Dungeon 5 Turn 42
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The fight against the salavamander rages on, and despite Kamau’s ongoing success in keeping everyone safe from harm, the fact remains that time is running short. The Guard will be here soon, the beast shows no sign of tiring, and to retreat now would be to welcome an incendiary death.
But suddenly, the tide turns, and the salavamander is slain by a final precision strike!
“Did… did I do it?”
“Did I help get the monster?”
“Yeah, good shot, Mac! We’ll make a killer out of you, yet!”
“Please don’t.”
With the stomping and grunting of the salavamander now silenced, the sounds of armoured boots scraping on the floor above becomes noticeable. Ricki quickly darts in riding on Daisy’s back and grabs the cooling lump of magma the creature expelled upon its death.
“We gotta go, guys!”
“I got a look at how many guards there are earlier, they’ll reduce us to red mist if we let them catch up!”
“But if I can just explain what happened—”
“No. Take it from me, once their blood is up like this they won’t be stopping to listen to what you have to say. If they EVER would have.”
“Don’t worry, Macadamia, we have a place you can stay! And we’re working on getting someplace even better, outside the city.”
Lara leaves her spider behind to web up the tunnel and delay the guards further as the party hurries to catch up with the kobolds they helped to escape. Despite the many twists this dungeons threw at them, they have emerged victorious once again!
Dungeon 5 is complete!
Congrats everyone!
Well, I’m inclined to call this adventure a great success. We might have got a corruption point, but we also got three level ups, two bond points, new character, our first pet, lots of gold and stuff for sell!
Absolutely. I’d even say, I think that’s the best run so far! Hype! 😀
I am sooo curious about this intermission (BAH!) and how Macadamia’s character sheet looks like.
By the way, smiffing is one time per ring and/or the ring has to be non-magical, correct? We cannot re-smiff a ring to upgrade it (i.e. from +1 to +2)? I’m not sure if we tried that or not.
One time per ring, requiring non magical copper ring and active ingredient (armor, shield or weapon). May change with Macadamia getting more abilities.
Macadamia’s sheet should tell us. It is clear that he’ll be able to learn new smiffing skills.
With copper rings as the base, I highly expect silver, gold, and maybe platinum upgrades.
Yeah, this got us more treasure than the loot dungeon. We basically got everything up top. Our limit is more our inventory space than our cash now.
I’m glad we spent the first Corruption and got so much out of it. Refusing to spend any corruption is basically skipping right to the worst part.
I also look forward to seeing what terrible drawback Macadamia will have. There’s been some suggestion that Kamau and Lara will stay on the bench the moment we find more party members to replace them, but this doesn’t pay enough attention to how every party member thus far has had trade-offs. The 0 base attack is part of it, but he’s not very happy about joining us.
10 minutes ago Macadamia was a successful lawful ringsmif, and now he is a wanted criminal travelling with 3 other wanted criminals who want to make a killer out of him.
We spent corruption this time because we expected to get so much out of it (I personally agreed to it because we were doing it to help out civilians being free from gangs. Little did I know we shouldn’t have worried about that *laughs*). If other new companions are not as good as Lara, we’ll want to reserve corruption uses for situations where the risk reward matrix is just as lopsided as this one was.
I can’t believe it. I can’t believe how much we got away with. You madlads did it!!
From the Item Page
SHIELD, MAGMA
Shield
Def +3, or Def +6 against fire.
Weight 2, Cost 37
Very nice.
But seriously, it has 3 normal def, and takes only 2 slots (compare to gold shield taking 3 slots). That’s great on its own. And
96 def against fire? Awesome. Anyone can count how many drunks with torches does it take to warm it up just a tiny bit when red-robe is included? That’s 9 def for fire when using both! xDNope, the “or” here is a replacement. “Just” +6 Def vs fire.
This makes Shield Bash more interesting, though not any better than a sword on offense.
