagey DM “as far as you can tell” wording makes it unclear. Even deterministic movement is really hard to observe, Dungeon Eyes giving us a full room is still a tiny view onto the dungeon. I feel a little better about never scouting the graveyard now that I know we would’ve still learned nothing about the ominous feeling unless Kamau looking down at the graves told us outright that they were more active.
This is a common problem for DMs. Any puzzle you know the answer to will seem easy, and hints that feel like you’ve given everything away are barely enough to get started unless you already know the answer to see what the hint means. At least at the table, we might get to see some dice and see that there was an unusual pattern for an unusual event.
If I made no mistakes, in the finished dungeon there are left:
– 7 bats
– 2 venom bats
– 1 buzzer
– 1 centipede
– 1 ghoul
– 2 giant flies (friendly, need interaction)
– 1 lost giant maggot (needs escort to family)
– 1 magicrow
– 3 normal rats
– 3 dire rats
– 4 plague rats
– 1 skeletal dog
– 16 big skeletons
– 3 small skeletons
– 3 reinforced skeletons
– 2 solar guards
– 1 giant spider
– 1 stalkroach
– 1 wolf spider (needs taming)
– 4 unlocked but unopened chests
– 3 locked chests
– 1 special chest
– 3 locked doors
– things to be dropped/given by the monsters/NPCs
– things in chests
– things outside of chests:
+ 1 dagger
+ 1 bow
+ 1 rusty armor
+ 3 arrows
+ 4 ropes (when cut)
+ 1 cheese
+ 1 key
– another net trap before the spider
– a lot of broken glass in need to be swept together and recycled into new windows
Trap detection II seems like it’ll be a particularly useful ability going forward. I might suggest improvisation to get more things unlocked, but we’re already pretty good at that.