Dungeon 7 Turn 0
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“Well, here’s where we part ways.”
“Good luck in there, Ricki.”
“Don’t worry, we got this!”
“Hey! Are you going in the dungeon?”
“Watch out for the bull in there!”
“Bull?”
“Yeah, we tried to get it out early on, but it went crazy! Attacks anything it sees!”
“Huh. I’m not sure they heard you before crossing the boundary.”
“Well, hopefully they’re smart enough to run from it, then.”
“In different directions.”
“So it only kills one of them.”
Once within the dungeon, the sounds and even the colours of the outside world appear muted. Ricki can no longer see Paws just a few feet behind her, but she can now see… a lot of birds. And a… a corn man??
It seems that the majority of the dungeon encompasses an open field, which should make it easy to leave once the party has enough produce. However, the barn in the distance also seems to be part of the dungeon, so there may be a more traditional interior area to explore as well.
Additionally, all of Ricki’s group immediately notice a heavy scent in the air. It’s vaguely floral, but they can’t quite place it. It’s simultaneously familiar, and yet unlike anything they’ve every smelled before, and not at all unpleasant. If anything, it may be a little TOO pleasant, as the calming effect will probably be a liability in combat.
Also, it sets off Macadamia’s allergies.
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Dungeon 7: The Overgrown Farm
Goal: All remaining characters must gather at the exit and leave while carrying ten or more items of produce. Produce will automatically be converted into Gold Coins (it’s a gameplay abstraction, settle down). A bonus 3 Gold Coins will be given for each distinct type of produce found.
Time Limit: Every 10 turns, the calming aroma suffusing the dungeon’s atmosphere will inflict a stacking -1 Atk on all characters.
This dungeon can be abandoned. If Ricki leaves while carrying the necessary produce, only other characters not near her will be considered to have abandoned. Ricki can leave the dungeon from any outdoor room.
Okay, so we got
1) A probably hostile corn person
2) 8 chickens
3) 8 magicrows
LSN confirmed on discord that nothing was noted to be pissed when we entered, so if we do nothing this turn, nothing will attack us.
Magicrows look to do elemental damage probably
Bull is hinted at having an AOE straight line attack, so interpose may not be usable against it.
Magicrows have ray attacks, so no reason to engage them unless we get a lot of ranged attacks (just spear and Lhok for now)
We have the stuff to enchant and heal and smif, but that would leave nothing for Ricki to do. We also dont need the inventory space or smifs to take out chickens.
My Suggestion:
Kamau: Interpose
Everyone else, including Squirrel and Daisy (not Molly though), each attack a different chicken. (cane, spear, axe, and natural weapons)
This is just going to get their numbers down and get us some stats for later. We can do the enchanting and smiffing next turn and let Ricki finish off any remaining chickens.
Can the chickens be captured alive and kept?
Kamau: use enchant scroll on Swiftblade
Lohk: use healing potion on Kamau
Mac and Ricki: attack Corn person.
I find this dangerous if the Chickens are aggressive.
Kamau: Interpose and walk forward until something hits you or you go into the next room
Ricki, Mac, Lohk, Daisy, Squirrel: Follow Kamau, and if anything hits him, hit it back
I find this an acceptable compromise to my assumption that we must kill the chickens. They are not to be trusted…again.
Kamau can’t leave the room while interposing, so this might lead to us not actually getting to see the next room depending on LSN’s interpretation and the aggression of the enemies.
The scarecrow will hopefully keep the crows away. Might be damaged by something though, possibly just pulling crow attacks if they’re angered.
Now, are chickens monsters or items? Hmm…
Kamau: Interpose the group through the chickens and past the corn person.
Squirrel: Attack the corn person?
Lohk: Attack the corn person with your torch. Lets see what fire does to plant people.
Ricki: Attack the corn person with your greataxe.
Mac: Go along with the group and then continue past the corn person to see what’s on the next screen to the right.
