screenshot [complete] Something Something Insidious Killer: Let's play Darkest Dungeon

[ping]

3 hours ago, Benice said:

Is the Shambler supposed to be a significant boss or something? This game seems to really want you to think it's particularily threatening.

And since we don't have any more Highwaymen name requests, I vote that we should name the next one Batta.

Shambler is an optional boss that you can fight by torching these little altars. It's very tough and you want a party set-up that can deal with its bullshit (and Antiq, Arbalest, and Flagellant are all awful against it), so I've passed both Shambler Altars that I've come across so far. I'm hoping to find one in a a medium/large dungeon, too, so that I can set up camp right before fighting it.

Sure! Some Beastly support will be welcome in the future.

[Golb89]

6 hours ago, Benice said:

And since we don't have any more Highwaymen name requests, I vote that we should name the next one Batta.

No Actually, we could just give that name to our current HWM, since i'm pretty sure it still has his default one.

[ping]

On 6/8/2020 at 12:42 AM, Golb89 said:

No Actually, we could just give that name to our current HWM, since i'm pretty sure it still has his default one.

No True, but since Dismas has been going into dungeons forever being called Dismas, I think I'd like to stick with that name. I'm sure we'll pick up another one at some point, HWMs are pretty great.

IT'S LIKE RAE-EEYAAAAAAAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY!

Spoiler

As mentioned, the Butcher's Circus DLC is now out. I installed it because hey, free DLC, but I'm not really interested in PvP. I might take a look at th Banner Desiner later, but otherwise, I'll probably ignore the whole thing.

Corneilles and Jessica get rid of their diseases, Kroos and Frostleaf both lose some "Mania" quirk to reduce the risk of licked curios.

Last week, I had sent Phil to pray because I was planning to bring her to this week's expedition, but she refuses... One of the random stress relief side effect - probably the least impactful one, but a bit annoying in this case.

...because I want to venture into the Courtyard for the second time and was hoping to bring Phil for her excellent Stun abilities (and also to show off the Incision skill, since Courtyard enemies tend to be much more resistant to Blight than to Bleed). Instead, I bring the Good Bad and Ugly, wondering who is falling into what category and if the fourth expedition member doubles as Good/Bad/Ugly or just doesn't have a descriptor. Very important questions, I assure you!

In terms of provision, I bring Holy Water for some of the Curios, and Bandages to heal Bleeds (turns out vampires like to cause those) and also for some Curios. Notably, even though the mission is stated to be of "epic" length, we don't have any camps available.

As intoxication invariably took hold, innocuous frivolities would escalate to ever more disturbing diversions. Orchestrating the hideous affair was a hunchbacked fiend who seemed to delight in proportion to the suffering he caused. I could have stopped him, I suppose, but I was a slave to my own appetites, and restraint would have rendered me a hypocrite.

Reminder that the Ancestor isn't exactly a nice chap.

What games does the diminutive fool play at now?

Both Gawain and Sigurd enter the dungeon in the Craving state and immediately drink from the Blood to get the combat bonuses coming with Bloodlust. The reason why I bring to cursed adventurers is simply that this reduces the risk of additional Crimson Cursed heroes.

Wayne June is, of course, narrating about this dungeon's boss, the Baron. We will, however, not meet him in this run. As a reminder: With the exception of the very first venture into the Courtyard, all of its maps are friggin HUGE and not meant to be cleared in one go - instead, our progress is saved and we can go from there once we find another Invitation somewhere in another dungeon.

Also unlike in normal dungeons, we can't see the entire map layout right away, so there's no indicator of where we need to go. Well, right now there is, because there's no choice but to go right, but you know what I mean.

I have to admit that I do use a map here to get though the whole thing a bit quicker - I honestly don't like the Invitation restriction and would like to take as few trips to clear the dungeon as possible. The complete dungeon is predetermined, so I can beeline to where I need to go and avoid unnecessary fights and stress ticks.

Those stress ticks happen consistently and faster than in other dungeons, and torchlight is fixed to "Bloodlight", reducing Bleed resist. Otherwise, this is a normal, if pre-rolled, dungeon with curios and fights.

This Pile of Bones just yields some treasure when you use a Bandage - although in this case, I just find some Blood and Holy Water. Meh.

The first battle is just a quick little warm-up. Skip.

Well, mostly skip - Sigurd rolls a good Bloodlust effect here and heals 15 Stress.

And then a bad one, giving all three of his compagnions +7 Stress. RNGeesus giveth, RNGeesus taketh away.

Traps in the Courtyard are... slightly disturbing, I find. They deal direct damage and a Bleed (which Gawain resists here).

[The Thirst]
In the first room, we run into a Sycophant and (visible in the background) a Supplicant and a Chevalier, with the last one definitely being the biggest danger.

We also run into Gawain making it weird. Cursed adventurers will sometimes react to a compagnion being hit, stressing that compagnion a bit.

Now, about my team comp: Gawain and Specter do what they do - Punch, and heal/stun, respectively - but Dismas and Sigurd do a little dance between the middle ranks. Dismas uses Duelist's Advance to set up Riposte (i.e. counterattack every time he's targeted by a damaging move), which also moves him ahead one rank...

...and Sigurd, who forgot to bring his fanfiction into this dungeon, uses Holy Lance to reset the positioning. It's not a continuous dance, since Duelist's Advance itself is weaker than Dismas' other moves and Riposte lasts for three rounds, but it allows Sigurd to target the back ranks on turn 1.

The Chevalier, like the first time we met one, can't land a hit, so you still have to take my word that it can be pretty dangerous.The Chevalier, like the first time we met one, can't land a hit, so you still have to take my word that it can be pretty dangerous.

Another Bloodlust effect: Use Random Skill. Hew wouldn't have been my choice here (Purge would've killed with higher Acc), but it works out fine.

Gawain: "The tide rises. And the tide falls."

Here's the first fork in the road and my mysterious instincts tell me that we should go East. North and South are dead ends with no big rewards making up for the additional battles you'd have to fight.

...I remember the Ghoul. It's not a good memory.

We don't have to run away like last time we met one, but it's a legitimately threatening enemy nonetheless. Skull Toss deals decent direct damage, 15 Stress, AND can stun.

The Corpse Eater's Dmg rolls are lower, but it can also inflict Blight. And in Veteran-tier dungeons like this, they also start to transfer diseases, although the chance for that is fairly small (and in this case, the Crimson Curse give Sigurd immunity to any other disease anyway).

Ughh.... More Stress really isn't what I want. [Howl] - 75% chance to inflict Horror, inflicting 3x3 points of Stress

Gnawing uncertainty - the birthplace of dread.

All in all, not a DANGEROUS battle, but stress levels are rising quite a bit already.

After that, we find an unusual obstacle - the only type that requires a Torch instead of a Shovel to clear. The flavour text is actually not just fluff here: If you go through it without a torch, you'll be sent back to an already explored, random location.

The room just has an unguarded Curio - Bloodflowers, which yeald some treasure if you dig them out with a Shovel.

Another crossroad and this time the voices in my head tell me that south is where we need to go - but there might be some treasure to be found in the opposite direction.

A few steps in, Gawain calms down...

...and Specter walks right into a trap. It's less unnerving than the previous one, which is bad...

...because it indicates that the trap spawned a couple enemies - 50% chance of that to happen. "Couple" being a precise term in this case, which means that "bad" was a bit exaggerated.

Grievous injury, palpable fear!

OR WAS IT? ...well, it's still not a dangerous fight, but it adds to the stress level.

The next room battle is a bit tougher, again mainly because of the Chevalier in the back...

...who actually lands his attack for once. Unlike Dismas, who whiffs the first time he actually makes use of his Riposte. (The Ghoul's Howl doesn't deal HP damage, so it doesn't trigger the counter)

[Buried Blast] hits two random targets for moderate damage...

...but also carries a Stun and a -40 Dodge debuff, which really makes it quite nasty.

[Subterranean Skewer] is the Chevalier's harder-hitting ST attack. With a decent chance to crit.

And also dealing a 3-point Bleed, which Sigurd doesn't particularly enjoy...

I get a bit of healing in before ending the fight (and without allowing the Chevalier another turn, thanks to Dismas dealing a Bleed on it), but attrition is piling up nevertheless.

Still, we move on. Almost like we know where to go and that there's not a whole lot of fights between us and our first goal.

This Throbbing Coccoon isn't the goal, but it's still appreciated - in the Courtyard, you can burn them down for a 30-point stress heal. Very appreciated, since Specter wasn't doing too hot in that regard.

Even more appreciated, because we run into another Ghoul (and two Maggots, but whatever) soon thereafter.

This fight goes fairly well, though - still full of stress, but Specter outheals the HP damage that I'm taking.

The Thronging Hive has been demoted from Quest Goal in the first Courtyard mission to a random curio, yielding some treasure when you burn it. In this case, 75 gold and 2 food, i.e. hardly worth the torch...

Sigurd becomes Craving again already, although this time I'm going to sit it out - I'm pretty sure that I won't explore much further and I'm hoping that he'll be able to control his cravings for a few weeks in the Hamlet, saving me some Blood.

Next fight! And the reason why I was going into this direction in the first place. But first the battle - it's a mean one.

(Sigurd was hit by the Manservant's Enraging Slight, which causes Stress and brought him above 80, triggering his bark)

The fight starts fairly well, though - Dismas crits with his Duelist's Advance, which allows Gawain to get a safe kill with Hew (well, safe except for his his low Acc).

Dismas: "Didn't see that coming, did you?"

Dismas gets Stunned here, but Sigurd does not. The Riposte looks a bit weak here because the Chevalier has 30% Prot, but it's still free damage. It's at its best against enemies who love AoE damage, though - like Brigand Fuseliers or some bosses.

Specter also lands a Stun on the second Chevalier, and Sigurd gets a nice big hit in.

Sigurd: "A righteous blow!"

But the next turn, both Chevaliers target Sigurd - remember that he wasn't too high on HP to begin with...

...and the Bleed damage brings him right to Death's Door. No saving throw against Death, at least, since the Bleed BROUGHT him to 0 HP...

Sigurd: "Is this to be my last battle?"

...and with a Bandage and the few HP that his stress heal restores, he's safe for now.

Sigurd: "My thread winds on!"

[Open Vein]
Dismas gets an kill (by the added Bleed) on one of the Chevaliers right away, so the immediate danger is over...

A death by inches...

...but I still decide to call it a day. Better safe than sorry.

But first: Disappointment! Both those trinkets are just some common ones, only worth the money that you can sell them for.

Should've went directly towards the quest goal after all. Oh well, Hindsight's 2020. The game is lying a bit here - you don't suffer stress from retreating from a Courtyard mission.

You obviously don't get the Quest Rewards, so the haul isn't particularly impressive, but that's to be expected in these missions.

Quirk-wise, Fragile definitely has to go, no question about that. Flawed Release has literally zero negative impact on Gawain, so it's legit a good quirk for him to pick up, since it occupies a bad quirk slot.

Back in the Hamlet, I get increasingly frustrated by the lack of piety among my new recruits...

The Sanitarium has a Gothic Theme Day with two Vampires seeking treatment (surely, nothing bad will come of this): Sigurd immediately gets rid of Fragile, Gawain locks in Hot To Trot.

(nothing bad WILL come of this - there's nobody around to spread the Curse to)

Next mission is just a quick and easy Antiquarian run - not very memorable, so I'll just give the general idea:

Jessica comes into the dungeon very stressed, so she and Sora do some singing and dancing.

('member when every female pop singer wanted to be Britney?)

Pramanix also dances, but with more killing and less singing. Corneilles doesn't mind too much -

- in fact, he can also join Sora in a Dance when I want Sora to deal some damage with his Dirk Stab.

We find one Eerie Coral on the way and Pramanix uses the occasion to rethink her dietary balance and her sleep schedule. As a result, she's no longer more susceptible to disease - not too big a deal, I think, but I'll revert that statement if she resists a Crimson Curse later this playthrough.

And that's that! It's just a short dungeon, so I come out of it with just ~16500g and 22 heirlooms (mostly Crests)

...so about that disease resistance, Pramanix...

(It's really not a big deal. 750 gold in the Sanatorium. Corneilles and Sora will have to get rid of their negative quirks, too.)

Next week's expedition will cost us half the usual gold price - not sure why Supplies and Provision are listed as two different things here. In any case, this is a bit of an encouragement to pick a medium or long expedition next.

I decide to go for a medium-length mission in the Weald, getting mixed reception from the team I picked.

Sending Sigurd into a dungeon at his current stress level does seem like a terrible idea, but hear me out:

The Crusader has a very powerful stress self-heal when camping and the Vestal's camp skills can de-stress religious compagnions (which, surprise surprise, includes the Crusader) very effectively as well. Risky? For sure. But not quite as silly as this initially looks.

I also make the first step to truly leveling up to Lv.3 by upgrading the Guild (remember, character level and skill/equipment level are out of sync) - now I'll need to save Deeds and Crests to do the same with the Blacksmith.

I knew all these paths once; now they are as twisted as my own ambitions.

The dungeon layout will force us to take walk a couple hallways twice, but since we can leave two rooms unscouted, we can maybe skip a fight or three.

This is an Antiquarian run, so I'm hoping for some good money - even if I will have to flee without clearing the mission, although I'd love to get my hands on the trinket reward.

First room battle! And with a new enemy type too: The Blighted Giant has a huge HP pool (98 HP, compared the Ghoul's 41 or the tier 2 Bloodletter's 49), but no Prot at all. DOT-wise, he's more susceptible to Bleed than to Blight - like most of the Weald-specific enemies.

A bleed-centred team comp is generally better here, but I was hoping for Gitano to set up some Blights to give Haze her damage boost.

Haze is a lot faster, though (Graverobber is the class with the highest Spd), so she mostly has to inflict the Blights herself. With her Crimson Court trinkets, she has a base chance of 165% to Blight, which will get through the monster's Blight resist (usually ~80) fairly reliably.

And with the Blight in place, her damage is pretty darn respectable.

For Gitano, meanwhile, I have a chance of plans: Instead of dealing some meager points of Blight damage, she spams her [Invigorating Vapours], which at this level boosts the entire team's Dodge by +9 per use and can stack up to +27.

[Treebranch Smackdown] - HUGE direct HP damage and knocks the target back one rank

[Poison Spores] - 2 points of direct damage and a 3-point Blight. Wayyy less dangerous than the Smackdown.

It works quite nicely in this fight, although it'll never be a reliable tactic.

Incidently, leaving the stress dealing enemy alive when Sigurd's already at 80+ stress might not have been my brightest move.

DEFINITELY not my brightest move. Also: Ummmmmmmm... I don't think I would be allowed to post his fanfics during this dungeon.

Those who covet injury find it in no short supply.

Sigurd: "I will bear any wound!"

A fortune waiting to be spent...

Anyway, what I probably should've done is set up camp right away, to use all the stress reductions on Sigurd. I can still do that, but getting rid of his masochism would require his stress to go down all the way to zero, which is highly unlikely to say the least.

Moving on - second battle,  no stress dealer! Yay!

Grievous injury, palpable fear!

BOOOOO!

Sigurd: "Begone! Providence alone shall suffice!"

...if you say so. Every affliction has its own set of penalties attached to it - including a buttload of "refuse to do X", in this case "refuse to be buffed", which a masochistic adventurer will do 1/3 of the time. Sigurd's Dodge is reduced by -15 for the entire dungeon, too, so he's not exacty being a dodge tank anyway.

Well, I say that...

[Confusion Spores] - debuffs Acc by -7 and has a high chance to shuffle the party.

...and I would be right. Note that Sigurd as our tankiest hero has 38 HP. Haze is sitting at 26, Gitano at 27. The Blighted Giant is legit dangerous, so I can somewhat understand why Past Ping would target it over the Acolyte in the previous fight.

Next Masochistic bark: When an enemy misses (the Giant whiffed another Confusion Spore), the adventurer will be disappointed, stressing out the party a little.

Next: Like with buffs, there's also a 1/3 chance that the hero will refuse to be healed. If it's a single target heal, the healer can still choose another option, if it's the multi target heal, it'll just target the remaining three (hopefully three...) heroes.

Shadow Fade + Blight + Lunge. Not bad, not bad...

Next battle: A fairly tough group of Bloodsuckers, once again mostly because of the Chevalier in the back.

Haze and Gitano remove one of the mosquitos, Saria stuns the Chevalier. Sigurd... puts a mark on himself, although luckily none of these enemies deal bonus damage to marked.

Sigurd: Show your worth! Spill my holy blood!

Sycophant:

Sigurd: *is at 5 HP*

Also Sigurd: *deals 4 Dmg to himself*

Ahhhhh, fighting with an afflicted hero. Always an adventure.

At least he doesn't refuse the heal this time.

We knew that Sigurd may stress the party when an enemy misses him. He may also stress the party when an enemy hits him.

It's really a testament to the Vestal's power that I'm going out of that battle with fairly respectable HP levels. Still - time to set up camp. I ran into a couple early hunger events, so I don't dare spending 8 food for the stress relief (it would put me at 4 remaining rations, i.e. enough for a single hunger event).

Brief summary: Sigurd combines ambush prevention with a huge stress self-heal; Saria uses Pray but Sigurd refuses to partake; Saria uses Chant on Sigurd (forgot to make a proper screenshot: -15 Stress and -20% Stress taken for four battles. Far smaller numbers for non-religous classes); Haze goes clubbing.

Next fight: Four maggots, which should be no problem at all. Except we get shuffled, which really sucks - Sigurd doesn't have Holy Lance equipped and Haze can only Shadow Fade from 1st rank, which means that my damage output for the first turn is godawful, which means that all four maggots get at least one attack in.

Mortality clarified in a single strike.

At least Sigurd enjoys it.

Sigurd: "This persecution only strengthens my devotion!"

Ummmmmmmmm.....

[redacted]

Next fight, and a quick lesson how small things can matter.

