Intermission 7 Page 4
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After a few days of rest which must have been completely uneventful since nobody can remember them, Paws returns to the manor, ready to lead Ricki to her next destination.
“Hello again, Ricki. Seems like everything is going well here.”
“Yeah! Botanya is helping us get the garden seeded. She says we need to till a larger patch of land if we want to make use of all we brought back, though.”
“I’m sure that’s something we can arrange, if you’ve got the funds.”
“We have so much money right now I don’t even know what to do with it.”
“Well, if you fix up this foyer, you could probably install a replacement safe. Then at least you wouldn’t have to worry about any of it going missing between jobs.”
“Speaking of jobs, are you and your team ready to head out?”
“Pretty much, yeah. Our options were the tomb or the poisoned well, right?”
“You said the tomb had zombies and other undead in it, and the well had poisonous and aquatic monsters?”
“That’s about right. Another option has come to my attention since then, though. It only appeared yesterday, and it’s an interesting one.”
“It seems that there was a merchant caravan making its way down a highway a few miles off. They passed through a small patch of woods, and were attacked by bandits.”
“Then, just as the attack started, the entire stretch of road turned into a dungeon, from the lead wagon to the back. The merchants, their guards, the bandits… anybody who was in or between a wagon got pulled in.”
“The dungeon is a line of wagons?”
“Yeah. Pretty wild, right?”
“Anyway, at least one of the merchants was outside the dungeon boundary when it appeared, and she’s offering a reward if her companions and at least some of their goods can be recovered.”
“Sounds pretty straightforward.”
“Yeah, well, turns out some of the bandits got out, too. I have some connections with them. Turns out their boss is making a similar offer.”
“So we’d have to decide which one we want to help.”
“Right. It could get a little messy, but either way, there’s money in it. If you take this job, you’ll probably want to be able to carry lots of stuff so you can retrieve everything.”
“We’ll go with whichever dungeon you prefer, though. Feel free to pick one of the other two.”
“Hmmm. Tough choice…”
Lke this post to go to the Broken Tomb!
There’s still a Ko-fi previewed character, “Death”, heavily implied to be here. Getting characters earlier gives more opportunities to leverage abilities and earlier Bond points. We’re also well equipped for fighting undead, the corn spear is a +4 Atk weight 1 weapon and Botanya’s pets swing for 5 vs undead, which is like the spider which tore through bandits in the Warrens.
I’d be hesitant to assume any of these dungeons will be easier than the others.
I think we are better suited to tackle this dungeon than any other one on the list. A team composition with Kamau, Ricki, Lara, and Botanya, with Molly, Daisy, and two of Botanya’s plants, would be incredibly powerful.
Consider the below composition:
Ricki with Daisy, swiftblade, heavy shield, wolf hide, silver and copper ring of aggression: 9 dmg a turn from Ricki, 3 dmg a turn from Daisy. Ricki sits comfortably at 8 defense.
Lara with corn spear and same ring comp as Ricki: 9 dmg a turn to undead, 2 defense before any other equipment. We can easily add chain to buff her up to 5 defense.
Botanya: Debuffs the zombies by 1 atk, and has two plant summons that each do 5 dmg to undead for a total of 10 dmg. That’s incredibly powerful, and I think even Cordy would have a hard time standing up to that.
Kamau: Plate, both rings of protection, and the shield would get him to 13 defense. We can buff that a bit more by switching around the shields or giving him the helmet.
Like this post to go to the Poisoned Well!
I’d still be much more comfortable going into a flooded dungeon if Mac could Dig a way to air in case of emergency.
This one just isn’t very appealing. Definite danger and no hint of reward. Still helps people, but not at the scale of stopping a zombie plague.
Like this post to go to the Contested Caravan!
In a roleplaying sense, though LSN didn’t directly imply it, this would be considered a “timed” dungeon, in the sense of it being an unstable situation, rather than the more or less stable situations of the other two.
In a mechanical sense, we can do the others first, and this one later, when we are more powerful, to try and clear it – but I would rather be less powerful now and be more powerful against the zombies and the well.
I concur this is the best option to pick even if it doesn’t sound mechanically timed-limited.
Our awesome new OP p2w character’s kit is partially poison damage-based so I’d rather start with the dungeon without poison resistance so we can, on top of being generally stronger, have a better understanding of Cordy’s abilities and set up our Spored buffs before we tackle dungeons where he’ll be slightly less OP in.
Cordy and Botanya are most likely in the next dungeon we run, who both have lots of equipment space and won’t be using any up on bringing weapons. Big Haul indeed.
