Dungeon 3 Turn 59
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While Kamau finishes off the creature, Ricki runs over and ties the end of the rope around the winch. She carefully loops and tightens it to the best of her ability. She’s pretty sure that if someone turns the handle, the bell up above will ring.
Ricki also recovers her throwing dagger from the battlefield. The sun guy doesn’t drop another set of armour.
Ricki: CRANK DAT SOULJA GIRL
I don’t think there’s an in-dungeon way to get the drow’s attention, I think we’ll get her attention by ringing the bell.
It’s been 6 turns since we pulled up the chandelier, so it’s possible that skeletons are already spawned and moving towards the entrance. I don’t know if we’ll have time to run back and interrupt them either. Maybe we do, maybe more won’t spawn until 60 (like how drunks didn’t come down until every 10th turn).
We have two sets of lockpicks left, we could run at the spider room, which may be the only safe chest left. That’ll take time, including however long it takes to bop skeletons and run back and forth.
Centipede chance drop for venom left.
Finally, in regards to I’m-sick-of-this-place, let’s end the dungeon on a nice Friday.
Yup. The Friday part really did it for me.
Again, the skeletons on the chandelier weren’t blocked from leaving in any way. If they can climb up, which required the use of the lectern as a stand, then they could have certainly jumped down and walked out. There’s been no indication of what would actually cause skeletons to leave; it can’t even be “10 or more skeletons have gathered” because there were 11 on the turn 15 we first lowered the chandelier.
Fair enough to just want the dungeon over.
There were 11 because the ghoul pope was actively directing them. Their behavior is explicitly different now, though we don’t know how exactly.
“The skeletons appear to have no direction any longer, and resume normal skeleton behaviour (which still involves attacking the living, unfortunately).”
On skeleton behavior and spawns:
Turn:
3: 6 in middle room.
12: 2 join below
15: 3 more have arrived in middle room, chandelier drop
18: 1 more skeleton has arrived. Kamau charge
22: Find graveyard. 3 skeletons and dog
25: 1 skeleton spawns
30: 3 skeletons spawn
32: Last turn in graveyard
52: 4 on chandelier
My guesses:
10% chance of a spawn per grave every turn, maybe not counting the flowered grave.
Some simple movement behavior that doesn’t require LSN to make a roll for each skeleton every turn. Either “move forward when more than 4 skeletons in room” or “move forward after 10? turns”. Based on the four in the graveyard when we found it.
In any case we wouldn’t be in danger of losing our bonus in the next few turns… But the ominous feeling was on turn 50. Something timer related has started, and it’s going to be scary enough to make us want to finish the dungeon, or it wouldn’t be a timer.
Double spawn rate? Then we’re about out of time right now.
Spawn black skeletons/ghouls instead? We have a chunk of time, but will have trouble stalling forever.
Some bosslike enemy? Dunno.
Reposted
I am voting to end on the grounds that the chance we will walk away with nothing is getting higher. No guarantee spending time with bird or drow will get us what we want, and if something big comes along like the guard did in dungeon 2 we risk the permadeath or not finishing the dungeon. LSN has said we will have other opportunities to recruit missed part members if this was attainable to begin with.
Do you people not want to recruit the drow or what? We barely tried communicating with her and now you want to end the dungeon right away. WTF?
And you, what, want to go shout at her again? Because she’ll listen this time?
I’m not convinced that ringing the bell is a failure state. Abandoning the dungeon would be, sure, but the giant bell seems like a really good way to make her take notice. I also don’t think it’s a puzzle without any hints. When we first met Kamau there was an entire cutscene and extremely unsubtle comments: “Huh. It seems this man isn’t interested in talking, let alone getting out of his cell. But Ricki could really use his help. She can hardly even reach half the stuff in this dungeon!
Maybe if she found out more about him, Ricki could think of a way to change his mind.”
I guess we could try interacting with the bird, and see if it flies up and gets her attention. Actually that’s not a terrible idea. Grabbing the keys is an obvious enough action that we might have been expected to just do it. For that matter, the bird might be tamable with the moldy cheese in this room, which I note there’s exactly one of in this dungeon, and rots after each dungeon so we can’t stockpile it.
Rope doesn’t seem like a good bet though. At least not just one rope. There was one lying right there, and if all we needed was in the top room, there’d be no reason to make the grate impossible to open/no more obvious paths up.
I like the idea of trying to tame the bird with cheese. It looks like a crow, and probably most of us heard the story about crow and fox and cheese, so probably crows like cheese, at least in fairy tales. Cheese may be there also to distract rats and gain access to chests without fighting rats. I wanted to write that some time ago and I kept forgetting.
However. What would a tame bird do for us in a dungeon game like this? One thing for sure, it’s an extra pair of eyes with added mobility. But it’s probably rather vulnerable, I suppose it’s DEF is at most 1, of any at all. This may mean taking a heavy hit on Kamau’s remorse (though I really like to think that ‘pet’ is not ‘ally’ for the purpose of that character trait). If we have time and will to try out, I’d do try. We can always simply just not take the pet to the dungeon if it turns out like this. And this dungeon shows that extra pair of eyes may help.
