Dungeon 8 Turn 3
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With the first group of guards down, and with their allegiances apparently decided, Ricki and her friends avoid the pressure plate at the top of the ladder and join the (fake) ongoing battle above. They attempt to split their attacks strategically, but it appears that the merchant guards are able to protect the merchants similarly to how Kamau protects the party. The result is that with everyone’s combined damage, plus some assistance from the bandits, the guard hits the ground more or less immediately once the fight starts. Kamau takes no damage from intercepting the counterattack, but notes that this guard hits harder than the last batch.
The bandits let out a cheer now that their eternal battle seems to be decided. The remaining merchant lets out a pathetic squeak. It seems all of them, in THIS group at least, understand which side the party has taken.
Cordy raises a third little mushroom at the cost of 1 more HP. Again, they can keep it or send it to Lara.
Time to make friends! Yay!
Lara: Fill in the bandits on our mission, the wolves, and how we can get their buddies to cooperate. Encourage them to get the small bandit group below to join up with them for a better stand against wolves. Tell them the gear Kamau is dropping is for them, requesting they let us a have the main share of battle loot.
Kamau: Drop 2 longswords among the bandits, pick up the battle loot starting with plate once merchant go down and loot the chest on the right with your action. Heavy loot goes on Molly, lighter loot on inventory.
Ricki: Tell party and bandits about pressure plate trap so they all avoid it then move a room right, point out the pressure plate on floor 2 to Cordy then attack left eagle
Cordy: Assign little shroom to self then move a room right with Ricki and Spore Touch the right eagle. Pick up any battle loot from eagles.
Explanation:
-We want that plate from the guard, but Kamau is the only one with space for it(Molly) so he has to stay and loot.
-We’re dropping extra equipment for the bandits so that they’ll be stronger against wolves. Also to make them grumble less at us having a bigger share of battle loot than them. We learned(the hard way…) that intelligent NPCs can pick up and use dropped items, time to use that fact to our advantage! Keeping the chain armor per discussion with TNIM below.
-We are not attacking the merchant, because we know the bandits are attacking properly now that we got involved and should be able to finish him off.
-Ricki and Cordy go right to kill eagles. These 2 are chosen for this task for their high defence(8 and 6). As wild beasts, eagles will spread their attacks. As non-magical dog-sized animals, they should be weaker than Giant spiders, and definitely weaker than Owlbears so we won’t take damage, Cordy should kill and Ricki might kill.
-Pets do not attack because I don’t want to risk Daisy dying or a mushroom exploding on Ricki causing remorse.
-Next turn, we can use the info from bandits to peacefully loot last chest on room 1 with a single character. Or with just with a high defense character if we don’t learn anything.
We don’t know space requirements on cargo yet. Let’s not make too many assumptions until we do.
I also really don’t want us throwing away chain when we don’t know doing so is necessary. Chain sells for only 2 gold less than Heavy shields and takes up the exact same space in Molly. Beyond that, chain armor can be used to make silver rings of protection, which otherwise require we sacrifice unique hide armor or spend 23 gold to buy chain. Keeping that chain is worth it just for the smiffing potential.
Including this guard’s drops, we already have enough 2+ weight items with more value than chain to completely fill Molly.
And we looted less than a single room out of 5+ so far. Outside of Molly, we only have to find items with 8+ value/weight for it to be a better keep than chain.
Chain is so inefficient that even if we compare its buy price to other items’ sell price, we’d still be massively better off spending that weight carrying shields(23 vs 30)! And remember we’ll get a discount on buying from dungeon quest.
This is a dungeon explicitly said to challenge our carrying capacity(despite being small) so I don’t find stack-able cargo to be a reasonable assumption.
And again, we only looted less than 1 out of 5+ room of this dungeon so far. Plenty of better loot to come (potions? wands? treasure? more shields? better weapons? etc). I don’t like risking the bandits insisting on having the heavy shield as their share of battle loot when giving them chain and some swords would have mollified them.
Wait what? The only two or greater weight drops we’ve found are the chain, plate, and heavy shield. Unless we are counting on stowing Kamau’s plate and shield (I don’t think we want to rely on this), that’s only 3 multi weight items. As long as we’re using Molly space chain is explicitly better than shields. We’ve seen nothing on the next screen with higher value than the armor on this screen.
If you are planning on relying on stowing Kamau’s plate, it’s honestly an even better idea to keep the chain for now. Doing so would let us use the chain on Kamau as an intermediary between plate and no armor at all, while still saving us 2 enc on Kamau. Let’s us trade 2 enc for 2 defense, which isn’t bad.
