Lohk finished a dungeon! She can gain one new ability from this list:
Channel III: Can use four Charge abilities per dungeon.
Charge Wand 
: Can use a wand that has no more uses remaining.
Cloth Proficiency: +1 Def when wearing armour with no base Def bonus, or when wearing no armour.
Death Touch: Can deal 1 unblockable damage. The amount of damage cannot be modified by abilities or items.
Herbal Tea II: Starts each dungeon with one Potion of Greater Healing if able to carry it.
Magic Barrier I: Negates all damage from the first magic attack received each dungeon.
Master Accessory: Can destroy a magic accessory to unlock its ability.
Master Staff: Can destroy a staff in order to unlock its ability.
Potion Affinity: Recover 1 additional HP from healing potions. Limited duration potions last 2 extra turns.
Rechannel: Can recover 1 expended use of Charge abilities when an ability is used to destroy a wand or other magic item.
Staff Strike I: Can use a staff to make a melee attack with +2 Atk.
Wand Efficiency I: Wands with limited uses per dungeon have a 20% chance not to be depleted when used.
Wand Proficiency: Can deal +1 damage with damaging wands, or heal +1 HP with healing wands.
Wand Proficiency. Makes mediocre wands into good wands, and good wands into great wands.
Now that we have a wand, that’s a good ability, and we expect to find more next dungeon (where we likely won’t take her) – unless we all die, ofc.
I’ve actually entirely changed my mind on this. Staff strike with the Monk Robe makes for an incredibly powerful build on Lohk using only items we already want Lohk to use that are not of benefit to any other character.
With staff strike and the Monk robes, Lohk will be able to dish out 5 melee damage a turn and benefit from 3 defense. That’s as much damage as Macadamia using the swiftblade with Daisy, and it uses 0 pieces of equipment that any other character would want to use. Wand proficiency will be quite powerful once we’ve got an array of wands to use it with, but at the moment we just have the one. Enemies might resist fire, and we’ve likely exhausted the fire weak enemy pool for the foreseeable future. At best the wand of fireball would give us 3 5-8 damage Fireballs in a dungeon, but we’d have to give Lohk the wand of fireball, the fire robe, and either be content with Lohk having 1 defense, or also give her a shield. Between all of those items, her Cane, and her spawned healing potion, Lohk won’t have much room to carry any items or hold additional wands.
In contrast, the staff strike Monk Robe build would use just 3 equipment slots (counting the cane). That would leave room for an additional wand as well as the healing potion spawn, while giving the same base defense as the fire Robe/shield configuration, and a whopping 3 more attack. It also lets us carry the gravity staff into the dungeon on Lohk herself, which would be impossible in the wand configuration. We’ve seen how costly inventory swapping is, and how annoying it is for everyone involved. We’ve got a chance to make an incredibly consistent and powerful build for Lohk using just the materials we have on hand, and that chance is for us to take staff strike.
Working towards this build also gives us an obvious path forward on Lohk. Cloth proficiency would instantly up her defense, and the possibility of further staff strike levels will be available. In contrast, wand proficiency falls off immediately and has no further upgrades.
This ability is hard-capped by ENC. Lohk can plausibly carry 2-3 wands. While we can devote lots of ENC on other characters to carrying various wands, that hurts more and more as we’d have to start using more turns to swap them around so Lohk can fire them off. It’s also a strict +1, unaffected by other things.
More uses of Channel gets us a bigger bang, along with additional flexibility like healing (or, presumably, other powers unlocked by Mastering). It also has the potential of being further boosted by equipment, since things like the Fire Robes boost the damage of fireball, and we’re likely to find things that buff healing or other damage types. Yes, those work with the wands, but they’d also work with the Channel abilities unlocked by those wands.
Finally, 1 levelup in Channel gets us 1 additional use, guaranteed. 1 levelup in Wand Efficiency would eventually get us to an expected +1 use/wand if we ever find a wand with 5 charges, but would still have a lot of potential to screw us over by bad dice, and there’s no guarantee it would increase by 20% per levelup.