First: Haze targets the Enchantress and misses the KO by one point. Which, to be fair, was a coinflip - her damage range here is 13-23, so 18 lies right in the middle of it.

A dizzying blow to body and brain!

The Enchantress gets her turn right after that. And Crits. Which brings Saria to 100 Stress. Oh no...

Oh, sorry, I meant to say OH YES!

Saria: "By the holy Flame, I shall persevere!"

A moment of clarity in the eye of the storm...

There's a 1/4 chance to become virtuous instead of afflicted when hitting 100 stress - and this immediately reduces Saria's own stress to 45 and also gives the rest of the party a small stress heal. On top of that, Saria also gains +10 Acc, +8 Crit for the rest of the dungeon.

Unfortunately, the Enchantress also pulled her to 1st rank, where she is utterly useless, and Sigurd only allows her to change positions on 2nd try.

Skipping a turn actually inflicts a little bit of stress - most of the time, you can avoid this by just attacking a corpse, or swapping positions, but here, Saria actually doesn't have any other choice.

Still, the fight ends without too much further problems. And we get a nice final scout in - one more required fight, then we'll have explored enough rooms to finish the missions and have the option to take a hallway battle or two to get some more curios.

But first the battle and a bit of sadness. Not because of the battle itself, but because that thing in the background is a second Eldritch Altar that I'm not going to be able to use.

The fight itself doesn't seem too threatening - the Ectoplasms can summon more of themselves once there's room, but they're very frail (12 HP) and don't deal a terrible amount of damage, either.

The Towering Ectoplasm is, of course, a LOT beefier (51 HP, 33% Prot), but it's damage output...

...is pretty laughable for a monster that's two ranks big. (to be fair, it has other attacks that deal more damage, but nowhere near the level of the Giant,the Ghoul, or even just the Bloodletter)

[Cytokinesis] - also summons a regular Ectoplasm.

Saria also helps out a bit: Virtuous heroes have 1/4 chance every turn to give one compagnion a boost - for Focused, that's +10 Acc and +10 Crit. Unfortunately, it goes to Gitano instead of Haze or Sigurd, though.

OK, fast forward a little. The Towering Ectoplasm took some time to go down, but it did eventually (with Blight dealing the last points of damage, which is why it didn't leave a corpse), and now we're practically done.

One last attack from the Ectoplasm...

[Ectoplasmic Profusion] - which... also...

...deals +10 Stress to the entire party. Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

The walls close in, the shadows whisper of conspiracy!

And also summons a Towering Ectoplasm. Come on!

Haze: "Think I'm done with you? HARDLY!"

But to be honest, the rest of the fight is more tedious than dangerous. Haze critting the Towering Ectoplasm here speeds things up quite a bit.

And we're done. Phew! That was... stressful! *rimshot*

Overall haul is decent, I guess, although a bit light on the heirlooms. Saria picks up the worst quirk (the "lick EVERYTHING" quirk) and Haze... apparently wasn't quite as over Her or Him (details open to headcanon) as she thought she was.

In the Stage Coach, we STILL don't find a Vestal, but an Occultist is fine too, I GUESS. The increased Accuracy is actually pretty good on him, since it applies to all but one of his offensive skills. I may or may not be glad that I brought him with me - let's see what the readers say.

The Caretaker blocks the Transept, which is actually annoying since it's Sigurd's only allowed place to reduce stress. I go a bit against my initial plans here and do upgrade the Cloister halfway through, just to have one fairly cheap option whenever stress gets too high to only rely on the Puppet Theatre's passive effect.

This week, Saria (because her stress is really high) ang Gitano (to remove Paranoid) make use of the upgraded Cloister.

Looking at Sigurd's stress level, it might be possible to get by without any stress healing anyway - afflictions also go away when stress naturally decays to zero, which would mean 4 weeks of inactivity. Crusader is always such a good class to bring though... We'll see, but next update. Thanks for reading!

 

[Golb89]

Spoiler

10 hours ago, ping said:

 

10 hours ago, ping said:

Instead, I bring the Good Bad and Ugly, wondering who is falling into what category and if the fourth expedition member doubles as Good/Bad/Ugly or just doesn't have a descriptor.

 

10 hours ago, ping said:

Reminder that the Ancestor isn't exactly a nice chap.

 

10 hours ago, ping said:

...I remember the Ghoul. It's not a good memory.

 

10 hours ago, ping said:

Should've went directly towards the quest goal after all. Oh well, Hindsight's 2020.

(I know she wasn't part of the actual expedition, but i've long since run out of Specter's quotes)

 

10 hours ago, ping said:

Back in the Hamlet, I get increasingly frustrated by the lack of piety among my new recruits...

 

10 hours ago, ping said:

Jessica comes into the dungeon very stressed,

10 hours ago, ping said:

so she and Sora do some singing and dancing.

10 hours ago, ping said:

 

10 hours ago, ping said:

Pramanix also dances, but with more killing and less singing.

 

10 hours ago, ping said:

not sure why Supplies and Provision are listed as two different things here.

I guess the latter only include stuff you eat.

 

10 hours ago, ping said:

DEFINITELY not my brightest move. Also: Ummmmmmmm... I don't think I would be allowed to post his fanfics during this dungeon.

Should have called him Darkness:

(For brevity's sake i will NOT quote any of his masochistic lines nor link any more Darkness .gifs in response to them in this update)

 

10 hours ago, ping said:

Every affliction has its own set of penalties attached to it - including a buttload of "refuse to do X"

(Wrong character again, but this time it was closer)

 

10 hours ago, ping said:

Saria: "By the holy Flame, I shall persevere!"

 

10 hours ago, ping said:

Saria picks up the worst quirk (the "lick EVERYTHING" quirk) and Haze... apparently wasn't quite as over Her or Him (details open to headcanon) as she thought she was.

If only it had been the opposite...

 

Edited June 11, 2020 by Golb89

[ping]

Spoiler

 

12 hours ago, Golb89 said:

[ghoul]

I've seen the vid you posted earlier - can't remember if I got far enough into FF8 to fight that thing. I found Squall as the point-of-view character rather frustrating (whatever...), so I didn't enjoy the game as much as the numbers around it. Now, if the entire game was centred around Laguna....

Alternative "Ghoul from old classic video game":

12 hours ago, Golb89 said:

Haze: "I'm no stranger to fleeing, but this is just too embarrassing..."

I feel attacked!  

12 hours ago, Golb89 said:

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Kitty sounds like a great premise.

 

 

[Benice]

23 hours ago, ping said:

 

mmm...Now I want popcorn.

23 hours ago, ping said:

 

 

NO! He has to die to a fire attack!

 

[ping]

2 hours ago, Benice said:

NO! He has to die to a fire attack!

*flashbacks to my first run intensify*

Edited June 11, 2020 by ping

[Golb89]

5 hours ago, Benice said:

NO! He has to die to a fire attack!

Alternatively:

 

2 hours ago, ping said:

*flashbacks to my first run intensify*

 

Also:

And:

Just putting my hands forward...

(... if anything, because i'm most likely gonna forget when the right time comes)

 

[ping]

@Golb89 yup, the Affliction/Virtue screens have been used as a meme template quite a bit, I think. I only started recognizing them after finally playing the game, though.

"Many fall in the face of chaos, but not this one. Not today." might be my favourite Ancestor quote. The "Not today", with the implication of "we'll see about next time", really sells it for me.

• Update 15: Boss Rush

Spoiler

Next Stop: The 2nd-tier Necromancer. Partly because my adventurers start approaching Lv.5 (at which they wouldn't go into Veteran-tier dungeons anymore), partly because the Necromancer is still probably the least dangerous boss in the game (unless you count the Bandit Bloodletter in the tutorial dungeon) so I should be able to take him without the next Blacksmith tier, and partly because the mission gives a pretty neat trinket as a reward. I forgot to make a screenshot, but the Fortifying Garlic increases Blight, Bleed, and Disease resist by 33% with no downside attached.

Hamlet work is summarized quickly: Skills are upgraded, Auber's quirks are reinforced/purged. Frostleaf (our Hellion) also gets rid of her Ascetic quirk (reduced healing received from the Occultist) so that she can work with both healer classes.

...certain techniques and alchemical processes I had found to yield wonderous and terrifying results. Having learned all I could from my visiting guests, I murdered them as they slept.

Reminder that the Ancestor isn't a particularly nice chap. And, also as a reminder, the first part of is Memoirs regarding the Necromancer:

Mastery over life and death was chief among my early pursuits. I began in humility, but my ambition was limitless. Who could have divined the prophetic import of something as unremarkable... as a twitch in the leg of a dead rat?

A devil walks these hals...only the mad or the desperate go in search of him.

I go with The Cleanup Crew once again: Haze and Phil for Blight and Blight Abuse; Specter for healing.

Gawain for big, big damage rolls. He still has some residual stress, but that shouldn't be a problem (this time for real!)

The path to the boss is unambiguous this time, since there's only one room that's six hallways away from the start, and we've been to the Ruins numerous times before - so I think I can largely skip the walk to the boss. We do, however meet a new enemy type:

(note that this fight takes place right after coming out of a room battle, which allows Haze's stealth and Dmg/Dodge buffs to carry over)

The Gargoyle has a whopping 50% Prot, but only 10 HP - kind of a less extreme version of the snails in the Cove, defensively at least. Even though Gawain overkills pretty hard here, he actually still has a small chance of rolling low enough on his 8-17 range to miss the one-shot, despite being a Leper on Bloodlust with a +Dmg quirk.

Offensively, he has to attacks that can both mess with your positioning: [Lash of the Tail] deals very low damage, but carries a Stun and a Knockback, although the latter is only by one rank.

[Flurry of Claws] hits your two front ranks, deals a little more damage (but still not a whole lot) and has a small chance to Shuffle (i.e. move to a random rank) its targets. Although looking at the wiki, its base chance of doing so is 50%, which is completely negated by literally every Lv.3 character's Move resist, unless it's debuffed or reduced by a trinket.

TL;DR: Gargoyle harmless. Better to focus on whatever monster is accompanying them.

Especially when it's the actually threatening Ghoul.

Ughhh, double stress dealers...

UGHHH, DOUBLE STRESS DEALERS... Haze no likey.

Oh, and a new enemy type: The Bone Commander, who (like Ghouls and Gargoyles) only appears in Veteran and Champion dungeons.

[Crushing Blow] - fairly high Dmg (8-16) and Crit (16%) and also debuffs Stun Resist.

I felt pretty smart about this one: Knock the Melee enemy back to the back row while also getting the squishies into Gawain's range. Ignore the Move Resist at the bottom at the screen, please.

"Never tell me the odds!" - Ephraim, probably

"Purge has a 130% base chance of Knockback on its current proficiency level, so thirty-five percent in this scenario!" - ping

Reading the wiki right now also tells me that the knockback wasn't even a 100% beneficial move - it locks the Bone Commander into his secondary move, which is a all-party Stun attack (with a low base chance, but still...). Luckily for past ping, between being stunned itself and the high damage potential of this team comp, the Commander doesn't get another turn to show it off.

[Bless used on Gawain, since he's struggling the most with Acc]

Since Haze is pretty close to Affliction already, I go ahead and set up camp in the room right before the boss. The stress relief potential on this group comp isn't that amazing, but at least it gets Haze down to 54 stress...

...and scouting a trap in the next hallway also allows her to disarm it for another -8 Stress.

Towering, fierce, terrible. Nightmare made material!

And here we go! The Necromancer doesn't change too much between his first and second iteration - it still reads terrible fanfics...

...which greatly disturbs the party...
[Six Feet Under] - +15 Stress, and luckily the only stress attack that the Necromancer has

...and also summons a random skeleton. Probably to have a listener who can't run away (and also protects the Necromancer from his increasingly annoyed audience).

Necromancer: "Well excuuuuuuse me princess, for taking a more serious approach on the Smurf-verse. You have to admit that their pseudo-communist society just cannot function the way it is described in the original material!"
Specter: "Alright, I guess, it's your story after all. But does it have hot steamy explicit sex scenes? Not that I would be into that stuff or anything, I'm just asking. So that I don't accidentally read that kind of sinful, carnal, lustful stuff."

"You see, I'm very pious and my faith isn't troubled by anything. Especially not by indecent thoughts. About strong... biceps or... big...

Actually, let's just kill the thing and continue this conversation never."

OK, let's listen to the crazily repressed priestess, shall we? The Necromancer summoned a Bone Veteran first, i.e. a stealthed enemy. While I don't have any de-stealth skills active, Gawain can use [Hew] to get around it - he two-shots the Veteran while at the same time putting some damage on the boss.

Haze does her [Shadow Fade] / [Lunge] dance...

...for some decent damage: a range of 21-37 with 31% crit. Without the crit, this isn't quite as good as Gawain's total damage (he deals 20-ish total damage every turn), but that's to be expected - front line characters do more damage in general.

With the downside that their reach isn't as great - Gawain is forced to heal himself with Solemnity here because BOTH 1st and 2nd rank are stealthed, which disables the AoE workaround.

Not sure what Haze is talking about here -

the Necromancer had used [The Flesh Is Willing] to summon that second Bone Veteran and I don't think anything did touch Haze...

Be it as it may - the Necromancer goes down fairly easily (which also despawns the skeletons).

The random trinket drops are kinda whatever, but we also get our second Blueprint - now if only we had enough heirlooms to build a second Estate with it...

The bigger the beast, the greater the glory.

Haze: "You're looking a tad wan, friend."

Anyway, since HP and stress levels are still looking fine (well fine-ish for Haze), I continue exploring a little bit, but stop when Haze's stress approaches 90.

But that's that! A bit anticlimactic, I guess, but once in a while the game does cooperate with the player and things do not go horribly wrong in every way.

Notably, Gawain and Haze reached Lv.5, which would unlock the highest tier of skills and equipment if the Hamlet upgrades had kept pace. It also means that they won't go on Veteran-tier missions anymore, so I guess they're going to take a break for a while now.

Champion-tier missions have been popping up the last two or three weeks already (this week, it's only the side mission in the Courtyard), but there's not much sense in pursuing them right now, I think. Instead, we do another Apprentice-level mission into the Warrens - it's high time that we start to unlock the boss missions over there, as well.

It's going to be another Antiquarian mission. We're not exactly hurting for money, but I want to make sure I can make full use of the Blacksmith once it gets upgraded.

They breed quickly down there in the dark, but perhaps we can slay them even faster.

This is a Cleanse mission, so we might have to march through the entire dungeon, but the layout is fairly nice - if we go left first, we only have to backtrack through two hallways.

We run into a Throbbing Coccoon fairly early. Those are pretty common, now that we're sitting at high infestation levels, but we've always ignored them so far. This time, Jessica takes a little lick...

...which unleashes a standard group of Bloodsuckers. But is it really "standard"?!

...almost, but not quite. This Gatekeeper looks quite the same as the Manservant, but I believe this is the first time we see this particular enemy.

"Really, I think that some people just need to accept the fact that they're just no Gamers. I mean no offense, of course, but if you can't even play Sekuro on the intended difficulty, you just lack the mental capabilities to really appreciate the pleasure that is a good, proper video gaming experience. Catering to that kind of "Casual" by introducing an easy mode, or allowing people to make a mod to a similar effect, will just ruin the game for us True Gamers, what with all the scrubs running around claiming that they, ahem, "beat the game". Even though they didn't grow. They didn't improve. They took a shortcut and gained nothing. Nothing was risked and nothing was gained. It's sad if you don't know the difference."

brb, need to take a shower. I feel dirty after typing that.

[Enraging Slight] - also causes stress, marks the target, and may pull it 2 ranks forward. The Gatekeeper shares this attack with the Manservant, but doesn't have any of its other, more bloodsuck-y moves. Instead, it may use "Elusive Exit", which does what you'd think it does and you don't want to happen...

...because these Gatekeepers are what you farm the Invitations for the main Courtyard mission from.

Next battle, next group of bloodsuckers. And also an ambush, which shuffles everyone to a position they don't really want to be in. It's still not super bad - Warfarin loses his first turn, but only the first, since Flagellants can move 3 ranks forwards (but not backwards) in one turn.

And Frostleaf hardly cares at all, since she has [Breakthrough] equipped, the Hellion's "deal damage while moving forward" attack, which also happens to be a really strong AoE skill (but debuffs her damage for a couple turns).

I'm going to allow myself to mostly skip the rest. Another Bloodsucker fight...

...ANOTHER Bloodsucker fight (and also another ambush)...

...a beautiful [Iron Swan]...

Frostleaf: "I will FEAST on you HEART!"

(please don't, I'd rather keep the number of Crimson Cursed heroes low)

...and FINALLY the first regular group of Warrens enemies. Good grief.

And the battle after that gives us the next Ambush, which I believe means that we had as many ambushes in this mission alone as we had in the entire playthough until now.

Auber is having a bit of a rough time in his first dungeon (at this point, I'm really convinced that stress-dealing enemies focus on already stressed adventurers). The picture is technically unrelated to that, but it kinda fits the mood.

Like, come on!

But, silver lining!, he saves us some food that way! I wasn't even aware that he has this quirk (even though I recently sent him to the Sanitary), so I was rather confused at first when I had an odd number of rations left.

This random drop is a pretty good one - I don't think I've ever seen this particular trinket before. The lowered resists aren't too bad (I guess Gawain or Kroos really don't appreciate being moved) and +5 Acc / +8 Crit is pretty legit, even if it's restricted to melee attacks.

This scout reveals in the last second that this dungeon has a secret room - unfortunately after I decide to drop my chest keys to make room for some loot that I already got. Which means that instead of the 3500-gold treasure with the complicated name, I only find 775 gold (and, at least, an Antique because Jessica is with us today). Oh well!

Close to the end, we find a map in a backpack, revealing that there's only one hallway battle and one room battle left.

The hallway fight has two Swine Slashers in it - have we seen those before?