Explanation: I worry that attacking the chickens will cause some sort of catastrophe ala cuccos in Zelda. I’m assuming the plant person must be murdered to gather his sweet sweet mutant corn substance, and I really want us to get some more data on the dungeon so we know where to focus our efforts while we have the most attack available to us. We could have Mac smif as well as move, but given we have no ranged attacked other than throwing the spear or Lohk casting spells, I’m inclined to hold onto the spear for now given the number of flying crows we’ve just seen.
okay, I know what the rules text says, but I don’t think that’s how we should go about this.
this is outside, yeah? the boundary’s easily accessible and all.
why not grab stuff and bring it out as we find it?
potentially leave someone outside to look after the pile.
like, seeing this now, we herd the chickens out, grab the corn, and go back in.
exiting the dungeon should not be an end to the delve when reentry seems so uniquely trivial.
one may even wish to consider entering/exiting from different points for better accer to goods.
wait no the corn is not (currently) produce.
just herd the chickens away then.
Kamau: Intercede with the corn man and chickens. Use magma shield.
Squirrel: Attack the rightmost chicken while under Kamau’s protection.
Ricki: Stash two thieves tools with Molly, and attack the corn man with your battleaxe.
Macadamia: Examine the scarecrow. More importantly, explore to the right.
Lohk: Attack corn man with your torch.
Daisy: EDIT: Follow Macadamia.
We can enchant later. I want to explore first and foremost, and figure out what these creatures do. If 1 damage drops a chicken then we can set Kamau up to Cleave through them, though they might be more items to gather than enemies (though Legend of Zelda makes attacking chickens questionable). I expect the axe to do plenty to corn man, but we got the hint that fire damage does something to plant monsters, so maybe we’ll see what that is. Popcorn man would be fun.
Mac won’t be able to leave the screen if Daisy attacks, unfortunately.
Correct, was still setting Daisy with Lohk. Edited to fix, there’s an argument to send Lohk exploring due to move but discovering fire damage is fine.
Hmm, if produce becomes gold coins while in the dungeon, then we don’t need to worry quite as much about inventory space since it’ll stack. We also have the purse.
It won’t be in the dungeon unfortunately, since part of the dungeon text gives us a bonus for having a variety of produce.
Still could, it’s a gameplay abstraction. We’d know that the stack of 20 gold coins would include corn, eggs, and beef. The text suggests that Ricki can carry ten different types of produce on her own, though it may just be written for Big Haul III.
I think it’s 10 units of produce, not 10 different types, so presumably there’s some allowance for stacking. Even barring that, she also has access to Molly whose inventory would presumably count for these purposes. My reading of the produce conversion to gold was that it occurs when exiting the dungeon, not before.
I think it’s nice of the bluman to go out of his way to try and warn our group about the bull.
Also worth considering: seeing how we are most likely the strongest we are ever going to be, while in this dungeon (because of the “soothing scent” taking away our atk gradually), we should try to get as much killing done as soon as possible, by and large (and I’m not saying we should attack the chickens, they might just be “produce” waiting to happen, e.g. by laying eggs. But scout quickly and sadly, kill most of the things we see), especially if we “want” to take out that bull. (This might be the “dungeon clearing condition”, parallel to the “goal”, perhaps? IIRC, in the chapel, we didn’t know about the faithless either, when we went in, but only learned about it later on.)
It was mentioned that the locals would appreciate clearing the dungeon which generally requires killing every monster, but there’s no secondary objective to back that up. We’ll see.
The bull will probably be part of keeping us from loitering. Ranged attacks will ignore the Atk penalty, but that doesn’t mean we can stick around forever.
Kamau: Interpose, moving to right edge of room
Ricki: Attack corn-thing.
Daisy, Maca, Squirrel: Attack separate chickens
Lohk: Scout right a room
Torch attacks are limited use, and good luck figuring out what fire damage does against an enemy attacked by the greataxe in the same turn. Plus, Lohk is slow–better to have her be the one moving ahead right now, because she’ll have a harder time catching up if she falls behind.
Overkilling the corn-thing is probably a more efficient use of actions, but we’ll never figure out how much damage they take to kill if we keep doing that. So splitting off our other combatants to try the chickens instead. This includes 1, 2, and 3 damage characters, so we should end up with a good idea of exactly what those take to kill.