Macadamia finished a dungeon! He can gain one new ability from this list:
Accessory Essence: Can smif rings with benefits drawn from accessories worn on the head, hands, and legs. Bonus of ring is limited by cost of accessory. Minimum 20 gold value required for +2, 40 gold value for +3.
Dig I: Once per dungeon can expend a hammer or pick to create an opening in a normal wall or floor (not leading between rooms). Only Small characters can use the opening.
Dispel Ring I: Can turn a magic ring back into a nonmagical ring to restore 1 HP per tier of the ring to a nearby ally.
Hammer Proficiency: +1 Atk when wielding a hammer or similar weapon.
It Goes on Your Back: +1 Def if carrying a shield but not wielding it.
Magic Essence: Can smif rings with benefits drawn from undamaged wands and staves. Wands can create +1 or +2 rings, staves can create +2 or +3 rings.
Master of Both Things: +1 Atk if wielding a hammer in one hand and a pick in the other.
Panic: +1 Atk when targeted by an attack.
Pick Proficiency: +1 Atk when wielding a pick or similar weapon.
Ring Synergy: If wearing two rings that increase the same attribute, +1 to that attribute.
Ringsmifing II: Can smif copper and silver rings.
Scamper: +1 Mov when using turn only to move.
Smif Ring II: Three times per dungeon can combine a nonmagical ring with another item to create a magic ring.
Ringsmifing II: Only because we found a silver ring we can enchant.
Lots of good choices depending on what we want. I think I prefer him as a support class making us rings as opposed to buffing his fighting.
We’ve only found the one silver ring and they weren’t available to buy when we called Paws mid dungeon. The bigger issue is what we’d spend to smif the silver ring. Ideally we want more defense but we don’t have any generic contenders for smiffing a +2 ring of protection. Both the bat hide and wolf hide armor are useful.
That being said I think this is still the best choice. Assuming we manage to smif another ring of protection and aggression we’ll have almost a full set of one each.
I’d take +2 ring of defence over bat hide. It’s pretty situational.
We’ve had a debate everytime we’ve seen a group of bats about whether they were safe to engage. Knowing there were no venom bats (or if so how many) could be very useful imo.
Accesory Essence, imo the only contender to Ringsmifing II
gives us more items we can smiff so we won’t be needing to bring weapons into dungeon, and less stuff we will leave on the floor.
I’d like better rings before trying new rings. Accessory Essence notably works on items with a break chance (as even undamaged accessories can break). Getting +2 accessory rings might be tricky, let’s see what accessories we’ve seen for head, hands, and legs:
+1 cost less than 20:
Boots
Bucket
Crit Gauntlets
Crit Greaves
Helmet (16)
Gold Helmet (16)
Iron Boots
Oven Mitts
Owlbear Cowlwear (15)
+2 cost 20 to 40:
Dawn Mitre
Yeah, that’s about what it felt like, even the treasure accessory didn’t break 20. If we can’t get a reliable source of silver rings, then Accessory Essence might help tide us over. Most accessories are really cheap.
Magic Essence, meanwhile, has no reason to smif +1 rings unless we can’t provide a silver base. Wands start at +2, and the cheapest we’ve seen is 35.
Voting for Accesory Essence, because it opens new unknown options, and we see from other skills that we’ll need moar rings.
But in future, please don’t overlook those:
– DispelRing-1, it’s another 2HP like Lara’s Antivenom, and it’s also upgradeable. And it even scales the healing with ring quality. Note that rings can be packed up and take less ENC, and that this skill is not “once per dungeon”, and that rings can be eventually “charged back”.
– Dig-1. What! And it’s even upgradeable!
– all the possible Atk bonuses. I counted total of +4 Atk possible. That’s noticeable.
Dispel Ring lets us do something with rings over our limit, but we can also sell those (as long as we carry them out). We ideally want to avoid leftover blank rings to free up inventory. We have 5 smiffed rings now and want to upgrade to silver, if we don’t get a source of silver rings for two dungeons then this might start getting use.