And everything wand-based is dependent on ENC. So, Channel’s our future. Let’s purchase Channel III.
Wand Efficiency I.
Yes, it’s weak now. With the one wand we have with two charges, it’ll get us to an average of 2.5 charges per dungeon, for +1/2 of a charge average. But if we get Wand Efficiency IV, for (probably) 80% not depleted on use, we’ll average *10* fireballs per dungeon from that wand–2 fireballs per dungeon per levelup spent on it. Double what we’d get from channel upgrades! *And* extra shots from any other wand we pick up.
Wand Efficiency I will never *ever* be our best ability right when we can pick it. But it’ll unlock stronger Wand Efficiency upgrades, and if we don’t start it soon, we’ll likely never get to the point where it’s really awesome.
Good speech, I am torn.
i really dislike rng based abilities.
game is already unpredictable as is.
I feel like this ability is just counterattack 2, electric boogaloo. I do agree that it has longterm potential, but I’d rather boost damage and healing immediately (especially because it makes the wand of mend quite good), which is why I prefer wand proficiency.
What if Wand Efficiency II is 30%, Wand Efficiency III – 40% and Wand Efficiency IV – 50%? Or just I and II levels?
If it gets to 50%, it doesn’t matter that much, we’ll just rely sooner on Charge Wand and Rechannel. It’s just a matter of finding some source of cheap magic items to consume for Rechannel. The real question is if it really gets that high. From my pov, it could even be planned like 20-25-30 etc and still be reasonable, just unreliable like counterattack. “Reasonable” as in “get a bonus from time to time” or “get an unexpected moment’s grace in otherwise hectic world” as opposed to one-skill-that-changes-it-all 🙂
Personally, I don’t believe in 80% and I have hard time believing we’d ever get 50% considering the % on counterattack, dodge, and other similar things.
I just wish ‘Charge’ would really add a charge to a wand, and not just use the wand immediately.. but as it is written now, I think it doesn’t really charge it at all, just activates the item at the cost of :star:, and doesn’t really make a combo with WandEfficiency 🙁
New rule: the moment we complete the main objective(s) of a dungeon crawl, we GTFO ASAP (if not immediately), at any cost. We had plenty of vegetables and the new party member at turn 41. Fuck the constant inventory management, we only take what we absolutely know is going to be useful or necessary.
On that note we should consider benching Kamau for the rest of the campaign until he gets therapy. This is the second time dozens of turns of conscientious and careful play around Remorse went down the drain at the end of the dungeon in a cutscene showcasing a newly recruited party member’s abilities. If they’re so useful, it’s time for Lara and Botanya to start pulling their weight as non-smalls.
Maybe Kam will get better when his bond maxes?
> Fuck the constant inventory management
LOL downvoted to oblivion
Players are going to play the game the way they like to play.
This is not the place to comment this sort of thing – this page is for voting on the next levelup for Lohk. So people aren’t going to read this and just downvote. People are still talking on the t51 page, just so you know.
I thought the “real” conversations are all on Discord, Instagram, Twitter and Twitch.
This comment section is mostly ceremonial.
Of course not. It’s just that the density of conversation you can have here is smaller than on Discord. You can not jam hundreds of comments here. And LSN prizes legibility – if too much stuff obstructs the voting here, he tends to stop reading halfway, and that is BAD.
LSN no longer has Twitter.
In Twitch conversation only happens at the end of each dungeon.
In Discord we talk more (but LSN most often doesn’t read it either).
Please note that all of those are free channels so if anyone is feeling excluded from the conversation, don’t – there is no VIP only club, just a normal moderated chat anyone can participate in as long as they remain civil and follow moderation guidelines. I am just explaining the most obvious reason for the mass downvote – people want to keep the unrelated discussion away from LSN’s eyes in cause this causes him to miscount the actual votes.
