Dungeon 7 Turn 35
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Macadamia reaches out and cuts the short rope that connects the hay bale to the track. It falls to the ground, where the mammoth immediately stomps forward and starts pulling it apart. It no longer eyes the barn door aggressively, seemingly content to munch away at the snack that just fell from heaven. Maybe it was just a scared, hungry animal after all.
For the first time since joining this party, Macadamia feels pretty okay.
Taking only one more regular egg with them, the party leaves the barn and regroups out in front. Ricki hands the pumpkin an onion, which it happily chews up (and… swallows??).
Lohk pulls up one of the remaining vegetables sticking out of the ground. It turns out to be a carrot. It doesn’t explode, doesn’t attack, isn’t sharpened to a razor point, and doesn’t have a face. It is by all appearances just an ordinary carrot.
Lohk doesn’t trust it, and leaves it on the ground.
Just then, the ground trembles again, and there is yet another cacophonous cawing from somewhere off to the left. Ricki gets fed up and decides to go see what’s making all the noise.
“Are you going ahead alone? I thought we were leaving.”
“I’m just gonna check this out real quick. I’m tired of not knowing what’s going on in this dungeon.”
Ricki walks to the left, but she still doesn’t know what’s going on in this dungeon.
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CARROT
Treasure
Can be used to grow more carrots.
Weight 1 (Stack 5), Cost 1
…Well, then, come on… Which way do you want to go? … Up or down?
Porque no los dos?
or even three?
Problem then is that if we really want to get Kamau up to attack or interpose he can’t.
Hold on…let me replay King’s Quest again real fast
Mmm, pie.
Later:
Wait no ahhhhhhh
also hugo’s house of horrors, if anyone remembers that game.
Let’s watch the space quest trailer in the hole!
I started a re-play of Monkey Island 1 yesterday for nostalgia. How appropriate.
Neither. We are in a good position leave the dungeon with at least some of the loot we were after. The dungeon and beanstalk likely aren’t going to disappear, I see no reason why we can’t come back with a well-rested party.
Where are you getting this idea of our characters being able to RETURN to a dungeon, after they left it (successfully or unsuccessfully)? Afaik, that never has been the case, and I don’t understand why you would assume it is possible now.
Looking more like a Labyrinth every turn..
😀 Awesome, I had to hope someone was going to get it!
She said Down!
Mac: Pick a carrot out of the ground and leave it there. Then move left 1 and go up the beanstalk.
Ricki: Wait for Lohk to arrive. Trade her the wand of fire and robe for her torch and pet egg. Then climb down the beanstalk.
Lohk: Go left, make those trades.
Kamau: Pick the last carrot. Leave it there then head to the left.
This gets us vision on the two new screens, fixes Lohk’s inventory, and gets both remaining carrots picked so someone can potentially grab them with one action later.
My brain is still borked upon seeing this twist, but this is kinda of the only gamble we have given party member speeds. This sort of evens out the ranged attacks between party members (trading amount of people with said attacks for extra FIREBALL (Just Fireball) damage), and grabs us the most info in less time. Now we have three directions to explore. The treehouse, up the beanstalk, and down into the roots. Probably the source of the debuff is up above now. But we gotta get max intel now.
Help us, our brains are ALL borked at this one
well, this is foreboding.
we got what we came for, and more.
the bull is pacified.
consider turning around and exiting there?
As cool as this looks, we DO have a pretty good setup, plenty of loot, and a lot to lose. Want to do a controlled exit?
Ricki: Go back 1 right and lens the pumpkin
Kamau: Pull up a carrot
Mac: Pull up a carrot
Lohk: Give your egg the love and care it deserves.
Then next turn we can gather the carrots, possibly mess with the pumpkin if we deem it worth it, and leave.
I really want to see if we can get a pumpkin out of it. Kam can interpose, and everyone else shoot from a distance or pile on. Problem is, Ricki can’t hurt anything, Kam is on 1 dmg, Lohk could use Ray of Frost for 2dmg or Fireball, but Mac can go beat it up. Shall we?