Their only attack is [Hook Where It Hurts], which doesn't deal too much damage, but debuffs Bleed and Disease resist. It has a fairly high crit chance (16%), too, but this is still not a particularly threatening enemy on its own.

[If It Bleeds]
Defensively, they're not too great, either: 25% Prot and a little bit of Dodge (7.5%), but low HP - so low that this was a precise one-shot, in fact.

"Oh right, this was a medium mission" - ping's brain, while typing this

HP and stress haven't been THAT bad, so I was able to postpone the camp until now.

Auber is our ambush-preventer here. Unlike every other camp skill of that variety, Unspeakable Commune's side effect is a negative one, but it costs less time in exchange.

Auber then gets some anti-stress measurements (both generic skills used once, giving him -15 Stress now and -15% Stress taken in that last battle) and Jessica scrounges a rare, but rather useless trinket. Yes, you can run out of food and it sucks when it happens, but if you're afraid of that, you could just bring more food to begin with and equip a trinket with more meaningful combat bonuses than +5 Dodge instead. It's worth some money, I guess?

("enjoy it"? Badly timed screenshot...)

Main stress healer of the day is actually Frostleaf, who brought enough booze for everyone. The stress reduction on this skill is absolutely insane, but it comes at a cost...

...except not really because I actually planned ahead and overstocked on Medical Herbs! Yay me!

I suspect that this might be an oversight on the dev's part, since self-inflicted debuffs often can't be healed with Medical Herbs, but it works here.

The purple spider web just indicates that there's a scouted trap in front of the group and you can mouse over it to see how good each hero's chance at disarming it would be.

(also, don't mix alcohol and medicine, kids. You might just die.)
(dang, now I remember and feel nostalgic about Curse of Monkey Island)

Anyways, we know these enemies. (that's a pukey swine dying in the back) It's nice that we got the jump on them, because it allowed us to kill both stress dealers before they got a turn.

The curio in the background is a Bone Altar, and the only reason I'm not complaining is that we've been rather lucky with this kind of curios in the past, so I guess it's OK to get the Big Combat Boost curio after the last fight for once.

But that's it for this run. We don't get a whole lot of quirks this time: Only Plutomania (lick treasure-related curios) on Warfarin and Resolution (won't drink for stress relief) on Auber. I might get rid of the former, although it's not super terrible, and the latter literally doesn't matter at all, so that's great.

Back in town, two Kings of Jerusalem arrived, but I don't think we'll recruit either of them.

We will, however, finally recruit Venois Lawrence, since every team needs a Jeigan...

...which also means that I need to up our barracks' size despite that delaying the Blacksmith upgrades. Because surely we'll be able to pick up some Vestals SOME DAY...

We also get another Jester, because we might as well, right? Warrior of Light is a great quirk and Jester is a great class, and this one even saves us some money by joining at Lv.1 with upgraded skills and equipment. First time that particular Stage Coach upgrade pays off, actually!

I don't think we have a name in the queue for a Jester, right?

Other hamlet stuff: Saria absolutely needs to learn that you really don't want to know what's going on. Kroos also locks in Quick Reflexes (+2 Spd, unconditional).

And then it's finally time to get the other tier 1 bosses out of the way, starting with the Wizened Hag.
(*googles for synonyms* Wrinkled, withered, gnarled, shrunken. That makes more sense than my initial association with "wise" - why would the lowest-tier version get that kind of moniker?)

My work was interrupted, however, by a singularly striking young woman who insisted on repeated calls to the house.

That's... not a whole lot of exposition, to be honest.

There is method in the wild corruption here. It bears a form both wretched and malevolent.

The map is a bit off centre, but there's two more rooms to the west and nothing further south from what we can see. The furthest room is, obviously straight to the west.

However, we get a critical scout right in the next room we reach, revealing a Secret Room to the south. So, south we go!

The hallway fight on our way contains nothing new - two rabid doggos and this acolyte. I mostly want to show Sora's role for this mission: While he still keeps the options to buff Acc/Crit and to heal stress, he's also here as a Bleed character that can reach the third rank with [Slice Off].

Rainecourt is more of a generic damage dealer, at least for now. He technically has Mark synergy with Auber, but that's not too effective when the enemies are being two-shot anyways.

The room battle guarding the treasure is just four Spiders. Nothing to see here.

Since I scouted the Secret Room almost immediately this time, I obviously didn't use/drop the keys before reaching it. It yields two Trapeasfkjölafdsjkta crystals and the last remaining Collector trinket: the Man-at-Arms' head. Quite powerful when stress isn't too much of an issue, and frontline units are usually targeted less often by stress-inducing attacks.

And then we just march westwards. We found another backpack map here, revealing the rest of the map. Only one battle before reaching the boss!

And it's not even the most difficult battle, either. We get a jump on the dogs, so we go before them on turn 1...

...and thanks to that crit, three dogs go down before they can act (without a crit, max damage roll plus bleed would've been enough).

Only three because the Occultist can't use his Sacrificial Stab from the 4th rank and doesn't really have any other moves with decent single-target damage output.

Anyway, the fight ends with outrageously good HP and stress levels, and I decide to delay setting up camp, just so I can use it to get rid of (some of) the stress the boss fight might incur.

Alright, boss fight gogogo! Meet the "singularly striking young woman"!

The Hag always sits in 3rd and 4th rank and both she and her cauldron are immune to being moved (200% resist. It MIGHT be possible to stack enough bonuses to overcome that?), which makes low-reach characters (read: Leper and Crusader) absolutly awful in this fight.

She has two actions per turn and she has hardly any Bleed resist, so that's the most effective way to deal damage to her.

This includes our Bounty Hunter, whose [Caltrops] also debuff her Spd and increase the direct Dmg she takes.

Unfortunately, [Collect Bounty] also has that awful 1-2 range (somewhere in the distance, a Fire Emblem LTCer feels a sudden burst of anger and doesn't know why) - it would've been absolutely insane in this fight otherwise, since it gets bonus damage against human enemies on top of its Mark abuse.

After that, it's the hag's turn and she...

...cooks Auber. Huh.

[Into The Pot!] is the main gimmick of this fight, constantly leaving you with three heroes. The simmering hero takes damage fairly slowly, but will only be spat out once at Death's Door. You CAN knock over the pot fairy easily - when filled, it only has 14 HP and no damage reduction, while it's completely impervious to any damage when empty - but it's not really worth it. The Hag will just start cooking the next hero immediately.

Her other moves are [Season to Perfection], which mostly deals stress and debuffs the character's offense (-10 Acc, -25% Dmg), and...

The wood is still poisoned. The way is still blocked. But less people will be eaten.

...dying on turn 2. Wait, what?!

So, uh, the Hag only has 66 total HP, which is honestly not that much for a boss, even if this is the Apprentice-tier version of her. I guess you can be caught off-guard if you bring a Crusader and a Leper as your two frontline units? But in general, this is one of the easiest bossfights in the game.

One thing that can potentially disrupt your plans: the character in the cauldron will respawn in 1st rank, which for example disables both the Vestal's healing abilities.

(this happens after the Hag dies - I completely ignored the Cauldron)

But, er, that's the second boss fight of this update. I keep exploring a little bit to make the most out of the week, but nothing too special comes up. OK haul overall - not too much gold directly, but a couple of sellable trinkets (and two very rare ones that I'm going to keep, the head and the mission reward).

The quirks are pretty damn good - Hot to Trot is great on a direct damage dealer (especially since Frostleaf is a bit faster, so there's a better chance that she can snipe a dangerous enemy with this), Lygophobia is increased stress at low light levels (which I'm not exploring at), more Spd is always welcome.

And since this bossfight was so easy, why not do another very easy bossfight right away?

Yeah, yeah, sure. But really, the Swine Prince is very easy if you know how to deal with its gimmick.

Apropos of nothing, Kroos has been sitting at one XP below Lv.3 for a while now without me taking her on any missions. It's almost like I didn't want her to reach Lv.3 for some unknown, mysterious reason.

But first: You might have already spotted her, but SWEET LORD OH YES IT'S FINALLY ANOTHER VESTAL. At Lv.1, as well, so she should be good to go on a boss mission immediately.

Her name is, of course, not Hamage, but Saiga.

This week's quirk management focuses on Frostleaf (who IMMEDIATELY locks in Hot to Trot) and Saria (which is more of a "might as well" thing, since there's no more pressing quirk to remove). But with that out of the way, let's get right back into the action.

Those from beyond require a physical vessel if they are to make the crossing into our reality. The timing of the chants is imperative - without the proper utterances at precise intervals, the process can fail spectacularly.

A nameless abomination, a testament to my failure - it must be destroyed!

Hey, don't talk about Benice like that! We haven't even recruited him yet! (sorry, could not resist)

Anyway, that's a compact map layout. The boss is in the top right or bottom right, so my plan requires careful deliberation:

"Go east and hope that you scout the boss room along the way". Masterful. Genius.

There's been two easy fights on the way, but more importantly-

- an Eldritch Altar that gets rid of Warfarins Plutomania. I'm a bit lucky with the coin flip here, because his other negative Quirk (Mercurial - slightly lower chance of becoming Virtuous at 100 Stress) is not only less impactful in general, but, as I realize right now, completely useless here because Flagellants have a 0% chance of becoming Virtuous to begin with.

But now: Hello, Swine Prince!

And hello wittle Wilbur! Isn't he cute?! And also very fast: with 20 Spd, he's practically guaranteed to go first, while the Swine Prince (0 Spd) is slower even than Corneilles (2 Spd), although he still can roll high on his initiative.

[End These Two] puts a Mark on its two targets (always the two front ranks). Naturally, the Swine Prince will oblige and rain death and destruction just as Wilbur dema--

--Kroos, whatcha doing?

Swine Prince, that's not the AoE attack I was expecting! Saiga wasn't even marked at all!!

So, Kroos used [Rallying Flare] right there, which doesn't deal damage, but removes Stealth. Which neither Wilbur nor the Prince have. But what it also does is remove any Stuns AND MARKS from your team. And when there's no Mark to tell the Prince where to hit, he will use [Wild Flailing] instead of the aptly named [Obliterate Masses].

Of course, I'm a bit unlucky with the Crit here. But still, this little trick trivializes the Swine Prince about as hard as Titania trivializes PoR's earlygame. And even better: Since Kroos has two +Spd quirks, she's guaranteed to go before the Swine Prince - normally, you can't completely nullify the risk of eating an Obliterate.

[End This One] - this triggers the single-target [Obliterate Body] instead, which deals 10-18 Dmg to its target, compared to 6-14 on the double attack.

You might think, "Now wait a minute. Why don't I just target Wilbur first? Surely, he doesn't have as much HP the prince?"

Don't. Every time Wilbur takes damage, the Swine Prince will use Enraged Destruction (5-9 Dmg, decent stun chance ON THE ENTIRE PARTY) as a free action, and if Wilbur dies, he'll use it as his regular attack.

So, all you do is clear the mark, heal as needed, and keep hitting the Swine Prince until it's dead. Boom, fight's ov-

Awwwww, he thinks he's people...

[Squeal] only deals one damage and may Stun your heroes. It's dangerous if the Swine Prince managed to bring one of your heroes to Death's Door, but here, it's little more than a nuisance (and only Corneilles gets stunned anyways).

Fun Fact: Wilbur killing a hero will award a Steam achievement, forever reminding you of your failure. According to the wiki, anyways - it's a hidden achievement and I didn't "manage" to get it on my first playthrough.

Anyway, I again stick around for a bit, collecting treasure and curios, finding another Secret Room (with three Trapesfdöjakos this time!) and a random Gatekeeper. Nice, I wouldn't mind another Invitation - there's no way I'll reach the Baron on my next visit!

Mother--

--FUCKER

Ugh. [Elusive Exit] - causes Horror (3x3 points of stress) on your entire party, the Manservant flees and you don't get the Invitation...

(horror)

...and because you're probably still not salty enough, it also summons as many Sycophants as there is room for.

I guess I shold be thankful that none of those inflicted another Crimson Curse (even though that would apparently be very appropriate for Warfarin)...

Oh well! Another fight against Brigands (see the Bloodletter's health bar? That was ONE strike by Corneilles!)...

...and the Camp to reduce stress. Kroos picked up a fair bit against those Sycophants, but it's almost all gone now.

The last fight is, unfortunately, over another end-of-the-dungeon combat boost that's going to be literally worthless and Saiga catches an infection from pig vomit. Eww. Ew ew ew eww. (The Runs is one of the worse diseases in the game with -20 Dodge and -10% HP. Not that it matters too much at this point - it's just a bit of money)

There we go. The Secret Room made this a pretty profitable run.

Imposter Syndrome will have to be removed - you do NOT want your healer to skip a turn at a crucial point.
Musical is actually really good on the Flagellant - he and the Jester can tag-team for some really nice stress healing: The Flagellant's Endure reduces another hero's stress while raising his own (with the number becoming more favourable at higher level); Inspiring Tune heals stress AND reduces stress taken, including the Endure skill.

We also get our fourth Vestal! Hooray!

She also needs to get over her Imposter Syndrome, of course, but I kinda like the Spiritual quirk on her(she gets more healing from her own healing spells). Warfarin locks in his musical talents, Saiga should proably stop pooping before tackling her mental block.

And, finally, a warm round of applause for Benice, who finally found his way into the hamlet! He doesn't really have much going on quirk-wise, neither good nor bad, but I prefer to call that full of POTENTIAL. We shall see where it leads him - next time. Thanks for reading!

(gee, this probably seems really mean-spirited for people who didn't follow the thread)

 

[Golb89]

5 hours ago, ping said:

"Many fall in the face of chaos, but not this one. Not today."

DA NYA!!!!

 

Spoiler

6 hours ago, ping said:

Reminder that the Ancestor isn't a particularly nice chap.

 

6 hours ago, ping said:

Auber is having a bit of a rough time in his first dungeon

Wasn't he supposed to be called Deepcolor?

(Maybe: i don't even remember if i booked that or Berenice booked this one in the first place...)

 

6 hours ago, ping said:

 

6 hours ago, ping said:

Rainecourt is more of a generic damage dealer, at least for now. He technically has Mark synergy with Auber, but that's not too effective when the enemies are being two-shot anyways.

Pretty sure this one was supposed to be named Skadi though.

 

6 hours ago, ping said:

Alright, boss fight gogogo! Meet the "singularly striking young woman"!

At least she had it better than that other young maid who was literally "sent to sleep with the fishes"...

 

7 hours ago, ping said:

Apropos of nothing, Kroos has been sitting at one XP below Lv.3 for a while now without me taking her on any missions. It's almost like I didn't want her to reach Lv.3 for some unknown, mysterious reason.

 

7 hours ago, ping said:

Her name is, of course, not Hamage, but Saiga.

 

7 hours ago, ping said:

But now: Hello, Swine Prince!

 

7 hours ago, ping said:

I guess I shold be thankful that none of those inflicted another Crimson Curse (even though that would apparently be very appropriate for Warfarin)...

 

7 hours ago, ping said:

but I prefer to call that full of POTENTIAL.

 

7 hours ago, ping said:

We shall see where it leads him - next time. Thanks for reading!

 

[ping]

5 hours ago, Golb89 said:

Pretty sure this one was supposed to be named Skadi though.

That would've been our 2nd, yet to be recruited Grave Robber. I'm sure Rainecourt wouldn't mind that rename though, if you want.

You crossed out "Deepcolor", so I thought you retracted that. He'll be renamed for the next run.

5 hours ago, Golb89 said:

At least she had it better than that other young maid who was literally "sent to sleep with the fishes"...

We don't know that yet ! Maybe the Ancestor didn't have anything to do with her fate! Surely, he wouldn't do anything evil!

 

[Golb89]

20 hours ago, ping said:

That would've been our 2nd, yet to be recruited Grave Robber. I'm sure Rainecourt wouldn't mind that rename though, if you want.

Wasn't our first BH renamed into Cliffheart already?

(But yes, i don't know how i confused the GR with the BH here: i really need to stop reading these past 4 a.m....)

(Also, i should have quoted the update's number above my spoiler section, but i only remembered right after pressing the "submit reply" button and when i edited it in i got the "too much time passed" response... even though it took me less than 30 seconds!)

[ping]

PRAISE THE LIGHT (and also note the small, slightly hidden spoiler for the upcoming update)

So yeah, update coming up later today or tomorrow. Screenshots have been made, but there's still some cutting and writing left to do.

On 6/17/2020 at 4:10 AM, Golb89 said:

Wasn't our first BH renamed into Cliffheart already?

He was - but then suffered a fatal cause of Too Few Hero Slots And Ping Needs Vestals. But come to think of it, I chose to call that BH Cliffheart because I thought he would have better quirks than the one I kept. Since I thought wrong, I think a little retcon is in order. And since I've invested in the real Cliffheart quite heavily, there's no way I'll let him go again.  

--

By the way, heroes that can potentially be renamed: Corneilles (Crusader), Hodene (Jester)

Names that I have noted for future heroes: Skadi, Grani (Grave Robber), Silence, Gavial, Hibiscus, Jean (Plague Doc - I doubt we'll go through ALL of them before too soon), Mayer (Houndmaster), Provence (Arbalest), Batta (Highwayman)

As always, prod me if I'm forgetting anything. Deepcolour the British Occulist will be renamed in the middle of the next update.

[Benice]

5 hours ago, ping said:

PRAISE THE LIGHT (and also note the small, slightly hidden spoiler for the upcoming update)

So yeah, update coming up later today or tomorrow. Screenshots have been made, but there's still some cutting and writing left to do.

Woooo! Sorry about missing the last update.

5 hours ago, ping said:

Corneilles (Crusader),

In honor of my first FE4 run, I'd like to request Arden, named after my MVP.

[Golb89]

You are alive!

[ping]

21 hours ago, Benice said:

Woooo! Sorry about missing the last update.

Never mind that, thanks for sticking around!

