Lara finished a dungeon! She can gain one new ability from this list:
Antivenom I: Once per dungeon can restore 2 HP to a nearby living creature that was damaged by poison on the current or previous turn.
Cloth Proficiency: +1 Def when wearing armour with no base Def bonus, or when wearing no armour.
Drink Poison I: Once per dungeon can consume carried venom to recover HP equal to its damage.
My Pretties: When an owned pet deals poison damage it deals +1 poison damage.
Night Eyes: +1 Atk in rooms with no light.
Poison Proficiency: +1 damage when dealing poison damage.
Poison Resistance I: +2 Def against poison.
Poison Use: Can use venom when attacking.
Spider Sense: +1 Atk and Def against spiders.
Venomous Sting II: Makes a ranged attack that deals 2-3 poison damage.
Poison Proficiency.
I like this, yeah. It’s phrased as damage so it’ll work with Venomous Sting (and Barrage if it comes to it), and it can most likely combo with venom later. Upgrading Sting looks like it just gives us a 50-50 chance of bonus damage.
She’ll still deal more damage with a sword.
i am confused by Sting II existance.
I bet it keeps scaling, from I, to II, to III, etc. It’s strictly worse than poison proficiency right now, but we won’t be able to pick that again.
The bonus per level isn’t great–compare Ricki’s Backstab–but I guess that’s the price you pay for an unconditional ranged attack.
If we take Poison Proficiency and few levels of Sting, we will get a free effective ranged attack that might eventually become better than swords, whereas Lara’s other abilities are not that useful (they rely on poison and venom and we don’t encounter these things often).
Yeah, upgrading sting is an obvious choice next level up (assuming we don’t find any sweet cloth armor)
That Sting II is next best pick (and i agree with that) shows how bad all Lara skills are,
Hey King Marth, sorry if this has nothing to do with Lara’s skill up, but I dunno where else I could contact you, and I was wondering: since you attended the last “dungeon de-briefing” streams, would you perhaps be so kind and ask some questions in the stream (and jot down the answers)? Because a) I don’t know if I will be able to attend and b) even if I could be there when the stream is live, I don’t think anyone can chat in there without having a twitch account (which I don’t have).
First question (or rather a request): it would be superb (and most kind) if LSN could possibly clarify how “ranged” combat works in dungeon eyes, precisely. After 4 dungeons, I am still unclear about the mechanics.
Like why did the sun sphere wipe out all the beaver rats (and partially their barricade, too), without Ricki getting attacked by them (NOT complaining, mind you, I just wanna know how/why that worked, so we can replicate that effect in the future), whereas the “severed rat head” could still “attack” Ricki when she was trying to eliminate the regular (next to the rat pile) with a thrown longsword from a safe distance, so she wouldn’t take damage and trigger remorse.
Nothing in the sun sphere’s description mentions that this attack happens BEFORE any others (meaning the beavers would have “legitimately” been dead before being able to hurt Rick), nor that it is meant as a “ranged” weapon (I could have tried to reason/conclude that a weapon actually meant for ranged attack might wipe out an enemy before they can fight back, whereas a weapon NOT meant for ranged attack can’t, but this doesn’t seem to be the case, either).
In the “Island of starlight” there was a clear combat order: magic attacks happened before any others, and ranged attacks happened before melee (but after magic attacks). Healing happened at the end of combat (iirc). That was so much more clear and so much more easy to deal with than this system here in dungeon eyes.
Is the point of ranged attacks “only” to be able to hurt enemies that you can’t reach (with melee weapons) and that can’t reach you (with melee weapons), either? I’m not sure if that actually justifies the additional fuss of having to procure and bring both the weapon AND the ammunition (in case of e.g. bow and arrows or crossbow and bolts).
Could something like a lever be switched by shooting an arrow/bolt at it? (That would have had some added value in the sewer dungeon, making it possible for Ricki to still remain “free” while opening the grate to the Rat King area…)
Second question, in context with the “Antivenom” skill: Is there any way for us/our chars to tell what kind of damage they are taking?
