Dungeon 9 Turn 44
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The party attacks the bloated zombie, and although it proves to be fairly tough, it can’t stand up to that level of concentrated firepower. Kamau takes no damage from blocking its attacks (and Coccyx’s arrow), but he does gain 2 more points of Infection. If he gains one more, the plague will claim him.
However, Kamau seems to be familiar with this type of zombie. He cuts open its skull and pulls out a lump of diseased meat from within.
“Zombies that swell up like this are a rare mutation. They incubate the plague inside themselves and can spread it farther than regular zombies.”
“But this concentrated plague can also be used as a cure. It’s very rare, so I didn’t think we’d find any of it.”
“Paws would probably find a buy it at a high price. That is, if you trust him not to sell it to anyone untrustworthy, Ricki.”
“But we might want to consider using it ourselves… I’m not feeling so great.”
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ZOMBIE PLAGUE SAMPLE
Consumable/Treasure
This lump of pulsating necrotic flesh can be used to revive the zombie plague… or cure it. If consumed alongside any potion, that potion’s normal effects are cancelled. Instead it reduces Infection by 3 points.
Weight 1, Cost 30
I suggest we heal Kamau with this plague sample and our healing potion.
If we do that though Kamau doesn’t get the health, and we know we’re going to be dealing with unblockable damage from the boss, and from any wraiths we release
If we don’t reduce infection, Kamau will die from a single attack of a zombie. Plus, we stilll have other healing methods, like Botanya’s nectar and eating mushrooms.
Eating mushrooms will give him the zombification right back. But Botanya’s nectar works.
Kamau can’t eat somebody else’s mushroom. Ricki or Lara could eat their mushroom though.
Last turn, Holo Golem wrote:
That seems worth trying as long as it doesn’t require Lara to spend three turns poison stinging the pots one at a time. Maybe have everybody throw stuff at them?
Of course, breaking them could also release three more wraiths, and then we’d be really sorry…
I actually don’t think the dungeon will end when we kill the necro so I think we’ll have time to still do so. We’ll see though.
I wans’t expecting a cure for the infecction. It’ll probably change things up a little if Kamau uses it now (which I think he should).
BUT
Supposing that we stay the course for the boss, I have a couple of suggestions and I’ll regret if I don’t say anything. BTW, I don’t even know if the turn-by-turn timer we are on would allow these actions below. Anyway…
I believe we need to verbally invite Cyx to join. It’s clear that they are under the Necro’s command inside the dungeon and that their memory is fuzzy, at best. But they do remember something, like attacking the pets that they can hurt. And if we want to recruit them as a party member, we need Ricki to invite him to join us after we kill the Necro and end the dungeon. A simple “hey, we’re gonna whack the bad mage so you can join us when this is done” will do.
And as we talk about killing the Necro and ending the dungeon, I fear we need to provide Cyx a way to get out of those plataforms or whatever they are trapped on. So, I think we need to shoot the first dangling pot from the top, which would hopefully break the pots below and leave enough rope to allow Cyx to get down. Yes, there might be more specters. And yes “rescuing” Cyx would also allow them to keep attacking us and maybe even following us to the boss fight, and that would bring a whole lot of other problems with the Necro’s abilities and such that we might have to kill them again.
My 2cp.
I honestly don’t think killing the necro will end the dungeon. I think we’ll have to do something with the altar or pile of bodies to do so. Do I think we have time to get him. Could be wrong though
I think it has to, at the very least, change the conditions of the dungeon since the necro is the source of the dungeon’s time limit.
I think we should definitely consider using the Zombie Plague Sample on Kamau. As for Coccyx, right now I see three potential routes for recruiting him:
Sadly we haven’t really encountered anything ninja/archer related in this dungeon that Coccyx might be interested in, aside from the arrows from the trapped chests I guess, so those three options are all I can think of at the moment. But in any case I don’t think we can really afford to hang around in this dungeon past turn 50 since that’s usually when things start to take a turn for the worst.
I don’t think we have time to kill all of the zombies and open the puzzle chest, either, so I really think we should focus on recruiting Coccyx and then killing the Necromancer. Each character we recruit, aside from the bonus ones, is another potential Bond dungeon we can do in the future. That means more potential loot, more opportunities to earn Bond points and build up the manor, and ultimately more Dungeon Eyes- and therefore friendship is the most valuable loot of all.
