Dungeon 9 Turn 37
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Ricki and Kamau finally catch up with Botanya and kill the two zombies with help from their pets. Botanya’s pipes unfortunately don’t work, but the flytrap is immune to the plague. The mushroom, however, is not, and now has 2 points of Infection.
Lara lags a bit behind the rest of the party, and she’s getting awfully sick of Coccyx shooting arrows at her constantly.
“Will you STOP that already?! That last one almost hurt!”
“Then stop wandering through my dungeon! You don’t belong here, you’re not dead!”
“YOU don’t belong here! Dead people aren’t supposed to talk!”
“Well that’s weird because I keep hearing YOU FOUR yammer on about whatever, and you’re ALL as good as dead!”
“…Once I find a weak spot in all your armour!”
“You know, you’re not the only one around here who can dish out damage at range. If you keep this up, I’m gonna get mad and start shooting back.”
“Good! Do it!”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“I, the greatest archer the world has ever known, RELISH the challenge!”
“Our battle shall be glori—”
Lara accidentally kills Coccyx.
Holy crap.
Well. Didn’t expect that.
What a yutz.
I was worried that might happen. They’re a skeleton after all, they’re pretty weak. We played right into LSN’s hands with that one; I reckon they were designed to be annoying so that something like this might happen. It’ll be an extra slap in the face if we find the Coccyx item and it’s something meant to restore them to human form or give them extra power. Most likely they’re meant to have unique traits that can help us in niche situations like this dungeon or the poisoned well but be extremely fragile. Every character has their pros and cons–I reckon the low HP was Cyx’s drawback that gets resolved with high enough bond.
They were kind of a jerk anyway, though, and if they wanted to be part of the party they could’ve been nicer. The only reason we wanted them so bad is due to meta reasons like the fact they had a speaking role in fancy blue text, something the characters wouldn’t know about. As far as the characters are concerned, he’s just another dungeon enemy that they were willing to give a free pass for a while due to their sentience. There’s no reason to suspect they’d want Coccyx to join them, honestly.
It’ll be interesting if the demon can bring them back, though. I doubt it. Oh well.
Papergrin, that was three hit point+def total. That’s a joke character. Weaker than a normal skeleton. Weaker than Macadamia. There’s likely something else afoot.
Well my philactery theory is still on the table. Maybe Coccyx in his skeleton form is actually quite weak, but they basically get transferred into a trinket that needs to be carried around for a period of time until their body is revived. Not a joke character but still a recruitable character with a unique gimmick. I wonder if he lich-ified himself by making a deal with that demon.
If we see any weird trinkets with the aura of an annoying archer emanating from them, don’t discard them! It’s likely Coccyx!
Hunh.
Guess the Archery God’s gonna need a new champion.
Dafu?!
Her name is Lara.
She’s the best there is at what she does.
And what she does ain’t pretty.
accidentally
well, skeletons have poison immunity, and Lara used a venom skill, but at the same time she has just tested out first time her newest poison-immunity-breaching sssnake accessssory.. I’d count that as accident from the dungeon’s point of view 😉
Whatever. Maybe he will rise again. Maybe not.
But I want to loot his stuff.
It would be neat if Coccyx is actually just the green, incorporeal spirit thing and they just possess inanimate objects. Like that skeleton isn’t actually their original body, and their annoying, easily-killable self is just going to show up in other golem to be a general pest as sort of a running gag.
That would be AMAZING and I want this to happen so badly
There’s definitely some theories that his Bandana is key and if we just wrap it around another skeleton he’ll come back.
Or they got transferred into a phylactery…
Simple Plan: Disarm Chest Trap.
Ricki: Move down one. Point out the 2 pressure plates, the Trap door and the trapped chest to Kamau. Pat him on the back and say “Have fun!”. Stay at the ladder.
Kamau: Take a running leap and jump over the 2 pressure plates and the Trap door. If you dont think you can jump all 3, prioritize jumping the trap door first and then as many of the pressure plates as you can. Open the chest at the end of the room.
Lara: Move Right
Botanya: Ask Lara whats so funny?
This will get us to bypass the trap door and make the way clear for the rest of the party to move down next turn and deal with the zombies. Nice and Simple.
The cost is 0-3 Damage on Kamau if that chest is loaded with AP Arrows like what we’ve seen before. That said, there’s a good chance its actually poison since the zombies have walked by without triggering the traps.
Lara needs to move right and down to join the party.
She’s still in striking distance of the boss room regardless. I just didnt want to crowd things
Complex Plan: Disarm Trap door and lure Zombies.
Ricki: Move down one. Point out the 2 pressure plates, the Trap door and the trapped chest to the party. If/When the trap door opens, shoot the armored zombie with your wand. Make sure to avoid stepping on the traps.
Botanya: Move down one. Avoiding the traps, toss the rusty sword on the trap door. If you still have an action, pipe the armored Zombie.
Lara: Move Right one. Move down one. Stay at the ladder.
Kamau: Avoiding the traps, stay close to pressure plates and a Cleave the armored zombie if it comes into range.
Flytrap: Attack Regular Zombie if it comes into range.
This plan should hopefully lure the zombies to us, while having them trigger some of the traps. Once the trapdoor is open, we can use it to bypass the pressure plates safely and just have to deal with the chests themselves.
The risk is that if some things dont work like ricki having a shot, or the trapdoor doesnt open we’ll have wasted a turn. Regardless, we learn more and will have lara for the next turn.
The intention here is for Ricki to target one of the zombies with her wand. If the only available one for Line of sight reasons is the non-armored zombies, we are definitely okay with that too. I’m not Claudious but this was discussed on the discord and this plan is sort of my baby.
Indeed! I also lost my ability to edit otherwise I would have added that detail. (And changed flytraps target to the armored one).
Also just to clarify, assuming Botanya dropping the rusty sword onto the trapped door causes it to open, the rusty sword should also land on the pressure plate under the trap door, thus causing the zombies to be hit by that chest.
We seem to be getting that bug again where we can’t edit our own posts with the error message being that we are posting too quickly. Apologies for the multiple posts.
Regardless of the action plan chosen, we’d really appreciate seeing Lara’s room post Coc death to see what if anything changed/dropped. Thanks in advance LSN!
We learned something this turn at least.
I can’t believe Coccyx is fucking dead.
No, but actually that’s a huge shock. Venomous Sting only does 2 damage, plus +1 from Lara’s Poison Proficiency. (And maybe +1 from her ring?) Still, that’s only like 3-4 damage max. 4 HP is less than Ricky, Macadamia, and Lohk; hell, it’s worse than MOLLY and on par with the mushroom pets. I get that skeletons are fragile, but holy crap, I’d hope that a party member would have a few more health than a trash mob!
I hope he has a revival mechanic of some sort, it’d suck if we missed out on recruiting him over an ‘accident’.
WELL FUCKING DESERVED
SHOULDA TORTURED FIRST
GOTTEM BABY
Lara’s new hood looks like the hairdo that the evil stepmother has in Cinderella.
Gonna be real.. it was kind of satisfying.
Yeah I actually don’t feel very bad about it.
Reminds me of the Borderlands 2 “Shoot me in the Head” guy.