Dungeon 7 Turn 29
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Macadamia investigates the weather vane. It seems to be accurate to the current wind direction, but he can’t tell anything else about it. He gives it a twist so it’s pointing in the opposite direction, and interestingly, the wind seems to change at the same moment. Huh.
However, it seems the nearby tomato vine has greater reach than anticipated despite being rooted in place. It lashes out and swats Macadamia across the snout, dealing 2 damage.
On his way through the barn, Macadamia passes by Lohk as she moves the hay bale. The rail is greased up well enough that even an old lady can move the heavy bale easily.
After giving Molly her heavier items in order to maximize her inventory space, Ricki follows Kamau up past the skeletons in the loft and opens the chest. A stalkroach pops out and punches Ricki in the face, but she’d anticipated this and her helmet, ring, and spear keep her safe from damage. She takes the rope from inside the chest and tosses it to Molly.
Kamau takes no damage from interposing the half dozen skeletons, but he does sense Macadamia’s distress in the other room. If his friends get hurt any more than they have, he’s not sure he’ll be able to stand it.
Ricki and Kamau both back away from the horde of skeletons before the turn ends.
Macadamia ends his turn as far away from the tomato vine as he can. Doesn’t look like anything is going on out in front of the barn, other than the gravity effect that’s still active.
Kamau: Interpose near the ladder a safe distance from the skeletons to block the stalkroach’s escape. Also feed cheese to squirrel so it tries to attack stalkroach as well (feeding is free as long as it is part of combat)
Ricki, Mac: stay near Kamau, do not aggro the skeletons, attack stalkroach with axe and swift blade respectively as it tries to run by you.
Lohk: go to kamau and stay safe under his interpose.
Reason: it’s NOT GOOD to have roving monsters in the dungeon free to punch people, go anywhere they like, destroy items etc.
Also, now we have more time, we can try to get the rat chest. But it will be way harder, if not impossible to do, without taking out the stalkroach before it can get there. Main objective for this turn is the stalkroach.
I am having Kamau interpose because we can no longer take any risk with remorse.
Rat chest plan risked remorse if we got unlucky enough that 3/4 enemies targeted one little, unless you guys came up with a variant that didn’t have even the slightest risk. No longer worth the risk – whatever’s in that chest isn’t worth Kamau not getting a level.
It’s still very bad to have roving monsters around. Roving monsters function closer to PCs than NPCs and may decide to go off-script. Remember the knight? LSN already warned us he’s gunning for the pile. While most of the items there aren’t vital, the spear and cake are healing items that we need.
We can get Mac to 8 defense by swapping an attack ring for a ring of protection. That’d make the plan risk free, and Mac would still have 4 attack with only one ring of aggression, which is enough to 1 shot a dire rat.
Interpose won’t stop the stalkroach from leaving. Lohk moving the hay bale will also put it in sight of the mammoth, which some people had expressed worry about doing before we were ready.
For your first point: yeah, I know. That’s why I am having ricki and mac attack it at the only point they can be sure the roach will have to pass through and that kamau can reach, and why I am moving lohk out of the way.
For your second point – that is a concern, but there is nowhere else safe for her or any other actions she can do…
Changed it so she goes to the interpose umbrella and stays in position to heal kamau or attack chickens next turn
Kamau: “If his friends get hurt any more than they have, he’s not sure he’ll be able to stand it.”
Or in other words:
One (!) point of damage to Ricki or Lohk or Macadamia means
Remorse: Kamau will leave the dungeon immediately.
Told you guys the weathervane wasn’t worth it ._.
Also called that it was a wind direction indicator.
Jingles, it was TOTALLY WORTH IT. the wind will slow down the crows!
Are the crows even coming? They havent moved 1 screen in like 20 turns..
Their current location is indeed a mystery. But there is no other conceivable function for wind direction. Unless we want to try to grab chickens and glide out with them?
There is one more function we didn’t consider (and sadly, we didn’t hear about) – namely, it could change the way the “smell” spreads.
The smell appears to have no discrete origin, sadly.
It’s not an indicator, it controls the wind.
Remove that badboy from the scene and take it with us. A weather control device…it has to be worth a fortune!
Dungeon Magic means oversized fixtures cannot be moved. But yeah, wish we could do that, too.
I believe that messing with the weathervane dispelled the sweet scent debuff. Come turn 30 we will know for sure.
That would be really cool, but I would be kinda surprised if it did. It would change things a little.
DISPELLING would be too much. We won’t get out lost ATK back. Completely shutting down any further ATK loss would be a bit too much I think, since it would effectively remove time limit. But it might at least make it spread slower, like i.e. -1atk/15turns, and I think that’s quite reasonable considering it took some effort to get there.
One other possible benefit of changing the weathervane is that now we’re upwind of Manny. If mammoths are anything like elephants, he can smell a lot better than he can see. So that should help us regardless of whether we decide to attack him or exit the dungeon from his area while he eats.