LSN confirmed on discord that we shouldn’t expect any updates Wednesday so we can debate next steps until probably Thursday.
Da heck
Is that the Underground Spinach Demon?
I totally expect the way down to then lead to the right and under the pumpkin, where we discover what happens to whatever it eats, and also be surprised by it’s boss-state roots.
Otoh, what’s above? The scarecrow boss? A giant’s castle? Clouds and air elementals?
While I’m all for taking a peek 1 up and 1 down, I am worried that at least the ‘up’ may span several screens, and that it we MAY RISK FALLING (remember? staff of gravity, reduce falling damage, if we are going to cast that spell anywhere, we should do it HERE, because anyone who from the beanstalk will fall from above and crash into the ground here).
Maybe we should just put a fire to that beanstalk and watch in awe of the greatest bonfire ever?
We used the staff already, and it can only be used once per dungeon.
Uhm, no. We used Lohk’s cane to create the effect of the staff without actually using the staff. In the “characters” page you can see it still has all 4 charges.
So we would technically be able to use one charge of the staff still, while in this dungeon.
I just don’t know if we should yet, before knowing more about the remainder of the layout of the dungeon/enemies we will still be facing. Even if “don’t let our chars get killed from falling damage” is a good use, it’s possible that there is abetter use (e.g. “stop the crow-swarm from killing our chars, by grounding them”) yet.
Note: if there is a Castle In The Clouds, the fall hazard area, if any, may not map with this particular screen.
I love that we were able to pacify the mammoth in a peacful way. Especially LSN’s comment
is so heart-warming. Too few games altogether even allow for options of not to just brutally kill everything that moves, even fewer “reward” such behaviour, even nowadays. (Though to be fair, I should mention that there are some gems out there – like DeusEx where you can just sneak and tranquilizer dart almost every one and avoid other targets – and that I think by and large the gaming industry has made progress since the days I started playing video games.)
As for what to do from here on out:
I can totally understand being curious about this huge plant (and yeah, the assumption that it might be a magic bean stalk – possibly complete with a giant’s castle in the clouds at its upper end, where you can get a goose that lays golden egss and whatnot – is very tempting), but please don’t forget that one more point of damage taken on anyone but Kamau will make him remorse out of this dungeon and not get a level-up (his bond level is arguably full, so it would not as bad a loss as if that additional bond point was at risk, too).
Considering that we have already 33 gold worth of produce in our inventory as it is (bonus of 3 coins for each unique kind included) and could get another 6 from picking up the carrots (to a sum of 39), that means we would only have to sell some minor item(s) in order to be able to afford e.g. Kamau’s appartment renovation (50 gold), for example the and still be equipped extremely well (even keep the hunter’s bow and arrows!) for the next dungeon.
So I’m starting to lean towards the idea that we should consider leaving, (after loading the plate armour onto Molly and grabbing whatever loot we still can) before things blow up in our characters’ faces.
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Math:
Produce already in inventories (letter in brackets indicate who is carrying it atm):
3 ears of corn -> 3*1+3 (R)
4 onions -> 4*1+3 (R)
3 eggs -> 3*1 +3 (K)
5 tomatoes -> 5*1+3 (M)
3 potatoes -> 3*1+3 (M)
-> 33 (yes, the full amount of 33 gold, because produce is treasure, I checked. 😉 )
still available:
3 carrots -> 3*1 + 3
-> 39
(There’s also 6 more tomatoes and 1 egg back in the barn, but we’d have to “pay” one more vegetable in order to get those and exit right thereafter, 2 more vegetables to pay, if we went in, got the tomatoes and egg and exit left again thereafter
Also, there’s 3 more carrots in the “treehouse” screen, but they only stack up to 5)
e.g. sell magic lens and one of the two remaining corn spears (10/2 + 12/2 = 22/2 = 11)
39+11 = 50
(But any other combo of items sold that nets us at least 11 coins means we can afford a “story/bond cap unlocking upgrade” to the mansion. Presuming my theory that that’s what the “personalized mansion upgrades” do is correct, mind you.)
