Dungeon 9 Turn 24
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Everyone joins Kamau in the newly-opened room. Ricki opens the upper chest and finds another enchantment scroll! Based on the insignia, this one seems to empower weapons with the poison element. Kamau opens the other chest and finds a dragon tamer’s robe, also attuned to the poison element. He drops his wooden stake to make room for it.
“This one room reminds me a lot of the place where we met Mac.”
“Remember all those kobolds, acting all weird and wearing robes like that one?”
“There might be a connection. That other group was trying to raise a big frog thing, so we should be careful. There could be a similar monster down here somewhere.”
Ricki, of course, can already see the giant cobra on the bottom floor. Hard to miss it, really.
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DRAGON ROBE, POISON
Armour
Def +3 against poison damage only, and +1 damage when dealing poison damage.
Weight 1, Cost 20
ENCHANTMENT SCROLL OF VENOMOUS
Consumable
Can be consumed to bestow the Venomous enhancement on a weapon or ranged weapon until the end of the dungeon. If 5 HP are spent when doing so, the enhancement is instead permanent.
Weight 1, Cost 25
Removed duplicate
Won’t the pet get sniped by Coccyx?
Possible, but better to have less infection on Ricki if possible.
Plan: Prep for left side of dungeon
Everyone move up and left to Lever room.
Ricki: attack zombie with pet.
This gets us set up to either deal with rats or Ghast next turn. I have Pet attack as well in the hopes to negate an infection on Ricki. I think the odds Cyx decides to snipe it are low.
The benefit to the rats is a Tomb and a Mulch but costs us 3 turns.
Ghast is good target since it might be the last one for Puzzle chest.
Please leave a comment for which target you prefer. Especially if you’re not on the discord.
I prefer hitting the rats. We are going to be so incredibly outraged if we miss the puzzle chest because of the rats’ tomb it won’t be funny. Also, we need to mulch before facing snek.
I don’t understand. Isn’t that an argument for attacking the ghast first?
If you’re thinking that maybe we (also) need to kill the rats to open the puzzle chest, I don’t think so. The front and top of the chest are the exact same color as the ghast’s skin. The rats are a darker green (darker than the end of the chest too).
In any case, my vote is for the ghast. I want to see what we get from the puzzle chest, and it seems likely that killing the ghast will pop it open.
Since there was already a ghast coming out of one of the tombs, I would assume what Siv would find “not funny” is the possibility of the tomb behind the plague rats containing a ghast, too, and us having to do a whole round of lever switching in order to even get to that tomb again (after we fought the claymore one yada yada).
So rats first to make sure there is no ghast in their tomb, then already visible ghast is his line of logic.
Incidentally, I’m all for going for the rats first, too.
That is precisely correct
Gotcha. I wasn’t thinking about the lever flips required, but now that you explain it that makes sense. Thanks!
Meanwhile, Botanya: “the giant cobra is nice’
Plan: Prep for left side of dungeon plus testing snake
Everyone except Kamau: move up and left to Lever room.
Kamau: After everyone else left the room, move back and forth around the snake a few times then go join everyone else in the lever room.
Ricki: attack zombie with pet.
Do all the same things as Claudious’ plan, on top of checking if the snake has unblockable damage. He probably don’t since he’s heavily hinted as a poison analogue to the salamander which didn’t, but better know for sure so we can make an informed decision to fight it or not in the future.
My concern with this is that we do discover it has unblockable damage, and now we’re short on hp to finish dungeon. It also wouldn’t let us know for sure, since it might have different attacks like the salamander did.
Both bosses with alternative unblockable damage(Undead Knight, Mammoth) always deals it if they can’t get past defense with regular attacks. And infection and remorse are much more concerning timers than hp right now.
I’d rather lens it if possible. Triggering one attack won’t necessarily tell us that much – the salavamander’s AOE attack only had a 30% chance to trigger, for example. But it could get Kamau into serious trouble – for example, if the cobra spits poison in his face and blinds him. Instead of making an informed decision about whether to fight it, we’d be forced to fight it immediately, without time for equipment swaps or any other preparations.
Of course lens would be best. But the point is we don’t have any. And even if we did find some, we should save them for the dungeon’s main boss rather than an optional boss.