18 hours ago, Golb89 said:

You are alive!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-_-QxerYno

• Update 16 - The Return of Boss Rush 2: Electric Boogaloo - The Revenge

Spoiler

Alright, where were we... Ah, Swine Prince slain, fourth Vestal recruited, first Benice recruited...

We now have the heirlooms to get one of our Blacksmith ranks up - I go with armour before weapons because I'm a coward (and also because I think it's the smarter option).

For the next mission, we go (once again) into the ruins. This will unlock the 2nd version of the Prophet, but I'm mostly here for the bosses: We might find The Thing and Pramanix might have her 3rd bad dream.

The mission itself is a the "Purify Altars" one, so we have to bring three Consecrated Essences with us.

We get an immediate scout, which is nice, and spot the first quest location right away, which is also nice because it makes inventory management easier.

And boom, altar found. Very thrilling beginning!!!

We also found a map in a backpack in the hallway, which is why there's a little bit more of the map revealed. To the west, there's a curio and a battle in the hallway - normally not really worth checking, but the fight might be The Thing, so I go anyway...

...but it's just a random, not too dangerous group of skeletons.

Long dungeon short: No Thing appears.

Wellll, I know it's just a 50% chance, so I'm not that surprised tbh.

On the plus side, that fight against those bandits drops another Jute Tapestry, which is always a welcome cash infusion.

Licking the Suit of Armour also makes Pramanix feel rather Adventurous about the Ruins.

See?
[this curio gives either a boost to the licker's prot until camp or a positive, Ruins-related quirk. Either would have been fine for a Shieldbreaker]

And then I found the other two altars. The HP and stress levels kinda tell the tale - having a Vestal and a Jester obviously helps a lot managing them, but I didn't really run into any super-dangerous mobs, which is why I'll skip showing most of this dungeon.

As you can see, there's only hallway battle left...

...which, while relatively dangerous, isn't The Thing either. Oh well, we'll find it eventually.

We do get the 3rd nightmare, though! Thanks for the heads-up, Pramanix.

Since she'll be going into the nightmare with that nasty, uncurable Horror effect, she gets all the stress reduction she can get. Shieldbreaker doesn't count as Religious, but -40% in total is still pretty nice. I forgot to capture how I used the remaining 4 Respite points, but looking at the HP bars, it was some healing on Dismas.

Pramanix: N-no! It begins again!

That's a big snek.

But the little snek still feels protective over it. [Warning Rattle] means that the little Rattler will shield the big, two-headed Adder and retaliate (although fairly weakly) when attacked.

Like so.

Masterfully executed!

Pramanix immediately uses Expose to clear the Pliskin's stealth. It's not always worth bothering instead of simply killing the other enemies first, but the Pliskin has big crit boost while stealthed.

My general strategy: Sora presses the Jester button and just uses [Battle Ballad] over and over again, for the increased Acc and Crit rate.

Saria, when she doesn't need to heal anyone, uses her Stun to reduce the enemy's damage output.

And Pramanix has a little dance with Dismas. She uses [Adder's Kiss] (which inflicts a fairly good Blight) to move back one rank...

...which allows him to use [Point Blank Shot] (+50% Dmg) fairly consistently. I only say "fairly", because their Spd isn't that far apart, which means that the order in which the two are acting isn't set in stone. But even if it doesn't work, both of them have a good arsenal of moves at their disposal regardless.

The Sinister Adder has two attacks (and one defensive ability which it didn't use this fight). [Paralyzing Quills] deals a fair bit of damage and has a high chance to stun...

... [Adder's Fang] does less direct damage, but also inflicts a 4-point Blight.

All things considered, the Adder isn't that threatening - quite tanky, with 63 HP and 20% Prot, but not that strong offensively, considering it's a two-rank large monster.

The bigger the beast, the greater the glory.

So outside of the fancy dancing, the fight boils down to "Punch. Hard.". Pramanix still suffers stress over time, even if it's greatly reduced, so there's absolutely no reason to prolong the fight. Sora delivers the final blow with style.

As a reward, we get the Shieldbreaker's next trinket. It's decent, the +2 Spd can help solidify the turn order in a dance set-up and it doesn't have any drawback, but the Move resist is pretty worthless, given how easily the SB can fix shuffling with her attacks.

And we also get the next snippet of her backstory. It really could come right out of a FE game this far, huh? First two pages are here and here. (btw, I keep finding pages we've already seen for the other stories, so that's why there hasn't been any updates on Darius, the Shambler, or HE WHO IS BECOME VENGENCE)

There's nothing to do in the dungeon after that, so I immediately leave. The trinket reward is quite strong, although you probably want to pair it with a +HP trinket to offset that penalty. In terms of money and heirlooms - eh. 's OK.

Quirks aren't super impactful. Bloodthirsty is a bit disturbing in conjuncture with Dismas' already present Deviant Tastes though...

I do hardly anything in the Hamlet - since Sigurd is Crimson Cursed, putting a non-cursed hero in the Sanitarium alongside him would very likely result in two cursed heroes, and none of the other cursed heroes really need to remove or lock in any quirks.

Apropos of nothing: There's yet another trinket tier above Very Rare - items from the Ancestor's inventory. Very strong, of course, but I have no business going into a long, champion-leveled dungeon at this point (and I believe that is the only place we would be able to get them right now)

Instead, I decide to go for the next Farmstead mission, which also has a very interesting item drop. The first turn is always the most crucial one, so this might allow a hero to kill (or stun) a dangerous enemy right away.

As last time (and every subsequent visit), the Farmstead is not really a dungeon, but a number of fights in direct succession. Torches and Shovels are useless, but healing items can really come in handy.

...The Miller, lamentably eager for some early signs of improvement, fixed his watery eyes intently on the wilted fields and listless mill. My gaze, however, was cast skyward and I marveled at the limitless profanity of the stars, wondering what harvest might come.

Here's the Ancestor's lines before the first venture into the farmstead:

Spoiler

Blight had struck the harvest again that year, and the Miller was desperate. He came to me, hat clutched tightly in filthy fingers, stinking of sweat and manure. Seated comfortably in my observatory, surrounded by telescopes and other delicate apparatus, I recognized his misfortune as an opportunity, and I agreed to lend him my... expertise.

Reminder: The ancestor was NOT a particularly kind-hearted gentleman.

At the start of the mission, we have no option but to walk through this very inconspicuous portal...

...leading right into the fight. The two Farmheads in the back are the "basic" enemy type, with no too dangerous abilities.

In theory, they can deal a little bit of stress and blight damage, but for now, they just use their basic attack, [Ceaseless Labour].

On our side, Pramanix starts using her [Impale] skill, the best AoE attack at higher levels. The direct damage obviously isn't great, but it hits everything and, now that she has leveled up a bit, also adds a small Blight to increase that damage.

Continue the onslaught! Destroy. Them. All.

It can also potentially be used as a Dance set-up with Dismas' Point Blank Shot, but not right here - the Scarecrow enemy in the front (and PBS can only target 1st rank) starts the fight stealthed, so it can't be targeted directly. Instead, Dismas gets rid of the Sleeper's Herald - a new enemy type, but I guess we'll have to wait until we can see its abilities.

The only thing we could've seen if my screenshot timing was better is its Riposte - it counters every attack (so Pramanix took a counter, but the screenshot was a little early) for 3-5 points of damage and - quite importantly, since the Farmstead tends to be a battle of attrition - a Debuff that increases stress damage taken.

Oh, defensively, it has high Prot (45%), but only 8 HP, so it's not too difficult to kill.

The Scarecrow, apart from being annoying with its stealth, can inflict Horror with its [Haunting Revelation].

Their formation is broken - maintain the offensive!

This time, I go back to my standard strategy for dealing with stealth, i.e. "wait until it wears off and maybe use some AoE to damage them". Once that's happened, the Scarecrow goes down very easily.

And once that's happened, the next wave shows up. Nothing new here...

...except that this time, the Impale / Point Blank combo does work. And as a result, the Sleeper's Herald still doesn't get its turn.

Sora, meanwhile, just keeps rockin'. [Battle Ballad] after [Battle Ballad] after [Battle Ballad] - this is especially nice here in the Farmstead, since there's no walking between fights during which the boosts would wear off.

And the increased Crit rate actually doubles as a bit of a stress heal, too - not as reliable and big as his [Inspiring Tune], but it really adds up over the course of the mission.

Once the second wave has been taken down, this oddly coloured Sleeper's Herald appears and immediately gets its turn:

It's the Sleeper's Dream, boasting absurd 500 HP, 99 Spd, and unpiercable status resistances. Which obviously means that we're not supposed to fight this - its [Beyond Time and Space] ability just ends the battle...

...and teleports the party to a room just like the ones in the regular dungeons. This is how the Farmstead is structured - not one single big fight (probably to make sure skills that give bonuses for one fight aren't too OP, and skills that can only be used x times per fight still viable), but multiple fights, each consisting of multiple waves, separated by these breathers.

You always find a curio in these rooms, which almost always (we'll see the exception later) don't require any item to interact with.

This particular one gives us a handful of comet shards, which we can use to buy stuff with at the hamlet (once we collect enough of them, that is).

And on we go! For the next fight, the lighting effect goes away from the standard "Farmstead Miasma" (which weakens healing spells and increases stress taken)...

...to Blazing!

Which this team isn't too good at using, since we have no Mark abilities at all and no particularly Debuff skills, either. (DOTs or Stuns do not count as debuffs for skill chances / resists)

At the start of the battle, everyone suffers a fair amount of stress for no reason because that's how this game rolls. Anyone who plays along - bring a Jester to the Farmstead. It's so, so worth it.

Also, that's not the usual Farmstead enemies! Outside of the first mission, you can run into basically any type of enemy, so it's important to have a more generalist team set-up. In this run, I brought two classes that deal good direct damage...

...with Pramanix' [Pierce] ability to deal with high-Prot enemies such as the Gargoyle. I kinda like the lighting aesthetics, by the way.

Dismas struggles a little bit with the heightened Prot, but 7-13 Dmg is actually still the same range as Pramanix with her piercing attack. It's just that he can't use [Point Blank Shot] as consistently when Pramanix uses Pierce...

...although she can still use [Adder's Kiss] and use the Blight damage to circumvent the Prot and set up the dance.

So yeah. Enemies die, some Cultists reinforce and also die, and after this Gargoyle falls to a Blight...

...we get half a turn while no enemies are around. Huh. Pramanix and Dismas already took their action, but this still means one free Battle Ballad and one free AoE heal before the next wave arrives.

And the next wave is just a bunch of Bandits. Nothing to see here.

They get reinforced by some Cultists, too, but again, nothing too exciting.

What you do see here is the effect of Pramanix' [Serpent Sway] ability, which blocks direct damage twice - I forgot to screenshot the skill's animation, but I believe I showed it in one of the previous updates.

And that's the second battle, which is ended right before the last regular enemy is defeated. Doesn't matter, since you don't get anything out of killing enemies in the Farmstead (in regular dungeons, this would've robbed me of an item drop), but still a little odd.

This time, we find a heaing curio - we're doing very OK HP-wise and we would've had some food to heal Dismas anyway, so it's not the most impactful roll possible. In a more dire spot, this would've been really nice though - it restores up to 90% of your HP.

Furrows of earth, filled with blood.

The next segment takes place in the standard Farmstead Miasma again, with the Farmstead-exclusive monsters, as well.

The Plow Horses are probably the most dangerous monsters of the bunch, with their double Bleed/Stun [Rearing Strike]...

...their ability to stealth in the middle of the fight (rather annoying here, since there's no other target, but Pramanix can at least do some damage with [Impale] thanks to the corpse being on the field)...

...and [Trample], which is annoying even when most of your characters dodge...

...because the one clumsy character still gets shuffled, potentially messing up your positioning.

In this case, it's not too bad though, since Dismas and Pramanix can quickly get Saria back to 3rd rank while still doing something useful.

More Horses, more stealth - good opportunity for Pramanix to use the defensive [Serpent Sway] skill again, this time without skipping the screenshot!

The reinforcements include a Foreman, who uses [Stir The Rabble] to give that Farmhand some buffs and a (fairly weak) Riposte. With that, I think we've gone through all Farmstead-exclusives in this run.

[No Trespassers]
The fight goes on and on and...

...oh, nice, we WILL see what the Sleeper's Herald can do.

...Nevermind.

And after a bunch of additional Plow Horses and Farmhands have gone down, the third fight's done, as well. The meter on the top right tells us that the entire mission's done as well, but the top left answers, "wait a second"...

But, smashing the arc of suspense, we get another break first. This Stockpile curio is the only one that you can use an item on - you can still safely lick it, but a Skeleton Key gives you a trinket in addition to the supplies (some food, in this case) that this curio gives.

Not the most exciting one, in this case, but it's still worth some gold.

Hah! The poor fool still stands - battered and proken as his precious mill!

Reminder etc.pp. (although Mr. Ancestor seems exceptionally callous when talking about the Miller. No idea why)

Anyway, boss time!

The Miller is fairly resilient - 143 is fairly normal, compared to other bosses, but he also got 20% Prot and pretty good resists on top of that.

(also, he's classified as a Poor Soul. Probably so that he doesn't take bonus damage from trinkets targeting Husks, i.e. all the other Farmstead monsters, but still...)

He's got two actions per turn, so DOTs work fairly well - this team isn't exactly built around those, but Pramanix at least can put some Blight on him...

...while Dismas resets the positioning with [Point Blank Shot].

Saria can't do too much in this fight offensively - she goes for her Stun here because she might as well while the Miller hasn't attacked anyone yet, but it's about as reliable as Dart trying to hit Uhai.

But what does the Miller actually do? Well, he opens with [The Master Beckons], summoning a Farmhand...

...which he then transforms into a Frozen Farmhand with [Winter's Breath].

While a Frozen Farmhand is on the map, Guard skills are deactivated, but since this means "guard another hero" skills and not Pramanix' Serpent Sway (afaik - didn't test it), this is completely irrelevant for my party.

Its only regular ability is [Hollow Keening], causing stress and horror if it hits.

It can also thaw, reverting into a regular Farmhand, but since I believe in the general strategy of "kill low-HP targets first", we don't get to see that.

Speaking of low HP - the Miller uses The Master Beckons again, this time summoning a Sleeper's Herald, so maybe we'll see what it does now--

Nevermind.

Let's keep looking at the Miller instead: This is his most dangerous move, [The Reaping]. I'm just now learning that it's no coincidence that Sora in the back row eats the least damage - this is the only attack I'm aware of that deals rank-dependant damage.

It's dangerous because it out-damages the Vestal's multiheal, and the Miller is quite likely to use it multiple times in a row.

Like he does here. It does help when RNGeesus is on your side though.

Which also unlocks a Steam achievement. Yay! The Reaping is a fairly accurate attack, so I never got this on my first run.

(this was the slightly hidden spoiler from my last post, btw - the achievement was visible in the background of the Steam screenshot)

The third and last (and most powerful) possible summon is the Scarecrow. As I'm learning right now, all three summons have a cooldown before they're called again - 5/7/8 turns for Herald/Scarecrow/Farmhand. That means that after the first 2-3 turns, the Miller will spam Reaping, which I think is an interesting way to set up its combat AI.

Like so.
I'm quite lucky with his rolls, I must say, and also increasingly certain that the game uses one roll for all targets of an AoE attack, since both times only Saria (who has the lowest Dodge of the four) gets hit.

Fitting that he finds rest upon the dirt he harrowed so fruitlessly.

See? Very callous.

Between lucky RNG rolls and Battle Ballad keeping my Crit rates high, this fight is over fairly quickly, after... four? five? turns. Not sure - the turncount isn't shown in the Farmstead.

We go home with rather modest rewards, thanks to the lack of regular curios, treasure chests, and loot from monster fights. We still don't really have enough comet shards to really get to the good stuff, so we'll have to come back at a later point...

...but unfortunately, "later" really means "later" this time. From this point on, the Farmstead goes to "endless" mode, giving your more shards the further you can go. But the difficulty is set to "Darkest", which means that the monsters will be set to their highest tier, so we'll have to wait until more heroes reach Lv.5 or even 6 before coming back.

To accelerate things, you can now directly hire Lv.6 heroes, but only for the Endless Harvest and at the cost of making the Harvest less efficient.

...but I only now notice that they don't use our precious roster space. I was about to say how I don't want to expend any for this, but hmm...... But not right now, because I'm typing this after doing the next mission and I'll still need to assemble a decent team comp. We'll see.

For now, let's take a step back and look at the quirks we got in the Farmstead - all good, except for the Red Plague (and any disease is just a bit of lost money, if you don't catch it during a mission). It seems like Saria insists on trying the punchy 2nd Rank Vestal set-up (which I generally don't like as much). And Sora seems to really like working with Vestals in general, which I wholeheartedly agree with.

Eldritch Slayer is very nice too - the Cove monsters are mostly Eldrich and Pramanix works quite nice there, and a little bird has told me that this quirk won't be a waste in the endgame, either.

Sora obviously gets rid of his Plague right away, and Kroos joins the two in order to lock in her Early Riser quirk - this means that as long as the torchlight stays above 75, she gains +4 Spd permanently. Bit of a mixed blessing, since she likes if someone else sets up a Mark before she takes her turn, but it also means that she'll very reliably outspeed the Swine Prince once we fight its second form.

Next, we go for the second Cove boss, the Sodden Crew, bringing some Metal Madness \m/, looking for sanity. That trinket reward is really quite good - simple, strong, no strings attached. I've been using a lesser version (Snake Oil for -10% Stress) a fair bit - for Pramanix and her nightmares, or to alleviate the stress from carrying a Collector Head in the other trinket slot.

A sheltered jetty was accessible by a narrow stone stair off the back of the manor, and a discreet system of pulleys could hoist even the heaviest prizes up the rock face from a securely tied dinghy below.

Well, that's still vague. Guess we'll have to wait for the other two versions of the boss to learn more about the crew itself.

