Dungeon 9 Turn 51
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Ricki leads her party past a trap towards the necromancer, resolving that it’s time to deal with that guy. They arrive in this cleared room at the same time as another group, which Ricki can see with her Dungeon Eyes ability.
It looks like one of those “faithless” creatures that showed up way back in the chapel. It’s accompanied by three zombies, one of which seems to have been transformed in some way. Probably not in a way that makes it less of a threat, if she had to guess.
Well, shit. I think the black zombie probably gets the same boost that the Faithless gets (+3 ATK/DEF in shadows), but I’m also worried that it might deal two points of infection. Maybe I’m just being paranoid ever since that buff zombie did it, though. It could also block anyone that tries to attack the Faithless too, like the Necromancer does with his minions. At least the Faithless probably had to use an action to create a black zombie, so we should only have the one to worry about.
Still kind of worrying though, especially since Kamau is about to remorse out of the dungeon if anyone gets hit- and he can only take four points of infection before dying himself. Ricki and Lara definitely can’t afford to get hit by all three zombies either, having 3/2 Infection points already. So Kamau is probably going to have to block for at least one round of combat, which would give HIM 4 points of Infection total- assuming that the black zombie doesn’t give two Infection, which would kill him outright…
I’m sure the math guys on Discord are already trying to figure out the optimal plan here, but I think this is another scenario where we might have to get lucky to get through this encounter without anyone dying.
Correction: We are collectively freaking out on Discord. Unknown monsters are the WORST.
I was afraid of that. For what it’s worth- I don’t see any reason why the Faithless would worsen the Infection that the zombie does, really. It’s definitely made it stronger, and I would venture that the +3 ATK/DEF thing is accurate, though- but nothing about the Faithless would make me think that it could make the zombie plague worse.
Honestly- if it comes down to it, we might need to plan around the idea of sacrificing another level-up for Kamau by having him attack the black zombie instead of defending, since I think the zombies usually attack the person they’re fighting. Have Kamau attack the black zombie to hold it off since he can afford to get hit with Infection, have Ricki and Lara each attack and kill a regular zombie, and then have Botanya pipe the Faithless in an attempt to delay it another round and keep it from attacking anyone else.
I don’t think Lara and Ricki will have too much trouble fighting the Faithless if all the zombies get killed, and they might be able to burst down the Necromancer’s giant skeleton and kill the Necromancer, too. There’s a degree of RNG involved, but I don’t think we can really afford to go two rounds with a group of three zombies so wiping them off the board ASAP feels like something we need to do.
Kamau can’t interpose because he’s at 2 points of infection himself. We’ve got to take out the three zombies first, or at least distract the two regular zombies while we take out the faithless/the shadow zombie.
Crap, that’s right, I forgot that he took another point of Infection after getting it healed. My bad.
I am going to propose several plans and leave it up to you guys to decide.
First Plan: Abandon Ship.
Everyone: Go left.
Ricki: Point traps to everyone;
Everyone: Go down.
Risk: No level up, no loot, we may still be attacked on retreating.
We will not be attacked on retreating. That’s never happened and the rat king on the farm is not a counterexample. If we stayed within sight of the entrance to the room one room left of here we WOULD be attacked, but as long as we keep moving to at least get out of sight, or ideally to the next room, we would be fine. To assume otherwise is to assume that enemies move faster than we do, and they don’t, otherwise the faithless and zombies would’ve been in this room when we arrived, not arrived at the same time as described.
Ricki: Head down and attack the Corrupt Zombie.
Kamau: Head down and attack the Corrupt Zombie, Cleave.
Lara: Head down, equip your Helmet and Corn Spear, attack a normal Zombie.
Botanya: Head down to the melee for aroma proximity, Pipe the Corrupt Zombie.
Flytrap: Attack the other normal Zombie.
This plan works best if corrupt zombie is just as dumb as the others – no one will take damage even if corruptnzombie has 5 atk, and infection won’t get anyone either.
Just as a quick explanation, this plan assumed the Shadow Zombie gains +3 Atk and Def while in darkness and can be distracted by attackers just like any other Zombie/unintelligent enemy. This means we only risk damage on the Flytrap, should the Faithless target it.
This plan likely leaves the Faithless and one of the Zombies alive to be cleaned up for next turn.
Do we know for sure how much damage a zombie does? The faithless is an evil and intelligent monster, it will pick a target and I’m afraid Lara might be vulnerable.
We know zombies do no more than 2, reduced to 1 with aroma because we’ve used mushrooms against them in the past, and they have 1 armor. Anything more than that two ans they would’ve taken 1 dmg. Same for Golly when she kicked a zombie.
Intending for Kamau to use his shield and not.his hilt, so he takes no damage. Should still be enough damage to guarantee kill on corrupted zombie.
