Dungeon 6 Turn 30
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Lara picks up the new greataxe. It seems to be a little more reliable than her current choice, even though its maximum damage output is lower. She holds on to both heavy weapons for now.
The rest of the party proceeds up the ladder to the tower, and then
“Hey kid!”
“Do you have what it takes to challenge me,”
“PET MASTER,”
“to an official PET DUEL?!”
“What? You don’t know about PET DUELS?”
“That’s when two PET TRAINERS have their PETS fight each other! The PET TRAINERS can’t attack or use any items, but passive items that benefit PETS are okay! The PETS can use any abilities they may have, of course!”
“The PET DUEL continues automatically until one PET is defeated, or until one PET TRAINER forfeits!”
“If you manage to beat me”
(Pffft yeah RIGHT!)
“You’ll win a great PET ITEM! If you lose, though, your PET will FAINT and be unavailable until you leave the dungeon. So think twice before you challenge me, because you only get one shot!”
“If you beat me enough times, who knows?”
“Maybe YOU can be a PET MASTER too!”
Not having the stomach to bother with this strange person, Lohk walks right past him while he’s distracted by Macadamia and takes the keys off the wall. They are labeled “kitchen”. Once again, these appear to no longer be useful, but she adds them to the key ring anyway because why not.
Ricki uses her magic lens on the giant bat monster on the other side of the door, right as a ghost appears and reduces her maximum HP by 1.
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GREATAXE
Weapon
Atk +4-6, 2-handed.
Weight 2, Cost 19
BATBEAST
HP: 10
Atk: 5 or 4 ranged
Def: 3
Ability: +1 Atk and Def on the ground, ranged attack directs nearby bats to attack
The mutant batbeast seems to have more in common with wolves than most bats, engaging in group hunting strategies alongside lesser bats. They prefer to attack from the air with sonic waves, allowing their smaller cousins to take on the risk of melee combat, but if they find they aren’t doing any damage that way they will land to make better use of their claws and fangs. The most dangerous batbeasts are those that serve as mounts for more intelligent creatures, though this is a rare occurrence.
Ricki: Attack the Batbeast.
Lara: Attack the Batbeast with the shiny new Great Axe.
Maca: Attack the Batbeast
Lohk: Unlock the door to the Batbeast.
Wolf Spider: Attack the Batbeast
Explanation: Kill the Batbeast.
The Wolf Spider is to either to take a hit to prevent anyone else from taking damage or to guarantee the kill.
Risk of having Maca and Ricki face the Batbeast: The Batbeast can kill Maca or Ricki if it attacks Maca with a Melee Attack and makes the Bats attack him too.Honestly, I wouldn’t complain if this got downvoted a ton because of the risk. I’m okay with just pointing it out for other plans. Then again, I’m not sure if we can take down the Batbeast without ganging up on it because our ranged attacks suck and the Batbeast prefers its slightly weaker Ranged attack.Edit: It was pointed out on Discord that the Batbeast only makes Bats attack if it uses its slightly weaker Ranged Attack, so there’s no chance of death this turn.
Batbeast + bats is up to 9 incoming damage, which is enough to kill any party member other than Lara.
This is an extremely risky plan.
And that’s assuming no venom bats
I don’t see any way we can kill the Batbeast without ganging up on it. Lara and Lohk’s Ranged Spells would only deal 1 Damage a turn through the 3 Defense.
Although, now that I think about it, we could do some inventory trading first. Give Maca Lara’s Ring of Protection (and maybe Ricki’s Leather Armor) and give Ricki Lohk’s Wolf Hide Armor.
Lohk: Unlock the door to the BatDen with your keys.
Ricki, Lara & Mac: Attack BigBat for 14-16 (3(R) + 3(M) + 8-10(L)), killing it in one turn.
Wolf Spider: Crawl across ceiling, sacrifice yourself by hitting a bat.
This covers us on it staying put and meleeing us for 6 Atk, risking only 1 hp on Maca, or if it flies and Ranged Attacks someone dealing no damage and with the roosted Bats already being focused on the Wolf Spider.
This plan assumes there is no light source for Lara’s Night Eyes and that the Bats will follow their own protocol of attacking whoever is closest and not gang up on the target of BatBeast’s ranged attack.
BatCave. It’s the BatCave.