Aah yes, you’re right. I was focused on combo’ing it with the red-robes, which give +3 def against fire, hence +3base+6fire = 9, and then I messed up the number in the comment. Thanks, corrected!
Wonder what it does to mixed fire+normal atk?
Hmm, good point – if this was your only source of defense and you were hit for 3 normal + 4 fire damage, there’s a couple of ways this could go. By my guess, the 3 base Def would apply to the 3 normal damage and then the 4 fire damage would be partially absorbed by counting the Def as 6 with 3 already used, so you take 1 normal/fire damage. (Only lose 1 HP but I think you still take damage of every type, which is important if you took 3 poison plus 4 fire damage and we had Antitoxin.)
By this reading, the same would happen for 4 + 3 fire: you soak 3 normal damage, then soak 3 fire damage, taking 1 normal/fire.
Worst case though, you only get one or the other. If you take less than 3 fire damage in a turn, then it’s always going to provide 3 defense, otherwise it gives up to 6 defense against the fire part – here, 3 normal + 4 fire damage would make you lose 3 HP, and 4 normal + 3 fire damage would make you lose 4 HP.
Before we go into the next Dungeon we need one thing above all else.
DOG ARMOR!
I would be severely disappointed in Gloves if they fail to have something in stock.
Maybe we could contact Sofia and see where she got the armor for her dogs from.
Anybody got a Gold Coin?
I missed the reference here.
John Wick 3. Sofia is the manager of the Moroccan Continental. She has two very well trained dogs as companions. The dogs were equipped with bulletproof vests. So, she would know where to get the vests from.
Generally, to get anything done at the Continental, you need a Gold Coin.
My Dungeon 5 lessons:
– Armour is really heavy! Lots of inventory juggling. Part of this is also because we didn’t need to use consumables because armour is really powerful, that potion of shield would have otherwise been used to tackle some other looting.
– Heavy armour proficiency was not quite overkill. There were lots of fights with just barely enough defense. Kamau spent basically the full dungeon with a shield equipped.
– We did a lot more of this Dungeon than the Tavern Basement or the Chapel. I’m pretty sure it was made more difficult as we couldn’t have survived any of those fights with just Kamau in leather, but there’s a huge difference between taking 0 damage and taking 3 damage per round. Having the offense to finish fights in 2 turns rather than 5 also did a lot.
– Spiders are really strong and totally worth a point of Corruption. Those abilities are there to be used, and remember Lara maxes out Bond with 5 successful dungeons.
– Pets exist! The hardest part is knowing that there’s a possibility, once we saw a dog in a cage we were pretty much set. The friendly rat was never on screen and the wolf spider was a monster guarding a corpse.
– Pets don’t count against Remorse, so healing is interesting again. A wand of mend can fully heal Daisy.
– Extra movement is good. Ricki used 2 movement on 8/28 turns up to the Guard arrival, which also let her recover from leaving equipment behind. A couple of those were wasted since an unexpected action was used, but we accelerated quests by at least 2 turns. Daisy got even more use, as 3 movement lets you backtrack and also advance.
– Dungeon conditions can change. Also, the Guard is always going to be considerably better equipped than us.
– Heavy Shields go up to Def+3, at the cost of extra inventory space. Kamau’s shield skills look more interesting with this in mind.
– D&D monster knowledge can apply, the rust monster did basically what we expected. Having a torch for fire damage would be good for fighting a troll.
– Ringsmif! It’s the category of item which impacts the ring result, so damaged items should work as well as anything we can’t otherwise carry. Macadamia will definitely be able to upgrade to smiffing better rings, and copper as the base is just waiting to upgrade through silver/gold/platinum. We basically always want to have blank rings ready to smif, as if nothing else they pay for themselves (provided we can get Macadamia to sell them). We have 3 rings of 8 free slots, so it’ll take a while to fill those. Nice call, Paws.
Paws is quite omniscient.
Pets appear to accompany unusual dungeon features, like a broken door, a cage or a tinier mouse hole. We have to keep an eye out for those.