Your responses to this sub-thread have by far been the most helpful. I mistakenly assumed that any discussion on previous pages was completely meaningless and no one reads it after a new page goes up because LSN doesn’t read it. You’re correct that my comment was more appropriate for the Turn 51 page given its subject matter.
What about Staff Strike I
Combined with MONK ROBES (Atk +2 and Def +2) and any staff (we have got one) it is a Atk +4 and Def +2 option (which will cost only two inventory slots).
And this can be improved even more later with Staff Strike II and Cloth Proficiency (up to +5-6 Atk and +3 Def).
I think yes, but not now. Lohk will always have her staff, so we will take this one for sure at some point, but other picks look better at this moment IMHO.
Lohk’s Cane is a Weapon, not a Staff.
By the looks of the one Staff we’ve seen, they probably aren’t going to give Atk on their own, so this is giving Lohk a free longsword whenever we can field an expensive consumable. She doesn’t have much inventory space so that does give flexibility, but also right now she has the Cane for +1 Atk, so this is at best another +1 Atk. I’d rather she cast spells.
It’s actually better than a free longsword if she’s wearing the Monk robes. It turns a layout with 3 enc (Cane, robes, Monk staff) into a 3 defense, 5 attack layout. That’s actually quite good. Staves are notably NOT weapons so they combo with the monk robes unlike a longsword or cane.
I didn’t get it, why 3 Def and 5 Atk?
Unfortunately, LOHK’S CANE is a weapon. So we can’t use it with robes and just get +2 Atk from robes and +2 Atk (with Staff Strike I).
Why 3 Def?
Or that is about Staff Strike II and Cloth Prof.?
The robes also give +2 defense if a shield and weapon aren’t used. Lohk has 1 atk and 1 defense naturally, so a build with staff strike, the gravity staff, and Monk robes would be 5 atk and 3 defense off the bat with no other equipment. That’s really good.
Yes, I understand and agree. That is a total outcome for Lokh.
Yep, the cane is a Weapon and doesn’t work with Staff Strike or Monk Robes. Why bring it up?
Clever, a staff isn’t a Weapon so it gets around the Monk Robes restriction.
Whoa. Weapon! I didn’t notice that!
I actually think this might be my new favorite configuration and level up choice. The only wand we currently have does 3-6 and can be used up to 3 times a dungeon with Lohk’s Cane ability. If we put her in fire robes and get wand proficiency, that bumps up to 5-8 dmg. Staff strike with this configuration would let us do 5 dmg with every single attack every turn. Any rings we put on Lohk would add to that attack, and we’re already quite close to having a full stack of attack rings. It’d be pretty simple to get Lohk to 7 dmg a turn, and all without even giving her any additional equipment that other characters would want to have. No need to give her the swiftblade or any other weapon – she can simply use the staff we’d already like her to have and the robe we’d like her to have. I think this sets up for a super viable, powerful, and consistent build moving forward.
It’s likely the robes are meant for the next character, so a no from me, for now.
Master Staff.
With a rising number of candidates to fill up our dungeon crawling party we don’t know when we will get to take Lohk with us into a dungeon again and whether or not that will earn a level-up. It would be best to be “prepared” for her to “eat” any or all staves we find with the rest of the team in the meantime, IF we want her to. Right now, we don’t have the ability to get the “gravity” effect permanently, even if we wanted to (yes, I know we’ll need one more level up to actually gain the ability, but right now we can’t even unlock it). And who knows what other cool abilities other staves out there might provide.
I am aware that “we don’t know when we will take Lohk into a dungeon with us next” is also a fair argument against letting Lohk “eat” staves and wands in the first place (because we can swap wands and staves between party members, but Lohk’s abilities are hers alone, if she stays at home, so do her abilities). So keep that in mind, when you cast your vote. 🙂
Cloth Proficiency.