I actually think the dungeon doesn’t end when we kill the necromancer. I think the source is the zombie patient zero or the altar. So we might have time to run and get him after, although I think something bad could happen if we take too long.
Possibly unpopular idea:
Let’s not finish this dungeon. Let’s see if we can recruit Cyx without interacting with the necromancer, steal his stuff otherwise, then take our loot and scoot.
Logic: We now cannot have Kamau take ANY more infection, unless we want to give up both a greater healing potion AND a 30 gold consumable, the latter of which might be beneficial for the world story-wise (and the former of which will likely improve our odds in future dungeons). He’s also low on health and remorse, and using the potion to cure his plague will disable the healing.
Plan to go kill Necro ASAP while still having a shot at enchanting the Siege sword, only losing Botanya doot chances –
Turn 45, everybody move up. Ricki and Botanya pause to trade the scroll and the coin pouch. Rickin points out the floor trap. Everyone else double move right while avoiding the trap.
46 Everyone move to Necro room, Bot double move to catch up pointing out and avoiding traps. Kamau interpose, Ricki, Lara and Flytrap attack Big Skeleton. No mushrooms in case Big Skeleton has AoE attack.
Turn 47. Attack Big Skeleton some more if not dead. Lara attack summoned Skeleton if one got summoned. Botanya maybe heal Kamau if his HP is worrisome.
48 – Hopefully Necro is exposed. Kill him. Bot try to enchant Seige Sword Lara is swinging – if this fails, all that is lost is a doot chance.
Bot double move to catch up, Ricki pointing out and everyone avoiding traps
Good catch
There doesn’t appear to be any healing or plague curing for Kam here, so you’re just sacrificing him for nothing.
Guys we came into this dungeon to be heroes and save the world from another zombie plague and God damn it that’s what we should do.
Now that we can get Kamau back down to only 1 infection point I really think we can clear the zombies. A rough plan to do that would look like the below:
A possible timeline for this would look like
T:45 Trade inventory.
T:46 Kamau drink potion with cure, Botanya enchant siegesword. Everybody move left one. Ricki pull lever.
T:47 Everybody left. Flytrap attack zombie rat. Golly kick zombie 1. Kamau and Lara’s mushroom attack zombie 2. Botanya pipe that same zombie. Kamau cleave should kill the rest of the enemies because he does 11 damage against the zombies from heroic Effort. There’s a chance he doesn’t kill the second zombie if Golly and the flytrap miss and he targets the rat first instead of the zombie. Something like a 1/8 chance of all of those things going wrong. Ricki go past this combat to loot spider chest.
T48: Ricki open sarcophagus in rat hole then move down and right. Botanya open the sarcophagus in main tomb then move right. Everybody else double move right to pot rope room.
T49: Ricki move right with Botanya then guide party up to ghouls past trap. Kamau interpose this fight. Pets kill one ghoul, Lara and Ricki each kill one as well. Kamau almost certainly paralyzed.
T50: Zombies spawn. Lara and Ricki each kill one of the two remaining ghouls. Botanya should be safe to double move to top of boss room to see zombie spawn.
T51: Team is paralyzed. Botanya stalls zombies in their spawn room. Kamau is unparalyzed
T52: Kill the owlbear. Kamau and Lara attack from one side, flytrap attack from the other. Ricki can use wand of fireball from afar for another 4-6 damage. Should be something like 22 damage just from Lara and Kamau.
T53: Double move left then right on the lower level.
T54: engage zombies.
T55: Boss
Under a worst case scenario of the above (Kamau gets hit instead of Lara’s mushroom and Kamau again gets hit instead of Lara when fighting the owlbear) we’d end up with infection levels of
R:3
RM:3
K:3
L:2
LM:2(or 3 and Kamau 2)
G:1
If we open the extra tombs (and we most likely will if we go there), there’s a high chance someone smells a chance to get the puzzle chest. If that involves more combat you need to add 2-3 extra turns to this caculation.
I am still on team Kill Necro asap… but this is a well laid out plan with little risk overall. Biggest risk is opening the sarcophaguses (Why?). It also could be a risk if Turn 50 is either a guard invasion or Bigger zombies (since thats a thing now).
That all said, Rushing necro is also a risk since we’d be engaging around turn 46 and if we don’t finish by 50 we’re screwed.
I may vote for this plan when it gets posted.
The reason to open the tombs is to know definitively that neither contain zombies. If one did we’d need to figure out something else to do. Not opening them could lead to us putting in a ton of work to clear the secondary objective only to fail at the finish line.