The broken door in the Chapel was for the room with the lost maggot. The wolf spider was behind a regular door, though since I thought it was a cat I did suspect that we could avoid fighting it by also opening the door across the hall with the rats, then stand back and let it chase them.
I don’t think I would’ve figured out to go help it fight the rats and then, after it fell asleep, bring Lara past the Faithless to give it scritches.
There are definitely multiple steps to getting a pet. Daisy needed to be freed, fed, and played with.
Couple more thoughts:
– Interpose is really good when it covers multiple allies, none of which then need to worry about defenses and so can use two-handed weapons freely. This is particularly important for Daisy, who has no inventory slots to buff her Def. I still think we overused Interpose, Lara can wear heavy armour too and that could open up extra attacks from Kamau. Still, as long as it’s unclear how enemies will split attacks, it’s understandable to err on the side of caution. The dire rats did double up on the spider to deal some damage, rather than wasting attacks on Lara in heavy armour.
– Macadamia mentioned that smiffing a shield into a ring would make a ring of evasion. I haven’t liked Dodgy I on Ricki over other options because we can’t rely on enemy miss chance when there’s Remorse and Ricki’s small HP pool on the line. Giving Kamau a dodge chance is interesting though, he takes a lot of attacks and it isn’t terrible if he loses a bit of HP (it’s arguably better, to enable Heroic Effort and Counterattack). Another Ring of Protection is easier to plan around and more effective on the allies we want to keep unscratched, but maybe we should try riskier plays while Kamau has high HP.
– We finally have a dungeon where we weren’t right up against the limits of Remorse! We would’ve gotten away with 0 Remorse too, if it wasn’t for those confusing 9-damage-from-two beetles. Even that was more a calculated play than a mistake.
– Room-wide buffs and debuffs exist. We sort of had this with light, but the wanted poster and the hearth were clear magical effects within the bounds of one dungeon room.
I won’t think too hard on shopping choices before we see Macadamia’s stats, but we’re reaching the point where we can buy consumables since we have lots of inventory space spent on permanent equipment.
Crossbow bolts are very cheap, we should get some of those and keep an eye out for a quiver like the purse.
A wand of mend is very helpful for Daisy and maybe Kamau if he lends the plate mail to Lara for a while.
I think we have more shields than party members (even not counting the golden shield which is more like cash), but I’m not sure if we should sell a regular shield or the spiked buckler.
I don’t know if we should actively avoid selling equipment (or even buy spares!) in order to smif it right away, or use smiffing to get use out of damaged gear we find.
I also wonder if Paws will still lend us his lucky rabbit’s paw if we’re leaving the capital… He doesn’t know what we’d need out there, but he does know that if we don’t know what we need, then we’ll be glad to have the paw.
That last panel with a “close up” shot of Ricki riding Daisy is glorious!
I’m not going to say “now I can die happy” (because a) this seems to be getting used more and more these days, at least in my corner of the world b) I don’t want to die anytime soon and c) while this is awesome, my life is so much more than this game, and there are many other things that still have to happen, too, before I could possibly “die happy”), but it sure put a big smile on my face.
LSN, since this is your art, would you be adverse to people (okay: me) using this for their destop background or something? Would you like to put some kind of stamp/link/watermark on it?
Quick and lazy version:
Love it! This is badass!
Wrap-up stream:
– Didn’t miss very much this time
– The kobold “cultist” was a dragon tamer
– Kobold apartment – talking was appreciated.
– Getting the kid to sleep was not a quest hook, just trying to get Lara to go away.
– You can’t take stuff from the kobolds or open the wardrobe early, Ricki is too nice. Certain actions won’t happen even if voted.
– We could have cooked raw meat in the oven. Kobold mom would’ve given us pancakes if not interrupted by guards.
– Could’ve given Daisy the cool ball, but she would’ve torn it apart too. Needed to do all three kobold quests to get the hearth.
– Bats were a hint that fighting would happen near Macadamia.