If it do something annoying, then we learned it’s not worth coming back the room to kill it. If it doesn’t, then we didn’t lose anything. We only pay a “cost” if we learn useful information about it.
Johnny, the skeletons are scattered all across the room. That likely means it can pursue us, like Manny.
That scroll feels like something to use right before the end of the dungeon if possible. Maybe on Kamau’s blade, since he’ll always have it?
That’s… Not a bad idea at all. But we are too low on hp, so we’ll have to save it for next dungeon.
I think it’s a reasonable idea in the abstract, but very poor one in this instance because of the specifics involved. Lara deals bonus damage with poison effects, but Kamau’s Hilt is a weapon that she’s guaranteed to never be able to use.
DPS isn’t generally a major concern for us, but giving up free bonus damage is almost certainly going to prove undesirable very quickly – the game just doesn’t have that much slack in it.
But I do wonder how many more times will we be taking Lara into a dungeon, after this one? She only needs 2 more levels of bond, one of which we might be able to fill this dungeon.
I’m figuring that her being on the last bond cap will then trigger her “personal quest dungeon”, which of course will need her to be going and then we “only” have 1 more level of bond to fill.
Or we have to do something else to remove the last bond cap, then one more dungeon and then the “personal quest dungeon” of hers.
Either way, it could be as “little” as merely 2 more dungeons for her (if we a) don’t mess up and not get level-up/bond-increase from any dungeon and b) try to maximize what we can learn about characters by taking mainly people who still need/can gain bond into dungeons).
Granted, a weapon that is not “bound” to a character can then be used by anyone (except Cordy or Botanya) who has enough room to wield it, so that would most likely be a fair enough idea (using it on a weapon that Lara can use, when she is with us and someone else can use, when Lara stays home). We might want to pay attention to the weight of the weapon, though. Both Macadamia and Lohk have extremely limited inventory space and Lohk on top of that has already 1 slot where she parks her cane.
On the other hand, seeing how we are generally pressed for inventory space, at least considering enchanting a bound weapon (that will not take up extra room) is also valid.
Idle musing for the potential future:
Might even use it on Lohks cane, that does bloody little damage without enhancing it, to give her some options beyond her ray of frost.
Hrm. Does whoever does the entchanting have to have the weapon and the scroll in their own inventory? Because that would mean only Lohk can expend the 5 HP for the perma-upgrade and whenever we would do that, it would leave her with only 1 HP after using the scroll. Not impossible (good thing Macadamia doesn’t have a bound weapon, because he only has 5 HP altogether, meaning him using the enchanting permanently would kill him), because she can heal herself back up (either the potions she brings or the heal channel abilities), but could still be a risky thing to do.
Also, I kind of wonder if it would work on ranged weapons. Like if we were to enchant a bow or a crossbow, would that work on the arrows/bolts? Because having to enchant arrows/bolts would be a waste of time (and HP), but if the enchantment of the bow/crossbow automatically transfers onto the arrows/bolts used, that could be really nice. Possibly even more so, if we get a professional archer in the group… *eyes Cocxy*
> Does whoever does the entchanting have to have the weapon and the scroll in their own inventory?
AWUI, yes: you’ll recall we migrated the scroll and Swiftblade onto K last time specifically so that he could eat the damage from it. (https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-7-turn-6/)
Lara’s long-term usability is a fair point, especially in light of the P2W party members. Even so, (a) she’s unique in being full-size and able to use/wear any weapon or armor; and (b) we don’t really have any idea what changes she’ll undergo by endgame, or what attributes future dungeons will have, so it may be premature to write her off as not having much usable playtime left.
Mostly though my take is that if we’re going to have to burn 5HP on the enchantment, we *really* don’t want to be forfeiting the potential for double damage on it. Even if you’re right and Lara really is close to retirement, we’d need K to be using the Hilt for not just twice as many dungeons as Lara, but twice as many *attacks* as her for it to not be a net loss, and I don’t see the math on that ever working out unless the very vocal Shield Bash crowd has suddenly had a change of heart. 🙂
re Enchanted Ranged Weapons, it’s not at all uncommon for those to have the enchantment on the weapon itself, not the ammo. It does depend on the game, so it’s even more “up to LSN” than most things, but I think we have more than enough understanding of magic in the party that at a minimum we’d just “know” that it wouldn’t work ahead of time if it won’t.