Dungeon 9 Turn 42
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Botanya picks up the eight coins off the ground, while Ricki picks up the lens and uses it on the necromancer. Looks like this guy isn’t a huge threat by himself, but his undead minions are going to protect him. It could be hard to get him isolated and vulnerable.
The whole party goes up one room, and Ricki, Kamau, and Lara continue moving left to reach—
“Hey! Hey you!”
“What do you think you’re doing here?”
“Oh come ON! I already killed you!”
“By accident, but still!”
“Ridiculous!!!”
“First of all, I’m pretty sure I’d remember something like that!”
“And second, I’m the greatest archer the world has ever known! There’s no WAY you could take me out!”
“This weirdo’s kind of growing on me.”
*THUNK*
“Could do without the constant arrows to the face, though.”
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NECROMANCER
HP: 12
Atk: 1
Def: 0
Ability: deals unblockable damage, grants +1 Atk to all allied undead in sight, cannot be targeted if near an allied undead, 30% chance to create a Skeleton when attacking
Drops: 3 Imbued Skulls
Those mages who specialize in raising and controlling undead are called necromancers. Though they usually learn their craft outside of a dungeon, most end up living in one in order to practice and perfect it. If a necromancer is present, it usually means that every undead around, no matter how far away, are under their control. They aren’t very threatening by themselves, but they can direct their minions to deadly effect, always with the intention of creating more corpses to animate.
God dammit LSN you got us good.
Ricki: Point out the floor trap. Head down, and use your Swiftblade on Left Zombie.
Lara: Head down, Corn Spear the right zombie.
Kamau: Head down, open up the Sarcophagi behind them.
Botanya: Double move to the party, provide some aroma support.
Everyone: Avoid traps.
[Explanation]
With Coccyx back to life and an idea of how to recruit him, wrapping up this last bit before we take on the Necromancer. Rough timeline has Necro dying on turn 49, avoiding the turn 50 zombies.
Not having pets help.because Coc is back and prob just itching to murder our animals.
What exactly is the “last bit”? Killing all zombies (rat included)? Just cutting the rope with the dangling pots?
Also, is it possible that we need to get Cyx down the plataforms to recruit him? Do we risk Cyx joinning the Necro fight on the side of the bad guys?
Well, initially all I wanted to do was kill the 2 zombies, loot the sarcophagi and head to the Necromancer fight. Lots of discussion in discord changed that to killing all the zombies. Vote for meta’s plan below.
My plan is still pretty unvetted! So please check out my general outline below. We’ve already gotten some ideas for possible improvements.
How?
Hmm, Coccyx included?
Clearly his control is less than the others. That’s why his green eyes are pinpricks unlike every other skeleton.
There’s been some discussion on the discord that the necromancer’s ability to control undead could lead to him recalling the undead dispersed around the tomb to come to his aid.
If that’s actually something he can do, we’d have to worry about 8 ghouls, the zombie owlbear, the two zombies by the sarcophagus, the two zombies on the bottom floor of the tomb, and the one zombie rat with them all coming to his aid. Assuming the enemies all started moving at once and moved one screen a turn, we’d see the following groups by turn:
Two turns after call: 5 ghouls
Three turns after call: zombie owlbear, two zombies, three ghouls with swords
Five turns after call: two zombies with zombie rat
I’m not completely certain that’s likely, but it would be really bad if the ghouls at the very least showed up that soon after we started fighting. If we’re worried about having to clear all that before engaging, we’re definitely going past turn 50 and should just acting as such.
I think if we take this past turn 50 we can clear all of the zombies and complete the secondary goal.
In the dungeon currently we’ve got a group of two zombies and a rat that we can safely use pets on, a group of two zombies near Coc on which we could only use the flytrap without risking death of a pet, and the zombie owlbear. Assuming the zombie owlbear has multi-attack and gives two points of infection as a result, and assuming all zombie encounters are cleared in a single turn we’re looking at up to 7 points of infection from clearing the zombies currently active.