– Rust chest: Feed Rusty 10 weight of metal items. Gold is safe, can only rust iron and steel. The safe counted as 5 weight, so with that and the rusty plate we were good.
– Rusty and Ringsmif were from an old game. Original smiffing made transformation rings (one of which gave an extra hand…). Macadamia isn’t that cool but will be very useful until he dies.
– Blue lair – metal doors would squish the spider.
– Was the dungeon altered? No. You’re supposed to not do everything. Also, leaving more monsters up top gives you more time below as guards are distracted.
– There was no combination available for the safe. This one could only be opened by Rusty.
– The guards would’ve shown up turn 60 if we still stuck around after all three gangs attacked. Just because the posted time limit has an end doesn’t mean we can outlast those and have free run of the place.
– Poker game was to steal money from us, odds weren’t good. One character playing had 1 in 3 chance to win, two characters had 50/50 odds, need at least 1 coin per wager, double or nothing. If you won all 20 coins, they attack, but you won the Stacked Deck, random ranged damage output with risk of self damage.
– Both pressure plates make the chest shoot, and they are well hidden. Trapped chest is a poorly hidden trap and dealt 3 ranged damage. Plates would make the trap shoot multiple times. Note that the chest had bolts inside which it was shooting.
– Cannot open chests from the back.
– Rusty is not hostile if you don’t have anything metal. Cannot climb the ladder either. He goes for the biggest metal item first, wouldn’t be distracted when fed by rusty daggers if you tried to walk by with plate.
– Rusty wouldn’t eat items in your inventory until he kills you to get them out. Can smell them, can’t rust them.
– Guards started appearing at the entrance on the same turn the Justiciar arrived. Turn 60 guards wouldn’t have opened with Justiciar at the smiffery.
– Guards move one room at a time and scope out the room. If enemies are immediately in line of sight then they fight that same turn. Before moving on they scope out the room and may take another turn to fight other enemies they find. This happened with the Reds and the beetles.
– The sane miner has the power to damage dungeon walls. The pick doesn’t have that power.
– We don’t know what kobold dad took from his locked chest. (On a completely unrelated note, we succeeded at the secondary goal!)
– The first time we end move with kobold miners is when they hit Macadamia. Could’ve only been hit by one. Crit chance was rolled and Macadamia could’ve been killed there before joining.
– You can use picks to break rocks. Small boulders could be broken in one swing, breaking the pick (the miners are working slow and careful). Big boulders take two swings, each breaks the pick. Heavy pick doesn’t break.
– Minecart could be loaded with broken rocks. Sally would eat rocks, ignoring all non-damage in the room while eating (could even attack Sally without retribution if you don’t break Def).
– Glass patches: Ricki pointing out glass allows safely crossing one patch-width, then 10% risk of damage per contiguous patch so 3x patch width has 20% chance of causing damage. Max 1 damage per patch no matter how wide.
– Boots convert unblockable damage to blockable damage, so it is still best to point out glass.
– Trapped chest in mines had 12 crossbow bolts, which it would shoot.
– Trap Disarming can prevent damage from monsters hiding in chests.
– Unarmed miner was still hostile, but his pick was in the chest. Beetles were distracted by the miner so they wouldn’t attack if you opened the chest behind them.
– Beetle damage was a mistake (miscounted defense buffs – which direction is a mystery). Didn’t matter for outcome so it wasn’t corrected.
– Miners would not be hostile if Macadamia was killed before we entered the mines (by traps, basically).
– Buzzer chest had a potion of fire resistance.
– When you get a pet in a dungeon, you can always send it to someone without a pet no matter where they are.
– To have the spider follow Macadamia – Lara webbing the entryway would let us climb back up, then she could have run back to get the spider and send it to terrify him. Technically possible!
– Keys would have opened the chest in one turn, as would double lockpick.
– The divot in the floor by the buzzer may show up later.
