Dungeon 4 Turn 9
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After leaving a set of thieves’ tools next to the rat tunnel for Ricki to pick up later, Kamau and Lara head to the next room to try and get one of the big caches of treasure. Lara picks up the rusted greatsword from out of the skeleton’s head, and in a stunning combo move that only two people who truly do not like each other can pull off, the two of them demolish the beaver dam with a single devastating attack. The beavers they reveal on the other side seem caught off guard, as if they had been about to do something with the dam before it exploded in front of their eyes.
Above, Ricki tries climbing to higher ground to avoid the rat pile, but it seems it can still reach her (despite doing no damage). She takes a swipe at it with her rat fang blade, dealing a decent amount of damage but also cutting one of the rats loose from the tangle. It’s a bit dizzy right now, but it looks like it will quickly gets its bearings and join the fight!
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GREATSWORD, RUSTY
Weapon
Atk +3, 2-handed. 30% chance to break when used.
Weight 1, Cost 6
That free rat is a concern. Hopefully it means the rat pile does less damage though.
Greatsword looks about right. Kamau can’t use though.
I think we lucked out and avoided the beaver dam crushing us as a trap. No mercy now beavers!
Ricki: Kill small rat.
Kamau: Interpose with shield.
Lara: Attack a beaver with greatsword.
Kamau and Lara: Back up to the ladder for room to breathe.
Greatsword because attacking underwater probably has a penalty. Rat pile looks kinda dangerous to keep trying to kill, so we should have Ricki grab the sword and leave next turn. Turn after that she can drop the sword, grab the lockpicks, and go back in to loot the chest.
Alternate:
Ricki: Kill small rat. Move to sword.
Lara and Kamau: Back up to ladder for air.
Kamau: Interpose with shield.
Lara: Venom sting a beaver.
Some people are concerned that we won’t get to breathe if we attack the beavers directly. I don’t believe it, but we can do this anyway. We have time.
((Edited out cause Siv’s idea with the shield is better.))
Ok, guys, we MUST find out what happens if a character fights underwater/drowns a bit.
The only one we can test this on is KAMAU!
Also, Ricki must not be damaged again, ideally.
Further actions will depend on test results!
So we have:
Corrections are welcome! I shall edit this comment accordingly if I made a glaring mechanics mistake, or a new one if the plan is conceptually wrong.
Edited to give Lara the shield and longsword – Kamau would attack with hilt.
Nothing preventing beavers from attacking Lara in this one. I suggest at least giving her the shield.
I’m of the opinion that the beavers will follow onto land if attacked at range, though having someone in melee might change that. Good point about figuring out the underwater rules, though we can always take a swing at the surviving room 2 beaver to test that out in a safer environment.
Edited – I don’t want Lara to risk damage. Good call.
Suggesting another amendment, give Lara the Longsword too so she can kill a Beaver if it follows her up and she’s able to attack it instead of having to use Venomous Sting without having to risk losing the Rusty Greatsword. It’s a big if, but Kamau isn’t going to use it this turn either way.
I’m curious: What would Kamau attack with, then, considering underwater penalty to atk? Unarmed wouldn’t do damage, probably.
With the Hilt, of course! Edited.
It would be very unusual for an enemy to move away from its location. My expected outcome here is that Kamau will be hit by both beavers underwater while Lara gets a Sting in. Without someone in the water to fight, the beavers would only go up on land because they were attacked by someone on land.
I don’t think that definitely reducing Kamau’s damage is worth it. That said, since they’re hitting the same target and 4 damage is confirmed to kill a beaver, Kamau could take up to -2 attack from water and still land a kill. The bigger issue is his miss chance (which might also go up underwater), we’ve had a series of lucky hits but that could change any turn.
Yes, I am aware that is a likely outcome, however it is more survivable than the outside chance of Lara taking damage. Also, killing the beaver is not the main objective here – the objective is to test underwater mechanics in the safest way I can think of…. (Lara can sting it one more turn if necessary due to a Kamau miss).
This should be the last time Kamau is deliberately exposed to damage though, so we’re mostly OK risking this once. If drown damage is problematic (as in, unavoidable if any action is taken underwater), no further underwater adventures will be conducted, until we’re sure a path is clear to the exit (which will likely expose Kamau to damage as well), at least.
