Dungeon 6 Turn 0
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Ricki decides to sell the gold shield, then buys a couple more copper rings and magic lenses, as well as another set of leather armour. She also rents Paws’ paw, in case she needs his help inside the dungeon. She also decides that Kamau should be the one to stand guard outside, since he’s the most capable of handling himself without help. Ricki, Lohk, Lara, and Macadamia then enter the manor.
“Off we go into the jaws of death.”
“…”
“I’m sure it won’t be that bad. Besides, if things get really dangerous, we can always just leave!”
“…Well, good luck with that.”
As the dungeon exit mysteriously closes of its own volition, and seems unable to be opened despite no apparent locking mechanism, the party threatens to fall into chaos.
“Welp, looks like the old lady was right, as usual.”
“Oh no, oh no, oh no…”
“Meh, we had a good run.”
“Hold on guys, there’s a note here. Let me see what it says.”
Taking initiative in order to preserve morale, Ricki reads aloud the words on the paper near the entrance:
Miss Ricki,
I applaud you for choosing to accept my request, and I apologize for not informing you of the full consequences for doing so.
This manor is the resting place of an ancient knight, from the days before the Empire came to prominence. The power of the dungeon has made him restless, and he now traps any who dare enter so that he may do battle with them. However, his body is locked away within a sealed room in the basement, meaning that only his spirit can emerge to attack. This will happen repeatedly until your deaths, so haste is recommended.
In order to defeat this undead knight, his chamber must be unsealed so that his body can be destroyed. I have every confidence that you will see it done.
Wishing you luck,
A Friend
It seems that this was indeed a trap of sorts, though the motivations behind it remain ambiguous. Notably, the note doesn’t explain HOW to unseal the knight’s tomb, but Ricki assumes she’ll just have to explore and figure it out. Lohk, Lara, and Macadamia look to her for direction. Time to get to work.
Dungeon 6: The Manor
Goal: Defeat the undead knight’s physical body.
Time Limit: Every 5 turns, a spectre will appear to attack a random party member.
This dungeon cannot be abandoned.
Some observations – the note is being held up by what looks like a shiv or dagger so we should consider smiffing that if it’s just a regular old item. There are also a BUNCH of undead dogs, and it’s unclear what exactly is going to wake them up. It’s currently very unclear how we could access the chest on the level below the centipede. The knight also appears to use some sort of two handed weapon (a hammer? Maul? Axe?).
We’ve got 5 turns before the first spirit shows up and two directions to explore. We might as well get a start on killing the centipede while we have time, since there’s no point in sending in more than one person to each of the next screens.
Agreed, plus can we also have someone examine the picture? As lma points out below, Lara can probably kill the centipede by herself in one turn. So if, for example, Ricki explores right and Mac explores up, Lohk could check out the painting. Might give us some useful intel on the boss, since it’s presumably a picture of him.
Lara use Web Walls to let Ricki climb up and access the chest.
Leave the centipede alone, we’re going to need every HP in this dungeon to withstand the spectre attacks and win the boss fight.
Per our last centipede fight, they only do something like 4 damage. Lara has 6 defense and should be able to tank it easily enough. Lohk also has 6 defense in the event it somehow attacks her instead. The chance to finally get a venom gland and see what they even do is imho worth it. Worse comes to worse it’s an item that we can sell using our ability to summon Paws, and there doesn’t seem to be much else for those two to do this turn.
There is no way whatever’s in the chest is worth getting Corruption point for.
Edit to be clear: I’m not saying, “The chest sucks and we shouldn’t go for it.” I’m saying we can get way better value out of Corruption than using it to get just one Chest, especialy because we don’t know if the chest even has anything good.
The other poster said “it’s very unclear how we could access the chest”. Well, that’s how.
We already have more characters than we can use. Corruption isn’t a big deal, use those points. Not many abilities even use it. Don’t make Lara’s abilities some kind of super-weapon that is to valuable to ever actually use. Those points are there; we’re supposed to use them. They’re a resource just like charges in magic wands.
Sure, but I doubt the chest has an item that’s on the scale of usefulness to us that the spider last dungeon was. Web walling is a totally possible way of accessing the chest, but it’s probably a better idea to explore the dungeon and see if we can find a rope or ladder first.
I bet it has the undead dog packs squeaky toy. We could be missing out on 4 extra temp pets or would they count as 1 if they only acted as a pack?
Rope. And a bow+arrow or crossbow+bolt. Tie rope to arrow/bolt, shoot into the ceiling. Try climbing. One tall strong person waits below to catch you if the arrow/bolt wasn’t stuck deep enough.