The poor devils, chained and drowning for eternity...

On the plus side, it's completely unambiguous where the boss is. On the negative, we still have to visit almost every room of the dungeon to get to him.

Mind that such missteps are the exception, and not the rule.

There isn't too much to note other than a regrettable lack of scouting...

...until we get a critical scout in the third room. Since there was no battle to be fought for it, I also made a small detour to the cul-de-sac to the north - ultimately worthless, because neither of the curios were of any interest.

On the way, we find a Bas-Relief, which is a somewhat risky curio to lick. In this case, it's rewarded with a pretty nice quirk for Corneilles; but there's a 1/3 chance that he would've gotten a negative quirk or a disease instead.

(Corneilles shall be known as Arden in the next update - we'll see if he can pick up some -Spd quirk for maximum consistency)

Finally, our first fight halfway through the dungeon! Nothing new - one tank, one stress nuker, one two HP damage dealers - but an opportunity to talk about the team comp real quick:

Deepcolour is here to drink tea, eat crumpets, sing Rule Britannia, and to heal/support. Here, he [Daemon's Pull]s the stress-nuking Madman into Corneilles/Arden's range. He can also apply Marks and two of his skills deal bonus damage against Eldritch monsters...

...although he'd have to swap positions with Hodene to use one of them. I still keep Hodene in front of Deepcolour so that he can use Dirk Stab (which moves him to 2nd rank) and Finale to end a fight a little quicker, but for the most part, he does the usual Stress Heal / Battle Ballad stuff.

The-Cliffheart-formerly-known-as-Rainecourt (or TCFKAR, for short) deals damage. That's about it.

Well, OK, he can also apply Marks if Deepcolour is busy brewing his tea, or use Flashbang to stun an enemy, but he's honestly mostly here to deal a lot of damage, preferably to a target that Deepcolour has marked.

Cliffheart: I've come to collect.

The-Corneilles-soon-to-be-known-as-Arden (TCSTBKAA) can punch pretty hard, too, but he also has [Stunning Blow] and his healing ability for support.

Most impressive.

(this is from the next fight and against those 75-Prot snails, so don't take this as a testament to Finale's potential killing power)

A map in that backpack reveals what was to be expected: No fights in the first half of the dungeon means that they've all been put into the secon half. Nothing too weird happens in them, though...

...unless ceiling tentacles count as weird.
[Abyssal Artillery], one of the Occultist's attacks that deal bonus damage vs. Eldritch

What is a little concerning is that the obstacle you were able to see on the map consumes the last shovel - I brought four, but came across one shovel-consuming curio and (after that) three obstacles at this point.

Luckily, the next group of monsters drops another shovel...

...and the next room curio (guarded by a couple fishies) requires a shovel to cleanse.

Not falling for that, game!

Because naturally, there IS another obstacle in the very last hallway before the boss room.

But before coming to the boss - in the room before that (and before that obstacle) I set up camp, even though stress levels and HP (especially considering that I could've healed with food) are looking quite fine.

But Cliffheart has a VERY nice camp skill made just for this occation - guess what size the boss has.

Cliffheart: The bigger they are, the harder they will fall.

Besides that, Deepcolour prevents a nighttime ambush, while Hodene does some anti-stress measures.
And now....

...to the fight literally one tile before the boss. You can see the door behind the two Stingers in the back.

Do I seem salty? Well, I'm not! This is a blessing in disguise: These enemies don't really do that much damage...

...and Hodene can use the time to stack up some Battle Ballads. Remember, buffs don't immediately go poof when a battle is over; they decay while you are walking through the dungeon. Which means that Cliffheart will start the boss battle with all those bonuses.

Let's go! Hodene and Deepcolour swapped positions before the fight so that Deepcolour can use Sacrificial Stab for its bonus damage against Eldritch...

...except that the Sodden Crew only counts as Unholy, not Eldritch. Oh well.

[All Hands on Deck!] doesn't deal any kind of damage, but is - we've seen this before - a summoning ability. In this case, the boss always uses as free action at the start of the turn.

It summons the Drowned Puller, which has a very stong, seemingly permanent bonus. I say "seemingly" because it's connected to the boss' gimmick...

...but that has to wait, because 50% Stun resist is not enough to dissuade Corneillarden.

Meanwhile, Deepcolour uses [Vulerability Hex] to Mark the boss itself. ...By the way, when I said, "guess what size the boss has" - it's size 3.

CLIFFHEART SMASH!

DOESN'T MATTER! STILL COUNTS FOR THE BONUS DAMAGE!
(Darkest Dungeon sometimes has some inconsistencies with its tooltips...)

Cliffheart: Hmph.
(The BH isn't actually one to lapse into Hulk Speech, or into any Speech at all)

The boss has two (regular) actions per round, which technically makes a Marking strat a bit less effective - but you can't really argue with 42 Dmg in one hit.

In the first round, it uses both its actions to [Drink with the Dead], targeting Cliffheart twice, but only hitting once. It also deals 10 stress (only 8 here thanks to Hodene's camp skill), but it's really not very dangerous - the danger comes from what the Drowned Puller does, and that's been delayed by a turn.

The boss uses [All Hands On Deck] even if there's already a Drowned Puller on the map, to mess with your positioning:

It pulls the target to the front, although Cliffheart resisted that effect on the first turn. Hodene on the front obviously isn't the best thing in the world - but he has a certain skill just to get back to the 4th rank. But first:

CLIFFHEART SMASH!!!

(he does even more damage here because a crit gives a BH increased damage against marked targets for his next two actions)

Finally, a sailor's death for captain and crew. Fitting.

Thank you, thank you. You're all so beautiful. This is the the best audience we've ever had.

...did I say that the gimmick was "delayed a turn"? Well, I meant "delayed until the next tier of this boss"! Triple Crit! 100% skill, 0% Luck!

To the victor go the spoils - very, very unimpressive spoils. Oh well, it's money.

The loot is fairly modest in general, outside of the very nice book from the quest rewards. Both quirks are negative, but not too impactful, either.

It's tempting, considering how the boss fight went, but I'm still not going to pick up another Bounty Hunter from the town event, giving us those two additional potential recruits. There's no hero that I'm willing to ditch and I don't want to spend the heirlooms to upgrade the roster size.

What I do spend heirlooms on is the final discount upgrade of the Guild, reducing the cost to unlock/upgrade skills by 50% in total.

Every creature has a weakness. The wise hero trains for what she will face.

But that does it for this update! Next time: ...We'll see. I haven't decided yet.

 

[Benice]

3 minutes ago, ping said:

We might find The Thing

That made me think of this:

Spoiler

 

11 minutes ago, ping said:

Bloodthirsty is a bit disturbing in conjuncture with Dismas' already present Deviant Tastes though...

Nice.

13 minutes ago, ping said:

 

AKA Kill every last one of them!

25 minutes ago, ping said:

CLIFFHEART SMASH!!!

Buffheart.

Also, can I request a Houndmaster to be called Dogmatix?

[ping]

55 minutes ago, Benice said:

That made me think of this:

Google image search had to help me out there. I don't think the Cat in the Hat is particularly well-known in Germany (doesn't even have a Wikipedia article in German). I've seen the cover art somewhere on the internet before, but I don't really know much about it beyond that.

Fun fact: There's a German children's book from 1980 with the very similar title "Katze mit Hut" (cat with / wearing a hat) about, well, a (female) cat with an affinity for big hats. She squats an empty building in some backwater village and founds a commune of oddballs (including a chicken that likes to play cards, a dog that used to go to sea, a sleepwalking (backwards) Llama,...). The house owner is initially not very pleased with all of this - he does sign a lease, but remains very testy for a long while - but eventually becomes good friends with the cat, too.
...Now I have to see if my parents still have the book and its sequel flying around. I used to like it a lot.

1 hour ago, Benice said:

AKA Kill every last one of them!

Once again, murder solves all our problems!

1 hour ago, Benice said:

Also, can I request a Houndmaster to be called Dogmatix?

Excuse-moi, son nom est Idéfix!
(I'll go with the English name if you insist, although I'm afraid it'll have to be the Houndmaster after the next one since Mayer is already in the list)
(Dogmatix is honestly not a bad translation, tbh)

[ping]

• Update 17 - The Infinite Malignity Of The Stars

Spoiler

Five Vestals!?! I'm not worthy!
I'm starting to pick a couple Mercenaries - well, one for now - to maybe check the Endless Harvest out before too soon. First pick: A Vestal. Obviously.

The Shard Mercenaries always have a fair amount of quirks and in Marci's case they're fairly good overall, as well. Evasive and Hard Noggin (increased Stun resist) are really nice; the otherwise awful Compulsive (lick any curio) doesn't matter in the Farmstead. I might remove Scattering (-5% ranged Dmg), but it's not that horrible on a Vestal, either.

Speaking of quirks: Arden is now permanently nimble and agile. Immersion ruined.
Saiga (one of our regular Vestals) locks in Hot to Trot and, more importantly, overcomes her Imposter Syndrome (randomly skips turns).

The next mission is just a regular one, with the goal to bring Nearl, Lawrence, and Benice to Lv.1. Warfarin comes with them as a higher-leveled unit, making the early missions easier for the low-leveled scrub squad (sorry, Benice!). If only there was a catchy term to call that kind of unit...

I dont mind him getting closer to Lv.3 either, though. I do want him around for at least one of the two remaining Apprentice-level boss fights, but I also would like to bring him to the Courtyard once I return there.

I knew all these paths once; now they are as twisted as my own ambitions.

This is an Explore mission, which means that we have to reach all but two rooms. Since I didn't get an immediate scout, I decide to ignore the one to my north and hope for a scout sooner rather than later.

First fight of the dungeon: Two (relatively harmless) tanks / damage dealers in the front, two (relatively dangerous) stress dealers in the back.

Our formation, thanks to being surprised: Healer in the front, damage dealer in the back. That's not great.

Warfarin can immediately move back to 1st rank, but it sucks that our main damage dealer can't do his thing on the first turn...

Both stress dealers decide to go for Nearl. Thanks to Lv.0 characters starting with 20 stress, that puts her to 39 stress while affected by Horror (3 stress for 3 turns) right away - really not a great way to start a dungeon.

Lawrence can't do too much while standing in the 4th rank - you can kit a MaA to stand there, but I didn't really do so. He does have Bolster though, increasing Dodge (+5) and reducing stress (-10%) for the entire fight - you can only use this once per fight, so you can't stack it with itself, but it's still a nice little boost to have.

The Madman uses [Accusation] on Nearl a second time... and a third time (I focused down the Acolyte first)...

...dodges some attacks and targets Nearl for a fourth and fifth time...

...and this is where she ends the first fight of the dungeon. At 91 Stress. While still accumulating more from the Horror status effect.

Getting an uncommon and a rare trinket out of the first fight is nice, I guess...

...getting an afflicted adventurer two steps (during which the Horror status ticks) after the first fight? Not so much.

Those who covet injury will find it in no short supply.

Well then, a practically complete dungeon crawl with a masochistic nun as our main healer. I would make a joke about our Flagellant being on the same mission, but I can't think of one that wouldn't be inappropriate - sorry about that. Benice, please stick with Lawrence and don't approach either of your other collegues.

But I'm not going to give up - having an afflicted hero this early means that I should be prepared to abandon ship if needs be, but this is still a regular apprentice-level mission, so it's quite possible that we still get through it.

Nearl comments on Warfarin opening that chest here, stressing him out a little. She'll do that a lot.

Next fight, no stress dealers. That's the most important part right now.

But an opportunity to show off Lawrence's moves a bit more, even if he misses his [Retribution] here.

It puts a Mark on himself (which does mean that he might take some more damage from the Fungal Groper in this fight) and allows him to counterattack every time he gets targeted by an (HP-)damaging move.

Grievous injury, palpable fear!

Right now, it's not super strong - 40% Dmg penalty and the MaA doesn't have the most amazing base damage to begin with - but this is still a great additional source of damage against enemies with multi-target attacks. At higher levels, the Dmg penalty goes down to -20 at max level, too.

[Rampart] is the MaA's stunning attack. It moves him forward one rank, so you have to account for that, and also pushes the target back one rank, which may allow your frontline heavy hitters to attack a squishier target.

Lawrence: "We hold as one and strike as one!"

Nearl: "Yes... Your pain makes you powerful."

More stress for the party, how very nice...

More stress for the party, how very nice...

(also, those are two empty sacks and some robe, the fuck are you talking-- Actually, don't answer that)

Bloody...
Warfarin was trying to use Endure here, to transfer some of Nearl's stress to himself, but the random "doesn't want to be healed/buffed" chance of the affliction kicked in.

Dazed, reeling, about to break...

Outside of this random crit adding even more stress, that fight isn't too dangerous, though.

I'm afraid, I have to rag a little on Benice, though - or probably more on my decision to bring a Blight-based character into a dungeon with fairly Blight-resistant monsters. But I really want to get everybode off Lv.0 hell and medium-lengthed apprentice-level dungeons have been relatively scarce (and short apprentice-level dungeons never seem worthwhile).

Next random Masochism effect: Nearl putting a mark on herself.

Next random Masochism effect: Nearl expressing jealousy that Warfarin gets spat on by a spider.

At around 3/4 through the dungeon, I set up camp, since Lawrence and Warfarin also get closer to 100 Stress.

Unfortunately, I'm a bit light on stress-recovery skills even while camping, so Benice has to some self-sacrifice for not that much of total gain - since he takes more stress damage for being underleveled, it's only a total of 5 points of stress recovered. But the stress is distributed more evenly between him, Lawrence, and Warfarin, making a second affliction less likely.

To make things worse, Nearl refuses to Pray with the group, wasting the 3 respite points with that. Only Warfarin counts as religious between her three companions, but 5 stress is (or rather would've been) 5 stress. At least she didn't refuse to use her ambush prevention or to receive the stress heal from Benice.

Nearl does allow Warfarin to use [Endure] on her a couple times during the expedition. Like the Anger Management, this is a trade that isn't THAT cost-efficient (-11 Stress on Nearl, +9 on Warfarin), but it keeps Neirl far, far away from 200 stress and the heart attack (i.e. instant Death's Door) that would come with that.

...why yes, this is said right after Nearl got spat on by a spider. The other three heroes are understandably distressed by it.

On a more positive note: That curio in the background is an Eldritch Altar, and I still have some Holy Water with me to use it to remove a negative quirk. Nobody here has a really terrible one, so Benice gets a little bit of favouritism. He loses his Ascetic quirk (which leaves him free of any negative ones), which means that he can go party with an Occultist again.
(Ascetic: Less healing received from the Occultist's healing spell)

Hey, a new journal page! Here's the previous ones (one - two - three), so there's only the conclusion missing. I'm sure it'll be a nice and lighthearted happy end!

And with that, we do get through the dungeon, and without another affliction, too. Stress levels are still kinda bad, but with the Puppet theater, everyone (except Nearl) should be fine without any activities in the hamlet, although Warfarin should maybe not go into the next mission while suffering from the plague.

The two quirks are ok - Cove Scrounger is a small, but nice bonus in a dungeon in which Benice is more comfortable; Nervous Bleeder is kinda bad since Bleed is a very common status effect, but less bad on a healer such as Nearl.

Back in the hamlet, we grab the second Shard Mercenary - she'll have to get rid of The Yips before going into the Farmstead, though. Warrior of Light (+10% Dmg at high Torchlight, which is always true in the Farmstead) is absolutely awesome on a Hellion, though.

Alright, Nearl goes meditating in the Abbey, Warfarin's plague gets healed, Benice gets a week off, and Lawrence... gets right back into the action?

He does! In an Antiquarian run, no less! But obviously, Hodene the Jester being present makes this much less of an issue.

Well, I say that, but if the very first action of the very first fight is a gross pig-mag puking over him...

...it's actually fairly clutch that he's dodging the second stress-dealer's attack here.

But after that, Hodene starts doing his thing and Lawrence's stress level does go down. (the buff is just the damage increase for Finale which every Jester ability entails)

The other strange thing you may have noticed? Saiga in 2nd rank, just to try it out / showing how it works.

[Hand of Light] is the bread and butter of this set-up: while it only deals half damage, you can stack its buffs with themselves up to three times...

...and then make full use of them with [Mace Bash], her basic bitch attack move.

There's two problems with this build - one, the Vestal can't use her single-target heal from 2nd rank; two, her base damage is still not that great (the Swine chopper has 15% Prot, but this is still rather sad). She has a trinket that supports this build specifically, but I haven't found that one yet.

This enemy group messes with my formation a bit - the Chopper pushed Lawrence back with his Ball and Chain attack and here, the Acolyte uses [Eldritch Pull] to get Hodene to the front rank. On the plus side though, when she's doing this, she's not inflicting any stress.

Finally, Jessica hides behind Lawrence and forces him to [Protect Me!] - which synergizes nicely with his Riposte ability. In fact, MaA is the only class (I think) that the Antiquarian works fairly well with; either with this combo or by stacking Dodge boosts (which I didn't do this run though): MaA with his once-per-battle Bolster and the Antiquarian every turn with her party-wide Dodge buff.

[Eldritch Push] More position shenanigans!

This first group of monsters was guarding the first mission objective: This time, we are looking for three Grain Sacks to take out of the dungeon. This is a bit more annoying than the "reverse" mission type where you bring three items and use them on the quest objectives, since this will block three inventory slots until the end of the dungeon.

Right after that, we walk into a nice and early Moonshine Barrel, which Lawrence uses to boost his Dmg - he's already wearing two trinkets boosting it, since I was planning to lean into his Riposte as one of the main damage sources, so this is quite a nice find.

The Leetness of his HP count shouldn't distract from one problem with my team set-up, though: Lawrence is taking a lot of punishment over the course of the expedition. So far so good, since this means that the squshier party members do not...

...but Saiga can't use her stronger single-target heal to counteract this. 16 HP healed in total is great, 4 HP on one very injured hero not so much.