Upwind!!! That’s it! What if the Mammoth isn’t really interested in the hay? What would we need it at all for then? And the whole sliding machinery? Allow ourselves to be attacked once by mammoth so he’s closer, and then drop the hay on him? Well, that’s an option.
But then – if Mammoth isn’t hungry, we could use the hay as a COVER! Drop the hay block, and simply duck&hide behind it, or even IN it like in any farm comedy show, and use that to pass by the Mammoth while he can’t smell them due to the upwind, and by the time he actually can sniff them out, they’re already past him and out of the dungeon.
extra roleplay emergency plan 😀
That is actually a good idea
Doh, I meant “downwind,” not “upwind” – but the point is unchanged, the wind is blowing our scent away from him!
All that for rope. *Sigh*
Can we please start securing our exit by lensing manny?
At least we have Jack o lantern exit. Doesnt seem the crows are coming despite all their noise. Wind direction probably doesnt help them either
We need to secure the dungeon from the roving monster first, then we can get right on with lensing.
Also, rope is valuable – it is required to climb places that are otherwise inaccessible like the treehouse, and cannot be bought in a shop.
It actually CAN be bought in the shop now. That was true before the most recent shop visit though.
Ricki: Grab the shield then go back to the room with all the floor loot
Kamau: Go back to the room with all the floor loot
Mac: Go back to the room with all the floor loot, then drop the shield for a corn spear
Lohk: Push the bale to the other side of this room, but stay here
Prepping to leave the dungeon. We can put kamau’s armor/shield and mac’s shield on molly, which will free up a bunch of space to grab the rest of the stuff on the floor. Then we can exit out by the pumpkin, losing an onion in the end. I’d rather not spend the time pushing the bale back to the left (or the right) and cutting the rope.
Question: why are we leaving? We are not under threat by crows right this second. We don’t know how Manny behaves. We are leaving a pet behind.
I hope we can lens manny next turn and do some inventory organization. Then we’ll see if what our exit options are
Ricki: Put the eggs back into Mollys pack, then pick up the shield and equip it. Move down one.
Kamau: Move down one, drop a magic lens for Lohk to pick up next turn for lensing purposes, then interpose for the group in the chicken fight. Feed squirrel cheese for free to get its use done and over with, since Squirrel can no longer do any damage anyway.
Squirrel: Uselessly gnaw a chicken after eating delicious cheese.
Macadamia: Move right one then kill the rooster.
Lohk: Drop your robe in the pile of loot to clear room for a lens next turn, then move left one and ray of frost a chicken from the ladder.
I don’t think the stalkroach matters. It does 4 damage, and we’ve seen previously that they just run for the nearest chest. We have no real way of cutting off its escape, and we run the risk of accidentally chasing it up above if it runs along the roof to get to the rat chest (we’d take tons of tomato damage in that case). I think it’s better to let it run where it will, while we get prepped to lens the mammoth and make a dent in the coop chickens so we can spend some time trying to solve that mystery. If the stalkroach goes to the rathole chest, all we need to do is send in a character with 8 armor to kill a dire rat, before Ricki joins with 6 armor to help clear out another dire rat and the squirrels. Ultimately it’ll be two more actions of killing dire rats, which is better than a bunch of actions spent trying (and possibly failing) to kill a stalkroach when we aren’t actually prepared to dedicate the necessary damage to it.
Ok, I am on board with this. Still think there is some risk, but it’s sensible.
I think we are pushing our luck if we make a wrong assumption or miscalculate a hit then we risk remorse or worse. We need to start working on our exit strategy and gather what we already have.
Um, regarding “Ricki: Pick up the shield and equip it.” At the characters’ page, Ricki’s inventory is stuffed fully. She needs to put something in Molly’s bags first.
Good point. Fixed to have her stow the eggs first.
Regarding Stalkroach: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockroach#As_pests says:They feed on human and pet food. If we do not guard our loot pile, we need to hope that the burning birthday-cake-candle keeps the Stalkroach away.
Ricki: Give one of your corn spears to Molly. Go to the item pile. Pick up the potatoes and 2 onions (to fill out one of your stacks).
Kamau: If you can feed your cheese to Squirrel without it costing an action, do so. If you can’t, just drop the cheese. Pick up Mac’s old shield. Go down 1. Go and try hanging out on the other side of the ladder from the chicken coop. Don’t aggro the chickens if just hanging out there doesn’t do so. Drop 1 magic lens.
Lohk: Stay where you’re at and guard the item pile.
Mac: Push the hay bale 1 to the right, then come back to guard the item pile.
Rationale:
We no longer have ANY remorse left. No more trying to loot, no more fights that aren’t absolutely required in order to leave, we need to pick up what’s on the ground in safe places and leave now. Nothing here is worth Kamau missing a level and losing access to his abilities and inventory.
