Botanya finished a dungeon! She can gain one new ability from this list:
Beanstalk 
: Creates a tall immobile stalk that grows straight upward until it runs out of room. Can be climbed to reach high places. Has HP 7. Lasts until end of dungeon or until killed.
Bloom II: Can use three abilities per dungeon.
Disarming Aroma II: Enemies in the room have -1 Atk.
Flytrap II : Creates a Flytrap pet that follows and fights for you. Has HP 4, Atk 4, Def 3, and an additional +2 Atk against undead. Lasts until end of dungeon or until killed.
Longspine Cactus I : Creates an immobile plant that with 6 Longspines. The Longspines can be removed and used as ammo for a bow or crossbow. Has HP 3. Lasts until end of dungeon, until killed, or until all Longspines are removed.
Mulch II: Twice per dungeon can recover 1 expended use of abilities when a living enemy creature dies nearby.
Nectar II : Heals a living creature by 3 HP, or a plant by 5 HP.
Petalporter : Creates a giant immobile flower which allies can step into, then step out of any other Petalporter in the dungeon as though moving between adjacent rooms. Has HP 5. Lasts until end of dungeon or until killed.
Strong Roots I: All created plants have +1 HP.
Tangle Vines : Creates an immobile patch of vines that enemies cannot pass through. Has HP 10. Lasts until end of dungeon or until killed.
Thorns: All created plants deal 1 unblockable damage to enemies that attack them.
Victory Garden: When not in a dungeon, gives extra Labour equal to number of uses.
First look and a lot of options are good. Depends on what we want to build her as.
Given that we tend to get a lot of wandering enemies (which can be a pain to deal with), I like the look of THORNS + Tangle Vines combo.
My vote is for THORNS since it would be more useful first over Vines
You know what also makes enemies move? Ranged attacks.
They can still attack on the turn they’re attacked. Sure would be a shame if the only target they could reach was the big pile of hit points.
Dayum. All the levelup options are good.
Honestly Botanya can be built to have so many creative hacks that we really need to consider using her more often.
Beanstalk – We can use this to access treasures and make shortcuts in dungeons, and the taller a dungeon is, the better the shortcut. Even so we’ve had several chests that we’ve missed because we couldn’t reach them otherwise in the same room.
Bloom II – More plants. More healing. We have reason to want both of these things, especially as she gets more types of plants.
I think going for Bloom early on is best option. It’s Tania core resource and it makes all other upgrades better once we get them.
The issue I see is that we already didn’t get through 3 uses of bloom in this dungeon. Nectar is basically never useful for healing a plant, because we could just summon a second plant instead for the same cost. The healing is therefore only useful on people, and we’d be better served in that case by Lohk. Taking beanstalk is going to have a strong use in most dungeons we’ve been in, so we are basically guaranteed to have a good use for it the next time we bring her.
I can think of two possible reasons to use Nectar to heal a plant:
I can definitely imagine uses for nectar when we consider the rest of her eventual kit, I just have a harder time doing that when her only option is the flytrap.
Oh, wait, missed one: Botanya self heals as a plant. That’s the real benefit, 4 HP on a character is big; that mostly offsets enchantment.
Alas, same mistake we made with Macadamia and Lohk. It’s true that we will want more uses eventually, but first we need options to use the abilities on. As pointed out, this dungeon already didn’t use all the available points.
Especially on Botanya, having her most powerful Bloom ability create pets is a major nonbo with Cordy. She needs other abilities.
Lohk at least we managed to use all her Channel stars. We haven’t even fielded Macadamia since increasing smiffing potential, in part because it’s too expensive – a problem that would have been fixed by taking Accessory Essence first, which reasonably works with copper rings since the Cobra hood is only the second accessory after the pope hat which could make a silver accessory ring. Magic Essence would also be okay, since wands cap out at silver even if they’re more expensive to use up. Smiffing more rings isn’t nearly as good now that we filled out slots.
I’m definitely a bigger fan of Beanstalk or even Tangle. But bloom is a solid choice. And I think her disarming aroma is kinda of a great reason to take her in just via that.
Victory Garden.
Because she’s not coming to the Poison Well, we don’t know whether she’ll be the best choice for future dungeons and we may as well earn extra gold.
imo second choice after we get bloom to comfortable level.
we can do all the other fancy stuff after we are done with those 2.
still vote up.
“Look what they need to do to simulate a fraction of my power” – Cordy
Getting access to a chest we would’ve missed is definitely worth more than 2 or 4 gold. Unless we want to leave Bot behind forever victory garden isn’t a good pick this round.
Why isn’t she going to the Poison Well? I think she’d be pretty useful to have since the water probably isn’t an issue for her. Also a lot of these upgrades she can get are pretty ridiculously useful and we should use her more often because we could really hack dungeons with these. Honestly I would think she’s a shoo-in for the Poisoned Well. Heck if we give her Beanstalk right now I bet climbing out of the well in a pinch would prove useful.
