Dungeon 6 Turn 54
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It has now become obvious that this is no ordinary zombie. It may crave combat, but it’s smart enough to seize whatever advantages it can find, and that makes it extremely dangerous.
The party charges, prepared to take this undead knight out once and for all, or die trying.
Lara, the heaviest hitter in the group, uses her massive greataxe to cleave off the knight’s arm, removing its shield from the equation.
Ricki takes advantage of this new opening to jab with her spear. She gets hit by the knight’s slender blade in the process, dealing 2 damage and reducing her back down to 1 HP.
Seeing his new friends fighting for their lives, Macadamia summons all the strength and courage he can muster. He focuses his energy into his ring of aggression and prepares to unleash his most devastating attack yet!!
But it looks like Ricki already killed the knight.
Now that he’s dead (again), the latent sense of hostility in the dungeon begins to fade away. And, is the party imagining it, or are the walls beginning to creak and groan…?
Dungeon 6 is complete!
From the Items page:
SWIFTBLADE
Weapon
Atk +1. Deals extra damage equal to wielder’s Mov.
Weight 1, Cost 25
At worst it a cooler Longsword, not that I thnk we’ll use it with anyone that only has 1 Mobility. At best, riding Daisy makes it deal 4 Damage!
Says Weilder’s move so unless we have a darksouls daisy it will prob be limited to +3 with lhok I think?
After seeing how lhoks stats are written with daisy I take this back. It might work with Daisy’s boost
LSN said it works with Daisy on Discord, so it’s definitely 1+3 Damage with Daisy.
Closest. Call. Ever.
I’m so glad no one died. Except the knight, lol. Congrats everyone.
Sally was just as close.
Not even close. We might have lost the Kobold family, but everyone else was basically full health and armoured to ignore damage. The only problem there was the encroaching tide of death, but we had a reasonable clock and ended up with a turn to spare.
If the knight had taken those cigarettes, this would be game over.
Yay! No one died!good job everyone!
I think that was a good luck (or even a good attitude of someone …), but not a good job.
This time we are been lucky, we have to remeber the lesson for future dungeons
What lesson? Pound on it until it breaks is always the strategy.
I am interested to know what lesson specifically would that be. Please check last turn’s comment thread to find out what actually did happen. And the proposed solutions.
Please do not randomly spout platitudes. Really. It is demeaning to those who dedicated a lot of their time trying to keep Ricki and gang alive despite people breaking up plans in the middle, ever unclear rules and descriptions, lack of communication, the instructions being INSIDE of the dungeon, and all sorts of other problems.
You will only get us to quit. And given that a lot of people who did this job – yes, it is taking up nearly as much time as a job – already quit, Ricki will die fast. Unless you’re looking to step up?
The community didn’t consider the possibility that an unlucky event like Lhock would happen, so she has been for 10 round at death door.
She could had been dead now, only luck prevented it at turn 50.
I didn’t intend this to be a slur.
We didn’t have much a choice. Except for the safe attempts, all actions were directed at defeating and avoiding potential threats. Also the facts that we needed to 100% the dungeon for once, AND wait until november to really explore it. I don’t see any universe where we finished this before turn 50, unfortunately.
Lesson: Stick. To. The. Plan! (Bringing up an even better plan is OK, of course, but acting without clear plan is not optimal/more dangerous than necessary.)
Thank you. That is indeed a valid lesson!
I would say a lesson is to downgrade our expectations. Focus on a 2-3 key things and forget the rest. This dungeon we tried to loot/collect everything right down to the wire and it almost got us killed
If you mean the Safe, then I agree!
If you mean the chests, we could have done it if we Stuck to The Plan, as Tem put it.
On reflection, the high price of the rabbit paw and its low sale value, combined, incentivized us to loot just to make up for the loss of buying it. Might be worth it to badger LSN to make the shop more usable, for our sake (make it less of a loss) and his (minimize shuffling)
I think it was meant to be more of a “we really need X” rather than a profit making tool. That’s how’d I use it
Yes ,but that is the Law of Unintended Consequences.
I wonder if we can utilize this in the future, making aimed attacks to sever body parts from enemies.
Also, I would like to know: if we had brought Kamau, would he have gotten remorse from party members getting 1 unblockable damage from the spectre? because if so, the time limit would have been even harsher (5 points of remorse could have been reached as soon as turn 25 if unlucky).
And yay, we’re getting level-ups and bond increases for everyone! And the egg should hatch, too. 😀
He would’ve gotten remorse but he also could’ve interposed the specter per LSN on discord.