So since Hodene has reduced Lawrence's stress to a moderate level at this point, he and Saiga swap positions to allow her to top Lawrence's HP up again.

But I set up camp not too long after that, too. Lawrence looses the Moonshine Barrel Dmg boost, but he can replace that with a more defensively-minded camp skill.

Rest of the dungeon goes quite smoothly. Most noteably, we spot another secret room...

...which makes this expedition quite a lot more profitable....

And it is quite profitable in the end, considering that three item slots were blocked by the grain sacks. It could've been a bit more if Jessica had found any rare artifacts instead of the cheaper minor ones, and the heirloom haul isn't all that great, but I don't want to complain all too much.

Unerring is a worthless skill on Lawrence, since his only ranged skill doesn't deal any damage. Hodene's obsession with money is a bit annoying (since quite often, you'll want to use a key on chests), so I'll probably get rid of it sooner or later.

As a reward for the gathering mission, supplies for our next expedition will be free, saving us a couple thousand bucks and allowing us to overstock as we please. I'm still not sure if there's any gameplay distinction between "supplies" and "provision".

This event also gives a little American Gothic shoutout in the hamlet.

We also recruit the third shard mercenary - a Crusader with fairly neutral quirks. Lazy Eyes (-5 Acc for ranged skills) only affects Zealous Accusation, so Greslet might not be as big a fanfic guy as Sigurd; otherwise, they probably won't have too big an impact on a Farmstead run.

A week delayed, but our Farmstead Hellion gets rid of The Yips, in case we find a good fourth mercenary soon. Hodene locks in Warrior of Light (he's no damage dealer, but it's still good, I think) and does immediately remove Plutomania.

Our next target is the Brigand 8 Pounder (or, as I called him when I first saw the mission: The What Now?). I'm a little bit wary about our team comp - I would have loved some direct damage dealer with good reach because reasons (tm), but this should be a decent setup nevertheless.

And we do go all out with our provisions. I fully expect to throw away more than half of all this, but hey, it's free!

It was not long before rumors of my morbid genius and secretive excavations began to fuel local legend. In the face of my increasingly egregious flaunting of public taboos, awe turned to ire, and demonstrations were held in the town square.

The smell of sulfur and gunpowder hangs in the air, the war machine is close.

...I smell something else...

...I shouldn't...

...really really shouldn't...

BENICE WHAT HAVE YOU DONE

WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE

Actually, no, you're all going to die. I'm playing as the heir, after all, I'm just sitting in the hamlet, drinking tea, laughing at your misfortune. So, good luck fellas!

And say hi to the Shambler, one of the nastiest bosses in the game.

Part of the nastiness is that the party will always be surprised and shuffled. Benice in the 4th rank can't really use any of his abilities, so he just transforms (immediately, to raise his Spd) and advances one rank.

Honeybadger uses [Hound's Rush] to apply some Bleed...

...and Saiga uses [Hand of Light] to boost her damage. I completely forgot to respec her after her last appearance (because I normally never deviate from the same four skills for my Vestals), but in this case, that's actually helpful!

The Shambler opens by using [Obdurous Advancement] (is that even a word). Not a lot of direct damage, but it applies a 2-point bleed to the entire party...

...and summons two Shambler Sycophants.

Their [Clapperclaw] initially doesn't look THAT tough, either, but it deals 10 stress...

...and gives the little tentacle a bunch of bonuses. Which stack with themselves if it spams Clapperclaw. Which it will do - it's the tentacles' only attack.

Basically, you have to kill the Sycophants quickly, or else you're in trouble with both stress AND HP. But since the Shambler keeps summoning them, that can take quite a bit of damage output away from the main boss.

Because of those spawns, the Abomination is the single best class to have in a fight against the Shambler. ...except I make a mistake here: I use [Slam] to move Benice forward one rank - which is the only option he has, sitting in 3rd rank, so no mistake so far. However, I should have targeted the Shambler, since this attack also pushes the Sycophant back (as you could see in the previous picture)...

...and because of that, Benice's [Rake] hits Sycophant+Shambler, instead of both tentacles. It's not a big deal, though...

...because Honeybadger's [Hound's Harry] can finish the backrow Sycophant while still putting some Bleed on the Shambler.

Anyway - in the best case scenario, an Abomination can keep killing the Sycophants on his own, since Rake becomes stronger if used in succession. That way, the rest of the party can focus on the Shambler.

But even if you don't make any mistakes, the Shambler can still screw you up pretty badly. [Stentorious Lament] (come again?)...

...deals 10 stress to the entire party (more here because of the crit) and can shuffle the entire party. I'm lucky here - the base chance of the Shuffle is only 80% and all my heroes have 30-40% move resist, but the chance of no shuffle at all is still rather low.

Basically, if your party setup doesn't deal with shuffling very well and/or you're unlucky with repeated Stentorious Laments, you just move your heroes back and forth while Shambler and Sycophants rack up the stress damage.

Apologies for going out of temporal order a bit with the pictures - let me go through what everyone did for the first three turns:

• Benice: Transformed and moved forward | used Slam | used Rake
• Lawrence: used Bolster to reduce Stress | used Guard on Saiga | moved forward
• Saiga: Hand of Light x3
• Honeybadger: Hound's Rush x2 (on the Shambler) | Hound's Harry (that was the AoE one)

Oof, that's that. Now, the Shambler's action on turn 3:

Ringing ears, blurred vision - the end approaches...

More crits. How nice. [Undulating Withdrawal] (undu-what?) is similar to the Obdurous Advancement, except that it causes Blight instead of Bleed (and according to the wiki, they move the Shambler in opposite directions, but the tentacles are always in 1st and 2nd rank in this fight)

That crit sends Benice over the edge and he becomes Irrational. This comes with the rather bad side effect...

...of him reverting to human form, so no Rake spam for us in this fight... Abom can only transform once per battle, after all. At least the other three heroes get de-stressed ever so slightly by the retransformation, so yayy...?
(note the fresh tentacle, btw)

Benice: "ERRRRAAAAAGHHH!"

Lawrence doesn't have anything to do in 4th rank anymore, so he moves forward 2 ranks (which is as far as he can go in one turn). This pushes Benice to 3rd and Honeybade to 4th rank, which suits both of them just fine. Only Saiga in 1st rank is still a problem, since she can't use either healing ability there.

The walls close in, the shadows whisper of conspiracy!

Oh, and that Clapperclaw? Puts him to 100 stress as well. Two afflicted heroes! Yayyyy...

Lawrence: "They aim to sneak up on us!"

Benice is very disgusted with the overall situation and puts some Blight on Shambler and one of the tentacles. (Shambler isn't too resistant against either Blight or Bleed, so that's a small blessing)

And I am quite glad that I also have the second-best class to deal with the tentacles on the team. Hound's Harry might not pack the same punch as Rake would have had after two or three turns, but it adds a bit of Bleed to the Shambler as a bonus.

Saiga removes one of the tentacles, while keeping her Dmg buff up...

...which might have encouraged the Shambler to summon a replacement instead of using his shuffle/stress attack.

Lawrence complains about Honeybadger dodging here (while conveniently forgetting that he dodged the attack himself...)

Benice and Honeybadger pile up a bit more damage onto the Shambler...

The space between worlds is no place for motal men.

...which is just enough for Saiga to finish it with a critical hit. Flawless (well, casualty-free) victory!

Saiga: "Blacken our world no longer!"

Unlike in most bossfights, killing the Shambler does not despawn the tentacles, which can actually still pose quite a threat if they have some Clapperclaw buffs under the belts. Lawrence uses that additional time to trigger another Paranoia action: Attack one of his companions, luckily not for that much damage.

Lawrence: "Perhaps this will encourage loyalty!"

Beatings will continue until morale improves...

The Sycophant gets one last hit in on Benice, but Saiga then quickly ends the fight.

Oh right, the Shambler is another source of Ancestral trinkets! This is a good one, as long as you account for the increased food consumption. Speaking of...

It should be clear that going for a bossfight with two afflicted heroes would be a terrible idea. But I do fight two more battles to get to the next room, just to set up camp and recover some stress that way.

However, since HP levels are kinda low, I use a lot of food to heal between fights, only leaving 2 rations, which is the bare minimum for setting up camp without penalties.

Except that I didn't realize that Saiga is a stress eater, which means I would've needed 3 rations, which means that the entire party took more additional stress damage from hunger than I recovered with camp skills (which I didn't make a screenshot of, because I was busy facepalming).

OH WELL
Not very much loot apart from the Ancestor's Bottle, obviously, but bragging rights because I'm two out of two for casualty-free Shambler fights now.

Benice should probably get rid of his phobia (beasts are fairly common in all dungeons); the quirks on Honeybadger aren't too impactful.

The entire expedition force goes into stress relief - three of them in the Abbey...

...and Honeybadger stays isolated in the Tavern (ummmm), so that he doesn't infect anyone with the Crimson Curse.

In the hamlet, we get the opportunity to go after another optional boss...

...which has its own unique trinket rewards. But since it's a champion-level mission, we don't have what it takes yet. Which is a shame, because this mission is only available this week (until the town event randomly shows up again), but it's not worth losing heroes over.

Instead, we get to four shard mercenaries, with a fairly decent team comp, as well (Hellion/Crusader/Jester/Vestal). We might take a looksee next time.
But that's it for this update - thanks for reading!

 

[ping]

• Update 18 - The Fearful Fours

Spoiler

Since my money has gone quite a bit (it's at 1953 gold after buying supplies), I don't immediately go into the Farmstead, but do another Antiquarian run instead, with Sigurd, Saria, and Vicent accompanying Gitano into the ruins.

I'm going to toot my own horn a bit and say that between Saria's healing...

...and Sigurd's stress healing, it really wasn't too difficult to manage HP and stress levels despite Gitano being very underpowered in combat. So I'll just go through a couple things real quick:

On this mission Sigurd reads his own fanfic uses the [Bulwark of Faith] skill quite a bit, which increases his Prot and puts a Mark on himself.

This pairs very well with Gitano's [Protect Me!], which increases his Prot even further, gives a small Dodge bonus and redirects attacks on Gitano on Sigurd - a Mark on its own isn't very reliable at drawing enemy attacks, making this quite valuable. And since both Bulwark and Protect Me! put a mark on Sigurd (which doesn't stack), the cost of those abilities is halfed, if you will.

Saria once again goes for the Melee Vestal build, but she can swap positions with Vincent (who remains in human form this entire run) if Sigurd's HP get so low that a single-target heal is in order.

We find the last page of the Blood Soaked Pages, which means that we're only missing the first two - here's numbers three, four, and five. (and a little later, we also find the third page again)

We also find an Eldritch Altar (and a second one near the end of the run, but I didn't have any Holy Water left, or rather dropped it to make room for treasure, at that point) and Gitano uses it to get rid of a negative quirk. She has a couple, since I don't give my Antiquarians too much priority in removing them, but unfortunately clears one of the lesser ones, Night Blindness.

We run into a random Gatekeeper (in a hallway fight, not spawned from one of those throbbing coccoons), which gives us a second Baron's Invitation to access the Courtyard - which is nice, since there's no way that we're clearing the entire rest of the Baron's dungeon in one go.

A second Bloodsucker fight is a bit more painful, with two [Subterranean Skewer] crits in a row (first one was on Vincent)...

...but the damage is almost completely undone already at the end of the same fight.

TIL a Crimson Cursed, craving hero might refuse food while camping, taking HP+Stress damage in return. Something to keep on my mind.
TI didn't L to time my screenshots right.

So, long story short (literally, this was a long mission): Money, money, money. And a fair number of Heirlooms on top of that.

Sigurd and Saria pick up some bad-ish quirks. Having your tank below 50% health isn't something you'd want for a long period of time, but a crit can be lucky comeback in a bad spot; Bleed is a fairly common status effect. Cove Explorer is nice though - 10% Scouting is a fair bit.

This screenshot made me open the game and re-check the Activity Log: I didn't notice the words "Demon's Cauldron" at first. *game loading*

"Abbey: Benice has impressed the Abbot with piety and was given a trinket as a gift! Demon's Cauldron"

First: The Abbot is giving Benice a DEMON's Cauldron. Huh.
Second: Which's really good, actually. The Demon's Cauldron is the Occultist's Very Rare trinket, increasing Crit, Stun chance, and Debuff chance at the cost of increased stress. Well done, Benice.

I don't do a whole lot in the hamlet this week: Saria immediately gets rid of her Anemic quirk, Lucy of his Warrens Phobia.

And then I go straight into the Farmstead's Endless Harvest with the four shard mercenaries. These join with fully upgraded equipment and skills, so they're quite a bit stronger even than our Lv.5 heroes, but they will be taking 40% of the shards we collect on this mission.

The poor Miller - thrice a victim. The seasons took his livelihood, I took his land, and now, uncountable years later, the comet has taken his humanity. My only regret is that I did not live to see that shoddy mill smashed to pieces by the miraculous bounty I reaped from beyond the void.

Again, very callous. It doesn't translate into a screenshot LP, of course, but Wayne June puts a lot of schadenfreude into that first sentence.

The general strategy: The Jester spams [Battle Balad], hoping that the increased Crit rate helps keeping stress in check, the healer heals...

...and the frontliners smash.

The biggest problem in the first segment are these horsies. You can already see why:

Ringing ears, blurred vision - the end approaches...

Their [Trample] ability repeatedly screwed over my formation.

And my team isn't set up that well to deal with it - the Crusader can move forward with [Holy Lance], but everybody else loses a lot of turns because of this.

As a result, one of these Crystalline Aberrations (reminder: corpses turn into these if they aren't removed at the end of a given turn and they restore a few HP when killed) can't be targeted down in time (i.e. at the end of the turn they appear) and explodes for some moderate damage and the Horror status on everyone.

And, as it always goes, once one hero suffers more than a tiny bit of stress, he's going to be prioritized by incoming stress attacks.

Still, the first wave of enemies is beaten with reasonable HP/Stress levels, especially since our Crusader can use this curio to fully restore his HP befor the second fight.

That second fight takes place in the standard Farmstead environment again. No horses to start off, which is nice...

...but now our Vestal gets hit by a couple [Sow the Seeds], which gets her stress level into the 50s very quickly.

...and from the 50s, it goes into the 70s faster than an Oldies cover band.

I still keep pushing the [Battle Ballad] button (and try to keep stress in check with the Crusader's stress heal), which is probably way too stubborn at this point.

To make things worse, the Hellion eats a couple heavy hits in a row...

...quickly bringing her to Death's Door. I immediately cure the Bleed with a bandage and the Vestal heals her before she has to roll any saves against death...

...but it still leaves her with some debuffs for the rest of this run.

Definitely too stubborn with the Battle Ballad Button...

I do switch over to [Inspiring Ballad], which heals 12 Stress (and reduces incoming stress)...

...but this second wave still ends with rather worrying stress levels on our holy people. At least the Plentiful Bounty restores everyone's HP to full.

The third wave takes place in Splendorous light, which is unequivocally the best of the "special" lighting effects...

You tread beyond the reach of reality!

...except that going into any of those always causes a fair bit of stress for the entire party. (mistimed the screenshot, I think it was around 15-20)

This next segment, we fight Cove-type enemies, which we aren't very well-equipped for - this team comp focusses on direct damage with a bit of Bleed (Jester and Hellion), but we'd want Blight and Piercing damage here.

But whatever the team comp, I don't think this was avoidable: The Pelagic Tidemaster hits our Crusader with a [Stress Wave]...

...which pushes him to 100 Stress. Not great, especially since Fearfulness comes with a huge -25% Dmg penalty (and also +10 Dodge and +2 Spd, but that doesn't make up for it).

...please don't...

...please don't...
(that's a Stun resist)

THANK YOU

But this is not a good thing in the longterm - [Dirk Stab] moves the Jester forward, so he can't use his support skills (and the Hellion in 3rd rank can only use one of her attacks).

And honestly, my damage output at this point is just pityful. [If It Bleeds] does carry a Bleed (duh), but it only has a 50% chance or so to go through.

Towards the middle of this battle, a (an? is it "ooka" or "youka"?) Uca Savage spawns. These are "tier 2" monsters from the Cave (meaning that they only spawn in Veteran and Champion missions), but it's not as dangerous as others of that caliber - its main damage source...

...is a huge Bleed effect (10 points!) from [Arterial Pinch]. But even if our Vestal hadn't resisted here, I still have a fair amount of healing items to get rid of any status effects.

It still has a rather nasty Stun+Knockback move in [Tidal Slam] though, sending the Crusader back to the 4th rank. Good thing he has Holy Lance in his skill loadout.

The next monster that appears after the Uca Savage goes down is a Ghoul, so one of the more powerful stress dealers. Not good.

It opens with two [Howl]s and the second one inflicts the Worries onto the Jester: +30% Stress taken. Also not good.

The bulwarks of the mind have fallen!

And with another Thrall (the 'splody bois) attacking her, the Maggot critting her, and the Ghoul going for the third Howl in a row, our Hellion goes from 40-50 stress to 100. Yikes. That's both main damage dealers inflicted with the same -25% Dmg penalty - not great.

Canaigres: "No... I will not cower! I WILL NOT!"
(topical: The Hellion's backstory comic)

Next one's almost funny: The Vestal dodges an attack...

...the Crusader doesn't like that...

Even the aged oak will fall to the tempest's winds.

...and boom, third affliction, third time it's Fearful.

And even though he dodges the Howl here (how does that even work)...

Festering fear consumes the mind!

...the already accumulated Horror pushes our Jester over the edge, too. Well fuck.

Selfish is probably one of the less bad afflictions to get in the Farmstead. In a normal dungeon, it acts as a temporary, more likely to proc Kleptomanic trait, but that's not really a problem here, and the in-battle penalties aren't quite as bad.

But already after the second affliction, I didn't plan on staying in the Farmstead for much longer. Once the Sleeper's Dream gets us into the next "break room", I'll just see what's there and then leave.