The thought is that Cyx is going to be poison immune like the undead we’ve seen (and specifically skeletons), so he’s an obvious choice, especially since he probably can’t drown. Lara’s kit is built around poison resistance at this point so she’s a shoe in, and given we know the dungeon is flooded and we just upgraded her room, Lohk’s ability to heal (especially if we can buy a wand of mending) could he super valuable to deal with unblockable drowning damage. There are definitely other ideas being thrown about but discord seems to be developing a concensus around Cyx and Lara at least (unless Cyx’s abilities are really incompatible)
One thing that might delay that is that Lara’s character dungeon might be coming up if that’s what happens after the next stage of Ricki bond happens. I guess it’s true that Lara’s current build is basically made for this dungeon.
Cyx and Lara are too obvious. And while I’m tempted to put Botanya as the third member, I feel Lohk is the better choice not just for the reasons you provided, but because this dungeon was described as small and cramped which means there are probably lots of passageways that only small characters can fit through. I also feel like Lohk should’ve gone to this last dungeon instead of Lara since she had experience with a zombie outbreak before and we could’ve gotten some unique dialogue out of it, so bringing her this time will give her some experience she’s owed.
Taking Victory Garden means actively choosing not to have Botanya be better in any way when we bring her to the next dungeon. Let’s say we don’t take her to 4 dungeons. That’ll earn us an extra 8 gold that can buy a healing potion. Is a healing potion more impactful than Botanya being able to get us to Coc’s chest this dungeon with a beanstalk, or heal us an additional time for 2 hp with nectar, or summon a flytrap that’s 33% more damaging and 50% tangier?
I actually think this is the only bad choice, because it incentives us to not take Botanya. She has a really cool set of abilities that can massively transform dungeons and control enemies. It’d be a shame to not explore that and her backstory in favor of incredibly marginal gold rewards.
Beanstalk. We’ve seen plenty of places where the ability to climb would get us extra chests or shortcut dungeons, and it ISN’T limited by corruption like Web.
I think this is the best choice of those proposed. An additional use of an ability we didn’t even use all of our uses of isn’t super appealing. Having more things to use that ability on is, especially when we’ve missed a chest, or had to sacrifice lots of time to retrieve a chest, for lack of web wall or rope in the farm, the manor, and most recently the tomb.
Victory Garden – We already know we’re not taking her to the next (two?) dungeons, so getting more money out of her now, and leveling her up later, isn’t the worst option.
The only benefit of this ability is that it gives gold. We could take it whenever Botanya levels up, so the opportunity cost of not taking it is just the gold from however many dungeons we let her sit out until the next time we take her. Given she’s one of only 4 characters that are bond uncapped currently, I can’t imagine we’ll want her to sit out too many dungeons in a row. Let’s say we wait 4 dungeons. We know that the chest in the manor near the safe that was too high for us to access contained a staff. Assuming that staff is as valuable as the gravity staff, taking something like beanstalk would give us 20 gold of sell value if it lets us loot a single staff chest like we missed before. Botanya would have to sit out 10 dungeons in a row to make up just the sell value of one staff, which is more dungeons than we’ve gone on at all in the past year and a half.
Loot is always going to be more valuable than a couple gold per dungeon, so giving Botanya the ability to earn us even a single additional piece of loot is going to cancel out the benefit of victory garden immediately.
Beanstalk.
If we’re thinking about bringing her into a dungeon, well, utility is her thing and that is a lot of utility.
It might be boring but I vote for Flytrap II. 4 Atk and 3 Def is stronger than any pet we have by a mile and would likely win their duels against the dastardly Pet Trainer.
Let’s just buy a torch next time we want to use her.
From a money perspective, note that Longspine Cactus is worth up to 12 gold if replacing 6 arrows, or 6 gold for 6 bolts. Longspines might also have the same anti-undead effect as the other plant abilities, which is amusing given that the designated archer is undead. If we’re lucky, they might even sell like arrows, converting abilities into cash with leftover slots.
Not my first choice (I also like Beanstalk), but that’s comparable to Victory Garden for raw cashflow unless Botanya is benched indefinitely.
i would expect them to be value 0.
Possible, in which case Longspines might wither and be discarded at the end of the dungeon. The other item-granting abilities are sellable though (thieves’ tools, pack of cigarettes, rings, Lohk’s potion).
Having the option to get backup ammo makes ranged weaponry a lot more viable.
Petalporter is kind of insane. Like imagine you have to escape a dungeon fast. Just drop one down at the beginning and then as long as Botanya’s with you, boom you’re gone whenever you need to be. Like seriously if we ever get close to death this is an instance life saver.