Ask Kamau about drow and how to communicate with them. Or heck, maybe he knows this one personally!
Let’s go up there and talk to her directly. Use Thieves’ Cant, sign language or Mongolian throat singing. Come on, this is a dungeon crawl, dungeoneers are supposed to be skilled at this kind of problem-solving.
I think the bird is guarding the keys and we’re supposed to figure out how to get it to fly off without carrying the keys away with it. Then we loot the empty nest.
请将您的提案翻译成简单的英语语言。 (Please translate your proposal into plain English language. I am no native speaker and do not understand it. The urban dictionary tells me that it would be nsfw, but I assume this is not what you wanted to say. Sorry for my missing competence in English.)
“Crank that, soldier girl” (crank the winch)
Thank you for the translation!
in addition to the above:
Kamau: climb the rope (before Ricki cranks, ideally) to the top of the room and move left (mind the glass) and down.
(…just in case that the ringing of the bell doesn’t end the dungeon, I want to know what the situation looks like in the entrance room).
I vote we do not yet end the dungeon. Not until we’ve tried to get the Drow or the Wolf Spider
Also the special chest is two sun guys away.
Yeah, but one of them is in a “Ricki only” area. And with 3 Def, Ricki will not even be able to DAMAGE them, even if we give her the longsword.
I mean even if we got our hands on a +3 attack weapon somehow, Ricki would have to whittle that sunhead down for 9-10 turns, in each of which she’ll take 2 damage with her current equipment.
(Kamau took 2 damage in dungeon 3, turn 5, where he clearly didn’t have any defense items on and his BASE Def is 3, as high as we can Ricki possibly have unless we give her the tarnished armour, or loot some other defensive equip first. And we all know how that is going to go, right? Our little beloved rust prophet will take ONE hit and the armour that has been with us since turn 7, keeping Kamau (and by extent Ricki) safe, will fall to pieces.)
It’s just not doable, in this party constellation and with the loot/skills we have. This “challenge chest” was probably designed/balanced for the group to have the kobold (from the warrens) in it, too. Kobolds are usually small size, they will most likely be able to traverse the rat tunnels as well.
Or possibly some skill of Ricki’s would have helped, which we don’t have. (E.g. steal might have rid the sunhead of the armour he’s wearing – with 10% probability though – dropping his Def to zero, Ambush, dagger proficiency, even comforting weight or dodgy would help…)
Use the Holy Bowling Ball.
…against an enemy that wears an armour that explicitly has MORE (namely 4) def against holy damage than against regular damage (namely 3)?
GENIUS!
(By the way: that’s sarcasm, in case you can’t tell.)
The Coin of Revelry would’ve also helped significantly, +2 Attack is big. The centipede venom sac might also buff damage. It would still take a long time though. Solar armour would be a necessity, which leaves no inventory space for backup, and I don’t trust Ricki to keep that armour together long enough to run by, loot the chest, then grab contents and immediately leave on the second turn.
Ambush wouldn’t help much, it only helps on the first turn of a long fight. Dagger Proficiency is also only equivalent to bringing a longsword. We have more cost-effective defense boosts available than Comforting Weight. Agreed that a second small character would make these sections very different.
Agreed that the coin of revelry would have made this fight
a lot easierdoable, but it still would last 2 (base attack plus dagger)+2 (buff)=4 minus 3 (def sunhead) = 1 -> 9-10 (amount HP sunhead) rounds with a dagger and 5 rounds with the longsword (3+2 buff = 5 damage). Even with a +3 attack weapon (4+2) – which we don’t have atm – the fight would last 3 rounds and that would still mean 6 damage to Ricki with the leather armour, and probably a broken tarnished armor if we used that instead. Besides, Ricki wouldn’t even be able to carry it all (weapon, coin and the tarnished armour make up 6 inventory slots, and she only has 5), so we’d have to do some running back and forth, like depositing the coin and the drink (iirc, it only worked if some drink was consumed together with the coin) in the tiny area behind the rat tunnel, while not getting attack by the sunhead yet, then run back and grab the armour and the weapon, then go back into the rat tunnel area, then drop the weapon, pick up coin and drink, use coin and drink and pick up the weapon and then fight for 3-10 rounds. That’s a long time to faff around for ONE chest (even one with probably extra-ordinary content) with the “ominuous feeling” looming.Ambush would have helped only in the first round, that’s true. It’s not a huge advantage, but in other fights (e.g. dire rats), it might make all the difference.
Backstab would help, if we got someone else attacking the sunhead, but for that, again, we’d need someone else able to travel the rat tunnels.
Comforting weight is all about keeping Ricki able to sneak, while still giving her more than 3-4 Def tops, if you ask me (she already has 3 atm from 1 base def, 1 from leather armour and 1 from light armour proficiency, she had 4 during the dungeon for some time with the cracked buckler). She can’t have any items in her inventory that have 3 or more weight (per item), if she is supposed to be sneaky (which makes sense, you simply make a lot of noise in plate armour), and with comforting weight and lots of coins we can make her even more tank-y without having to resort to those kinds of items.