Lohk has 5 inventory slots, one of which is always occupied by her Cane. She cannot wear Plate and wearing chain mail would leave only one other slot open for wands and staves and loot, which then couldn’t be a shield. We have access to heavy shields which are more weight efficient for Def than armour. Even if we want to dedicate Lohk’s limited inventory space to Def, with heavy shield and helmet that’s +4 Def with one slot left which could at best contribute leather armour defensively, and more likely need to be used so she can do something other than not die.
For Lohk, this is +1 Def.
It also combos quite nicely with the Monk robes.
Wand Proficiency!
Charge Wand – It makes any wand twice as useful for a small cost. Master Staff would have been useful this dungeon.
How would master staff have been useful this dungeon?
It would have been anti-useful, so to say, as it would have destroyed a staff with 4 charges and given us nothing in return but for the chance to add its ability to our levelup list. We would still have to spend the level up to get that ability back.
for the sake of argument: it would free equipment slot.
and a bit of copium.
also there is non-0 chance (close tho) that Staffs are higher grade of magical items and skills from them we get without skill point. Yes, i am reaching here.
that being said if we are going to eat it we should do it once it has 1 charge, also worth checking if the staff gets destroyed at 0 charges and if maybe we can still eat it at that point.
Staff turns into dust at zero charges. Can’t eat it then. But we can buy more charges
Wait who said we can buy more charges?
Oooh…Dim Mak: the touch of death! That’s a really good ability that will help with minmaxing.
Channel III is a very future-proof ability. At its worst, it’s one more charge on Heal/Fireball, but it’s likely that Lohk’s Master abilities will unlock further Channel-limited abilities.
Another way to look at it: Wand Proficiency currently purchases us 3 damage/dungeon (3 charges of Wand of Fireball), and will increase in damage/dungeon as we gain wands, CAPPED BY ENC. Lohk’s limited ENC means she’s unlikely to be carrying more than 2-3 wands at most.
Channel III purchases us 3-6* damage/dungeon OR 3 points of healing, and will increase in flexibility (and more options is GREAT), and does not require any ENC. If we do indeed find more Channel abilities in Wands/Staffs/Accessories, it actually frees up ENC by making those abilities better.
*4-7 with the Fire Robes, more if there are further +Fire accessories/options
Except every new channel ability requires a level up to unlock, plus the investment of gold of eating a wand rather than selling or keeping it. Additional uses of channel do no good to us currently if enemies resist fire or we don’t need healing, and one fireball does not scale at all beyond equipment, which runs into the same limitation we’vw encountered before. If we want to start running non-Kamau compositions, the only repeatable source of healing we’ve ever seen is the wand of mend. Wand proficiency doubles the healing power on that wand, and the healing is useful most of the time on small chafacters.
Sure we can keep adding additional uses of abilities, but we fight in most dungeons for far more than 4 or 5 turns. We need to find consistent ways of having Lohk do damage/perform useful actions and channel can’t ever be that. At best we get one more turn of fighting or healing a dungeon, and that’s only if we keep taking channel and never unlock any other abilities ever. Wand proficiency on the other hand provide consistent buffs that work across a wide range of situations moving forward.
Master Accessory: Can destroy a magic accessory to unlock its ability.
I want Lohk to master Gardening by eating those Gardening Gloves. Lets do that.
The problem with these master abilities is that they also require a level up to learn them presumably (just like master wand and deathtouch). So it’d be two level ups to get +2 against a small subset of enemies that we might not ever see again.
Yeah, but what if it also gives Lohk a bonus point of labor because she’s good at growing and harvesting food? THEN HOW WOULD YOU FEEL? 😛
Staff Strike I. ThisNameIsMeta had a very good argument for it, assuming we plan on hauling Lohk into more dungeons soon.
(If we plan on giving her a break, I’m partial to Master Staff, so upvote GathersIngredients’ comment instead)