Would be really good to have a light source if we want to fight that thing …
This is too risky! What if we lose Kamau?
In theory he could remorse out if:
(a) the dark zombie gets a damage buff in darkness like the faithless does, as has been suggested,
(b) that buff is the same +3 that the faithless gets, and
(c) they both attack Ricki together.
In that case, their combined damage would be 11 (faithless 5 + 3 (darkness) – 1 (aroma) + zombie 2 + 3 (darkness) – 1 (aroma)), which is one more than Ricki’s DEF. Check my math, but I think that’s right.
But we don’t know if the DZ does get a buff, or if it would be the same +3 or maybe something less. And even if Kamau did remorse out, he wouldn’t be dead or a zombie. The rest of the party could at least finish off the faithless and the last zombie, and then we could decide whether to go for the necro or abandon.
So yes it is a risk, but it doesn’t seem too risky to me.
Ricki will have 12 defense if an undead attacks her due to how the bone armor works. Her character sheet just displays the 1 defense she gets if attacked by a living creature.
See, like I said in my reply to Gathers below: I miss things 🙂 Thanks for clarifying!
No problem. Bone armor is the most complicated armor we’ve found thus far. It doesn’t seem like it should be an upgrade for Ricki on undead versus the wolf armor because light armor proficiency only works on armors with defense below 3, but armor skills are always based on the base defense of armor. That’s why cloth proficiency would work with the Monk robes, for instance, even though they provide defense when a shield and weapon aren’t being used. So the bone armor has a base defense or either 1 or 0 (depending on how you look at it) which makes it eligible for light armor proficiency. If we only get attacked by living enemies, it gives 1 defense. If we get attacked by nonliving enemies or hazards, it gives 3 defense instead but the light armor proficiency still works. That means it’s worth 4 defense on Ricki as long as we’re fighting undead, which is why we switched to it over the wolf hide.
Second Plan: Sniper, SNIPERRRRR (Credit to Sickass).
Lara: go left one, web walk the wall, go to the left side of the screen (coccyx’s sniper nest), don’t let Coccyx trip you or shove you.
Everyone else: follow Lara to the sniper nest. Don’t let Coccyx trip you or shove you
Kamau: interpose on the sniper nest.
Ricki: go down after that if possible and open the chest. Who knows, maybe that will be useful for dealing with Coccyx.
Botanya: pipe Coccyx.
Pros: Isolates Faithless – he can’t drag the normal zombies along, at least. Accesses Coccyx chest. Allows us to snipe zombies at somewhat more leisure.
Cons: Uses corruption, may leave us vulnerable to shoving, we may theoretically be attacked while retreating.
Also this plan accounts for the dark zombie being intelligent or directed by faithless, which the attack plan does not.
Why would zombies not climb the nets?
Ability text: only we can do so. Faithless can naturally go anywhere in the room, but not the zombies.
Third plan: Attack.
Flytrap: attack leftmost normal zombie.
Botanya: go to the faithless/zombie battlegroup, use your aroma and pipe the dark zombie.
Kamau: attack dark zombie.
Lara: attack rightmost normal zombie.
Ricki: attack dark zombie.
Pros: Starts clearing the way to the boss.
Cons: assumes dark zombie doesn’t give two infection and isn’t somehow smarter. To be fair, there is no safe attack plan if that is true. May cause remorse or death.
Ignore this plan, Sick’s version is better.
Hey, how are you guys feeling about the ‘take the loot and scoot’ plan now?
Ah, read the other comments. Looks like ‘not favorably’.
Shocked with some sinking feeling but Not too bad overall, honestly.
No for real, I’ve been (probably annoyingly) pushing to get the necro for a while now – but I place no blame on anyone here or the discord. I was against the cobra plan and that went great. I wasn’t super thrilled with the tomb plan but – as weird as it sounds – the loot was kinda secondary for most. There was an honest desire to get rid of zombies. Seems like bullshit, but a lot of peeps really love these morons.
I think we did very well under very adverse circumstances. The simple act of not buying of a torch and putting Golly on Botanya really hampered us. Then a poor start and truly epicly bad ten turns at the beginning really put everyone on edge. But still, things turned around pretty well. It was some wrong assumptions made about how the dungeon worked and accidentally hampering us with pet selection. But even despite that things came together really well.
Regardless how this ends up, I’m actually kinda proud of the planning and thought put into making a pretty difficult dungeon work. Hopefully this can be pulled off and we ride off intot he sunset. If not, c’est la vie. We tried and had a hell of a time doing it. If we have to abandon, it sucks but we tried. And everyone is doing what they can to keep these dorks alive. I think there’s a reasonable shot with some luck. If we get past this, then the finish line may be closer than we think.