Unfortunately that will only work if there are no roamers (like the drunks in the tavern dungen, the mass of guards in the kobold warrens, the skeletons in the chapel, … ), so the usefulness might be a lot more limited than you imply. =(
On the other hand, petalporter would also give us the mobility to easily go back and deal with roamers. That would’ve been a game changer in this dungeon, or the Chapel, or the caravan.
Dropping a Petalporter by the obvious dungeon end also helps when sweeping the rest of the dungeon for loot. These double up when one of the dungeon goals is to reach the exit.
Mobility is hard to evaluate. Other abilities can create shortcuts (including Beanstalk) but Petalporter can only link two areas which are already reachable. Still, several dungeons have had levers that close some doors to open other doors, and teleporting through those decision points could be big. Same with bypassing hazards like broken glass or the Manor flies or the Pumpking, which have a cost to go through. Characters with extra movement could still benefit from these bypasses.
Beanstalk
So many good options, I think I’m in love.
At this point we have so many characters that if we keep switching them around we will end up with lots of weak guys instead of 4 good ones. I think botanya is really strong contender to become one of our main 4 characters.
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Separate vote (please comment your vote)
Who wants to keep Botanya home?
Who wants to bring her into dungeons?
Bear in mind she has a story of her own we won’t get if we don’t bring her along.
Bring Botanya when she’s suitable and we don’t have characters to bond level up instead of her. Same rules as any other character in that respect.
I mean both. It just depends on the dungeon. We’re not gonna keep her as a gold generator but we’re not gonna use her every time either.
We should bring her every dungeon she has very interesting kit and it’s worth to max her. She can heal, manipulate dungeons, create pets, and protect. Her story sounds cool as well.
Literally anything but Victory Garden. Level ups are super valuable! Victory Garden only pays 2 gold per dungeon currently, and we only get that gold if we DON’T use Botanya. 2 gold is nothing, particularly given the scale of the game. Dungeon eyes started in I believe March or January of last year, so we’ve been playing for a bit over a year and a half and have only done 9 dungeons in that time.
LSN has said before that we can’t do everything and get everything, and that he doesn’t expect the game to last anywhere near as long as willsaveworldforgold did. If we just aim to maximize character Bond, Botanya will only go on 4 or so dungeons. Do we really want to waste one of her limited level ups on an ability that, if we’d gotten her on dungeon 1, would have only yielded 16 gold in a year in a half, and less than that if we used her with any frequency?
Botanya has tons of interesting abilities and combos, none of which we’ll be able to use if we waste time on something like victory garden. Think about the utility of summoning level 2 flytraps with thorns. Given Botanya’s melee dmg debuff and the defense of level 2 flytraps, many of the enemies we’ve seen couldn’t hurt a level 2 flytrap, and every attack against them would do an unblockable 1 dmg to the enemy targeting them. That’s a great way to enable cleaves for Kamau or to wear down large groups of weak enemies.
Or think about how helpful a petalporter would be in any dungeon with a point we need to defend. We’ve seen a mechanic like that in the warrens (although we finished the dungeon so quickly that we never had to deal with it), the caravan, the Chapel, and with the roaming zombies here in the tomb. If we take victory garden now, it’ll be another 3 dungeons before Botanya can take petalporter and get the bloom upgrades necessary to use it without sacrificing most of the rest of her utility.
People are arguing that taking the gold generating ability first will mean we get the most gold possible, but the amount of gold victory garden gives now is incredibly marginal in comparison to the labor we already generate and the value of any loot we find. Botanya already had a hard time finding useful actions on most turns, even with the pipes. It’ll be harder still in a dungeon not built around infection and paralyzing enemies to find good actions if we don’t take any steps to give Botanya more to do. Upgrading Bloom, giving her new bloom actions, or buffing the pets she summons are all going to be way more impactful than 2 extra gold per dungeon.
Bloom II!
Beanstalk is super good Ya’ll.
I vote bloom as well
Since no-one has talked about it: Tangle Vines gives a sniper perch anywhere. Create vines, shoot through them at enemies (probably not on the same turn, to ensure the blockade is before combat). Enemies are alerted as usual and enter combat, but they need to fight through vines to get to you. Add Thorns and now enemies might kill themselves just trying to get to you, especially swarms. Standard combat rules only apply death at end of turn, so even enemies that overkill the vines would not be able to pass on that turn. This makes healing the vines with Nectar worthwhile since having them survive on even a single hit point is another turn of free shots (though it’s still better to make another patch of vines behind the first one, space permitting). Any remaining health helps constrain wandering monsters. Blocking ladders might even hold back flying monsters, though then we probably wouldn’t be able to target them through the narrow gap.
I still think Beanstalk is better for the times we’ve missed out without rope, but if you want the flexible ability to always have a good use, get Tangle Vines.