Dungeon 8 Turn 10
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While Ricki uses the potion on the ground to restore Daisy to full health, the rest of the party finishes off the two remaining merchant guards. They don’t drop any loot, but the chests they guarded are now free for the taking.
Ricki runs to the right, and past where the owlbear was standing to explore a fourth room.
There are a few things in here to be concerned about, but the angry owlbear directly across from her is perhaps the most pressing.
Big boi!
Woah, giant doggo! Should we lens that instead of a little one?
I really feel like we should start the big fight ASAP though.
Even action economy aside, there is a important reason to let them beat each other up:
Intelligent enemy targeting information
Do sapient enemy groups prioritise low def first? Low hp? Or maybe try to kill the highest attack target first? Do they know exact damage needed to kill, splitting their attacks strategically or can they massively overkill a single target? Or maybe only those explicitly intelligent(e.g. Undead knight) or commanded by a leader (e.g. Justiciar) fight intelligently and they’ll spread their attacks like dumb animals?
So much critical information we’ll get by watching them fight each other if we don’t interpose with Kamau. Imagine when we encounter a guard group in a future dungeon without Kamau, knowing its targeting will let us tackle it with maximum safety.
I’m heavily against not interposing in that fight. We know wolves will attack, and it sure looks like wolves can attack from the roof. If they attack from the roof, that huge group of bandits actually has a reasonable shot at defending itself if we keep it in good shape. Letting it get hurt by the guards isn’t going to help us out in the long run imo.
We can’t assume the wolves will fight that group first. For example, roof-spawning wolves could attack the bandit group in room 2 first, which is straight up mission failure if they fall.
The only way to not gamble everything on wolves’ first target, is to not give them time to rampage.
And giving us data points on sapient enemy targetting is supremely helpful for not only the remaining guards in this dungeon but also every future dungeon with them(aka the long run).
The only way we get any extra time once wolves start spawning, is if they can be efficiently cleared. Any large group of bandits would only need interpose support from Kamau to kill wolves, provided they’re well equipped. This is the largest group of bandits we’ve found, so lets not turn them into a small group of bandits.
I’m saying we should do more BEFORE the wolves spawn by avoiding any unnecessary action, thus leaving earlier aka giving the wolves less time.
Per King Marth’s stream notes on the warrens, invaders can attack immediately any target they see upon entering a room. So we can’t rely on Kamau interposing in time for every group.
We’ve had mixed results on that. Last dungeon newly spawned rat kings could not attack the turn they first saw us. Similarly the guard that entered the tavern didn’t take an action on its first turn. The justiciar did take an action on its first turn post spawn though. Unclear whether the wolves will be more or less like the justiciar.
Unfortunately the only actual gating item we have is the elimination of all guards, and this fight is blocking our progress forward. There are any number of chests that might have cargo in them, but getting 10 cargo won’t finish the dungeon if we don’t also take out the guards, which is something we will struggle to do without Kamau. On the other hand, theres lots of looting we can do without his help.
I don’t think fucking around with this fight will result in us getting appreciably more done in the meantime, because much of what else needs to be done is dependent on either having Kamau to interpose, or lies beyond this fight. If we don’t help the bandits, when do you think they’ll finish beating the guards, and what else will we be able to accomplish in the meantime?
The tavern guard had no enemies to attack on its first turn. And I’d say the wolves are closer to the warren guards than the rat kings since they’re both explicitly a stated dungeon timer. But I admit it’s not quite as clear cut as I first thought.
Both guards and cargo are goals, we need both to finish the dungeon. So there’s a lot of stuff we have to do without going beyond the big fight. For example:
T: Trigger the fight with Kamau, others open 2 chests and use bandit token
T+1: Kamau picks up loot pile, others open bandit chest, use magic lens on wolf, open owlbear chest
Then at T+2 we help bandits finish up the fight. Since they’re already beat up, we can do without Ricki damage as she loot new owlbear chest.
Or once we figure out their targeting pattern, interpose might not be required so maybe we could send people to defeat guards on T+1 without interpose. Either way, we have enough stuff to do in the meantime that we’d need to do anyway.
Did you see my proposed timeline? Is yours faster/does it lead to more getting done? My proposed timeline gives us every accessible chest except 1 guard chest. We don’t know we can access the bandit chest even with expending a token. Remember that merchants buff their guards, and that guards can interpose against damage to the merchant. Right now it looks like you wouldn’t have the bandits finishing their fight with the guards until turn 13, which means the merchant wouldn’t be down until 14. Unless we want to skip getting the token (assuming us letting them get killed still gets us one), and any drops from the fight, that puts us moving onto the wolf all the way to turn 15. That seems slower than my proposal and it’s not clear to me that we have good actions to use on all those turns that still keep Lara, Cordy, and Kamau arriving back on screen 3 by the end of turn 13/14 to be ready to face the wolves. There’s also the issue that failing to help the bandits might well mean that we fail to befriend them, which would necessitate spending more turns fighting them too/not getting a token to use on another group.