2 plates, 2 heavy shields, 1 magma shield for a full Molly, though I feel confident we’ll find at least 1 item worth Molly-ing over trading magma shield in the over 4+ remaining rooms of loot (remember any chest can have good stuff).
The whole point of having Molly follow Kamau is that we can stow his plate and heavy shield as a free action. He has Dauntless for emergencies.
We don’t have a need for 3 heavy shields (Magma, heavy, heavy) in any reasonable party config (seriously – Cordy can’t use them and Lohk and Mac don’t have the room). That makes a heavy shield worth 10 less than chain armor, given we want to make silver rings of protection and would otherwise need to spend 23 gold to buy materials to do so. If anything we should be planning to leave the shield behind instead of the chain.
That’s valid, we could focus on getting a couple chainshirts (or similar) home for Mac and drop a shield.
I’m not sold on buying chain for silver rings. We’d have to take Mac(opportunity cost of clearing more of a dungeon) and it cost 33 gold+actions each. There’s a lot of manor upgrades I feel would be great purchases until we unlock gold rings to directly make +3 rings instead.
We need to take Mac to unlock the ability to make gold rings, so he’s going to make silver rings at least once anyway. It also only costs 33 gold if we have to buy chain, which in this case we only need to do if we choose to drop it on the ground right now instead of keeping it.
Silver rings, yes, doesn’t need to be from this chain nor prot. We could make some silver aggro rings during the gold unlock run which cost pratically just 10 with how common weapons are.
Or some silver prot from salvaged rusty chain/plate/other(like solar) which we encountered several times already.Also you can’t compare keeping chain as being worth 23 gold while saying making a ring from it doesn’t cost 33. If you’re spending something you kept over other stuff due to valueing it as worth X, then you spent X(+10 for base ring).
Edit: Crossed out incorrect sentence, see replies below.
Incorrect. Rings cannot be made from damaged versions of weapons or armor. It’s in the ability description for gear smiffing. Solar armor wouldn’t have worked as it was tarnished. If we’d found a non tarnished version of solar armor that probably would have been acceptable.
Do we really think we want 3 more silver rings of aggression over any rings of protection? We have only two copper rings of protection. We already have 5 rings of aggression, so the impact of 3 more silver ones is going to be muted by the fact that we generally value defense more than attack on at least some of the party.
Oh, you’re right, I forgot the undamaged part.
Edited plan to keep chain instead of heavy shield, thanks!
I agree with Johnny – even if we had room, we want the bandits well enough equipped that they aren’t dying to wolves.
We do not know where the wolves will emerge, so I wouldn’t count on us being able to equip bandits in every room well enough to fend them off.
True, but when it’s functionally free to do so we can equip a few
Whole lot of assumptions being made here. We don’t know cargo weight, we don’t know what else is in the dungeon. I think it’s a safe bet longswords aren’t valuable, but we’ve literally never owned a set of chain armor before, and WE CANNOT make silver rings of protection without using chain armor, or sacrificing unique hide armor. Let’s please not throw away new armor that we literally just got because we think we’ve fully understood all of the mechanics of this dungeon sight unseen despite us literally never having done that before. The replacement cost of that chain armor is higher than the sell price of any other loot we’ve found in this dungeon, and we really truly do want to be able to make silver rings of protection the next time we bring Maca into a dungeon.
Do y’all think that mean merchant guards have the actual “counterattack” ability like Kamau or is it just flavor wording for a regular attack that their version of “interpose” let them do at the same time as interposing?
The later sounds like a cool level up upgrade for Kamau’s interpose now that I think about it.
*wink wink* LSN plz
I was under the impression it’s the former, but that’s based on nothing. We’ll probably get a better idea as the dungeon progresses.
LSN – could you, for example, adjust the color of ‘missing heart’ icon?
Right now, it’s impossible to see the 3 ’empty heart’ icons
Word on the server is that the page was changed temporarily. After tomorrow it’ll go back to the old design and should be more visible.
It’s the anniversary of LSNs dad passing on, isn’t it?
What a lovely gesture to remember and honour him this way, this year again.
Lara: Talk to the bandits. Explain what’s going on, that you were sent by the boss to help fight and carry out loot. We’re happy to provide any extra equipment we find, but since we’re going to be traveling through the caravan clearing out all the guards, we’ll need to keep some of the defenses for ourselves. Pick up the plate armor when it drops from the fight. End your turn on the 2nd floor, dodging the pressure plate Ricki pointed out along the way.
Kamau: Drop the longswords you’ve got for the bandits to use, then avoid the pressure plate Ricki will point out for you, and go downstairs. Walk past the two bandits to loot their chest. Head back upstairs afterwards and away from the bandits you just sorta robbed to rejoin the party on the 2nd floor.