Knowing that there’ll be lots of stuff around, I could see bringing Mac with Molly. We’re almost at full ring capacity, but Botanya gets no benefit from rings of Aggression outside of maybe helping to destroy barricades and similar destructible dungeon structures. This might be a chance to smif some armour.
That said, Kamau can carry more, as can Lara without the party shield or Remorse.
Cordy and Botanya is a super unlikely composition. They both rely on pets, and in a dungeon that doesn’t have undead, Botanya’s pets only do 3 dmg. Daisy does 3 dmg herself if she’s put on someone with wolf hide, so it makes little sense to leave Daisy behind for a pet that does the same damage, but doesn’t buff defense or movement like Daisy does. Since Cordy can’t use non-mushroom pets, we’d only be able to get one of Botanya’s pets, without leaving behind either Daisy or Molly. Can’t imagine we want to leave behind our mobile storage for the dungeon whose only guideline is “bring lots of room to carry stuff”.
Being able to sacrifice a fly trap and grow another one later adds flexibility. Attacks on pets don’t harm characters. On that note, it’s risky to attack with Daisy unless Kamau is blocking, as we can’t easily boost Daisy’s defense.
Agreed that two summoning characters is a bit of a nonbo. Still, bond on Botanya and trying out new abilities do encourage bringing them both next.
We’ll only be more powerful in those dungeons if we take characters we plan on using in them and actually take skills that will help us out there. If we take big haul X we won’t be any stronger in the tomb. The same is true if we Cordy to this dungeon and he ends up being unuseable against undead, or we don’t take Botanya here but want to take her against the undead. A level up on a character we don’t plan on using in the tomb won’t actually help us to clear the tomb.
Uhm. Equipment? Rooms? All of those exist regardless of party comp or level ups.
And best to be weaker now than deep inside catacombs or poison water.
We found no equipment in the farm that was stronger than existing equipment, and at least one of the party members we are taking to the tomb is equipment independent. We’re also taking a party member to this dungeon that is equipment independent. Do you really think we’ll find anything that buffs Kamau’s defense in this caravan? Something better than platemail or the magma shield? A magic ring of protection that’s just laying around? For the suggested comp for the tomb, the only person likely to find a better weapon is Lara, who could get something better than the corn spear potentially. I don’t find that incredibly likely, but it’s possible. Finding something better than the swiftblade seems more or less impossible at this stage, and Botanya doesn’t use weapons.
I’m against running this dungeon now. We just did a super inventory management heavy dungeon, and this one sounds like it’s going to be even worse, and I just don’t want us to have to deal with that again now. LSN has confirmed that he will indicate time limited dungeons super clearly in the future, after we took the rat vault sooner than we otherwise might have because we thought it was time limited. Time limited dungeons look like the kobold warrens did, when we had the chance to take it or the manor and were warned that the manor would lock off the kobold warrens.
Since we are pretty sure the tomb will unlock a new character, and we know we have equipment and characters (the corn spear and Botanya) that are both incredibly well suited to the Tomb, I think we need to do that dungeon first. If the new character (the death related character that’s probably in the tomb) has a ton of storage space, we’ll regret having done this dungeon now when we could have unlocked them first and used them here to good effect.
100% same thinking here.
The caravan doesn’t sound like timed, if we take care not to imagine thigns. Paws didn’t say anything like that. He said, it just showed up recently, that’s the only thing we’ve heard about any ‘timing’.
We also heard that at least one of the involved sides offers a reward openly, so we can imagine that other bounty-hunting teams may jump at the occasion, but it’s what we extrapolate, and not what we’ve heard, so it certainly isn’t a thing stated super-clearly.
Good doggy, didn’t sit on the sofa 🙂
I’m glad someone will finally eat one of those things without cutting their mouth
The way Squirrel is standing behind Phoenix… I’m sure glad he’s is friendly, since rats usually kill and eat baby chicks.
Oh, Ricki. You might not know what to do with the money, but we have plenty of options. I suppose we don’t know what to do either, though for us it’s because the money isn’t nearly enough.
Bigger garden will be a renovation, and the safe will be a renovation unlocked by the Foyer which otherwise just gives storage. Storage is the one thing we have far too much of, backup party member inventory is plenty when anything we can’t effectively use is better off sold to pay for something we can use. Worrying about stuff going missing is a nasty hint to drop… Hopefully just Paws being paranoid. Sort of like the Sentry Post having the stated purpose of looking out for the Guard.
Not sure what the Living Room will unlock. Wonder if the Child’s Bedroom for Ricki will have hidden effects beyond +1HP like how the other rooms unlock bond thresholds. Maybe not, we will always bring Ricki so boosts are more useful.