If you can come up with an outline where it really seems like we’ll save time by having the groups fight it out, I could see an argument for it. Theoretically having groups fight for us saves us time, but if we don’t actually have good actions to use while waiting for the bandits to finish the fight on their own, we won’t actually save any time. Finishing off guards slower so we have time to like, fight the stumps on screen 4 for example does not seem like a good use of time.
Given we know there are more than 10 units of cargo, looting everything is less important than killing every guard. We can alway come back to loot while Kamau interposes for some wolf fight. We can’t continue to fight guards if we need to save bandits from wolves.
The optimal timeline was what I suggested last turn. It would have looked something like:
T10: Big fight started, token used, both guard chest looted, R4 scouted
T11: Cordy finish a naked guard, Kamau loot pile, Lara loot dead owlbear chest, Ricki loot new owlbear chest
T12: Lara finish naked guard, Kamau+Cordy finish big fight guards, Ricki loot R2 bandit chest
T13: Lara bonk merchant, rest kill big wolf,
T14: Cordy lens a small wolf+scout R5, rest finish small wolves
But you insisted on healthy bandits instead of saving actions.
Starting the fight on bandits side is enough to immediately tells them we’re allies per T3, before the battle was even over.
We don’t need every chest, but given 3 in hole are very dangerous and time-consuming to go for, we don’t have that much wiggle room.
Refusing the optimal timeline last turn did already kill most of the saved action though, mostly extra targeting data points left to gain. I wish had the time and energy to argue for it better at the time, but I’m busier than last week now. 🙁
Starting the big fight without commiting means we likely lose.
??
What are you talking about? KO bandits do not make us fail mission. Only wolves do. That’s been explicitly stated since the very start.
I mean, we don’t know what the big wolf does, and this plan includes no time for lensing it before we fight it. Say it does AoE, and you plan on having mushrooms fight the wolf. That’s up to 3 remorse, and also a dead Daisy regardless of whether she was fighting, since your plan also didn’t call for healing Daisy, leaving her at 2 hp during all subsequent fights.
I’m also not certain that there’s leeway to allow Ricki to navigate everybody through all of the traps, but that could just be me not thinking it through completely clearly. Seems like turn 11 could at least involve Cordy having to trip the pressure plate to get back to the guards.
You’re also assuming the bandits will still be friendly to us after we purposely left most of them to die to guards and didn’t help with the fight until the last minute. If they aren’t, that will further slow us down as we have to navigate the hostile bandits (it also means we’ll have one fewer token to handle any other bandit groups we need to).
It’s an outline. Specific details/optimization can be nitpicked and adjusted, but my point is that the core idea it is built around would have saved us actions. For example, if we want healing Daisy:
T10: Big fight started, token used, both guard chest looted, R4 scouted
T11: Cordy finish a naked guard (after dropping heal potion on roof), Kamau loot pile, Lara loot R2 bandit chest, Ricki loot new owlbear chest
T12: Lara finish naked guard, Kamau+Cordy finish big fight guards and drop a lens, Ricki heal Daisy from R2 roof floor potion
T13: Lara battle area floor lens small wolf while bandits bonk merchant, rest kill big wolf,
T14: Ricki loot dead owlbear chest+scout R5, rest finish small wolves
Per my previous comment, we already know bandits are friended as soon as we enter battle on their side. Again, see T3’s text. It cannot be based on number of bandits surviving the battle, since it happened before the battle was over.
Actually, all we know is that the bandits befriended us on a turn when we successfully KOed a guard while fighting on their behalf. LSN said crows on the farm would be able to differentiate between us helping them, and simply trying to use them to clear enemies. I don’t see why bandits would be dumber than crows, and attacking one guard (or, as I think was actually suggested, potentially failing to push a guard off of the wagon when they interpose for the merchant) with one person to set off a fight might not work the same way as a full party press that successfully finished the dangerous part of a fight in favor of the bandits.
Also, just so you’re aware, only Ricki can lens through walls. Everybody else has to have vision on the thing they are lensing because they don’t have dungeon eyes. The only way to get a pre battle lens off is to have Ricki do it from below, or from above the rat tunnel wolf.
Just because we aren’t doing all their work for them doesn’t mean we wouldn’t still be helping the bandits a lot.
Instead of a very close match-up they might barely win at best, we’d distract a guard turn 1 then return to finish the fight by the time they lost like 2/6 people.
Thanks for the info on lens!
Just observation, not plan for action: On the lowest floor there is a mine on the right side!
Without breaking through walls, we can only reach the 5th wagon by walking over the roof (where the three grey wolfs (?) are).
Yep. Big boi is a mandatory fight to keep moving.
Did the owlbear aggro from having the owlbear boots?
Ricki is not wearing the owlbear boots, so I presume that the owlbear was just looking at the right (left) side and noticed Ricki and Daisy – maybe it just had a pot of coffee and was more alert? Or heard its companion’s cry of death? Or mastered a perception check or whatsoever?
It’s just we entered direct line of sight of a lone (wild) owlbear. It will charge at the top of next turn.