Only if he was in the same room as whoever got attacked, or could he just have redirected the specter from wherever their target was to himself?
No, we would need to gather everyone low-on-hp in the same room and close to Kamau for interpose to work. We know interpose only has local effect. It doesn’t work for team members in other rooms, or even other combats in the same room.
(edit: imagine three-level room and three separate fights on each floor, Kamau can cover only one of them. Or two fights on the same level, but separate by a door/grate. And so on. One room, One combat, Direct melee access. Can’t Interpose ‘at range’.)
(edit: actually, as now I think about it, I think we never tried interposing at range. We should try it with a rat or something. It may be hilarious)
He can interpose on the move within the same screen. Tried and tested.
On the move, yes, Kamau certainly can move into a room and do an interpose whoever fights there. But can he do an interpose that spans two different combats in two different places in the same room at the same time?
I.e. first turn of the dungeon, someone attacks bats, someone else clibms ladder and attacks centipede, can Kamau cover both at the same time?
Or did you mean two rooms? Start interposing in a fight room#1 and move to room#2 and continue interposing there?
Yes, he can cover more than one “battle group” in the same room. Tried and tested, starting from the tavern.
Lara did a great job as a tank, and she’s a magic-user, too. I think Kamau should be retired, his Remorse ability sucks and having one arm and no shield or double wield is a joke for a single-class fighter.
The whole theme of this campaign is “things with sucky negative abilities that have to use but which you discard the moment you get anything better.”
Kamau is useful. We have been able to work around the remorse mechanic. The only time that we lost Kamau due to remorse is because we got a little careless in Dungeon 3. He was the first to stand with Ricki and has Lohk’s respect. There may be dungeons where having him is better than leaving him behind.
Most, I would wager. This dungeon, not taking him was primarily a case of lack of dungeon instructions, creating a valid fear that they could potentially trigger his remorse, plus his bond being maxxed out.
Did we know the dungeon rules before choosing the party? I dont think we did. I thought the reason we left him behind was to A) get bond points with other characters (kamau was maxxed) and b) try some different tactics without fear of remorse
Indeed we didn’t. That was a factor.
Kamau’s bond has reached a level. Something will happen, and I do not expect it to be for the worse. Without knowing what benefit comes with his filled “bound level”, there is no way to make an informed decision. And besides this min/max point of view, I fully support Kareasint’s comment in the first place. –
About the theme: Yes, we do have people who are challenged by body (arm, size (3x)) and soul (remorse, corruption) and age (bad back – even Daisy is old!) or are a little naive or special. There are members in the party who are not male or not white or not human or even neither of those. At least one of them is in love to a person of the same … – well, because of fear for filter: it’s Macadamia. These heroes are refreshing for me, not “things with sucky negative abilities”. If I wanted the “strong, large, fit, young, white, blond, cis-male, hetero, … hero without scruples”, I would not play Dungeon Eyes but something entirely different. [Sorry if I completely misunderstood and you just wanted to talk about replacing sword atk +1 by sword atk +2.]
I think we shouldn’t read too much into the severed arm scene. It was probably just the artist’s interpretation of Lara’s attacks depleting the Knight’s defense and doing some damage, so that Ricki could finish him off with the spear attack.
If I remember correctly, the Knight had 1-5hp and up to 10 def with the leather armor and shield. Lara’s attack would deal 9-12 damage, depending on “night eyes” being active and the damage roll for the axe.
Ricki: Pick up a set of tools.
Lohk: Use Mom senses to get free and to Ricki.
Egg: Hatch.
Kamau: Come on in now.
Mac: Jump with both feet onto the knight. Show him for hurting your friends!
Lara: Get out your spare cigarettes.
Daisy: Good girl!
Knight: Rest in peace now.
Black dog: Care to get a new Master?
I think Kamau shouldn’t come in. I think the house is coming down after a number of year without maintenance now it’s not a dungeon anymore.
Maybe Lara could go for a smoke back to the entrance (nobody else likes the smell, alright) and try a few combinations now that the painting won’t animate?
Or maybe Mac. He’s educated and probably the most tech-savvy here. He may be able to guess the combination now that we have the piece of paper with hints, and it’s nice and calm all around.
I don’t want to rehash the whole discussion on decision making from last page but, perhaps unsurprisingly, I did want to offer my two cents. I probably should have responded on the last page to the thread there, but I wanted to wait till dungeon end so I’d have the benefit of hindsight. At this point whatever I have to say would be buried on the previous page so here we are.