I did stick around until this spot because finishing three battles gives a bit of additional loot, and also an unusual curio:

Umm....

Thank you...? Dang, now I feel even worse about this whole side story...

Not a very impressive first venture into the Endless Harvest, I'll be honest. Before trying again, I'll probably see if I can get a more robust team, in terms of positions and enemy resistances/prot. Shieldbreaker, for example, is looking really good in both those regards.

We get a whole lot of quirks - not sure if it's just random chance or related to the Farmstead. It's pretty good in general - Lazy Eye only affects ranged skills and as a "lick curio" quirk, Paranormania doesn't matter at all in the Farmstead.

Interesting - every is said to take 10% of the loot; 8 is 40% of 20; so the mercenaries seem to take only from the shards dropped in-dungeon, not the 12 we got for slaying 25 enemies.

Since I have a pretty large number of diseased heroes right now, I invest a bit into the Sanitarium. Busts are only needed here and to upgrade the Abbey, so it should be fine spending some here: For a third slot to heal diseases (not for the Treatment Ward though, I'm spending enough money there as is), to make disease treatment 26% cheaper, and to increase the chance to cure multiple diseases. You always select one specific disease to remove, but increases the chance that you get lucky and an additional disease gets cured.

Benice (again) and Lawrence visit the Abbey, which might be a bit wasteful, but I'd like to tackle another of the tier-1 bosses next week.

This weak, we try to get closer to 1 Baron - as I said, there's way too much left of the dungeon to clear in one go (and I'd like to get to Lv.4 weapons before fighting the Baron, anyway).

It's been a while, hasn't it? The first time we went into the Baron's dungeon, we took a straight route to a treasure chest to the north of the starting location (almost as if I knew where it was!), so that's where this second expedition starts.

There's a fair bit left to explore in the northern parts of the map, but the voices in my head tell me that it's not really worth it, so I return almost back to the starting location (which means that the first expedition made practically no progress towards the boss. Huh.) The voices add that the shortest way would be eastwards - except that the way is still blocked, so south we go.

(side note: Since nothing happens, Wayne June also hasn't anything to comment on for a while. Which feels almost weird - he really is a huge part of the overall atmosphere of the game)

The first battle of the expedition is just two Maggots and a Spider. Whatever.

Just a quick word to our team: It's the classic line-up of Crusader/HWM/PD/Vestal - strong, robust, flexible. Dr Phil has to switch her skillset a little bit for this dungeon: Instead of her usual Blight/Stun setup, she uses [Incision] a lot, which deals moderate direct damage (no penalty, but PD's base damage kinda blows) and a respectable 3-point Bleed on top.

In the next room we get a rare "real" scout instead of just unveiling the paths (and not what's hidden in them) right next to the room. I think they're actually rarer than in regular dungeons - it certainly feels that way and while the lighting effect here counts as 100% light in some ways, I don't think it gives the bonus to scouting chance that regular torchlight gives.

Be it as it may: We spot a secret room! I knew there was one (because, y'know, voices told me), but I never got to see it before. Since there tends to be treasure in those, I decide to wait before going there - so that I can replace supplies with the treasure and then immediately leave.

For now, we continue, ignoring the room curio (it's a dead end) and going south instead. Before entering the room, Sigurd (the only Cursed hero I brought) gives in to his cravings, so that he gets Bloodlust's damage boost for the upcoming fight.

Which is a fairly tough one: Two Chevaliers, which can put out a lot of damage.

So let's stun them! The reason I brought Phil despite Bleed not being her core competence is, of course, her amazingly gooddouble stun.

The Chevalier's [Buried Blast] against Dismas' Riposte.

Unfortunately (although I have to say that I've been amazingly lucky about this until now), one of the Supplicants manages to infect Phil with the Crimson Curse. I was kinda hoping that, if anyone gets hit by this, it would be Dismas, since he would profit the most from the Dmg boost in the Bloodlust phase of the curse, but oh well.

Fight's won with fairly good HP/Stress levels and we get another nice 4.5k gold infusion. RNGeesus gives, RNGeesus taketh away.

On we go, looping around the Locked Room and being surprised by a strangely sneaky Ghoul. It's no big deal this time though - only bad thing is that Phil can't use Incision from 4th rank.

Wealth beyond measure, awarded to the brave and the foolhardy alike.

Ha ha, very funny, Wayne June.
(I used a Bandage to safely search those bones. I found a Bandage and nothing else in those bones.)

Next fight: A Ghoul and a Large Corpse Eater. Like the Regularly-Sized Corpse Eater, which we've already seen, the large one can deal big damage to marked heroes.

Unlike the smaller version, this one can set up its own mark with [Weaken Prey], though, which also causes a pretty hefty -40% Dmg (and -10% Acc) on top of that. It goes down before it can make use of it, though.

Such a terrible assault cannot be left unanswered...

The Ghoul is a bit of a pain though, partly because the Corpse Eater and its, well, corpse keep it in rank 3+4 for a while, outside of Sigurd's range. This [Skull Toss] crit brings Phil up to 70 stress.

In the end, Sigurd manages to de-stress her a bit before ending the fight, though. The two trinkets dropped after the fight aren't too great, unfortunately - I already got one of those padlocks (an Abom-specific trinket) and I don't think the Debuff Amulet is worth a trinket slot. I end up dropping them, since my inventory is completely full already.

On we go, into a room with a treasure chest guarded by a couple bloodsuckers. The fight isn't too special, although it raises stress levels a little bit more...

...but the chest hold the key to the locked room we've been circumventing.

It's not technically necessary to use it, since we've already bypassed the locked room, but going through the locked room from the east is the shortest way to the secret room.

But first, I want to get one room further ahead. Why specifically one room? Well...

...that's where we find the boss from the first Courtyard mission, demoted to mini-boss, but by no means less dangerous than before. Especially when you go into the fight with everyone already being pretty stressed out...

To remind people: The Crocodilian is hiding behind three invulnerable, immovable bushes of reed, changing ranks throughout the fight. For now, I can't deal too much damage to it, but Phil has a good chance to stun it and remove one of its two actions. (she's successful here, the "Dodge!" is from the reeds in 3rd rank)

Dismas could shoot it, but instead uses [Duelist Advance] on one of the reeds (check those stats!) to activate his Riposte. Specter adds a bit of damage with her Judgement spell...

...and the Crocodilian uses [Lurking Fear], moving forward one rank and buffing his Dmg and Prot.

Which is still out of range for Sigurd, but at least he can heal some stress while hoping that it comes even closer.

Phil shaves another action off, Specter deals a bit more damage, and the Crocodilian uses [Swarming Corruption]. Not very good for me, since this is a stress-dealing move, on top of that HP damage.

Despite doing a bit of retaliation damage there, the Duelist Advance might not have been the best possible move, since Dismas can't use Pistol Shot from 1st rank, so he can't reach the Crocodilian this turn. Instead, he uselessly uses [Point Blank Shot] to get back to 2nd rank. In hindsight, he probably just should've started the fight in 3rd rank.

Better. [Pistol Shot]

Phil got yet another Stun on turn 3, and the Crocodilian uses [Submerge] with its remaining action. This buffs his Dodge by a huge 45% and also telegraphs that shit's about to hit the fan.

Wellllll, actually, could've been worse, even though Phil's quite low on HP after this. [Apex Predator], which it always uses after Submerge, has a chance to hit two adventurers.

But it also moves the Crocodilian to 1st rank, so it's time to get some damage in.

Nice! [Duelist Advance] and a prayer that the Crocodilian stays in 1st rank until Dismas' next turn.

Which it does... except that it uses [Teeth Rake] to pull Sigurd back to 1st rank. So no Point Blank Shot, although Dismas can still use Open Vein to stack up the Bleed damage.

Turn 5, the Crocodilian drops below 50% of his health. He also pulls Phil to the 1st rank, where she definitely doesn't want to be. But with Incision, she can actually stay there and keep adding up damage.

Like so. Almost there... (start of turn 7)

But since stress has been racking up over the course of the fight, this [Swarming Corruption]...

...is enough to push Dismas to 100 stress. By the way, if a character gets afflicted, the other heroes gain some additional stress. Can you guess where this is going?

Yep.

Yyyyyyyepppppp. (Gee, masochistic nun again?)

Sigurd: "Damned be the Light! My humours churn with lust!" (And thus Celice was born)
Specter: "Ha! The Light has already burned away all feelings!"

(he says that after Specter hits (!) an attack)

But this is less dramatic than I make it look, simply because the Crocodilian was already really low on HP.

But there goes the Crocodilian again! Bit of a risky move to go into this fight with rather high stress levels, but I would say it paid off. Baron, we're on our way!

The Crocodilian drops one Crimson Court trinket and in the treasure chest, we find another one - very nice. The greyed out bonuses are the set bonuses, which we can't get right now because we haven't found the other half of these sets yet, but these are still excellent trinkets. The Dissection Kit obviously only for the Incision setup (the Blight skills deal pitiful direct damage, so this is really completely useless for anything but Incision), but the Salacious Diary (oh myyyy~) is really, really good even on its own. +25% Healing with absolutely no drawback? I'll take it!

The voices in my head, ever helpful, tell me that there's no battles between me and the Secret Room, so I decide to go for it before I leave. But since stess ticks up rather quickly when going though the courtyard...

'

...we go four in four again with our affliction. Hurray!

Phil: "Sorrow and toil...sorrow and toil."

There can be no hope in this hell, no hope at all.

I agree, 2020 sucks.

We open the locked room, go through, reach the secret room and find...

...a Flagellant? And another Steam achievement I didn't pick up yet, how nice.

Turns out you don't get treasures in the courtyard's secret rooms, but additional adventurers. Huh. To be honest, right now, what with the full barracks, I would've preferred the money.

I go a couple steps back towards the formerly locked door, but I soon get a hunger event, consuming my remaining food...

...so back to the hamlet we go. That's honestly not too bad a haul for a "failed" mission, thanks to the Jute thingie, and the heirloom count is pretty nice as well. Not to mention the two new Crimson Court trinkets, of course.

We get a mixture of good and bad quirks - which is good, because you can remove bad quirks but not manually add good quirks.

It's a bit of a shame that it's Specter getting Unholy Slayer and not Saria - the latter already got Slugger, so she really would've stacked those bonuses for the melee Vestal build, since the two 2nd-rank attacks of the Vestal already do bonus damage vs. unholy.
The very nice quirk to get is Early Riser. While Sigurd isn't particularly fast even with it, every outsped enemy is potentially one less attack incoming.

Our saved Flagellant appears at the stage coach, ready to join. His quirks aren't too great (Antsy is awful, stress every time he stays in the hamlet; and you never want to bring a Flagellant into the Ruins, so Unholy Slayer isn't very useful), but I still kinda want to recruit him - simply because he's a fully upgraded Lv.3 character, which would cost quite a bit of money to do.

So I trade in some busts for more deeds and get the final Hero Barracks upgrade. Partly because of Auvray, and partly because there's two more interesting recruits:

Dyel, immediately renamed to Skadi (I remembered! Yay me!), is a Grave Robber with Quick Reflexes (+2 Spd). That's really goddamn fast, given that the GR is the fastest class in the game. Scientific (reduced healing from the Vestal) will have to go, but that's fine because she can lock in Quick Reflexes while she's doing that.

Silence returned to the village with the rather awkward alias of "Duquesne". She's... honestly pretty neutral as far as quirks go, but it's good to have another Plague Doc. One of the best classes in the game for sure.

In addition to another three diseased heroes being healed, Skadi and Auvray do the quirk management I was mentioning.

And, to close today's update, the stress management of our poor afflicted heroes of the Courtyard: Sigurd has the God Fearing quirk, so can only ever pray for stress relief, which means that only the already Crimson Cursed Phil can use the Abbey besides him this week.

Which means that poor Specter is forced, FORCED! to go to the brothel. I'm sure she's devestated about it.
(yes, I know, she could've gotten drunk instead. But roleplay, though!)

Dismas is already in the Medical Ward this week, so he can go to the Abbey when it's safe again next week.

And speaking of "next": See you all next update! (oof, that was terrible)

 

[Benice]

On 7/7/2020 at 10:42 AM, ping said:

Excuse-moi, son nom est Idéfix!

Ah, je vois que t'es un homme de culture aussi.

(Yes, I know my french is no good.)

On 7/7/2020 at 10:42 AM, ping said:

Google image search had to help me out there. I don't think the Cat in the Hat is particularly well-known in Germany (doesn't even have a Wikipedia article in German). I've seen the cover art somewhere on the internet before, but I don't really know much about it beyond that.

If you want to know more, there are two ways you can go:

If you want to think that Dr. Seuss (the author) was really cool, you can read one of his books.

If you want to laugh at the torment his creations caused, watch the live action cat in the hat movie. It's...Wow.

And fantastic, I missed an update again! Sorry!

Spoiler

Quote

Arden is now permanently nimble and agile. Immersion ruined.

Quote

Benice to Lv.1.

The best abomination in the game's here to save your run!

Quote

Both stress dealers decide to go for Nearl. Thanks to Lv.0 characters starting with 20 stress, that puts her to 39 stress while affected by Horror (3 stress for 3 turns) right away - really not a great way to start a dungeon.

Oof.

Quote

...dodges some attacks and targets Nearl for a fourth and fifth time...

It's not my fault! The sun was in my eyes!

On 7/8/2020 at 2:00 PM, ping said:

...why yes, this is said right after Nearl got spat on by a spider. The other three heroes are understandably distressed by it.

She Nearl-y caused a disaster!

Quote

Nobody here has a really terrible one, so Benice gets a little bit of favouritism.

Eyyyyy!

Quote

This event also gives a little American Gothic shoutout in the hamlet.

Hah! That's a good one.

Quote

It was not long before rumors of my morbid genius and secretive excavations began to fuel local legend. In the face of my increasingly egregious flaunting of public taboos, awe turned to ire, and demonstrations were held in the town square.

This is gonna end well.
 

Quote

 

...really really shouldn't...

BENICE WHAT HAVE YOU DONE

 

Ohohohhoohohooooo!

Quote

That crit sends Benice over the edge and he becomes Irrational. This comes with the rather bad side effect...

This is becoming more and more accurate to being me. Hee hee!

Quote

"Abbey: Benice has impressed the Abbot with piety and was given a trinket as a gift! Demon's Cauldron"

Nice! I'm the MVP!

Great update, looking forwards to the next one!

 

[ping]

Spoiler

On 7/11/2020 at 7:39 PM, Benice said:

Ah, je vois que t'es un homme de culture aussi.

(Yes, I know my french is no good.)

 Par Toutatis!
(probably better than mine. I've hardly used it for a loooong time, so there's not too much left outside of pronunciation rules and a very rudimentary understanding of written texts)

On 7/11/2020 at 7:39 PM, Benice said:

She Nearl-y caused a disaster!

...aren't you a little young to run around making dad jokes?

Quote

Great update, looking forwards to the next one!

Thank you!

....a forum hiccup just got rid of an entire update, up to 10 pictures before the end or so, not restorable by Ctrl-Z. It's also midnight over here. I think I'll try again tomorrow.

(I type these into the old windows editor and then copy them over, so it's not too bad. But adding formatting and putting the pictures into the right place still takes ome time. At least all the images will be uploaded already)

Edited July 12, 2020 by ping

[ping]

• Update 19 - For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.

Spoiler

Boss time! The second to last tier-1 we haven't faced yet is the Inchoate (formless, or imperfect, as the internet tells me) Flesh. It's got an interesting gimmick that Hodene and especially Honeybadger will exploit the hell out of. But first, let's take a little sneak peak at it...

...or maybe let's not. Eurgh. OK, let's see what the Ancestor has to say about this:

My zeal for blood rituals and summoning rites had begun to ebb as each attempt invariably brought only failure, and disappointment. Progress was halting, and the rapidly accumulating surplus of wasted flesh had become...burdensome.

The thing is more terrible than I can describe - an incoherent jumble of organ, sinew and bone.

Should there be an Oxford Comma after "sinew"? Asking the important questions in life here.

The dungeon layout is quite nice for us - two possible boss rooms, but they're only four hallways away from the starting location.

We fight a couple fights on the way, but nothing too interesting. Here Lawrence uses [Crush], the MaA's basic attack.

We get scouts in the second...

...and third room, so we don't have to guess where the boss is (and don't stumble into any traps).

Running into a Bone Altar and a Moonshine Barrel, combined with the closeness of the boss room, changes my plans a bit. I initially wanted to set up camp before fighting the boss, since Lawrence has a couple of very nice buffs that he can use during camp. But going into the bossfight with that kind of bonuses seems too good to pass.

Honeybadger consumes some Blood to enter Bloodlust...

...and we confront the Flesh. Eurgh.

There is two parts to this boss's gimmick. One: it counts as four individual creatures, with their own skills and resistances. However, they all share one health bar, so you can't focus down one of them. The entire fight, the Flesh will effectively have four actions per round.

Two: At the beginning of every turn, every part of the Flesh may randomly transform between the four different body parts (and the game knows that it's too gross to focus).

We can't do a whole lot about that second one, but the first one is what makes the Houndmaster so goddamn OP in this fight:

Multitarget attacks target that one HP bar multiple times - so far so ok-ish, since most MT attacks have damage penalties, which means that the total damage isn't that much better than from a ST attack. Hound's Harry however...

...carries a Bleed - not a terribly strong one, but its power gets effectively QUADRUPLED. In the same vein, the Shieldbreaker' Pierce and the Flagellant's Rain of Sorrow (which only hits the two backrows, but has a much stronger Bleed effect) are extremely stong damage dealing move against the Flesh.

Oh, and the same goes for the Jester's [Harvest] - slightly weaker with 2x3 damage per turn, but still really good.

Now, let's go through the four parts and what they do. The Head has fairly high Prot (50%) and its [Maws of Life] is the strongest attack in the Flesh's arsenal. It also carries a 2-point Bleed.