Third question: Can we get Lara new/different clothes, please? Apparently her outfit is that of an arachnomancer, which triggers certain recations in other people. We would do well to avoid that in the future, especially since she no longer IS an arachnomancer, I don’t see why she should/would keep on wearing that robe. Also, new/different clothes won’t have any poo water remnants in them, hopefully.
I might think of more questions later on, but the first one about ranged combat is the most pressing (to me at least).
Sure, I’ll bring them up. LSN usually gives answers of the “you’ll just have to try and find out” kind.
For 2, dungeon 2 turn 25 pretty clearly shows we don’t get a concrete description of damage type as we definitely know the snale dealt poison damage and that wasn’t discussed. However, d2t33 also shows we got confirmation when the oven mitts were protecting us from the fire damage we knew the torch was dealing. Meanwhile, d3t12 and d3t57 have no such confirmation that sun-head holy attacks are blunted by the armour, and there’s still no mention on d3t61 where the extra holy defense was required. I think we kind of have to infer damage types. Acid might also fall under poison.
For 1, my best guess is that the sun sphere wasn’t an attack at all. This is like our d1t11 trick of dropping a ball and chain on the guard dog, or the d1t5 distracting the dire rat with a burning table. The distinction is weird for a literal bomb, and this might only go unchallenged on a new enemy group as a previously-attacked group may be quicker to retaliate. If there’s an actual attack involved, then d2t42 makes it clear all combat happens at the same time, and the rat head confirms that this happens whether it makes sense or not.
For 3, I think Lara gets a kick out of making people uncomfortable, even when that is directly detrimental to her. We’ll see. It doesn’t help that the only cloth-type armour we’ve heard about is the Dawn Robes, which is religious and worth negative defense to her as a result. Increasing Bond and helping her channel the trolling towards something useful may be our best bet.
Awesome, thank you very much in advance.
Oh, I thought of one more question. If LSN doesn’t reveal this on his own, please ask how many rats were in that chest that the red rat had been sitting on and if the damage they would most likely do when Ricki opened the chest would have been unblockable.
dungeonsituation), or was that artistic freedom because having Kamau standing underwater, alone, next to the rope, waiting to get drowning damage, and then asking us: “What shall Kamau do next? Leave or leave?” was moot?<<Answer to some question might be “You have got to find out these by yourself/trial and error”, but we can ask nevertheless.
I can take my own guesses.
For 3, I expect this falls under the “dungeon clear” free pass. We satisfied all the conditions, and Ricki made it out with no meaningful barriers in the rest of the party’s way; honestly, I don’t think the Interpose was relevant as everyone was past the enemy anyway so it would only get an attack in if we attacked. If we tried this to enter another room in the same dungeon, I think Kamau would Interpose, not get attacked by anything, and be left behind due to taking an attack-type action.
For 4, I most definitely expect anyone there would either move out of the way or be pushed out of the way. The grate moved over the course of a turn. Recall there was no trouble stepping back after pushing the chest to trip the lever on turn 8.
For 5, we’d have to try. Might as well ask if you can pull a lever halfway. Note however that it’s been generally accepted that Kamau cannot crawl under small gaps like the chandelier, so a narrow gap would be Ricki-only.
For 6, I don’t know what is confusing here. Cloth Proficiency gives a bonus without armour or with +0 armour. This isn’t the sort of comic where Lara will take her clothes off.
Interesting, Poison Use implies that even if we had gotten centipede or spider venom sacs, we couldn’t have used them.
Might be that we just couldn’t have used them safely. Or that applying venom would take an action in itself without the skill.
True, “when attacking” could mean that this is giving permission to use venom as part of an attack. The “Can use” part is what makes me think that this is something you can’t normally use.
Only way to find out is to get some venom.
technically Poison Sting is an attack.
could we use venoms to augment it further?
it doesn’t specify that Poison Use has to be melee, sooo?