Because otherwise remorse point at Kamau.
(Just posting in case this was not obviouse to everybody anyway.)
Thanks!
Additionally: “picking up unattended items or trading items between characters doesn’t use up an action” (how-to-play). If the sword is an unattended item after killing the small rat, Ricki please pick it up! (If it is unattended then but attended later, we would later use/waste one action to pick it up.) If a rat tail is dropped and unattended, pick that up, too, if it is possible in the same turn.
After killing the small rat go pick up the lockpick left by Kamau!
EDIT: Withdrawing in favour of alternate in replies. The original suggestion involved trying to finish off the pile, but that’s an unnecessary risk when the stats we know about permit getting the loot.
Guaranteed Remorse this coming turn, unless removing a rat has reduced the pile’s attack, in which case this enemy is designed to take many actions to defeat. Glad we found out about that mechanic, wonder how many more rats will be freed. Ending by the exit should let her retreat the turn after without being attacked.
The rat pile does no damage but that extra rat added can. Better option is to kill off the extra damage and save the rat tail. It can’t hurt us anyway.
Removing the rat pile would remove 5 damage per turn, and if it has full strength then we can only kill it now.
That said, we don’t need to kill this one (though think of how many tails it could drop!).
If the pile doesn’t die by adding an empowered attack, we’re locking ourselves out of this chest and the longsword. I don’t *think* it’ll survive, but it seems like an unnecessary risk. But I like giving Lara the shield if we’re having Kamau attack instead of interpose.
Fair, that’s what I get for trying to fight. We can kill the one at the entrance to see what it drops.
It could very well explode into many more individual rats, cruel as that would be.
Alternate:
Lara: Take shield. Venomous Sting on one of the beavers from on dry land.
Kamau: Staying up and dry, attack an uninjured beaver that approaches you, using your Hilt.
Ricki: Kill small rat using Rat Fang. Go end turn by the rat tunnel hole.
This sacrifices killing the pile for definitely reducing the enemy group to a safe level, then next turn she can grab the sword and step out for thieves tools.
Well I’ll be, Greatsword is 2-handed and weight 2 (though on the Characters page it’s weight 0, the extra slot it takes up is rendering the same as Lara’s regular inventory and not reducing the count so it looks like she has 11 slots). We could have messed with that guard back in dungeon 2 by putting out the light even though he brought his own light source.
Also mostly confirmed that Kamau’s Heavy Sword Proficiency is flavour. Can always hope for a mithril greatsword.
Whoopsie, greatsword weight is something I rebalanced awhile back but it looks like the rusty version didn’t get changed. It’s weight 1.
Much more viable for Ricki then (though not the rusty kind, she’d destroy that).
Ricki is the Acolyte of Entropy, yes.
Ricky running around with a Greatsword, wow (oO)
I’m expecting this to get downvoted (and would be tempted to downvote it myself if I wasn’t the one saying it) because it’s risky to assume how something will work and it’s going off the assumption that Kamau and Lara could lure the Beavers to the ladder then float up after fighting. I’m still throwing out this idea anyway for the sake of brainstorming.
IIRC, Beavers have 4 Health. Lara with a Shield and Longsword would Kill one Beaver without taking any damage and Kamau with Kamau’s Hilt would kill the other. (I’m not sure if Beavers have 3 or 4 Attack, but I think it’s worth the damage) This is going off of some assumptions, but if they can fight under the ladder, they might be able to float up after combat.
Also, like everyone else is saying, Ricki should kill the small rat. (Preferably in an epic way like leaping off the chest and plunging the dagger into it as she lands. :P)
Luring enemies is totally possible, you just need to give them a reason to move (guard dogs could be lured just by shouting at them, but drunks needed the promise of alcohol and rats needed cheese or to be attacked). I’m suggesting it myself, using Venomous Sting from dry land. Either the beavers sit back and are stung (if they were smart and knew we were on a time limit and also that they can’t kill us anyway) or they leave the water and we’re not in the situation where fighting them is difficult.
Beavers definitely have max 3 attack… On land.