The [Undulating Invation] from the Butt (Eurgh! also lol) is a bit weaker, but with a higher chance to crit. It also deals Blight instead of Bleed damage. The butt is less protected (30% Prot) than the Head, so if you have the choice, BUTTKICKING FOR GOODNESS! is better than a kick in the teeth.

(damn, now I want to play Baldur's Gate)

The Bone is the least vulnerable form (90% Prot), as you might suspect. Its [Boe Zephyr] is the weakest attack, but carries the strongest status in Stun.

The Heart, of which two appear on T2, is the squishiest target (makes sense) with no Prot at all and instead of attacking, it uses a minor heal - technically targeting whatever is in the front, but that doesn't really make any difference.

There is honestly not that much more to this fight, since Multitarget DOTs are just so effective in it. We deal 31 Dmg in the first turn and that number only goes up as the Bleeds mount up. Despite the two Hearts healing 13 HP in total, it's down to 30 at the end of the second turn...

...and just dies halfway though the third one. Only one boss left!

But there's no reason explore the rest of the dungeon first. Nearl did take a lot of HP damage (and got Blighted heavily and I didn't bring any Antivenoms, so she even went down to 3 HP after the fight), so I set up camp relatively early.

Combat-wise, the rest goes smoothly, as well. We run into another random Gatekeeper, which means we're at two invitations again (we'll see if we need that - they don't carry over to the next Courtyard mission).

Hodene reads some Occult Scrawlings, which makes his blood congeal faster. (Clotter quirk: +15% Bleed resist. Pretty good)

...and for whatever reason I didn't make any screenshots of the Secret Room that we found after that. Weird. But you see the results: it basically doubled our money haul.

Honeybadger picked up a nice set of quirks (as always, an irrelevant negative quirk is a little boon because it takes up a slot for bad quirks), but Hodene will probably get rid of his newly aquired phobia soon.

Hm, I'm kinda saving up shards to buy a specific trinket and I'm not too far away from being able to afford--

NEVERMIND TAKE ALL MY MONEY

Morphew (name suggestions welcome) joins with an insanely good set of quirks: +5 Dodge (Evasive), -10% Stress (Steady), +10% HP (Tough). In fact, she even breaks the game rules with how good she is:

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE

If I had to guess, I'd say that the town event always spawns a Twilight Dreamer without checking if there already is another.

In any case let's start locking 'em in.

In other news, Specter is no longer Masochistic. Her debauchery has reached new heights. You can't make this up.
MOVING ON

Let's finally clear the last remaining Apprentice-level boss. Compared to the first time we went into this mission (and got interrupted by a little infinite malignity), Warfarin and Skadi join the party, replacing Lawrence and (sorry) Benice.

The idea was that I wanted to maximize my reach (you'll see why) - all of these classes can hit any rank they want - but looking at it now, bringing two characters that are focussed on Bleed damage in a fight against a literal cannon might not be my brightest move.

We've seen the intro, so gogogo!

The boss is a lot further away this time, with only three rooms that I can (and do) skip.

[skipping...]
This team comp does fairly well in the Weald, so there's nothing too dangerous happening on the way. Skadi would prefer a more Blight-oriented team, but she's still able to do her part: She starts in 4th rank, which allows her to open the fight with a Lunge, which is often enough to kill an enemy in 3rd rank, or at least bring them into killing range for Honeybadger's AoE Hound's Harry.

Since I've basically went through the entire dungeon before reaching the boss, there's no real reason not to set up camp before facing it, even though this party isn't that heavy on camp skills with combat buffs. Still, some additional Prot and some reduced stress won't hurt the effort.

The 8 Pounder is a boss fight where, if all things go according to plan (*), you will never see the gimmick of the fight.

(*)Translator's note: "plan" means "keikaku" (**)
(**)Translator's note: "keikaku" means "plan" (*)

It's not too hard to figure out what the dea is though: There's a big-ass cannon, and there's a Matchman standing behind it, with low enough speed to be guaranteed to go last. Do the math.

So that's why I was thinking about my team comp's reach: the Matchman must be targeted down every single turn.

And I do mean every single turn, since between turns, the 8 Pounder will always summon

[Reinforcements!], including a new Matchman. And as you can see, it can spawn in 4th rank, which can spell disaster for a team with worse range than this one.

Still, I did overprepare for the Matchman. Honeybadger can one-shot him pretty reliably (this is a one-shot, thanks to the added Bleed) and I even forgot to use the Doggo Treats, which would have made it completely assured as long as he (or rather the Good Girl) hits a 95%.

And Warfarin... doesn't really do too much against the 8 Pounder itself. His damage without Bleed isn't good to begin with, and the 8 Pounder sports 20% Prot and an additional 25% Dmg reduction through a battle-long buff (which I think doesn't get pierced by the Shieldbreaker's Pierce...

...or the Grave Robber's [Pick to the Face]).

Because of that little mathematical trick, Benice probably would've the better pick here (as I'm sure he already knew), to unleash the beast and spam Rake (the multi-target attack with crescendo effect).

But the most important part is still that I do have the means to just insta-bop the Matchman as soon as he reappears. It's just a prolonged fight against a lot of bandits. The LTC community wouldn't be impressed by my 8-turn clear of this fight...

...but an 8-turn clear it is.

Hehe, he said the line.

The boss drops two trinkets that are pretty obsolete at this point, but that's kinda the rule with those tier-1 bosses. We still get the much better trinket from the mission rewards.

As well as a rather mediocre money and heirloom haul. I guess I could've backtracked through the entire dungeon to see what's in the last three rooms.

We're lucky with the new quirks though - all three of them ae positive. Irrepressible is a bit too little to be noteworthy (now it's a 30% chance to avoid an affliction. Woooo!), but Unyielding and Unerring are two good quirks to have.

Honeybadger's chance of dying to a hit when at death's door goes down from 33% to 23%, so that's just a good quirk in general. And while I consider Lunge (which is melee) to be the most important attack for Grave Robbers, it doesn't hurt to get a little extra damage on Thrown Dagger.

Reminder that the Ancestor etc.

This is a pretty powerful event, and well-timed too.

The Blacksmith is upgraded far enough that I can use the event to max out the Armour upgrades - bit of mid- to longterm decision, compared to the immediately useful third Weaponsmithing upgrade, but this is worth a lot more heirlooms and we should have enough heirlooms to get the Weaponsmithing upgrade the regular way.

Since I once again don't have that much money, I don't do a whole lot in the Hamlet - remove bad quirks from Hodene and Nearl, and upgrade equipment of the next expedition party, is all.

Speaking of expedition party: Since Benice got robbed of the boss fights, he's getting into the action again now. And to add a little thrill to all this: Long mission, no designated healer. It'll be fiiiiiine. I'll just retreat if things get hairy. Probably.

Unrelated: I really, really like that trinket reward. I'd be willing to risk a lot to get my hands on that.

These salt-soaked caverns are teeming with pelagic nightmares- they must be flushed out!

Alright, it's a "clear room battles" mission, which means we'll have to check the two rooms to the north first.

Apart from, you know, the lack of reliable healing, this is a fairly good team comp for the Cove. Benice and Silence don't mind Skadi hopping back and forth too much and both of them can inflict some Blight to increase Skadi's damage rolls.

Putting Skadi in 2nd rank wasn't the right call though, I think. The idea is that she uses [Shadow Fade] to set up a super strong Lunge...

...Benice and/or Silence inflict some Blight...

Obliterated!

...and Skadi gets a nigh-guaranteed kill. (this was a pretty low roll, given that her range was 15-30 Dmg)

Problem is - that's rather overkill most of the time and it's more valuable to have a less powerful Lunge on turn 1. I do swap her to 4th rank eventually for that reason.

Pictured: The amount of healing that this team comp can muster. Wow!

Second room, second room battle. I'm not complaining about that - it's good to get them out of the way quickly, I'd say. I do complain that Lawrence is picking up a lot of stress already...

Oh, and ye're a vampire now, Benice.

(I'm still being far luckier with this than on my first run. I remember The Blood being a lot more in demand then.)

The low HP that you're seeing isn't too bad though - Benice does have a nice little self-heal, so it's actually good if he tanks a bit of damage.

Wow! TWO useless trinkets!

The Ship's Figurehead in the background is very useful, though: -30 Stress on Lawrence, which is very welcome.

We also find an Eerie Coral right after backtracking to the start, so Benice uses some Medical Herbs (and some favouritism) to get rid of his Fear of Beasts.

(wrestling a lion is still a bad idea, btw)

The slow death - unforeseen, unforgiving.

Right before the next room, we run into a fairly harmless group of three fishies. The timing on that is nice...

...because it allows Skadi to start the battle waiting in that room (three out of three!) with the stealth and damage boost from her Shadow Fade. That way, she can use the weaker Thrown Dagger to pick off a backrow enemy on turn 1 and then Lunge on turn 2.

Or she can just Lunge on turn 1 because bIg NuMbErS gOoD.

(actually, this might have been a cautious move by past ping. Lunge had a Dmg range of 15-30, so Thrown Dagger probably wasn't a guraranteed kill)

Great is the weapong that cuts on its own.

Oh well, the fight still went decently well, I'd say.

Which honestly makes me wonder why I set up camp this early. Maybe greed? This does open up two inventory slots from the firewood and the food.

Anyways, at this point I realize that besides healing, I also don't have an ambush prevention skill.

Whoops! That one just slipped my mind.

So much for the full HP bars!

I do manage to clean up very quickly (it's just three enemies, none of which are too tanky), but it's still not great that Silence and Lawrence are at 60-ish percent health.

We run into another fairly harmless hallway battle and then the fourth battle in the fourth room. Huh, this is starting to look weird.

Still looking OK-ish on the HP front (and very good in terms of stress) though.

Unfortunately, I didn't bring (or already threw out, not sure) the Holy Water needed to cleanse the Fish Idol in the background.

Fifth room, fifth room battle. What the heck. It's not a terribly tough one...

...as long as the Thrall doesn't get to explode (which it doesn't), since the Maggot really doesn't pose too much of a threat offensively, leaving only two dangerous enemies.

Sixth room is FINALLY the fist empty one. Geez!

...seventh room, sixth room fight. Come to think of it, the dungeon seems to be fairly short considering this is officially a "long" expedition. Maybe that's indeed the case and there's a higher density of room battles to compensate?

This is again not the most powerful, all-out offensive enemy comps, since the Stingers don't do too much direct damage. But since Silence was already kinda low on HP, she goes down to only 6 HP in the fight. I still hold off camping for now, using food (of which I brought a bit more than usual) to heal her a little.

Eighth room, seventh room battle.

And this time, I do decide to set up camp after the fight - while HP levels aren't awfully low, they're still low enough that everybody makes full use of the healing (except Benice, thanks to his self-healing skill).

Naturally - RNGeesus is in a bad mood, apparently - we get ambushed again. Ugh.

Only Benice and Lawrence got shuffled, which isn't too bad - but since Human-shaped Benice can't do anything in 1st rank, he transforms. Unfortunately, I didn't really plan on him doing so, which means he doesn't wear the trinket that reduces the stress that his transformation causes. And since nighttime ambushes happen at zero torchlight, his companions don't appreciate this too much.

It allows him to [Slam] the Bloodletter to 3rd and 4th rank though...

...allowing Skadi to immediately delete the Fusilier.

Like last time, this fight immediately undoes a fair bit of the camp healing. On the plus side, Benice got hit the most - not trying to be mean, but he does have the only self-heal in the group.

Another ambush in the following hallway. Ugh. I have not been lucky with scouting (despite Skadi at both opportunities using a camp skill that drastically increases the chance), which would have prevented this one.

[Rake]
Benice in 1st rank means more monster time, which also means more stress...

...and despite his self-heal, I didn't want his HP to go THAT low...

...so he reverts towards the end of the fight (there's only that one dude standing) to heal himself a little.

Very funny, game.

Empty room! AND a scout! Hallelujah!

The room to the south is empty and there's a hallway fight on the way...

...so I only poke into the hallway, grab that crate, and go backwards that one map tile.

To the north, we have to go through another hallway fight...

...and then reach another room battle. Which should be doable...

SHOULD BE DOABLE (note the HP at the bottom left)

Unnerved, unbalanced.

SHOULD BE DOABLE

In addition to being at 3 HP, Skadi is also suffering from a Bleed. Luckily, Silence can clear at least that with her [Battlefield Medicine] before Skadi reaches Death's Door.

OK, better. One damage dealer is stunned, the other one will die from his Blight before taking another turn.

Well, would, if Benice didn't throw up on it beforehand.

Phew! That's that - and that's the last room battle, too. I could see what's in the remaining hallways...

...or I could get the frick out. This is not a condition in which I would want to run into a Collector.

Well - the boss fights might have been a bit anticlimactic but I hope this was enough excitement for this update.

Skadi and Silence pick up some nice quirks - Stun isn't quite common enough to make Hard Noggin worth locking in, but Tough is really good. Guilty Concience is one of the Lick Curio quirks for "worship"-type curios.

Silence immediately locks in her Toughness - that extra survivability is really appreciated - and gets rid of Warrens Phobe while she's at it.
Haze (remember her?) also gets rid of her own Lick Worship Curios quirk (Hieromania), which may or may not be useless since she also has the third one of that kind, Hagiomana, already locked in. Still not sure how the game handles overlapping quirks of that kind and I may never find out.

Dismas gets drunk - since he's a Tipler, that's the only stress relief he can do. I guess I could've waited a bit for his stress to go to zero naturally to heal is affliction (he's between 40 and 50 right now), but I'd like to have him as an option if I want to go to the Courtyard soon.

Which I might. I only have to trade a couple deeds for busts to unlock the next level of Weaponsmithing, which means that our Lv.3-4 characters are now fully upgradable. We'll see - next time.

That's better.

[Golb89]

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

Update 16 - The Return of Boss Rush 2: Electric Boogaloo - The Revenge

Spoiler

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

And we also get the next snippet of her backstory. It really could come right out of a FE game this far, huh?

But i guess it'll turn into something out of TRS/BWS later...

 

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

Quirks aren't super impactful. Bloodthirsty is a bit disturbing in conjuncture with Dismas' already present Deviant Tastes though...

 

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

 

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

The reinforcements include a Foreman, who uses [Stir The Rabble] to give that Farmhand some buffs and a (fairly weak) Riposte.

 

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

Saria can't do too much in this fight offensively - she goes for her Stun here because she might as well while the Miller hasn't attacked anyone yet, but it's about as reliable as Dart trying to hit Uhai.

https://www.awkwardzombie.com/comic/hands-off

 

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

The third and last (and most powerful) possible summon is the Scarecrow.

(Translation in the comments)

(Sequel of this)

 

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

...but unfortunately, "later" really means "later" this time. From this point on, the Farmstead goes to "endless" mode, giving your more shards the further you can go. But the difficulty is set to "Darkest", which means that the monsters will be set to their highest tier, so we'll have to wait until more heroes reach Lv.5 or even 6 before coming back.

So you basically unlocked this game's ranking map?

 

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

It seems like Saria insists on trying the punchy 2nd Rank Vestal set-up

Well, what did you excpect?

 

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

Sora obviously gets rid of his Plague right away, and Kroos joins the two in order to lock in her Early Riser quirk

 

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

Next, we go for the second Cove boss, the Sodden Crew, bringing some Metal Madness \m/, looking for sanity.

 

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

Mind that such missteps are the exception, and not the rule.

"i.e. Next time bring a cute girl instead"

 

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

Deepcolour is here to drink tea, eat crumpets, sing Rule Britannia, and to heal/support. Here, he [Daemon's Pull]s the stress-nuking Madman into Corneilles/Arden's range.

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

[Abyssal Artillery], one of the Occultist's attacks that deal bonus damage vs. Eldritch

 

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

What is a little concerning is that the obstacle you were able to see on the map consumes the last shovel

 

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

But Cliffheart has a VERY nice camp skill made just for this occation - guess what size the boss has.

Cliffheart: The bigger they are, the harder they will fall.

 

On 7/7/2020 at 6:00 PM, ping said:

...did I say that the gimmick was "delayed a turn"? Well, I meant "delayed until the next tier of this boss"! Triple Crit! 100% skill, 0% Luck!

 

1 done, 3 more to go... eventually.

[Benice]

Spoiler

 

Oh crud, I almost missed an update again!

On 7/13/2020 at 7:34 AM, ping said:

 

This is what a math textbook looks like to me.

On 7/13/2020 at 7:34 AM, ping said:

Should there be an Oxford Comma after "sinew"? Asking the important questions in life here.

Nope, not that I'm aware of. Generally Oxford commas are omitted after And.

On 7/13/2020 at 7:34 AM, ping said:

 

MMMM! THIS MAKES ME HUNGRY!

On 7/13/2020 at 7:34 AM, ping said:

Benice probably would've the better pick here

Benice is always the best pick!

On 7/13/2020 at 7:34 AM, ping said:

Since Benice got robbed of the boss fights, he's getting into the action again now. And to add a little thrill to all this: Long mission, no designated healer. It'll be fiiiiiine. I'll just retreat if things get hairy. Probably.

Benice will carry the whole mission, as always.

On 7/13/2020 at 7:34 AM, ping said:

Oh, and ye're a vampire now, Benice

Hehehehehehehehehehehh...

WAIT NO NOW I CAN'T EAT GARLIC NOOOOOOOO

On 7/13/2020 at 7:34 AM, ping said:

so Benice uses some Medical Herbs (and some favouritism) to get rid of his Fear of Beasts.

(wrestling a lion is still a bad idea, btw)

Yay!

On 7/12/2020 at 3:03 PM, ping said:

....a forum hiccup just got rid of an entire update, up to 10 pictures before the end or so, not restorable by Ctrl-Z. It's also midnight over here. I think I'll try again tomorrow.

Oh dear... Feels bad. I really hate it when that happens.