Dungeon 9 Turn 11
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The party takes a brief break (despite Coccyx’s continued barrage of arrows) and shuffles around all the defensive items they’ve been picking up. They also take this opportunity to talk about something that’s been on their minds.
“So Kam’s got a ghost sword now.”
“Yeah! That was so cool!”
“I don’t actually know what that was about.”
“I didn’t do anything different than normal.”
“Well, that’s your old sword, right? That used to be super blessed and powerful? Maybe some of that magic stuff is still in it.”
“Hey, welcome to the powerful-jerk-you-used-to-work-for-won’t-let-you-off-the-hook club. We should get shirts made or something.”
“It didn’t feel the same as that, though. The Emperor’s power was… well, it sounds weird to say out loud, but I guess it had a sharp, metallic “taste” to it? This didn’t “taste” like anything.”
“Hmm…”
“Maybe this is just what you can do now that you’re not relying on that other power?”
“Maybe you could always do it?”
“you should see if you can do it again”
“Yeah!”
“Sounds like fun.”
“We’ll see.”
After everyone’s inventories have been sorted out, Botanya heads to the right to explore the next room. She can still barely see anything, but she somehow has the sense that this it he farthest right she can go in this dungeon.
That Zombie at the ladder is probably the roaming one if it spawned in the room below.
Plan: Intercept Zombie and Inspect Tomb.
Botania: Move down the ladder and over to the top of the other ladder past the Jars. Stay there and get the attention of any wandering Zombie that comes by.
Kamau: Move Right, Open the undefended Tomb on the second floor.
Ricki & Pet: Move Right, Attack any undead that climbs out of the Tomb
Lara & Pet: Move Right, Attack any undead that climbs out of the Tomb and pickup anything it drops.
Reasoning: It is assumed that the zombie on the bottom floor just roamed up from the room below. This means it will move through this room on its way to us. Botania is there to meet it so it will lock on to her. The rest of the party will attack it next turn.
Everyone else is going to teach us about the tombs. If they spawn an enemy, Lara and Ricki are ready to deal with it, even it’s a Zombie since neither of them have any infection.
I consider this the “Safest” approach to the roaming zombie and unknown tomb.
The zombie is not obligated to lock on to Botanya if it sees Kamau. It may well detect that Botanya doesn’t smell like an animal.
Hence, since skeletons don’t attack unless provoked, it may be best to bring her down the ladder instead.
Also perhaps have Botanya pipe the zombie ricki is attacking in case the twenty percent chance pops again. It doesn’t say anything about line of sight being needed to pipe an enemy.
Botanya: Head down the ladder and break however many pots you can from that group. Loot the spoils. Head down the next ladder and stick to the far right of the room, out of reach of the RSkellys. Stand right there so you’re the first thing the Zombie runs into if it begins wandering around the room.
Kamau: Head to the right, then down the ladder. Loot the unattended coffin on the left side of the room.
Ricki w/ Shroom #1: Head right, then attack the left of the pair of zombies on the right side of the room.
Lara w/ Shroom #6: Head right, then attack the right of the pair of zombies on the right side of the room.
I think it’s silly to fear the pots in the dungeon. We aren’t going to TPK for breaking a few pots and collecting some more coins.
Ricki & Lara are surely able to dispatch those two Zombies by themselves, but having the Shrooms attack with them gives the Zombies another target to hit. And if one or more of them do hit a Shroom, we can get a gauge on how much damage Zombies do.
I think this is a pretty good plan. The ominous feeling Botanya got before is a bit worrying, but I do think it probably won’t result in an immediate party kill. There are too many pots for them to be that dangerous.
That being said, the last ominous feeling we got I think was in the manor, and we all know what a bear that dungeon was.
Plan: Variation on Claudious’ plan: Intercept Zombie and Inspect Tomb.
Botania: Move down the ladder and down the next ladder past the Jars. Stay there and pipe/ get the attention of any wandering Zombie that comes by.
Kamau: Move Right, Open the undefended Tomb on the second floor.
Ricki & Pet: Move Right, Attack any undead that climbs out of the Tomb
Lara & Pet: Move Right, Attack any undead that climbs out of the Tomb and pickup anything it drops.
Reasoning: It is assumed that the zombie on the bottom floor just roamed up from the room below. This means it will move through this room on its way to us. Botanya is there to meet it so it will lock on to her. It’s not impossible that zombies will ignore plants if they can see or sense other targets (see Ghast attacking Lara instead of the Flytrap it could easily kill). This makes it less likely that the roamer will see and attack the group, and indeed make it less likely to attack at all.
Can I just say that I find the ten darkened skeletons on the bottom floor of this room extremely worrying? According to our “cheat sheet” (where people have gathered information based on past dungeon, trying to find out stats and whatnot), they have an attack of 2 each. That’s 20 whopping attack all in all.
And on the “current party” page, Kamau has 14 defense, that means he gets 6 damage, if he interposes them for one single round. And he has 16 health, so he can do that 3 times, before he is killed, too, during the 4th time. Anyyone else going in there (without using Kamaus interpose) means probably (as in, even if we go in as a group, so the attacks get split a bit) a “death” in the party instantly. (Either because of HP running out, or because of remorse – Kamau has only 1 left, two or more and it’s bye-bye for him, or – more likely – both!)
And I wasn’t even taking the zombie (currently on the same level, we assume it is a roamer, but we don’t know) into account yet.
And we haven’t even laid eyes on the “boss” of this dungeon yet. Might be another faithless (who, iirc, had “intelligent targeting”, which would mean we’re screwed most likely, if we have to fight them, because of remorse).
I mean I get that in those 3 turns that Kamau is able to interpose 10 darkened skeletons, the remainder of the party would do their best to whittle them down (or stop them from attacking in Botanyas case), so in the second turn there might be significantly less of them, but I dread to think about what we could have done in this dungeon in this room, if we hadn’t brought Kamau.
Basically everyone (Ricki has 11 Def – if the heavy shield is used and 5 HP, Lohk and Macadamia also only have 5 HP each, Cordy has 10 HP, but can’t use weapons, shields, or armours) else we have available would get insta-killed by 10 darkened skeletons (if they went in there alone, and even if they were at maximum health, which Lara isn’t). True, if a whole group of people attacked them, then the 20 attack would most likely get split up (“no brains” so most likely random targeting), but that is waaaaay too unpredictable to be safe.
I get that LSN wants to make these things challenging, but I wish that he would into account a bit more (while creating the dungeon) about what is doable for our group, instead of “I’m creating the dungeon, it’s your job to figure out how to deal with the dangers within/win/survive it” (not a direct quote, because I don’t remember it verbatim, but he said something along these lines in a streaming session). Especially since “random targeting” is not something you can figure out reliably, ever.
You’re forgetting about Botanya’s ability to reduce melee attack by 1. That group of 10 skeletons is only 10 damage, which everybody but Lara can tank.
Wow, that’s handy (at least in big groups)! Thanks for the reminder.
Sorry for “double post”, but this is about something else entirely than what I talked about in my previous one.
This must mean that the opening on the right in the top level of this room is another exit, behind the undead owlbear and the beaver dams… (But where are the beavers? Did the undead owlbear eat them? And does that mean the dungeon will flood at times?)
That’s good to know, in case going back to the original exit might become too dangerous, but I’m assuming we would have to get rid of the dams first (and this time, we don’t have explosives with us. We absolutely should bug Paws to give us access to explosives in the future!) in order to be able to use that exit, though.