Ricki: Point out the pressure plate to the party and bandits. Loot the chest behind the merchant, pick up any dropped loot you can store (the hammer or any coins) and then head to the 2nd floor, dodging the pressure plate along the way.
Cordy: Assign the 3rd mushroom to yourself. Spore touch the merchant to spawn a 4th mushroom for Lara, and pick up the heavy shield plus any dropped loot that the others can’t carry. If you can move away now that combat is finished, dodge the pressure plate and rejoin the party on the 2nd floor.
Explanation: I don’t trust fighting new and unknown enemies when remorse is on the table, and I really don’t favor throwing away the chain mail. I’m very confident that neither Ricki or Cordy would die fighting the eagles, but not confident neither of them will take damage. Tomatoes did somewhere between 7 and 9 damage in melee, and they were tomatoes. Let’s not assume new enemies will be gentle. Other than the above, there’s no guarantee we can get the bottom bandits to not be hostile just because we befriended the top group. Now that we’ve more or less cleared this entire room, we will want to fully clear it before moving on. The bottom bandits wouldn’t be a safe fight for anyone, so we’d have to wait for Kamau to loot that chest if we can’t get them to be friendly, which would delay moving forward by another turn. Better to get it done immediately and worry about rearranging the plate and heavy shield later.
Lara only have 3 space left and plate alone would take 5. Kamau(Molly) is the only one with the inventory to pick up plate.
Also, the tomatoes comparison come with several caveats: First, it’s an unnatural dungeon creature whereas eagle are explicitly said to be a regular common wild animal everyone(in-setting) knows about. Also, it is immobile and a ranged enemy that weaken itself with every attack. Thus I feel giant spiders or owlbears are far more apt comparisons.
Lara’s enc appears to be messed up. She had 10 enc up through the manor, so I’m assuming that’s gonna get fixed.
We shouldn’t be risking losing plate armor on that assumption. There was a situation you assumed LSN would fix during the farm and it didn’t get fixed (D7T30).
I don’t trust this plan without some confirmation from LSN that it will get fixed.
I don’t think LSN would silently change character stats without letting us know, and I put the odds of him fixing that when it hasn’t affected anything in this dungeon yet much higher than him retroactively fixing an inventory distribution issue after the turn in which inventory was supposed to be redistributed. Reducing Lara permanently from 10 enc to 8 enc would be a huge nerf, and it seems impossible it’d be done without any comment indicating it happened.
Note: archive.org confirms the reduction.
It’s possible that we won’t get either chests contents with this plan, because the merchant and the bandits might be “guarding” it.
If you remember, even a mere rat sitting on it could stop our group from getting into a chest in the past. We don’t know if the bandits up top will “mop up” the merchant, thus remove their influence over the chest. We also don’t know if the bandits down below will let us “at” the chest. Might be we will have to escort them with the chest in order to fulfill the dungeon goal or something.
Still, it will be good to find out these things as soon as possible, so even if the “non-looting of the chests” happens, it will be a waste of actions for this one turn, but we’ll gain knowledge, so we can hopefully avoid more loss of actions in the future. Then it will be worth it.
I don’t think we’ve ever been stopped from looting a chest by anything other than an enemy being on that chest, but I think the only intelligent enemy we’ve bypassed to loot a chest was the magicrow in the warrens.
You are calling the pancake rat from https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-4-turn-8/ unintelligent?! Well, that may be factually correct, but made the pancake rat sad nevertheless.
Addendum to Lara’s talk: request that the most influential of the bandits talk to the fancy-pants person to explain the joys and romance of destroying capitalism so as to plant the seeds for some future Stede Bonnet conversion.
I can’t edit this post anymore, and it might be too late, but Ricki should drop the venom gland! We’d rather her be able to pick up whatever comes out of the chest, and at worst add a hammer to that, than miss out on picking up a 2 enc item in the chest because of the venom gland. I keep forgetting to look at the current party instead of the character page, so I forgot she didn’t have 2 enc open.
Maybe it’s the time to heal Cordy?If he eats a mushroom right now, he’ll heal to 100%.If I count well, Cordy has 3 missing, 7 left, 7/2=3.5 would be healed. So if Cordy takes 1dmg more, he’ll need to be healed for 4, and that won’t be possible anymore in one go.Actually.. it means we should use that wisely, because when character’s HP falls too much, the healing effect gets worse. Assuming the “half” means “rounded down”:((snip))src: https://onecompiler.com/ruby/3z3czge6zon the topmost row, it’s “current HP”, and cell format is “healed/wasted”, so if “2/1” is seen for Botanya who currently has 7hp, it means that she’d be healed for 3 in total (7/2 round down), and would be actually healed for 2 and 1 would be wasted (since she has max 9hp).Kamau at full HP heals & wastes 7hp points. Geesh. We can use that in combat though, when we’re unsure how much damage will be dealt to him.Now I wonder. Remorse. If non-Kamau gets hit, and gets healed at the same time. If that whole event ends up healing the person, or even just nullifies the damage, does Remorse kick in? Can we eat mushrooms as a preventive action for Remorse?