(at first I considered Macadamia’s whip, like in IndianaJones movies, but I really don’t think it can catch on the ledge or the chest, common gaming lore indicates a whip’s end would need to hit something and wrap around it)
We could certainly open the chest by the centipede, push it down the stairs, push it close to the ledge of the other chest, Lara can then climb the chest and give any of the other guys a boost.
Hrm, maybe we can take the giant picture off the wall and use it as a ramp or a bridge between the ladder and the bit of floor the chest is on? Or we could try to build a humanoid pyramid… Just tossing around ideas.
I haven’t spotted any traps so far (the chests look clean, too), but perhaps it would be a good idea to sever the heads from the dog skeletons, just in case.
Also, I have no idea how we ended up with this party composition and gear layout (not complaining, mind you!). LSN would you care to illuminate us on this subject? I’m curious (as always). 🙂
LSN commented in the discord that it was mostly a toss up between Lara staying or Kamau staying. To paraphrase, the difference came down to there being more actual comments advocating leaving Kamau than there were enthusiastic requests to leave Lara. After that, it came down to there being more positive comments responding to this particular Lara layout than the alternatives.
OFFICIAL RULE CHANGE: LSN has changed how inventory/trading works, due to the item juggling during the last dungeon becoming way too much of a pain for him to manually change (as well as gameplay balance concerns).
Now, picking up items or trading items between characters costs an action, although dropping an item remains a free action. Characters will now automatically pick up enemy drops if possible.
See the How To Play section for the official text.
I don’t remember if it was there earlier, but I just noticed
This basically means, if one character holds the MagmaShield with “Def +3, or Def +6 against fire.”, then it might be quite beneficial for us to have Macadamia “accidentaly” hit ’em with a torch. Mac has 0atk, +1fire from torch, 1 in total, and the victim gets +3 extra def from shield thanks to fire-based attack.. so in fact the victim gets +2 def.
I wonder if we can pull this one off. Mac would probably complain, but that’d be the gack of the year. Mac’s literal friendly-fire giving out situational +2 def xD
It seems my post was purged by the spam filter. Oh well. I’ll make repeat it in short in case it shows up later.
I just noticed that How-to-play also says that bonus DEF received from a matched elemental source actually adds up to the total DEF a character has, regardless of the sources/types of the rest of the damage.
This means that when someone holds MagmaShield and fights non-fiery enemies, we could ask Macadamia (0atk) with a torch (1dmg fire) to attack that ally (or rather: hey Mac, we need some sparks, bang this torch into that MagmaShield for me, ok?), to effectively give the ally +2 bonus def (+1dmg fire, +3def triggered from the shield).
I have no idea if we can attack allies, but I don’t see any clear statement in the How-to-play, so this trick may actually be possible.
I feel like LSN won’t let us do this, but it also uses the actions of one character to add 2 defense to someone, which doesn’t feel that abuse able. On the other hand, let’s think about Lara using the Magma Shield with the fire robes. Hitting her with a torch would give her 9 defense including her innate defense and the damage from the torch. That looks pretty attractive and would make cloth proficiency more reasonable.
Attacking allies to activate special defenses seems like the sort of shenanigans that could get vetoed.
This does make Poison Resistance more interesting, if Lara gets the 2 extra Def even against a low roll of 1 damage from a poisonous enemy. Now, if only smoking did unblockable poison damage, it’d combo nicely by giving +2 Atk and +2 Def that turn.
On the other hand, poison proficiency would also make smoking do 2 damage in that case. We’d get no new defense but we also wouldn’t take any damage!
ok, 1 letter pinned by dagger? if it is, we can smiff ring of attack, but i not sure that we need it right now, maybe 2 ring of def more valuable for us
plan:
Laura attack centepide(if centepide has 3 def and 4 hp it’s are kill)
grany go up
mac go bottom rigth
ricky go top right
No need to have Ricki and Mac both go right, as TNIM already noted above.
we don’t know layout of the right room, probably right room don’t have striaght path to up and down, so i think it’s better to explore both path, but it’s not realy critical, becose except laura all has >= 2 move
Lara: Go upstairs and attack the centipede with the Heavy Pick.
Macadamia: Smif your leather armor, then wear the resulting ring of protection. Afterwards, head up up the ladder. Hang around the centipede combat just in case a venom gland drops when (if?) it dies, since nearby characters will pick up items from combat if possible and you’re the only one with an open slot. Afterwards, head up the next ladder to the new room above.
Ricki: Examine the painting. Does it appear to be moveable at all? Do you think someone could climb on the painting to try to make a leap across to the chest we can’t access? Afterwards, head right to explore the new room there.
Lohk: Use ray of frost on the centipede.