We now also are screwed if the chickens downstairs attack us on the way out, so we need to test if they are aggroed by someone being nearby but not aggressive. That’s what Kamau is doing. He has enough DEF that he won’t take damage even if they are aggressive.
We’re dropping 1 magic lens so that two people can use it on the same turn if there are spare actions, rather our slowest member holding both. It’s on a tile that we’re likely to go to again.
If the crows don’t appear on the pumpkin screen next turn, we should leave that way – it’s sure and it’s safe. If they do, we’re going to have to hope like heck that the mammoth is distracted by the hay bale like we’ve been hoping AND that the chickens don’t aggro from this distance.
For all the people worried about the the Stalkroach: If we don’t have any items laying around for it to steal, it really doesn’t matter. It does 4 damage, right? It can’t bypass anyone’s defense. So long as we’re not in a combat it’s irrelevant.
We’ve got a rope and can climb down from the ledge by Manny if chicken aggro is an issue.
We need to know whether or not it is. Unless you want to assume it is. (knowing that that will probably expend the rope).
Remember the cathedral? There was a graveyard, all walled, and a ledge, and we learned that we can escape the place via ledge, with falling damage, or without dmg if we can make it safer in some way. Now we have TWO ways of making it safer: rope, or staff of gravity. I suppose Lohk’s use of magic-mimicking doesn’t really count as “using the staff once per dungeon”!
To clarify my wording: We need to know whether or not chicken aggro is an issue, unless we want to assume chicken aggro is an issue. If we assume chicken aggro is an issue, the ‘climb away using rope’ technique will likely consume the rope, thus meaning we are not taking the rope with us.
I can get behind preparing an escape past the pumpkin and crows if we determine that the mammoth remains hostile after feeding it the hay and scanning it with the lens. I also agree that fights should be avoided at all costs and some of the dropped items may be forfeit, so we should scoop up what veggies we can and feed Kamau the birthday cake as soon as it’s feasible since he needs to block any and all damage to prevent Remorse from triggering.
Ricki: Put the eggs in Molly’s bag. Pick up the shield and equip it. Move down one and one right.
Kamau: Move down one. Drop a magic lens. Feed squirrel cheese (if possible).
Squirrel: Eat cheese.
Macadamia: Move right one. Pick up lens. Move right another two.
Lohk: Guard the loot pile.
Next turn, Mac lenses mammoth, others do inventory management and/or move hay to the right.
Aim: Distract or tame mammoth with hay, get out of here now!
Can you add having Kamau hang out on the other side of the ladder from the chicken coop to see if that triggers aggro? Doesn’t cost anything.
This plan looks great otherwise.
Mac doesnt have space to pickup lens does he?
Great – not. I cannot edit it, but just noted that Mac has no inventory space to pick up the lens.Claudius is right.Please downvote somebody! (I cannot vote on my own post, but neither edit it – weird!)
Ricki: Put the eggs in Molly’s bag. Pick up the shield and equip it. Move down one and one right.
Kamau: Move down one. Drop a magic lens. Feed squirrel cheese (if possible). Hang out on the other side of the ladder from the chicken coop to see if that triggers aggro (as suggested by Jingles)
Squirrel: Eat cheese.
Macadamia: Move right one. Drop shield (still 4 def., can be picked up next turn either by Kamau or by Mac again in turn 32.) Pick up lens. Move right another two.
Lohk: Guard the loot pile.
Next turn, Mac lenses mammoth, others do inventory management and/or move hay to the right (and maybe the big shield, too).
Aim: Distract or tame mammoth with hay, get out of here now!
Can’t pick up a dropped item in the same turn as it’s dropped. It counts as trading items then in which case Kamau needs to use his action for it (that might be viable though).
True, but Mac doesn’t have another action this turn, and Kamau doesn’t have one if feeding squirrel cheese can be done for free
heh. I only now thought about this. Look at the arrow pointing right into the pumpkin. Do you think that falling hay block would deal extra damage to the pumpkin now that there’s +grav effect? This arrow is SOOO suggestive!
edit: snips collected from my other comments, so it’s easier to see them. I can’t delete other comments I wrote, so please excuse me this duplication
*) escaping via ledge in mammoth’s location: LSN said we would take falling damage, that’s understandable – however, now we have a rope, this may negate the damage (I think we had such option in a similar setup in cathedral’s graveyard), and also we have staff of gravity, which wasn’t used yet (Lohk used her skill, staff was not activated in this dungeon yet!), so we actually may pull that off safely
*) if mammoth ignores the hay block we drop near him, then we could use the block as a cover for “abandoning” safely (hide/duck behind it so he can’t see us, and declare exit), or even wiggle into the hay block and walk/sneak/crawl past the mammoth (with the wind now blowing from mammoth to us, he shouldn’t be able to neither see nor smell us)