I obviously post a lot, and I’ve been wondering whether it’s actually healthy for the group/game for me to do so. I haven’t done the math on it, but I’d not at all be surprised to see that plans I wrote ended up being the chosen outcome a majority of turns in this dungeon (and probably close to that on the previous one). For a game that’s supposed to be based on community invovement and planning, that feels like an unhealthy balance.
That my comments do so well probably has something to do with discord, but i think it’s also because I’m usually free to post around when the turns update, so I usually have a plan out quite early in the voting process which helps get it votes. I’m also pretty active on the discord, and although the plans I post are generally mine, I’m certainly tapping into the discord group mind and talks we’ve had there. Early posting, and discussing the post once made with the discord gets my post momentum which helps it get chosen (people like picking winning options), and I’m careful to incorporate or reject with reasoning any suggestions I get, so we can arrive at some sort of reasonable and hopefully happy consensus.
The problem with me doing this so consistently is that we often don’t get other concrete posts, probably since it feels pointless to go through the work of writing a post that’s close to what I already posted, or that just wouldn’t be able to easily overcome the momentum an early post has. I don’t know what to do about that. The one time this dungeon that I didn’t do an early post we ended up choosing an entirely new direction for the dungeon, which lead us down the spiral that the last 4 turns of the dungeon were. If we want to do a post mortem on whether we would’ve been better off trying to follow the implied plan that decision set us on or reversing course to try to recover the purse and lightning scroll, we can, but there seem to be a lot of hurt feelings over the whole matter and I don’t think it’ll be productive.
All of this is just to say that we seem to not actually have a surplus of people writing valid plans on any given turn, and the difficulty of the dungeons seems to require us collectively arriving at some sort of long term plan. We have plenty of people who post ideas and parts of a plan, but because we need legal actions for all our characters on one post, most of those incomplete comments don’t actually accomplish anything beyond sparking discussion (which is important!).
For instance, GathersIngredients was one of the only people to actually post a real concrete plan, including inventory management, to bring Kamau this dungeon, despite seemingly lots of people quite strongly preferring that. As I recall bringing Kamau wasn’t even their preference, but they still tried to provide a valid choice for all of the people asking to bring Kamau along, which was noble of them. I was far more petty and refused to post a plan I didn’t prefer for basically all of our available voting time.
All of this is just to say that it’s unclear that me stepping back would result in more real plans being posted. I don’t want to stifle other people by posting all the time, and it’s less fun to play a community game for me TOO if I’m hogging all the oxygen in the room. My only concern is that stepping back on my end was what lead to most of the chaos at the end of the dungeon, and it’s unclear what exactly will fill any vacuum I create.
Thanks for sharing thisnameismeta!
I don’t think the sneaky time limit helped us. In just 10 turns we went from ok to someone may DIE! The bad luck we got with Lohk’s hp certainly scared me into just wanting to finish the dungeon asap (maybe not in the most efficient way).
For me I felt the dungeon was straightforward (ie, kill things to complete) so I mostly took a backseat to plan making but still chimed in with my preferences. I will be more active in the next one for sure (and will probably borrow your math).
Just remember that we all want the same thing: For Ricki to succeed. We all may just have different ideas to how to accomplish that.
Didn’t we see what happened when you didn’t?
As you wrote, it is not: TNIM has idea, posts, most votes, done, everybody bored. You do have good ideas, people contribute at discord and by comments here, and in the end it must be one post combining everything to one coordinated action. In my local time here, there was an update after 7 o’clock in the morning. I can neither stay up all night to ponder all new contributions (on page and discord), nor is 7 o’clock the right time for me to read, analyze, come up with idea,… Thus I generally at some time during the day find the time to find an update and an appealing solution/comment, and in the evening I can partake in the beginning discussion of another turn. I’m happy about what I get from Dungeon Eyes, and I feel much better when I know that there is somebody in the right time zone, with time and ideas and cooperating with others, and a decision is made as good as available information allows for.
There was one voting where LSN wanted only upvotes to plan A or plan B, and there were a lot more votes than the usual winning comment gets. Thus either the voting is generally very narrow/tight (102 up and 100 down votes, displayed: +2), but most of those 202 people do not make posts themselves, or people are just so content to watch the story to unfold, that they do not even vote a lot.
I sometimes think: Why do we not do that? And then the answer is, that it is not even a possible action for some reason I did not take into account. Some comments by others fall into the same category, and would lead to the character not acting or performing some replacement action.
