Dungeon 6 Turn 47
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Lohk and Daisy return to the entrance, where Daisy kills the bat.
Lara enters the kitchen, noting the presence of the helmet and the scroll. She picks up the healing potion and drinks it, recovering 2 HP.
Paws seems completely unbothered that he was summoned and then immediately abandoned. He already got paid, after all.
Ricki expends one of her thieves’ tools to open a locked chest. Inside she finds a spear, a simple but versatile weapon.
Another small skull goes dark on the door. Just two remain…
Macadamia travels to the tower’s secret crawlspace and kicks apart the final dog skeleton. He feels as though something should happen after doing so, but it doesn’t.
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SPEAR
Weapon/Ranged Weapon
Atk +2 and Def +1, 2-handed. Can be thrown to deal 3 damage at range. Must be recovered after throwing.
Weight 1, Cost 9
Welp, seems like those dog skeletons were red herrings after all.
I’m betting the blue dog is the last surviving member of an old pack serving the knight and once we set free thier master’s body they would have reacted some how. Imagine if we had to fight the Zombie Knight, his demon dog, and all those bone dogs. Lohk wouldn’t be the only one in trouble.
Destroying them is most likely the condition to open the secret (? marked) chest, that is probably inside the safe.
The only things I care to do the next two turns are:
Get Lohk into tower
Get Lohk a grave flower (she sadly might need it one way or another)
Kill the rats
The smart guys can figure out eggs, safes, blue dogs and brutal buisness transactions as long as we get the first 3 thing handled by the end of T49
Not to rain on the parade too much, but we were told outright that this won’t work, and even if we hadn’t been told it’s been proven that it doesn’t.
“Running away” only guarantees that Lohk has a high chance of dying on T50, which is the exact opposite of what you’re trying to achieve.
Yeah I wasn’t clear. Rats dead at T48 is best, but I’d still put her as far from action as possible even if the specter is thought gone. I don’t want her near the final fight incase something like everyone is grouped up on Zombie Knigt while Lohk hangs back making ranged attacks only for Blue dog to come up from behind and finish her or something else like that. I figure hiding her with Daisy and whatever protection we could spare is best. Plus with here Mom sense ability if she need to swoop in and save ricki she could do that from anywhere, right? Being in the tower and having a grave flower was just a sloppy guessing of where best to accomplish this (and hedging bets that we are going to mess up and not get the door open by T50 and hopefully maybe some part of the Specter theories might be right)
re “swoop in and save ricki she could do that from anywhere, right?”: yes, she could – except she’s already used her last heal, and we also learned that she (understandably) is considered “in combat” herself if she does that: that’s how she got hit by the beetles when she healed Lara.
If we don’t get the door open by 50, there is nothing we can do to hedge, at all, by Word Of God. The spectre will unquestionably attack, and unquestionably may target her again regardless of whether we move her, hide her in a cupboard, or have her chug the ales and dance naked on the kitchen table. :/
(Sorry for that mental image…)
It *might* still do so even if we do get the door open by then, though it isn’t credible for the spectre and the knight to both be “active” at the same time, so it really comes down to whether the knight exits the coffin on his own or not (this, which we *can* hedge rather than trusting to luck, is the main difference between meta’s plan and mine). Anything more favorable is out of our hands at this point though, so we’ll just have to hope for the best.
Pet Master is checking his watch! Poor guy! Hilarious!
Lohk go to kill rat 1, Daisy kill rat 2.
Lara go down to basement with Ricki
Ricki open a new chest
Mac go up to PetMaster and get the egg.
Lohk with Daisy can reach and kill the two rats next turn. One turn later, she can reach the pet master and get that egg.
But she can also reach the pet master next turn and reach the rats the turn after that!
Mac needs 6 (six!) moves to go to the Pet Master. He needs three turns to do that.
We do not want Ricki and Lara to solo the Knight, do we?
Additionally: Lara can reach Ricki in 1 turn. Why not use her turn now to do something?
Ricki cannot open another chest. These are locked, and Ricki has no tools left in her inventory.
Didn’t Ricki just buy more tools from Paws?
Yes, my mistake: 1 used, 1 left in inventory. But do we want to use it on a chest here or keep it for the left door in the burial chamber, allowing access to the chest there?
Lohk: Go grab the pet egg.
Ricki: Unlock the chest on the right then head upstairs to the kitchen.
Macadamia: Return to the kitchen. Drop your gold in the purse and your other items on the floor. Pick up leather armor, the bucket, the cigs, and both cheap ales so you can sell them next turn. This leaves turn 50 for Mac to get equipped and gets us 7 or so gold we otherwise wouldn’t get. There isn’t really anything better for Mac to do in the meantime and these are the most valuable items by weight he can access that we aren’t planning on carrying out (I think).
Lara: Sell the encyclopedia and shield and then buy set of thieves tools. Drop the remaining gold in the purse and the thieves tools on the ground for Ricki to grab next turn.
This gets us set for Lohk to unlock the tomb next turn. Lara will pick up the purse and scroll of lightning to fill her last slots. Ricki will equip herself and head downstairs to the alcove to be ready to lens the boss if he pops out. Lara will end her turn in the basement to be ready to head into the tomb if the boss doesn’t pop out on their own.