To be fair, we didn’t give the other owlbear a chance to alert. We attacked it before we ever came within sight of it. That’s part of why I wanted us to attack it when we did – I assumed it would alert as soon as someone walked by, which would’ve made this sequence of screens quite dangerous to scout.
Yeah, I imagine LSN would be cackling if Ricki had tried going by two owlbears.
Ricki: Run back two screens left. Point out the pressure plate by the ladder, and lead everybody back one screen right to screen 3. Attack the guard with the buckler and longsword (7 dmg/12 max damage]
Kamau: Wait for Ricki, then follow her back right, stepping over the pressure plate trap she points out by the ladder along the way. Interpose for the big group fight, defending the bandits as well as your allies from all guard attacks.
Lara: Wait for Ricki, follow her back right while avoiding the pressure plate, then attack the guard with the shield and battleaxe. (8-10/14 max dmg]
Cordy: Wait for Ricki, follow her back right while avoiding the pressure plate, then attack the guard with the greatsword. (9/14 max dmg].
Daisy: Attack the same guard as Ricki (10/12 max dmg)
Lara Shroom: Attack same guard as Lara (9-11/14 max dmg)
Cordy Shroom 1&2: Attack same guard as Cordy (11/14 max dmg)
Cordy Shroom 3: Attack same guard as Lara (10-12/14 max dmg)
Explanation: Biggest priority is KOing guards. We can always loot on our way back without any great difficulty, but we now HAVE to get through the large wolves to finish the dungeon. We can’t access the screen 4 merchant group without going above. I think to do that safely we are going to want to lens the big wolf, which means killing that owlbear.
So far as the damage numbers go, the thought here is that the bandits will probably split their attacks up a bit. There are 6 bandits. If any two of them hit each of the three guards, we should take out all 3 in a single round. That just leaves the merchant, which Ricki can help clean up on the following turn while Cordy and Lara kill the owlbear (and Cordy drops the lens for Ricki) and Kamau collects our loot pile from the last screen.
Sounds optimal.
Would just like to point out we want to loot before trying the mousehole later, in case a chest has equipment for it.
The way I imagine our next few turns working out is something like the below.
T11: Take out guards as above.
T12: Lara and Cordy take out owlbear (17 dmg minimum, should 1 shot it). Ricki takes out merchant and picks up dropped gold. Probably annoyingly gets a token. Kamau backtracks to grab loot pile (mostly for boots). Cordy drops lens near owlbear for following turn use.
T13: Cordy and Lara loot former owlbear chests on screen 4 and 3, return to screen 3 to get ready to fight big wolf. Ricki lens big wolf using floor lens dropped by Cordy, then return to screen 2 to point out floor trap to Kamau. Kamau loot one chest on this screen, then head back to screen 3 after Ricki points out the trap.
T14: Team fight wolves
I’m curious, if we would be able to get a token from the guards/merchants (similar to the one we got from the bandits), if we helped them in one fight against the bandits, knocking them out for a change. Because if so, that would be super helpful to get past the guards with the longswords and crossbows in front of the locked grate.
Up until now, the separate groups did not demonstrate having a hive mind, so it might just be possible (as long as that group of merchants/guards didn’t witness us culling another group of them red-handed)….
Besides, knocking out the bandits, too seems to keep them safe(r) from the wolves, since they will be “out of the game” somehow…
We need to beat all of the guards anyway, so I’m not sure it’d save much time.
Aren’t we risking another Gardening Glove? I mean, getting too late to chests that might have useful items for this very dungeon? Shouldn’t we just loot the chests and be done with the wagons as we clear them? We can escape from the top without needing to go back to the first room.
In the farm no one was to blame, we didn’t have a way to climb the tree, but in this dungeon? I don’t see a reasonable justification, not even KOing the guards.
The issue is that I can’t come up with an efficient series of turns that lets us clear the guards and loot. Inevitably it seems to waste one or two Kamau actions. The proposed series of actions still clears out at least one of the guard chests, and we have no guaranteed method of looting the bandit chest. Given the only way we win this dungeon is to take out every guard, and we have no way to the 4th screen guards other than through the big dog, I’m prioritizing clearing a path to the revealed fights that will require interpose on screen 4 over looting the one guard chest right now or the bandit chest we aren’t precisely certain we can access.
It’s possible there’s a gardening glove in that chest, but it’s also possible it’s just another unit of cargo. Cargo is necessary to win, but has multiple sources and we can win without grabbing them all. Guards all need to be defeated, and Kamau actions are indispensable for doing that.
I wouldn’t count on escaping from the top. It was said it would do damage. Hard to say how much, but if it winds up doing 5 or more between the whole party we might miss a Kamau level. Also I would be concerned about pets surviving the fall
2 unblockable damage per character is deffo a remorse. Plus mushroom splatter means comic end.
We could use the rope and – wait, no rope 🙁
OK, if we find a rope, we can use that.
If we need it for survival, Lara can use Web Walls to the side of the wagon and gain more corruption.
That said, I wouldn’t count on escaping from the top!