Our current infection levels are as follows (with safe infection left in parenthesis)
Current Infection levels are:
R: 2 (2)
RM: 3 (1)
K: 2 (2)
L: 1 (3)
LM: 2 (2)
Total unused Infection: (10)
For the zombie owlbear, assuming regular owlbear stats, we can likely avoid at least one of the points of infection by pairing someone off with the flytrap to attack it. Normally owlbears spread their attacks when surrounded, so doing this would mean we only take 1 point of infection from that fight rather than 2. Owlbears normally have 3 attack, but Botanya would reduce this to 2, meaning the flytrap wouldn’t even take damage.
For the two zombies by the sarcophagus, if we again utilize the flytrap, we’re likely to have it attacked by Coc. When Coc attacked a pet before he did 3 damage, so that’s what I would expect this time. Combined with Botanya’s aroma, the zombie engaged by the flytrap should only do 1 damage, which would lead to 2 hp damage on the flytrap after subtracting its 2 defense. This would let us save another point of infection, assuming we made up the rest of the damage by having Kamau cleave or engaging the zombie targeted by the flytrap from range.
For the two zombies with the rat, we should be able to set things up so that the flytrap engages the rat and our mushrooms each attack a zombie. If Kamau attacks one of the zombies he would cleave through the crowd and only have a 50% risk of taking 1 point of infection, since the targeting decisions for dumb enemies are made by who initially targets them, and are thus not affected by cleave. We’d only take at most two points of infection in this part, since the fly trap would again mitigate one of the infection points.
TLDR: We should be able to resolve the remaining zombie fights as follows:
Owlbear: Need 17 dmg for normal owlbear kill: Ricki use wand of fireball on owlbear for 4 guaranteed damage. Lara and her mushroom attack the owlbear from one side for 13 damage, flytrap from the other for a possible additional 5. Lara or Lara’s mushroom take one infection if pipes fail because the other attack hits the flytrap.
Sarcophagus zombies: Ricki and Lara fight zombies. Flytrap fight the same zombie as Ricki to give her a 50/50 shot of avoiding infection.
Zombies and zombie rat: Flytrap attack zombie rat. Lara’s mushroom attack one zombie, and Ricki’s mushroom attack the other. Golly kick the same zombie as Ricki’s mushroom. Kamau attack alongside one of the mushrooms. He’ll cleave the rest of the group. 33% chance that Kamau takes an infection point.
Assuming the worst case scenario from the above, our ending infection would be
R:3
RM:4
K:3 (not ideal)
L:2-3
LM:3-4
That leaves us with, at worst, Ricki at 3, Kamau at 3, and if Lara is at 3 then her mushroom is also at 3. That’d give us 4-5 units to handle turn 50 zombies, since the flytrap, Lara, Kamau, and Ricki would all be able to safely participate and take one more infection and we might even also have her mushroom.
I see no reason to not kill Cyx again and spare the flytrap some health.
I’m wary of killing him again in general. We got our potential character back once and I worry we won’t get lucky twice. That’s probably irrational.
There are a few discrepancies between the TLDR version and the original long form plan, but the edit bug means I can’t fix them.
One improvement we can make is to have Golly attack a separate zombie during the 2 zombie one rat fight. Doing so saves one infection on a mushroom which should help make clearing the turn 50 zombies safer.
Doesn’t this (in general) miss the possibility of additional infection coming from spawning undead?
Other than that it looks reasonable to me at a glance, but it’s a fairly crucial caveat unless there’s a mechanic I’m missing.
Altered version of Sick’s Plan to hopefully save one infection point at the cost of up to 2 flytrap health
Ricki: Point out the floor trap when Botanya arrives, then head down and use your Swiftblade on Left Zombie.
Lara: Head down, Corn Spear the right zombie.
Kamau: Head down, open up the Sarcophagi behind them.
Flytrap: Attack the same Zombie as Ricki.
Botanya: Double move to the party, provide some aroma support.
Everyone: Avoid traps.