I really want to believe this is safe and works, but I’m super worried one of those bats is a venom bat. If it does its sonic attack and the bats swarm the same character that’s 10 damage on one character, which kills anyone but Lara. If the bat can do a ranged attack from the ground, and its ability buffs that ranged attack that’s 11 damage or 9 in the event those are only regular bats. 9 damage still kills Ricki or Mac. I’m still sorta thinking enemy atk determines skull size, in which case I don’t think there are enough enemy skulls if all of those bats are regular bats.
Lohk: Unlock the door to the BatDen with your keys. Head back downstairs.
Macadamia: Continue chatting with the Pet Master, distracting him from your pet wielding allies.
Ricki: Pick the locked chest behind the Pet Master and loot it
and the keys if you have room.Then head down the ladder.Lara: Head down the ladder, and loot the chest previously guarded by the Scorpion.
Alternate plan if we don’t want to engage the BatBeast right now. Gather more resources and maybe call up Paws.
Lohk already took the keys and attached them to the key ring in her inventory. Don’t loot Lohk’s inventory! – Macadamia placed one pile of candy at the foot of the ladder AND still kept one pile of candy in his inventory: spooky candy indeed!
Odd. Last time we found now-useless keys, we heard “Lohk discards the keys rather than let them clutter up her inventory/floor.”. Probably totally irrelevant detail.
or a hint that there is still a door/lock in the kitchen we can’t see yet.
EDIT: added “in the kitchen” for more clarity
And the best “Who me?” facial expression award goes to Macadamia.
Okay, hear me out. Bats attack the nearest target after they’ve been disturbed, right? How about we range attack the bats so that their nearest target is the batbeast?
the
makes me think that the bat beast has some kind of control over bats and/or venom bats. So I doubt that they would attack the bat beast.
But maybe we could ranged attack the bats in order to lure them down, so we can take them out without having to simultaneously fight the bat beast?
If we allow BatBeast to do its “ranged attack”, then “ranged attack directs nearby bats to attack” will trigger. If we just open it and stay there, I bet BatBeast will scream at us from afar, and bats will activate due to that.
I don’t remember any rule saying ranged-attack are anyhow blocked by melee. I think even if we open the door and immediately rush towards the BatBeast, it still can scream, even if we hack at it. Well, unless it’s surprised, but it is facing towards the door, so it’s quite likely that it’s actively waching the door.
Also, description of BatBeast says, it prefers ranged, and flying. It’s quite likely it will jump into air as soon as it can, so we may have only the initial moment of doubtful surprise to hit it in melee. If we fail to instakill it, we’ll have both it, and the small bats on us next turn.
It all could also turn out nice.
The most optimistic turn of events, we rush in, it could be taken by surprise and stay in melee and not scream, we manage to kill it immediately, small bats still sleep.
Or, we rush in, it screams on us, and we instakill it, but the bats are just-woken-up, so they don’t attack immediately, they will attack next turn when the BatBeast is dead already.
One one hand, I when we attacked bats, they woke up and retaliated immediately (i.e. d5t29), but on the other hand, BatBeast’s skill is not attacking them, and I remember that at some point in Chapel, the bats woke up due to environment shaking, and at first they were dizzy, and not attacked at the same turn.
Item Swap Plan so we can have more Defense for Ricki and Maca before taking on the Bat Beast.
Ricki: Give your Leather Armor to Maca.
Lara: Give your Giant Pick to Lohk.
Maca: Give the Candy to Lara
Lohk: Give your Wolf Hide Armor to Ricki. Run to the item stash in the Kitchen after trading items. (Planing to drop the Giant Pick there next turn. She can come back to unlock the door next turn.)
It’s 4 moves to the kitchen and Mac dropped the candy already.
We were not able to scan the PetMaster, but maybe we could scan his pet?