Dig is a gamechanger though. Basically a Corruption-tier ability to modify dungeons. Upgrade could go several paths – more uses per dungeon (for once, not desirable), allowing medium-size creatures through, punching through room walls (both of which have been displayed by the friendly miner in the Warrens).
Exactly my thoughs with Dig.
I remember how LSN sometimes says “you could easily solve this with X, but oops, you never took that skill”. And making extra passageways where we need them, at will, sounds like not only we could make a dungeon a bit easier, but also sounds like we could get a get-out-of-jail-card (ref: classic monopoly) after screwing up something.
However, this consumes mining picks. Each costs 7, not that much, but it also takes up inventory space. Not a huge showstopper considering once-for-dungeon skill, we won’t be running around with 10 picks.
I think we should consider taking it at next available level up. For the same reason as CASE in Ricky.
Guesses for what other rings might offer? Our current options are Attack, Defence, and Evasion. It does look like rings cap at +3, even though we have weapons and armour which have base +4.
Looking at the stats screen, some possibilities:
Ring of Health, increased max HP. Unlikely, this is worse than defence at the same amount.
Ring of Speed, increased movement. Maybe, extra movement has diminishing returns.
Ring of Strength, increased encumbrance. This is pretty meta, using ring slots for non-ring slots, but it’s in line with other things we can do.
Ring of Fire/Poison/etc Resistance, large conditional defence boost. Like with HP, this would need to be more efficient than Defence, but there’s lots of language around bonuses being +1 to +3.
Ring of Magic Missile/Mend, ring with a wand effect. Maybe, but currently rings ignore the details of what is used to smif them.
Ring of Accuracy, reducing enemy evasion or other miss chance (alcohol, bucket on head, unable to see). Situational, but satisfying.
Ring of Spell Storing, somehow powering other abilities. Unlikely, there’s too many types of abilities, especially with Corruption around. Storing might be possible though, Lohk could channel into a ring or Lara could cast into a ring (paying cost at time of storage) and then later a wearer could cast with just an action. That involves trading though, which is unwanted.
Other question is whether Accessory Essence or Magic Essence can make multiple types of ring. Gear Essence calls out weapons, armour, and shields while Accessory Essence calls out head, hands, and legs. Magic Essence mentions wands and staves, but in the context of what is needed to get high-quality rings.
Side note, It Goes on Your Back combos well with the two-handed weapons Mac needs to make a dent in enemies. Lethal Joke Character here.
The ring bonus being based on equipment slot for accessories is interesting. Feet could boost movement, hands enc, and head?
Ring of speed, yes, limited, but then – Swiftblade.
Re two-handed – I don’t agree we need two-handed weapons. Take a look at the attack bonuses. If equipped correctly, Mac can wield two single-handed weapons, pick and hammer, and get +4 atk bonus. I have no idea if he can use them both at once for a single attack with “Master of Both Things” (it’s not clearly stated as dual-wield-attack), but +4 atk bonus isn’t something we could just ignore.
Plus, wielding a pick aligns with Dig. I didn’t do the math, but it looks really railroaded towards this set up 🙂
I doubt that we can benefit from both Hammer Proficiency and Pick Proficiency on the same attack; consider, if Ricki had Dagger Proficiency, would she get +1 Atk with a longsword if she was wielding a dagger offhand? It isn’t impossible as there is a cost to wielding the unused weapon instead of a shield, and it could be justified by using the offhand weapon as support, but the intent suggests we need to be using that weapon type even though it only says we need to wield it. Master of Both Things does use the same “wielding” wording though…
If it does work and an off hand hammer gives +2 from Master of Both Things and Hammer Proficiency, consider that going from a one-handed pick to the heavy pick is +3 Atk (from 1 to 4) with increased crit damage without spending two level ups. The increased weight doesn’t even matter as you don’t need another slot for the hammer. While “need” isn’t strictly correct, if we want damage output from Mac, we want a two handed weapon to make up for his lack of innate Atk. It’s around 4-5 damage that you start being able to take down normal enemies by yourself.
Either way, dual wielding weapons also works with It Goes on Your Back to get Def from a shield that you don’t have spare hands to wield. There’s also lots of smiffing to be done.