And I didn’t see that dagger proficiency doesn’t have a “I” at the end. So we couldn’t possibly have taken that and then levelled up to tier “II”, and make 3 damage with her. Bummer. But thanks for pointing that out.
Kamau head up to the left (climbing on the rope), avoid the glass, head to the first room. There’s glass on the top right, before the ladder down, and then glass right before the door in the first room.
Ricki, climb the ladder all the way up to the top floor.
Let’s burn a turn or two trying to get the drows attention otherwise
Either climb the rope, or mind the glass between the ladders.
In addition to the above:
Ricki: mind the glass.
Also, if we are going to check out the graveyard later on, I would very much want to do that from the balcony past the sundhead with the rusty sword, even if that means 2 more damage for Kamau (one on the way there, one on the way back).
At least we’d know what dangers we’d be facing, whereas in the chandelier area and the graveyard itself, only LSN knows… 😛
0 damage. Kamau has 3 defense, up to 7 vs holy with the solar armour. The sun-head deals 5 holy damage, +2 for the rusty longsword. Kamau could get the bow without taking damage. If that finally breaks the armour though, it might hurt less to jump down from the balcony than to take 3 damage while running back with just leather.
Do we know that the sunheads deal holy damage? And 0 damage altogether is even better than 1+1. 😀
Cancelling my vote. You know what, yeah, it’s time to get outta here. Last quest was 50 turns and we almost died. Let’s get out with our dignity and cool armor intact
If Ricky can smell the cheese from there, steal cheese from fly and climb all the way up to the room with the drow and pass the cheese through the hole, if he/she doesn’t hear, maybe smell can do the trick. Kamau will have to protect her
Ok, we’ve got the basics covered. How about last quick check at the entrance (Kamau goes straight to the entrance, Ricky goes to the lever)? Then clear the skeletons if situation is not good (drop the chandelier, kill what’s left, etc). Then Kamau takes a peek at the graveyard and probably just runs away, while Ricky goes back to camp at the winch to ring the bell at any moment she feels Kamau needs it – or, Ricky could instead try to disturb the drow last time.
Ricki: Climb the ladder to the room above, then climb the rope up one more room. Keep an eye out for glass if something sends you that way.
Kamau: Equip leather armour and start trying to kill that centipede in the dark. Mostly to have something to do while waiting on standby to ring the bells.
I don’t think Ricki can climb out on the right of the tower on her own. Sending some signal should be possible; we can tug on the webs, send up a ball of light, and try shouting again that we’re ringing the bell shortly.
We’ve seen every room of the dungeon since turn 50 except the bell tower and the courtyard, so that bad feeling should be at one side or the other. It clearly isn’t moving quickly though since it has been 9 turns since then.
I’m on the fence about Kamau fighting the centipede. Yes, we did fight one in the past successfully (iirc. even without taking any damage), but that time the poison of the centipede did not trigger for whatever reason (Kamau tends to be lucky on the % dice rolls). We did see that poison can increase the incoming damage (for the poisoned person) when we fought the spider in this dungeon, though of course it’s possible that the centepede poison works differently.
And Ricki should be able to get out the right window, if she uses the yellow chest as boost, IMHO.
The ball of light (through the grate) was already addressed by LSN (he wrote that the grate is too narrow to send up a holy bolt through it), but of course you could shoot one past the window next to the drow. However, I suspect that the wooden “blend” at the lower window is going to make it tricky to hit an angle that the drow will see that bolt, if we do that from inside the tower.
What about trying to holy-bolt the inside of the broken bell from below? Maybe it doesn’t do anything, maybe a holy item will somehow react if brought into contact with holy energy. Like maybe we could mend/charge it up somehow? At the very least, it should produce some vibrations (that even a deaf person could notice).
Also, how cool would it be, if we could mend the “tarnished” armour with a holy bolt? (Not willing to try that before I see the effect on the bell, though.)
Since we don’t know if ringing the bell will end the dungeon, I’m very much for doing that -very- soon (so we’ll learn the effect of the bell and also possibly get hints at what else needs to be done). But I think it’s fair trying to warn the drow first that the bell they are sitting under is about to toll. Can’t be pleasant to sit there when it goes off, even IF she was deaf (again vibrations)…
Ugg… I’m flip flopping again. Honestly I’m fine with either option but I do think we are pushing our luck.
Pushing our luck?
“Buddy. We have powers, AND magic, AND stuff. AND… flowers.”
Well, at least we had flowers and there even might be a flower left.
Ricki: Ring that bell and crank that wheel. If that doesn’t end your turn as an action nor end the dungeon, head up the church to the top. If the bell disturbs the bats across the dungeon, do not proceed past the ladder with the centipede.
Kamau: Ignore the toiling goblin, head up the ladder and then take the ledge to start moving left towards the section of locks & doors & monsters. Also put your leather armor on.