But for now, burn some sage, say some prayers, and bless your dice. We got a few to a lotta things that have go right to make this work. But there’s a shot. Even if we triage we might eke it out. Or we might have to scoot if Kamau remorses. We’ll see.
Either way, it’s been pretty cool to read and watch.
It would be interesting to know if the faithless does count as “undead”. Alas, it doesn’t say so on the “enemies” page at all (it doesn’t even say it for the skeletons, either, and I’m fairly sure they will count as undead).
I’m fearing that the same colour scheme (black body and red eyes) might mean that the faithless somehow controls the tempered-with-zombie, and thus it will also attack “intelligently”, like the faithless did in the chapel.
If that’s the case, we can only hope that the enemy can’t sense how badly infected our party is already, or we will most likely be looking at one zombified party member next turn (either Lara or Ricki and if it’s Ricki, then this comic is at an end).
I hope all you people suggesting/voting to faff around this long in the dungeon are happy now.
I don’t see how. Under Sick’s plan, which is comfortably ahead in the voting right now, it seems to me that:
• either Kamau or Ricki will take one infection point from the dark zombie,
• Lara will take one from normal zombie 1, and
• the flytrap will take none from normal zombie 2.
Alternatively, if the faithless controls the dark zombie, and can sense our infection levels, and also knows that Botanya can’t be infected at all, then it could direct the DZ to attack Lara instead of Ricki or Kamau. That would put her at four points of infection, but after that she should be safe as long as she doesn’t attack any more zombies (since the DZ won’t survive Kamau & Ricki’s combined attack).
It’s also been suggested that maybe the DZ inflicts two infection points. That doesn’t seem likely to me, but in terms of dungeon balance, it seems even less likely that the DZ would be doubly infective AND controlled by the faithless. So I don’t think we have to worry about a superspreader zombie teaming up with a normal one to give someone 3 infection points.
Of course, I could be missing something – I’ve done that plenty of times before…
I’m most curious to see what the faithless does. It could team up with NZ2 to kill the flytrap, but that seems like a pretty small reward. Maybe it’ll use its action to corrupt NZ2 instead?
Ah. I mistakenly thought both Ricki and Lara had 3 points of infection already, not “just” Ricki. In that case (and if the faithless could direct the corrputed zombie), the corrupted zombie would only have to attack whichever of the girls was not attacking it, bringing her up to 5 infection and zombiehood.
But a quick look at the “current party” screen shows that Lara acutally is on 2 infection (Ricki IS on 3, but she is going to attack the corrupted zombie anyways).
Still, we are cutting this waaaaaaaay too close for my tastes. Because having the party member that must survive in order for this comic to continue to (possibly, we don’t know if she or Kamau – or even Lara – will get attacked by it) rack up 4 infection (when 5 is certain death) and still have at least one more zombie around (allegedly, after this turn in Sick’s plan one more zombie will be “alive”) and the “big boss” fight is still due is just nerve-wracking.
Also, we don’t know if the corrupted zombie deals 1 infection or 2 (we have at least seen that that’s generally possible with the plague source carrying zombie). Maybe you deem it unlikely, but that doesn’t mean it actually is not the case. If the corrupted zombie does deal 2 infection and it attacks Ricki “back” (and not Kamau), it’s game over.
We don’t know that the dark zombie doesn’t do 2 infection points, but we know the faithless itself has nothing to do with plague, so it stands to reason that its powers combining with a xombie doesn’t automatically make that zombie more infectious, just more deadly/dangerous.
Agreed, this is a serious nail-biter. I was thinking it was 50-50 whether Ricki or Kamau gets the infection point, but if the DZ is under the faithless’s control, then the point will almost certainly go to Ricki. If the faithless then uses its action to create another intelligent zombie that it can send after Ricki on turn 53 – well, we’d be forced to have Kamau interpose. Not the end of the world, actually. But still uncomfortable.
Also agreed that unlikely ≠ impossible, but I think the DZ would look different if it had gotten an infection boost from the faithless – it would be swollen like the one we got the cure from. But it’s turned black with red eyes, which suggests that it’s taken on some quality of the faithless instead – probably either intelligent enemy targeting or the ATK+DEF buff in darkness. I know we don’t know, but LSN does give us hints about these things.
How about
Kamau: attack black zombie cleave
Ricky: attack next zombie
Flytrap: attack black zombie
Shroom 1: attack rickies zombie
Botanya: pipe black zombie + Aroma
Everybody else disengage
-> regular zombie and faithless left, 3 infection on Kamau, 4 infection on Ricki, potentially shroomplosion creating another small shroom.
Next turn:
Kamau interpose
Everybody else kill the remaining zombie and the faithless
-> Kamau at 4 infection, everybody fine damage wise
Time to go. Pick up stuff, quit the dungeon while ahead.