Some thoughts on the recent developments:
I would like to test, if the keys open more than just the doors. (e.g. could Lohk unlock the chest in this “tower”, too?)If we are going to try duelling with the pet master, I think Daisy would be our best option (she has 3 attack, thanks to Lohk’s wolf hide armour and also, if she faints, we will still have her available next dungeon; whereas the wolf spider is not at full HP and has “only” 2 attack and we would lose it “completely” because iirc, we only tamed/subdued it for the duration of this dungeon). I’m leaning towards we should do this sooner (so we can profit from whatever we get for winning, IF we do that. It’s “just” a bat, after all) rather than later (so we have Daisy available longer. OOH we hardly use her in combat at all. OTOH it’s handy to have Lohk be so mobile, thanks to Daisy).We should give the greataxe to someone else (probably Ricki is our best bet. She has 4 DEF even without the shield, and she has the most inventory space – Ricki could give the book or rope or both to Lara to make enough room. Perhaps we can have Lara pass her ring of defense to Ricki, too) at least before fighting any enemies with loads of HP.I wonder if the batbeast used to be the knight’s mount.I think it’s kind of time to decide if we want to use the scroll (with the enchantment for the weapon) for this dungeon only (to help with the boss fights we’ll be facing soon), or if we want to save it up for another time and permanently enchant a weapon (I think both the greataxe or the oxidicer would be excellent options).
I agree that long term decisions should be made soon.
Pet fight: I think several people wanted to summon Paws and buy a Shield potion for daisy first. One thing we do not yet know is how long the fight takes (it might just be one action per turn and be quite a while – if this also requires a character present we’re possibly looking at 3-4 turns we can’t use lohk for anything else)
Enchanting: I would not use the scroll in this dungeon, *unless* we figure out (by combat or lens) that the ghost night is able to resist normal weapons, in which case we’ll probably need it anyway. I disagree about the oxidizer though, it’s not really better than a longsword (worse imo, since restoring it is random /& takes actions). If we give Ricki dagger proficiency then the rat fang becomes a pretty good option though (and with 1h Kamau could also use it)
Dagger prof probably also works for the broken oxidicer, making it 2 atk at all times for Ricki with the plus that it’s 2 damage when whole for others and sometimes crits.
The keys probably just open the door, otherwise it would’ve made no sense for LSN to have us summarily discard the basement key, given the plethora of locked chests in the basement.
So it IS possible to get Ricki and Lara to 9 defense each using just our available armor. It’d take a turn of swaps and make Macadamia more or less useless though. 9 defense is enough for Ricki and Lara to take a 5 damage ranged attack (assuming it’s buffed by one when the bat is on the ground) plus attacks from 4 regular bats without dying. It’s also enough for either to survive that same volley if one of the bats is actually a venom bat, but either one would take 2 damage in that case, leaving Ricki with 1 hp and Lara with 3. See below loadout:
Ricki: Wolf Hide, Longsword, Magma Shield, Helmet, Ring of Aggression, Ring of Protection
Lara: Plate Armor, Shield, Ring of Aggression, Ring of Protection, Battleaxe (3A/9D with venom sting, 8-10A/7D with battle axe.
Ricki, Mac, Lohk, Lara: Trade equipment in the lounge below the master bedroom (where the scorpion was). If trading can also involve grabbing items from the floor/environment, have Macadamia grab the keys on above the scorpion chest as part of all this. After trading, Lohk can stay where she is, but Macadamia, Ricki, and Lara should end their turn in the tower just outside the bat door, ready to rush into battle the following turn.
Ricki: Wolf Hide, Magma Shield, Helmet, Longsword, Thieves Tools, Ring of Protection, Ring of Aggression – 7/7 (4A,9D)
Lara: Plate Armor, Shield, Battleaxe, Encyclopedia, Ring of Protection, Ring of Aggression – 9/10 (3A, 9D w/ poison sting, 8-10A, 7D w/ battle axe)
Macadamia: Heavy Pick, Rope, Keys – 4/5 (4A, 1D)
Lohk: Cane, Leather Armor, Shield, Oxidicer, Ring of Aggression – 4/5 (3A, 5D)
Plan with this is to have Ricki, Lara, and the wolf spider attack the following turn. Lara and the wolf spider can kill two regular bats on the opening round, and Ricki can take a swing at the bats when they attempt to attack us(assuming they don’t just go for the wolf spider). Lohk can loot the unlocked chest while Mac unlocks the tower door and bravely runs away. Maybe we can get him to make an improvised grappling hook with the heavy pick and the rope.
How does Daisy “Guard” ability work? Does she need to be upfront and actively taking and dealing damage or can she simply be behind her “master” and contribute +1 Def without actively engaging in battle? I imagine she’s there growling and snarling and this distraction/intimidation adds the +1.