It doesn’t say what using venom does at all. We need to see what venom does first.
I highly suspect it’s like holy water but for poison damage, which would buff a weapon rather than an attack (and then Lara might be able to hand off the envenomed weapon for someone else to use, if it lasts more than one turn). If it gives an Attack bonus, then it’d only work on melee since ranged attacks don’t use your Attack stat.
Cloth Proficiency would let us give our second Leather Armor, or more likely, sell it if we buy Kamau Heave Armor. Not going to lie, that’s not enough to be worth it over Poison Proficiency making Venomous Sting stronger. I’m just bringing it to point out that there will be Armor without Defense Bonuses
My Pretties: When an owned pet deals poison damage it deals +1 poison damage.
Wait, what? An owned pet? Since when is there an owned pet? We need to get her a pet spider ASAP. Tell her to cast a ritual of summoning in camp or something. Or go on a sidequest. A terrifying poisonous spider sounds like a great plan, and it’s perfect for an evil-themed adventuring party.
1) We already had a chance to get a spider pet, but we fucked up and i don’t think we get another one.
2) We don’t get to choose what sidequests/events happen during intermission, so we can’t tell Lara to do something like that.
3) Our party is definitely NOT evil-themed. One retired arachnomancer does not count.
I think LSN stated somewhere that the spider pet might return. Just like Rat King returned because we didn’t kill him last time.
The corruption ability Subdue Spider can turn an enemy spider into a pet for that dungeon “if possible”.
Ricki stole food to not starve, Kamau is seen by the Empire as traitor, they did knock down a guard, they broke out of prison (damaging inventory and stealing things), Kamau was posed as guard (verrry off-duty), the party keeps breaking into places, taking stuff which does not belong them, killing on their way (as well as littering) – what the good heroes do. Also: “So you HAVE kidnapped people?” “Yep.” “Drank their blood?” “That too.” “Sacrificed them to the Goddess of Spiders, in exchange for magical powers and the service of horrible beasts?” “Uh huh.” … “But she’s KILLED people!!” “Sure, but who hasn’t?” “…” “…”
You do not want to know what the really bad guys do! 😉
[In game, we clearly are NOT an evil party!]
Really? We’re not evil-themed? Could have fooled me. LSN loves evil adventuring parties. He literally ran a webcomic for a decade with a chaotic evil main character who got away with every stunt he pulled. (and amazing he updated the thing every single weekday and never quit, like so many other webcomic creators)
We’ve got a thief, a traitor who we found in prison, and a kidnapper who sacrifices her victims to an evil spider goddess. Our party’s whole thing is “kill things and take their stuff.” I don’t see where that fits into any Good alignment, and it’s pretty shady even for Neutral. If I was the DM I would have already had a private talk with the PCs about involuntary alignment change. That is, if they weren’t already Evil. If so, then hell yeah summon poisonous spiders and perform a home invasion robbery on a bunch of innocent kobolds and murder anyone who gets in our way.
You know, like Ardon.
Somebody who steals food to survive is not strictly Evil just because they stole, just like somebody who sells AIDS medication for 5500% the original price is not strictly Good just because they sell medicine.
Likewise, being a traitor does not necessarily mean you’re Evil for switching sides, if the faction you used to belong to were the bad guys. And if he was Evil, he probably wouldn’t be remorseful about anything, let alone strangers (or basically strangers).
Arachnomancer is probably safely Evil, still, until otherwise noted.
On this point (alignment), none of what LSN did for WSWFG has anything to do with DE. It’s irrelevant.
Hrm, the way that Antivenom is worded…
makes me think that this could come in super handy when trying to get potential pets (or keep already recruited ones). Healing them from poison would a) keep them from dying and b) show them we are on their side, possibly allowing them to ally themselves with us or increase a bond (if there is such a thing between our chars and their pets).