Edit: Switched the movement so that Ricki is going to the right and Macadamia is going upstairs. This lets us have Macadamia pick up the free venom gland if it drops. Additionally, since the body is in the basement, it seems better to keep Ricki on the lower level just in case we have a chance to use her magic lens on the body through a wall. That’ll keep her closer to the basement in either case.
The note is pinned by a dagger. How about taking the dagger, and trying out to stab the painting in similar way, to make some makeshift dagger-stairs? Considering Mac and Ricky are small, some lift from a tall person, plus a 2 or 3 daggers as additional stepping points, it could work. Someone can always catch them if they fall.
Taking the dagger would be an action, though.
Quick put a dog skull on top of Daisy’s head and tie on some other various bones. She can pretend to be a fellow dog skeleton and convince the pack of skeleton dogs to lead them to the sealed room and fight stuff.
(And don’t act like this isn’t a reasonable request, we’ve all played table tops here and have made just as silly request that have actually worked)
I mean…. I do love that idea.
Random attacks at party members?
huh, turns out im glad we didn’t bring Kamau. Remorse would have been frustrating.
Depending on what happens, yes, it could have been very frustrating.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN DUNGEON
Lara: kill centipede
Ricki: go right
Mac: take dagger, make into ring of aggression, go up.
Lohk: shoot centipede with ray of frost
I think the dogs will wake up when the spectre shows up. Or in whatever moment we don’t want them to. I think we have not seen them in this state yet. Right now, they are inactive, until some event occurs, or maybe they are just “sleeping” until we disturb them. If we cannot control them in any way, we might already start taking care of them them as we go through the rooms.
There’s one of them lonely at the top. Perfect set up for an experiment.
Anyone (except Daisy) passing a doggy-skeleton on the top floor: if you have a free action or attack, try to spend it to detach its head from the rest of the body. Or as many legs as possible.
I think even Mac has enough armour to not get hurt by one skele-dog if it wakes up in the result.
I have no better idea so:
Everyone attack those totally harmless skeletons on floor.
Ricki: Point out the dog skeletons to everyone and suggest not disturbing them. Use a magic lens with the encyclopedia to identify the centipede, then explore right on the bottom floor.
Lara: Kill centipede.
Lohk: Loot the top floor chest, then explore up.
Macadamia: Smif leather armour and a copper ring into a ring of protection. Go to the top floor to possibly grab a venom sac or the chest contents for free, then explore right on the top floor.
Opening the chest with full inventories isn’t great for actions (especially if there’s multiple items in the chest which each take an action to pick up later), but knowing what is there is helpful. Note we have three exits from this room, and even though two lead to the same room it’s likely that they will be separate parts of the room with different exits. Lohk will be able to ride Daisy back through the entrance to any new area while also taking an action.
With attacks every 5 turns, let’s get this place mapped out ASAP.
There’s a decent chance Lara can’t kill the centipede alone. Kamau took 4 attacks at 4 damage each to kill it. Assuming it had 2 defense that’s 8 hp. If it had 3 defense then Lara will massacre it though. I personally think we should wait to chance our first lens use until the specter appears or some new enemy shows up. We know there are two things we want to lens, the specter and the actual knight itself, so I think we should be a little bit cautious about our first use.
Knowing what the specter does will help with planning. We may have to pair up our characters to “dismiss” it via damage. We want to be able to deal with it quickly and get back to exploring/combat. King Marth’s point above to map the place ASAP is important. There will probably be something that we will need to do to get into the area where the knight’s body is. We may want hold off on smifing rings until we determine if everyone has enough defense to survive the specter.
Smiffing the leather armor doesn’t lower anyone’s defense though. We also can’t explore any faster than sending one person to each new room, and there are only two new rooms.
Kamau soloed a centipede with four turns of dealing 4 damage. The most sensible stat block I came up with is 4 HP with 3 Def, so Lara’s 7 Atk should one-shot. It could have 7-8 HP with 2 Def, but the damage was described as “minor”. Kamau also took 0 damage with 4 Def.
For what it’s worth, I think minor damage is all relative. In both cases Kamau was hitting it for a quarter of its hp each turn.
I want to bring attention to the fact what someome might have entered this mansion before our party and then actually managed to leave it. I don’t think what someone could have thrown the knife with the letter from the outside due to the angle between the knife and the wall.
That is a VERY good observation. I totally didn’t pay attention to this, but we’ve got a clear message that the ghost-knight tries to kill everyone entering, and locks down the dungeon and no escape/etc, so there’s definitely a dissonance in the info we got. And noticing implications of that dagger¬e thing is certainly within perceptive and cognitive skills of our party. We even were surprised to not find the note on the door, and yet we didn’t link the dots when we found it inside and the door suddenly slammed!
It’s a bit late now for turn#0 comments, please consider repeating it in the most recent post, so more people hear that.