– Second salavamander bypass: Whipping the scorpion would send it down, then while they fought we could run by. Sally has been fed this way before. (Unclear if we’d be safe from fire breathing…)
– Third, unexpected bypass but would’ve worked: Give Macadamia the fire dragon robe to impersonate the dragon tamer and have him feed Sally with raw meat. (Without meat, he would’ve been eaten.)
– Guards: 20 in the group at the end. Guards did check the dead end under the smiffery, then did their only double move back when retracing steps. They also needed to survey the room with beetles, but wouldn’t have been slowed down by the scorpion.
– Sally’s area attack would’ve hit the kobolds if it procced, it wasn’t limited to the melee fight. We risked a total family wipe.
– We had to KO miners to complete secondary goal.
– Swapping inventory will be restricted from now on. Completely swapping everyone’s inventories every turn was too much. Most likely every item pickup will be an action, and trading is an action from both. Looting is still one action. If we waste too much time with that, lock items per dungeon and only change on finding loot. Changing which items a character uses out of what they carry is fine. Character sheet stat icons won’t always reflect the most recent equipment choices.
– Gang members who show up will move. Could have led them to the hideouts to fight each other. They show in the same order as in the Intermission, red (3 thugs with daggers and an assassin with longsword), blue (5 hobgoblins and 3 bugbears), animal (3 magicrows and ape with greatsword).
– There are three different types of magicrows that do different things.
– Counterattack is supposed to work when using Interpose. Kamau continues to be good at avoiding low rolls.
– WordPress caching is on their side, which slows attempts to update images. Originally, character sheets were going to be full images.
– Items are unlocked in the shop based on contents of dungeon and total number of dungeons completed.
– Macadamia’s sheet previewed on stream, for the stream. The replay should be up now.
– Dragon robes are not associated with gods. Kobolds never worshipped gods, they used to worship dragons.
– Invalid smiffing combinations won’t consume the materials, but will waste the action.
– There are 10 characters, and 2 bonus pay to win characters (support on Ko-fi!). We’ve found 4.
– Outfits may change, but as a story event.
Thought on discouraging item trading – the least restrictive version would simply remove the idea of “trading” as a special free action, vs dropping and picking up items. That way, there’s still effectively no swapping equipment while fighting as it’s an action to pick up guarded items, but we could still have someone else carry thieves tools for Ricki, or be tempted to leave items on the ground in places we think are safe.
Of course, as mentioned on stream, the other goal here is to loosen up a little. HP is there to be spent, and we’re not supposed to get everything. We need to decide if losing a turn to shuffle gear will make the next combat so much faster that we can actually do more. The biggest shame here will be the rings, half the fun of figuring out enemy stats is to know precisely how much damage we need, and rings allow fine tuning to put the perfect amount of damage in each attack.
We’ll be much more relaxed next dungeon, I expect, because we won’t be worried about civilians getting harmed, or losing a companion (we weren’t looking to 100% the top floor, just getting the ring and the other quest items which were on the last chest of each gang) or getting trampled by the Guard. Well, risking getting trampled by the guard will be always be a risk (3 of 5 dungeons so far featured the Guard).
Point is, the reasons above were why we were so worried and perfectionist this time. Let’s see how the next dungeon shapes up.
About the divot: the guard couldn’t see it or interact with it from below, which implies we can’t either. And it looks awfully like the divot above kamau’s cell in the Jail.
And to make it quite clear to those who wanted, say, Kamau to lie, kill and intimidate, or Ricki to steal from friends:
LSN clarified he has executive veto on all character actions, exercising it whenever a character is ordered to do something not in its character. That is why Kamau didn’t kill even when we forgot to tell him not to do so, and why opening the kobold family chest was a non-plan. All such action requests will be ignored.
Guards never got there technically!
Thanks for doing this! I’ve updated the Game Mechanics page with these notes.
One thing I don’t see in this list that I got from the stream, was LSN heavily hinted at there being an item that allows us to sell and buy items mid-dungeon. This is presumably the rabbit’s foot Paws sells.