Eating a mushroom heals the eater by half of the MUSHROOM’s health. So 1 hp.
LSN clarified that on Discord.
No infinite-health hax.
Hoooly, now that was EASY to misread! Thanks for clarification. I’m rarely on Discord, so some things elude me. Maybe I’m picky, but I think for important bits as such, it should be added to the skill text, not just on Discord. It’s just a matter of “mushroom’s remaining HP” instead of just “remaining HP”.
LSN confirmed healing in the same turn doesn’t prevent remorse being generated. I had the same thought pre mushroom.
Remorse is much like radioactive decay. Nothing can prevent it…
Does Cordy spawning shrooms add to Kamau’s Remorse counter or is it like Lara’s cigarette addiction debuff where it doesn’t count if the user is voluntarily taking 1 HP of damage? Flavor text didn’t mention anything about Kamau feeling worried for Cordy’s safety, but I wanted to double check.
Hp sacrifices from abilities don’t trigger remorse. So permanently enchanting using scrolls like we did in last dungeon, summoning mushrooms, and smoking cigs are all fine, provided they don’t kill the user.
Kamau: drop Molly’s longswords for the bandits, hoover up all other loot, starting with the plate armor. Put all items above weight 1 into Molly, swapping with your inventory as needed.
Cordy: attack merchant with spore touch, assign mushroom to lara.
Lara: loot chest
Mushies: climb up onto your owners stay quiet.
Daisy: don’t attack. Stay quiet.
All other loot that drops and kamau can’t get, gets gotten by the others. Weight 1 items in cordy. Coins in whoever has the purse.
Ricki: Talk to bandits about how we go about convincing other groups that we are allies. Is there a password? Someone we could talk to? Also about arming themselves with the longswords we drop, against the wolves. Also whether they could, you know, just leave now the battle is resolved.
LSN: please disregard this plan in favor of meta’s if it turns out Lara wasn’t nerfed from 10 enc to 8 enc. Thanks!
This seem… extremely inefficient, Kamau isn’t even doing any actual action.
Why are we really so scared that a common and natural (see turn 1 text) smallish wild animal hits as hard as a giant mammoth? We know how stingy LSN is with information, it’s such a waste to not use it on the few times he volunteer some.
Even if eagles do 7, which I think is incredibly unlikely, that’d be only a single remorse on my plan.
I understand going for Meta’s plan if someone feel confident Lara will get back the enc, but not this one. Not with a turn 20 time limit. We still have at least 4 other rooms we haven’t started on yet and the roof of this room.
At least on my end I read the comment about Lara knowing what they are as a joke. Like sure that’s what they’re called, but it’s also sorta just generally making fun of the ridiculousness of the animal and its name. Also I think we are reading more into the animal identity being known than we should. Like just because most people could identify that a bear is a bear doesn’t mean a bear isn’t dangerous.
If we’re right that they’d split attacks among the party, we’d probably be fine attacking them with your plan. If we’re wrong and they do even 5 and hit the same person, that’d be a bad time.
All that said, I agree that I don’t like the inefficiency of this post, but don’t know what else to do if Lara really can’t pick up the plate and we don’t want to rush the eagle fight without interpose.
Sure, but it does mean a bear is less dangerous in battle than an elephant, unlike a same-sized abnormal dungeon-only monster with eldritch physiology.
”Dangerous” is relative, after all. I’m sure land eagles are dangerous to regular people, but not to people who can single-handedly shrug off the full brunt of an owlbear’s attack without a single scratch.
The split attacks is not only to due to the fact unintelligent animals spread out their attacks in general, but also to the fact that I’ve purposely attacked each of them with a different character.
We already relied on the fact that unintelligent animals attack whoever attacked them in previous dungeoneering.
I will not argue the inefficiency point – it is less efficient than the other plans – in the worlds where all plans work. That is, IF attacking without interpose doesn’t cause remorse due to the unknown attack patterns of an unknown creature, AND if the plate doesn’t drop for the bandits because LSN decides to keep Lara nerfed.
The inefficiency is the cost of the lack of risk. And every time we assume things, we run a risk, and often lose and get jeered at as “greedy”. So I present a conservative plan.
Also, between your plan and meta’s, I must say I vastly prefer “losing” the plate, to gaining remorse.