I need to add:
It’s 7 more tomatoes in the barn technically, but I think that’s more or less irrelevant because there’s no world in which we’d take 1 or 2 tomatoes in an inventory slot given everything else laying around (two thieves tools in the same pile, 1 thieves tool sitting in the old treasure room). Also don’t forget that we’ll be getting 1 gold from Lara’s labor while we’re gone.
For me the big reason we want to explore the bean stalk is that it almost certainly has to do with this preview on LSN’s ko-fi. https://ko-fi.com/album/Dungeon-Eyes-Prologue-6-X8X0HER4C
Ko-fi previews have thus far ALL been for new characters, and this seems like an opportunity to get another character. I’d take that against basically any amount of loot personally.
In case it would be about the loot (I read TNIM as: no, me neither), then one has to take into account that new characters up to now did have some empty inventory space, i.e. with the new character we would be able to carry more loot out of this dungeon. – That is not my reasoning for exploring instead of leaving immediately, but maybe somebody else thinks different. (A lot of people (for example: Lara) were frustrated when Macadamia did not pick up any loot when he could have smiffed or carried something out of the Kobold’s warren.) Longer term, I am for leaving but…not…just…yet…need…to…explore!
Don’t despair, we still have options that can result in brutally killing everything
Murderhoboing and spreadsheet gaming are depressingly common in this game. 🙁
For example slaughtering the Traitor as well as the Drow as well as Rusty as well as the Worg as well as the mammoth on first sight (or the pumpkin). Never just interposing enemies when we can also kill them. Never using Subdue spider when we can also kill it instead. Slaughtering all those drunks below the tavern, the kobolds in the warrens, and the watch dog. – Wait, do we speak about the same time line here?!
Mac: Pick a carrot out of the ground and leave it there. Then move left 1 and go up the beanstalk.
Kamau: Pick a carrot and feed it to the Punkin (or use Maca’s carrot if you can’t pick and feed at the same time), then head right. You’re gonna need to go control the weather with the weathervane while people are walking on clouds, might as well get over there.
Ricki: Wait for Lohk to arrive. Trade her the wand of fire and robe for her torch and pet egg. Then climb down the beanstalk.
Lohk: Go left, make those trades.
Reasoning: let’s get eyes on the new areas and get Kamau back over to the weathervane, which controls the direction of the wind, and seems incredibly likely to be related to some puzzle/gate mechanics up in the clouds on top of the beanstalk.
Downside: splitting up this much is going to make exiting hard if we’re on a time-crunch, but we can probably get everybody reunited at the Punkin relatively fast.
But Kamau’s the only one who can tank that Tomato plant, and we need to get eyes on new rooms immediately. And if we have to send Kamau that whole distance back to the weathervane from the beanstalk, it’s going to take FOREVER.
Actually Mac can totally tank the tomato plant now. It did 7 damage in melee in all other encounters – its damage seems to be based off of the number of tomatoes ON the plant, and Mac unfortunately encountered it when it had 5 tomatoes when all other melee fights were at 4 tomatoes. At 4 tomatoes the tomato plant did 7 in melee.
I vote we exit the dungeon ASAP and return later to full clear and/or investigate the giant beanstalk after the party gets a chance to heal and begin setting up the garden/farm back at the base. Kamau needs to level up.
Kam needs to get to the top of that beanstalk and grab the golden goose
Afaik it is not possibe to return to a dungeon (abandonned OR cleared). It never has been. Else we might have tried to go back to the tavern cellar in order to kill the rat king (or was it King rat? the bipedal one with the crown is the one I’m talking about).
If it worked that way, what would stop us from going here for one turn, leaving again, gaining the advantages of “having done a dungeon” in the meantime from the manor, then come back here again, rinse and repeat ad infinitum? I doubt that LSN would be game for such nonsense.
That was Rat, king. Not to be confused with rat king.