Intermission 13 Page 4
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“Of course, we’re still some time away from that worst case scenario.”
“Farther away than before, since these two Imperial installations were consumed by dungeons, and farther still after our interference.”
“It’s a shame we couldn’t set off enough explosives back at the Guard outpost, but even so.”
“I felt confident that you’d be able to make a difference, Ricki, and I’m very pleased to be proven correct.”
“Naturally, I’ll be keeping my ear to the ground for more opportunities to sabotage the Emperor’s plans.”
“In the meantime, I suppose if you really think this… Ix is a worthy addition to your efforts, I won’t argue any further.”
“Rather, I’ll see what I can do to repay you for your cooperation thus far. I’m sure I can turn up something.”
“I’ll need to take a brief leave of absence, of course, but you’ll see me again in time for our next outing.”
“Good night, Ricki.”
In gratitude for Ricki finishing one of the two secondary missions he suggested, Amadeusz scrounges up and donated 20 Gold Coins to the cause, and his bond level increases by 1!
What is this familiar feeling… existential dread?
If Lara’s arc didn’t make the point ealier (demolish a temple? anger ancient god? twice a week!) then probably she’s suddenly realized that she’s now in the big players league. It wasn’t just some almost-forgotten outpost with cool loot, it might have been the emperor’s one of a kind toy, or not a toy but a much valued asset, first line of his interest, and she’ll now see herself on the posters even more often! and bigger posters! with bigger price! say, how much mansion upgrades can we get if we turn her in, grab the reward, and then rescue her?
He broke Ricki!
ricky.exe stopped responding
AND a further Bond increase? That’s pretty generous.
I didn’t track his bond, but if that’s true, then maybe that’s his rule, kick empire’s as hard as possible and get him to max faster this way! hmmm
Yep, it appears to be true. Arch(analach) recorded everybody’s stats at the start of D13, and Ama’s bond level was just 2 then
Go chase down Amadeusz and make him come on the next dungeon
For those wondering, LSN confirmed on discord that if we did both, the bonus for the extra quest was just more gold. So we got the essential reward in my opinion (the bond)
Just to clarify, you’re saying that if we’d also completed the D11 secondary quest (blowing up the guard outpost), we would’ve gotten extra gold for that but no bond increase?
Correct. Reward for both would have been bond + 60 gp or some high amount
Unfortunately, unless there’s a surprise dungeon or a secret way to get more bond, we still can’t max out both lhok and amad. But we can do Botania and or ix if we want
Botanya yes, but Ix has five bond slots to fill, and we only have five regular dungeons left before the final one – right?
Technically, the last Bond point is reserved for the character’s Bond Dungeon, I think? So Ix needs to go to four regular Dungeons, and then finish the Bond Dungeon to fill it all the way. But still, that puts them in the same spot as Lohk, where we’ll need to give up on Amad.
I really want to max out Kamaus bond, even if (by now) he is a major PITA to take into the dungeons with us (because of the remorse). We have so much healing now that paying attention to “not loosing HP” is more than a little inconvenience. Also enemies are getting so much more apt at dealing damage (AoE damage, environmental damage like drowning, sneaky stuff like the punch bugs in the chests, traps, …) that it gets harder and harder to not have Kamau tap out (which also makes him not get bond).
I also want to max out Lohk, because she’s basically Rickis mom, and I’m sure finding out more of her backstory is worth doing.
I don’t have feelings either way about Coccyx, he can stay in a closet (I know we didn’t buy his manor upgrade yet, but I’m sure we will have at least something similar already somewhere in the mansion) for all I care. (He’s dead already, he was a major PITA in the dungeon we recruited him, but due to the way combat works in this world, he has very limited chances to use ranged combat in dungeons that were not custom-designed for him, he hardly remembers anything, both from present interacting with him as well as from before, be it his unlife or whatever he was before his death. I don’t see how we could learn anything interesting from him or “help” him, he doesn’t seem to have any problem, other than his amnesia, and because of the nature of amnesia, he doesn’t even perceive that as a problem himself.)
For Botania I also have little to no incentive to bring her/max out her bond. She seems nice (yes, I went there), but… bringing a pacifist to a dungeon where we know fighting -will- happen is just willingly reducing our options AND putting her into situations she probably doesn’t want to be in. (I know if I was forced to go on missions where people kill each other, I wouldn’t be comfortable with it, and I’m not necessarily a “pacifist”. If someone attacked me, I most likely would retaliate to the best of my abilities.)
So if we really do have only 4 or so dungeons left until the end, I think I would like to pick Kamau, Lohk and IX (I think they could provide interesting insights to what elementals are like in this world in general as well as on the “war” between the two worlds. Heck maxing out their bond might even be the key to stop this whole mess!) to join the team until their respective bonds are maxed out. (If Kamau doesn’t tap out and only needs 2 dungeons, we could pick Macadamia for two dungeons and max out his bond, too, as a bonus.)
Unfortunately that is a really messy team (Lohk can heal really well, but Kamau will stop us from taking advantage of that, and we’re not even sure yet, what IX can do/what skilly they can learn from a level up. And IX taking extra damage from opposing elemental damage will really screw us over remorse-wise).
We can’t take Amadeusz unless we don’t care about maxing out bond with anyone else, save Kamau and Mac (both only need 2 more bond).
This sucks big time. Curse you LSN! (this is not meant in a malicious, but in a good-natured ribbing kind of way. But you’re a sadist, when you GM. You probably know that already. :P)
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I’m honestly glad that we didn’t get the dwarven golem smith or whatever/whoever he was, or else I’d potentially be torn even more ways. I hope he and his mechanical companion rest in peace. (You can’t save everyone. Even Superman had to live with that truth.)
Edit: Typo, added in the bit about ranged combat basically not existing in this world, unless the dungeon is custom-designed for it, which, to be fair, doesn’t seem to happen that often.
Surprise Bond bump, nice! Takes a little bit of the sting out of Sketchy. I have mixed feelings about the 20 gold though. We’re not your hirelings, dude.