I’m all for getting poison proficiency now (and it already has 17 votes, so it would be hard to “catch”), but this is certainyl a skill to keep in mind for (close) future level-ups.
Also will help with keeping the party members alive, as long as they get harmed by poison/venom.
The problem is, we don’t fight many poisonous enemies. Such ability is too situational, compared to Venomous Sting II, Poison proficiency and so on.
First of all: we haven’t fought many CONFIRMED poisonous enemies YET.
If we count only the centipede and the giant spiders (one in the tavern dungeon, 3 in the chapel, 0 in the jail and sewers), you are technically correct, 4 isn’t many.
However, the snales had an explicitly mentioned POISON ranged attack (that’s 3 more enemies, bringing the total number up to 7 confirmed) and I am very much guessing that the plague rats (you know the sickly green ones) are not dealing “normal” damage, either. It might be “sickness” damage or it might be “poison” damage, (or even something entirely different,) depending on what kinds of damage there are available in the game.
Just because we haven’t used a magic lens on every enemy yet and therefore not know everything about them (other than, you know, learning just how much it hurts getting hit by them, or how long it takes us to take them out), doesn’t mean there isn’t more to know.
The “bat, venom” is also a likely candiate to deal poison damage.
Rogues might have weapons with poison applied to them, when they attack us.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if the stonger version of the undead (e.g. “reinforced skeleton”) deal non-normal damage, either. Granted, it doesn’t have to be poison, but probably not “plain, vanilla damage”, if you ask me.
So the possibilities are near endless for incoming poison damage.
And second, the difficulty of the dungeons will only increase over time, making the appearance of more dangerous (e.g. poisonous/venomous) enemies (or variations of already encountered enemies) ever more likely in the future.
For later reference, centipedes, spiders, plague rats, venom bats, and the snales all do poison damage. You only need one source of poison damage to get benefit from Antivenom, since it is only once per dungeon. It is effectively a free no-slot potion of healing each dungeon.
I don’t think we would have trouble using the ability, but healing isn’t all that useful while we’re still filling out basic defense, and especially while we’re playing around Remorse and only want to heal Kamau. Poison Resistance I does look more interesting with this list though, +2 defense saves as much HP as Antivenom every turn that Lara encounters poison, and it upgrades. Still, having Kamau focus on defense lets our other party members focus on offense.
Some random throughts:
I don’t think we can just randomly decide to ask her something as important as this.
I stongly suspect that this kind of information will bei either handled in a “cut scene” (remember the one where Ricki told Kamau about her dungeon eyes? We did get to pick whether she would or not, but only after being kind of prompted by the conversation in the previous turn) and/or in one of the special dungeons that we might get to do if we reach a high enough bond level between Ricki and (in this case) Lara.
We’ve already seen at least one Venom item — it’s a consumable item dropped by some enemies.
CENTIPEDE
HP: ???
Atk: ???
Def: ???
Drops: 30% 1 Centipede Venom Gland
Same for spiders, there’s a Spider Venom Gland.
Paws might stock venom, either on his own or some time after we find some.
For the record, from https://bit.ly/dungeon-eyes-enemies
CENTIPEDE
HP: 4? (4 * 4-Def)
Atk: 4?
Def: 3? “minor damage” from 4
Drops: 30% 1 Centipede Venom Gland
Theory:
Arachnomancers Corruption thing is cyclical.
by that i mean:
once Lara turns into spider her Corruption gaining skills are replaced with ones that cost Corruption to use, and once she runs out she gets human form back.
The gimmick with her character is about managing both forms mid run and juggling equipment. Since i assume she has vastly limited inventory as Spider.
issue. It’s worthless theory since testing it is to risky.
Edit: welp, i read Lara skill page again and it say the transformation is “permanent”.
sadness.
Where can we vote to additionally get a shower or bath (because: “poo water”)?!
I have a feeling that this Dungeon is the closest thing Ricki has had to a bath in a long time.
Maybe not, though. It didn’t seem like she had much trouble getting water for soup.