If I had to choose between TNIM’s posts done 100% and no TNIM’ posts but Ricki dead after 5 turns, I would always go for 100% your posts (which, like said initially, often are a collaborative work anyway, with your work the largest part).
TLDR Just continue your good work. Thank you for it!
Hey. You probably have seen me posting a lot sometimes. And most of that is not actions, just ideas and discussion, probably 1/3 missed, since I’m not able to track things very carefully. However, from time to time I try to write a plan.
I see you post a lot of plans, and I’m grateful for that. I agree with like 70+% of them, and probably in more than half of cases that stops me from posting my own plan. Sometimes after spending 15-30minutes on that, I review latest plans, and simply scrap my idea, because another previous one from someone looks totally good as well, or because someone did the math carefully and I did not. I have no problem with this. It’s my choice not to post. Or my own time limitations due to my own life. It’s pure nonsense if I’d be angry on someone on the remote side for my choices.
If I had time, and if I wanted to, I’d post more of them, but I don’t have and don’t want. I sometimes barely have time to read a new post when it shows up, and really read it only a few hours later. If my plan-to-be ends up 90+% identical to existing one, I skip, because I feel it adds nothing of value. But that’s me. I don’t want to block anyone from posting even a very similar plan. Posting is equally open for everyone.
I don’t have any problem that someone posted faster than me. Heck, I actually am in such a timezone, that I often see new turn published early, with 0 to 3 posts under it. Once LSN scolded me on twitch that it’s ridiculous that sometimes when he publishes a new turn, I post a response there faster than he tweets that it’s published. Achievement complete! Get author angry for following xD
I understand and feel a bit bad for people who post their ideas or plans 15 minutes or 1 hour before new round shows up, or something like that. No chances of getting any real attention. I sometimes see other people coming back a turn or two to read such dead letters, I often do the same, but it’s obvious that such posts and ideas are often lost unless repeated later. But with timed voting, there’s really not much that could be done with it. First posts simply have more time hence more chances to be seen, and thus more chances for any votes.
With you, TNIM, posting early and posting good content, I see it as great opportunity to kickstart a turn into right direction (or one of right directions). I don’t think you should step back and sit silent, just because you do a good job too often. You do no harm with that. It’s not like you’re cycling refresh in the browser to be first to write “shut up your plan is inferior my plan is better just gtfo” under each other post. It’s ridiculous for anyone to be angry that the overall audience statistically upvotes your posts more, just like it’s ridiculous to be angry at a good chess player for winning too many tournaments.
Unfortunately, I don’t know what to do about it. I know people’s psyche, some just will get mad or sad about such things. When you toss a number of people in one place and keep them on the matter for a time, you will get all possible reactions for every event. Every even a petty problem will eventually make someone angry and light a fire, because that’s how it is.
I hope that it’s just a darker moment, and that you’re not seriously considering ceasing posting plans. That would be a huge loss. Heck, does anyone tell CombatDoctor he should step back, because he takes all the fame for the map making? Seriously, just (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ . And if someone truly does, we should ban them for being stupid, or send them to a therapist. That’s just equalizing downwards, keeping everyone down, because someone’s mood is down.
However, if you do seriously consider that, could I suggest you do a clear A/B voting and decide after that? I’m one person writing here, but feel like the vast majority would tell you “thanks for the great work and please stay”, just like me.
Thanks for the great work and please stay!
Thanks for giving direction. I had similar concerns in earlier dungeons about monopolizing play, and I definitely agree that this just isn’t the sort of game you can play turn by turn, especially now that items are stickier and it takes multiple turns to recover from one turn of bad decisions. Maybe putting more of the plan for future turns in comments could help? That isn’t really the issue though. You mention that there is valid discussion of what goals we want to aim for (though more important is what we choose to leave behind), the key is keeping coherent actions. With more characters there are more details to get right and more chances to go wrong.
Even last dungeon, the continuous item trading was largely due to the plan pointing in different directions turn by turn (almost as if twice-daily updates were passing the controller between two different groups of people, surprise!). A game that could survive everyone taking individual action would be easy for a group that worked together.
For various reasons I haven’t been able to play for most of this dungeon and I’m glad someone is thinking about it. I was mystified at the end with all that money spent on items that it looked like we wouldn’t have time or inventory to use, and it’s a shame we couldn’t stick the landing. The Sally fight was a really fun puzzle and I’m sad that we won’t be able to do something similar again as we can’t pivot fast enough in one turn anymore.