Just unsealing the tomb door is by itself obviously not enough to stop the spectre attacks. If the knight automagically leaps out of his coffin when it unlocks, then that is, but we have no way of knowing if that will happen or not.
If *we* have to open the coffin, and we don’t do so until T50, then that turn will start with the spectre still enabled, and there is thus a small but reasonable chance that we will take another attack from it, potentially killing Lohk.
The only way to guard against that chance is to open the coffin on T49 instead, meaning we only have a single turn – this one – to get the tomb unsealed.
Lohk: Ride Daisy to the rats. Kill a rat (cane or Frost Ray, doesn’t matter which).
Daisy: Kill the other rat.
Mac: Go to the kitchen. Drop your gold into the purse, pick up and equip a stake, and take a grave flower.
Lara: drop the shield and the book. Take and equip the helmet, and take a grave flower. Move down to the tomb door.
Ricki: Go to the kitchen. Drop your tools. Pick up a stake, the shield, and the ring, and equip them all, and take the last grave flower. Move down into the basement with Lara.
I do think it would be harsh to have the spectre attack on T50 under meta’s plan, but there’s nothing to actually be gained from spending another turn messing about with the shop, vs Lohk potentially dying if we’re wrong, so I don’t see any reason to take that risk when we don’t have to.
This sounds like the best plan.
This plan has us not carrying out the purse at all, in addition to losing the 10 gold of the encyclopedia. There’s no guarantee that the pet master sticks around when we open the door of the tomb. It also insures that if the grave flowers change anything about specter targeting Lohk will be the only choice. Most importantly, it means we have no visibility of the inside of the tomb on the turn it opens. If the knight is out of his coffin and coming to attack we won’t even know because Ricki can’t actually get to the ledge to let us see.
That’s simply not true. Once the rats are dead, Lohk has all the time, movement, and enc needed to collect the purse.
There’s “no guarantee” the pet master stays, sure. There’s also no reason at all for him to leave, since he explicitly can’t be threatened by the knight, or anything else.
I’m curious as to why you think “visibility” of the tomb matters. AFAICT there is literally nothing more we can do to improve our chances in the bossfight beyond what’s already in the plan – other than buying at most one potion from Paws, which can only go to Mac, who currently has no weapon at all, and no room for one except by sacrificing the single-use stake.
You go to war with the army you’ve got. Even if the time to do anything with anyone’s gear etc hadn’t already passed, we don’t have options on that front anyway. Similarly, Lara will be leading against the knight regardless of whether anyone’s watching or not, because everybody else is more likely to die than she is.
The lens is solely so that we can make a more informed decision about Mac, and learn about any special abilities, but that’s it. Ricki can’t run away, she can’t be improved meaningfully at this point if even at all, and she’s infinitely less likely to be able to kill the knight solo than she is with Lara because of how combat works.
Lohk has a full inventory. She has oxidicer and will have the pet egg. She won’t be able to get down to the kitchen until at best turn 50 under your plan. There’s also the fact that anything can change when we open the tomb door and that may prevent Lohk from doing that in the first place.
Without visibility we can’t actually issue accurate instructions to Lara. LSN wants us to avoid complicated conditionals, and this plan will require conditionals on at least two characters. Ricki will have to have a conditional around lensing the knight, and Lara will have to have a conditional around opening the tomb/attacking the knight.
I don’t want this to be buried under the other comments, but my biggest issues with this plan are twofold.
1) We have no idea what happens when we clear the last skull. The only benefit of this plan is based entirely around speculation that clearing the skulls on the door doesn’t actually release the knight. Here’s some counter speculation – clearing the skulls will weaken the magic on the tomb and allow the specter to attack every turn instead of every 5 turns. Even sending Lara in immediately would still allow one attack to get through, and we would’ve guaranteed that if Lohk is targeted by this attack we not only lose her, we also lose the purse. To be clear, we DO NOT KNOW that this plan improves the odds of Lohk surviving. We know the knight’s goal is to fight us, and the only reason it is attacking us spiritually is because it is still sealed in its tomb. Specter attacks have occurred at the end of turns, not their start with the sole exception of Ricki waiting in the tomb alcove to be attacked by the specter. We will have unsealed the tomb door at the end of turn 49 by killing the last rats if we go with my plan, meaning we will see the result of that unsealing when Ricki enters the tomb alcove. Either the knight will be out, or we will release him at the very top of turn 50 by sending Lara into the tomb. I don’t think it is worth risking the purse, let alone the pet egg on speculation that we can improve Lohk’s odds of survival. If opening the tomb door changes the frequency of attacks Lohk can die just the same.
2) We actually will be sending Lara into a totally unknown situation in the tomb. We won’t be able to actually build a plan without conditionals for both Lara and Ricki (and conditionals are supposed to be avoided/cannot be relied on). Beyond the issue of just writing a cogent plan sight unseen, we’ve benefitted greatly in the past from being able to see bosses before launching into a battle with them. We had an idea of the faithless having some sort of occasional buff just by getting initial eyes on it, and we won’t even have that benefit in this case. We have no reason to believe the knight cannot escape its coffin once the seal is cleared and without initial eyes on the tomb we won’t even be able to say whether Lara should be opening the coffin or attacking the knight.
This plan also gives up the scroll. Lohk doesn’t have room for the pet egg, scroll, and purse.
Its supposed to be in Lohk’s inventory