Dungeon 7 Turn 40
————
Kamau shoves past the spider and opens the chest it guards, looting some gloves that would’ve been a lot more useful if found earlier in the dungeon. Macadamia then grabs the chest and shoves it over to the treehouse entrance, which allows him and Daisy to get a boost from Kamau up to the roof. Kamau is able to pull himself up shortly after.
Kamau takes no damage from the spider, and Macadamia takes no damage from the barrage of acorns, but it’s a near thing. All of a sudden the pollen seems even more debilitating than before as the ground trembles once again…
Ricki and Lohk climb back up the giant stalk just before it visibly shoots up out of the ground, growing taller before their eyes. They then trade the torch for the expended wand, and Ricki heads to the right.
The pollen is now not only affecting Atk, but Def as well. With a -4 penalty to each, every remaining monster in the dungeon is now that much more dangerous.
————
GARDENING GLOVES
Accessory
+2 Atk against plants. Allows plants to be pulled from the ground easily.
Weight 1, Value 5
THERES the hard timer. Time to see what the flower bloomed into, grab some carrots and leave
We can still safely loot the squirrel chest. And if the corn knight and bean sprouts will still let us pass, we can collect the veggies from the bottom of the pit and loot the chest there too. Unless of course the pit just got deeper…
Wow, that sudden -4 def almost fucked us over.
I feel like having that rule change happen with no hint, warning, or way to react whatsoever(since it apply on our actions that were locked in last turn) is poor game design.
Imagine if in the Kobold Warrens, the justicar got to attack(and maybe kill) Ricky the same turn he spawned. This is the equivalent.
Last time we actually had a situation like that but LSN didn’t punish us (when we left our items in the second room of the Kobold Warrens, and tried to grab it as the guards showed up. We should have been attacked by those guards but didn’t) I suspect that something similar would have occurred as well
To be honest, I also think that’s kinda unfair. The pollen has just worked retroactively. If something happened and it now “intensified” to affect DEF as well, it should now be -4 Atk -1 Def, since it has just started affecting it. Ok, want it to be strong? Make it -2 Atk. But 4? One for each past tick? What will we get on next tick? Will it be -5? That would only make the step we’ve got now even more nonsensical.. Or maybe -8, atk going -1 per 10 turns, and def going -4 per 10 turns? That would make sense, but geeesh
We know from the streams that a second harsh timer is pretty common. Walking around and taking actions with little health/remorse and barely enough def is risky. That’s not really a shock. We’ve had some surprise or another cause character damage half a dozen times now.
Honestly, I feel like any time anything bad happens lately people whine that it’s bad game design because their plans were the most perfectest optimal bestest things ever planned and if they didn’t see something coming it must not have been possible to see therefore their plan should win ever and forever you meanie dungeon master.
I’m getting a little sick of it. People have been predicting that something will happen on turn 40 for over half the dungeon. Something happened. We chose to be in combat with a character with 2 HP on turn 40, but that’s no one’s fault but ours.
I don’t know that you’re wrong that -4 def without a turn’s warning is really nasty (potentially kill Ricki in ‘safe’ combat from anything but max HP? Yikes.), but I keep seeing people calling for caution and being dismissed, and then bad things happening and the cautious people being dismissed *again* because “it wasn’t foreseeable”.
The only remaining insight we needed to mitigate this was “maybe the bad thing on turn 40 isn’t *solely* restricted to the stalk”. That isn’t some kind of shocking and impossible guess. Any of us could’ve come up with it. We just didn’t.
E: I guess this rant isn’t super-applicable to you. It’s just been building for a while. Sorry.
Hey, I was pleading for caution! *Laughs* – and also floated the idea of extra dmg this turn (I thought the stalk would toss fire or something at us, really. 😉
How much stuff did we leave on the floors of the barn? Trying to gauge if it’s worth going back to pick it up.