As long as we’re not going to go for puzzle chest if a ghast shows up
There is no healing for Kamua. Necro does unblockable damage, so he’s going to die with this plan.
We still have Botanya’s nectar and it’s at least somewhat likely Botanya’s aroma will reduce the necromancer’s attack to 0, causing him to deal 0 unblockable damage. We can get Kamau to 5 hp with a nectar during the ghoul fight, which should be plenty.
You have my sword and my heart. Lets be heroes.
Yeah I’m team kill necro and voted for that. But if we’re gonna go for it this is probably the way. Still very concerned we’re going to eat some suprises pretty soon but if that’s the way the vote goes then we gotta commit to it.
Kamau is also low health. There is no options here for healing him and the necro deals unblockable damage. He gonna die.
Botanya still has a use of her abilities and can heal Kamau for 2 hp during the ghoul fight or after the turn 50 zombies. Beyond that, as written Botanya’s aroma will reduce the necromancer’s attack to 0. He might deal unblockable damage, but if it’s 0 unblockable that shouldn’t be a problem. Even if that doesn’t work, Kamau will have 5 hp, 13 defense, and dauntless. Unless you think the big skeleton does 15 dmg he should be perfectly fine to handle 4 or even 5 turns of combat.
The goals for this dungeon: Beat it so we can get levels on people (we need to see if Kamau or Lara have any new skills from the bond unleash, as well as seeing what Botanya’s kit is),Get as much Treasure as we can, and (possibly) recruit Coccyx. I think gunning the necro has the best chance of getting all three, as we have investigated most of the dungeon but have gotten no clues as to how to recruit him. it may even be the case that there is an “escape” section at the end with the guard coming in from the top right where we get him. in any case, staying more than 50 turns is a bad call as bad things tend to happen at that point as LSN tells us to “quit faffing about and finish the dungeon already”
That’s my opinion for the most part as well. We’ll see what’s up soon enough.
Plan: Kill the zombies, be heroes
Ricki: Give the scroll of poison enchant to Botanya.
Kamau: Give the robe of poison to Lara
Lara: Give the siegesword to Botanya. Give your potion bandolier to Kamau.
Botanya: Give the potion from Golly to Kamau. Give the arrows from Golly to Lara.
Everyone: Receive the items as described.
This gets us set up to proceed with the plan I outlined.
To be clear, layout by person after this should be
Ricki: 10/11
Swiftblade
Wolfhide
(Wolfhide)
Wand of Fireball
Stake
Rusty Shield
(Rusty Shield)
Heavy Helm
(Heavy helm)
Heavy Gauntlets
(Empty)
Kamau: 12/12
Hilt
Plate armor
(Plate armor)
(Plate armor)
(Plate armor)
(Plate armor)
Heavy shield
(Heavy shield)
Owlbear Cowlwear
Piercing arrows
Potion bandolier with greater healing potion
Zombie plague sample
Lara: 8/10
Corn Spear
Bat Hide
(Bat Hide)
Helmet
Heavy Boots
Robe of Poison
Cobra Hood
Cobra Poison Gland
Botanya: 8/8 (unchanged)
Golly: 5/5
Battleaxe
Gold Warhammer
Gold longsword
Siegesword
Scroll of Poison Enchant
There was an error in this list. Lara should have gotten the arrows from Golly, which I included in the comment for actions but not the list above.
Anyone else still curious what that demon does? It’s not aggressive unless provoked, but seriously I want to see what’s his deal, man. I think that if LSN isn’t planning to pull a fast one on us on turn 50, we can go with thisnameismeta’s plan. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared, but we’re heroes, dammit! Turn 50 scares the hell out of me after we narrowly escaped with a 75% chance of someone dying at the Overgrown Farm, but like…what happens if we actually clean out a dungeon that isn’t purely a storymode dungeon like the manor? I’m mad curious. Surely there’s got to be a huge bonus or a new opportunity that arises.
Kamau said deals with demons are bad ideas. So it will almost certainly tempt us with something that enough people here lack the foresight to refuse, but that we will wind up regretting.
I don’t think it’s predetermined that we’ll accept. It would be useful to talk to him from the standpoint of gaining lore and information. How does a deal work? Maybe Coccyx took a deal and that’s why they’re a skeleton. Maybe we’re missing an opportunity to recruit them if we don’t talk to the demon.
The biggest problem is that we don’t have thieves tools and can’t get to the demon.