Good to know we can lure them. I don’t think we need to worry about how we’d do that because destroying their dam to proke them into attacking is a pretty good way. 😛
A risk free version of this plan that takes an extra turn is to climb up the ladder then wait for the Beavers to come up next turn. If we do this, Lara can use Venomous Sting to attack one of the Rat King’s Rats while waiting. I’d target either the Beaver or the Dire Rat because we’ll have more than enough time to attack again before we need to open the gate and the Plague Rat might be immune to Poison Damage.
This safe plan is basically Siv’s Plan but without damage instead of getting to do science with drowning.
Enemies generally don’t chase us. If we don’t attack them, then they probably won’t move.
The two beavers next to the lever, which we switched by dropping the chest, stayed under water and did not even surface. And look at the rats at the top level: We went past them, even attacked one group, and they are still chilling there. The beaver next to the chest, where the shield was in, still holds its assigned position and is not furiously chasing us. A beaver is no typical “angry attack beast”, thus I think that it is highly unlikely that they will follow us onto dry ground (and endanger themselves by that). The rat pile is another thing altogether.
Small note: I suggested once it would be funny if we pushed the barrier onto the beavers, but dismissed the notion that it was possible to do so. Well, apparently they could push it on top of us! Little pancake rats!!
If you look closely, the beavers behind the destroyed dam have wide eyes
Thanks for pointing that out. That’s hilarious. 😀
Yay, we “killed” the barricade in a single turn! (Though the beaver rats might have accidentally “helped” us from the other side, if they were in the act of toppling it over torwards Lara and Kamau. But gift horse, mouth, and all that. ^-^ And them being baffled and not attacking our chars this round? Welcome bonus!)
The pile of rats spawning a regular rat definitely is something that I didn’t see coming, but now that I see it happen, I kind of wonder how that mechanic works.
Most likely the pile has a % chance to spawn a rat for each round it is attacked in.
The question is: does this lower the attack value of the rat pile accordingly (in that case, it would only make the pile of rats MORE dangerous in case of Rat King being in LoS of a rat pile and whatever it spawns and should be fairly safe to “deconstruct” generally) or not (in which case we only should attack rat piles if we can do it with multiple people, one person to possibly spawn a rat and one to take care of that spawned rat in the very same round, in order to stay “as safe” as before the spawning. That should work, because apparently, freshly spawned rats are too stunned to attack the same round – which is very fair, game mechanic wise.)
Now let’s hope we can eliminate the beavers without anyone getting hurt and that inside the chests behind them is nothing that can be damaged/destroyed by water (like the torch did).
Well, LSN was disappointed when we killed the first cute beaver (maybe just mockingly so). Kamau was able to subdue the guard in the first/jail dungeon and the drunks in the second/tavern dungeon without killing them. Thus, if we want to, we can knock out the beavers instead of killing them. On the other hand, they tried to kill us by dropping the barricade onto us and they might drop loot (twitter says: mobile phones; beaver fur was used for coats for example, looking at Ricki’s clothes, they could use any upgrade, Lara’s appearance could get a change to no longer look so suspicious, Kamau’s guard-look could profit from a change as well, and even Lohk might not say “Bah!” to a fur coat). Fair compromise: We just swiftly kill the beavers but Lara does not use them in any dark ritual. The beavers should reasonably agree to that.
To be fair, we’ve killed 3 beavers with 0 drops (the fourth one in room 2 won’t reveal any drops until its entire group has been killed). Drop rate is looking low.
Certain beaver glands were used for artificial vanilla flavouring at one point.
We may not be allowed to attack newly spawned enemies on the same turn for the same reason they aren’t allowed to attack us. Basically, all combat happens at the same time, and if you miss the combat phase then you aren’t in combat at all.
I’m afraid that the pile will retain full strength as there are more rats in it than can effectively attack, so cutting one out just increases the surface area. Three damage only cut one out, that might be a per attack effect. I’m more curious what happens when the pile is defeated, if it leaves more than one rat behind.
In another space-time, someone noted:
Does that mean that Lara and Kamau suddenly discovered that when they do things together, they both get bonus points from their innate anger? 🙂
I mean, I don’t think the beaves helped here in destroying it, because the poor things worked really hard to build that barricade, and they didn’t move the slightest pixel. I think the ‘surprise’ part was just to note they were, well, surprised, and won’t attack this turn.
Poor beavers! Their eyes are square )))