According to my last count, it was 7 tomatoes and 2 sets of thieves tools. (in the “pile” room)
1 Egg (because they only stack up to 3) I think in the coop room. (which might have spawned LOADS more chickens by now…)
Oh, and 1 more set of thieves tools in the room with the skeletons, iirc.
and of course we have to feed the pumpkin for even trying to see how many chickens are there now
Also 1 loose onion in the coop room.
My guess is that there are no more chickens. The dungeon is supposedly clearable, so one eould guess chickens are now fed and sleeping- neutralized.
I’m too shocked with the DEF penalty to write even a dumb plan, but I think we should take a look at the “flower” – which may be now more than 1 room upwards, since the stalk grew up – so someone with at least mov 2 should go, definitely not Lohk. Ricky then.
Kamau: Kill a chest squirrel using your hilt.
Macadamia: Kill the other chest squirrel with the swiftblade.
Lohk: Move up the beanstalk. If you encounter no new enemies and the beanstalk is now another screen taller, move up again with your action.
Ricki: Grab the picked carrots from your screen, then move two screens left. Drop the carrots you just picked with the two carrots on the ground.
This gets us setup to loot the squirrel chest on the following turn, gives us vision of the stalk now that it’s grown, and combines the carrot piles for easy looting by any other character. The two piles add up to 5, so it’ll fill a slot when grabbed.
The plan on the following turn will be for Kamau to lower himself back down to the spider level and interpose. While interposing, he can help Mac get back down from the squirrel level, and Ricki to get up to the squirrel level. Ricki will loot the squirrel chest, then everybody will get down from the treehouse, with Kamau moving last to keep everybody safe with interpose while moving. Ricki has 1 defense so she can handle an attack from the remaining squirrel. If Lohk gets into trouble she’ll be able to use mom senses to get away. Mac and Lohk both have their actions/movement open this turn so we can always decide to instead kill the spider on this turn or do something clever with either of them based off of what Lohk reveals this turn.
What if the spider climbs after Kamau and ends up attacking Mac? I feel the safe way to play until we leave is having Kamau interpose at all moments.
We’ve gotten basically full stats on the spider due to having controlled one before. It has no ability like chase down on the wolf spider, so it’d be completely out of character to have it chase a character out of its encounter zone (I don’t think we’ve seen any enemy do this before, let alone an unintelligent one). I could of course be wrong – after all I was wrong about not all of the squirrels attacking Mac last turn, but I was right about the spider not changing targets to Mac.
My fear is that the rooftop of the treehouse and the room where the spider is are the same area and we know the spider walks on ceilings and walls.
Also I should have said, per this turn Kamau is already upstairs by the squirrels. It just wasn’t shown and instead was in text.
Kamau: interpose at top of treehouse between all 3 squirrels
Mac: kill squirrel on chest
Ricki: climb up beanstalk as far as you can go. Examine bulb at top.
Lhok: move left one and snipe squirrel on left side of treehousr
Plan is to have Ricki investigate stalk. Fingers crossed it’s the new char.
The rest can kill squirrels to get chest. Kamau can shield the rest of the party and the spider if it somehow chased us up too
You could just have Kamau attack a squirrel with his hilt instead of interposing, and have Lohk do something else.Edit: I just saw your comment also expressing concern about the spider following them. I don’t think it will, but this turn was a very near thing due to my attempted optimizations, so this is a super reasonable suggestion.
If squirrel decides to attack lhok in retaliation. That’s a remorse. Still kills 2 squirrels and covers the odd chance of spider
My point was that you can just not have Lohk participate. Pick a carrot or something.
Kamau: back down to spider level. Interpose as you go. If you have to choose a group to interpose, interpose the spider.
Mac: back down to Spider level, attack spider with swiftblade.
Lohk: go left and attack spider with ray of frost.
Ricki: go to treehouse area and shoot the spider with your bow.
This plan clears the spider and allows Mac to no longer need interpose to deal with squirrels. Also eases undoing the rope later so we can take it back, as it is 8 gold to buy.
What if you use gloves and try to pull out the bean stalk? It’s magic so might work?