Leaderboard

←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Weeks Seven, Eight, and Nine -- Spoiler Alert: We’re Going To Make Bank There’s not a lot to say at the beginning of this post and there’s a decent amount of strategy-explaining at the end, so let’s just get into the first run, why don’t we? We still have a couple more level zeroes to get through and some troublesome quirks to cleanse, so I started by getting rid of LordCowCow’s Kleptomaniac tendencies and devised a way to get the adventurers of that failed run catching up without much stress (yes, even negating the “level zeroes are too inexperienced to go into a level one dungeon” stress). Both Euryale and Sethera have stress healing skills, and Ren’s Guillotine is guaranteed to crit under the right conditions, which will heal the party’s stress as well. As long as we prolong every fight we can to use these healing moves, it won’t be a problem. This is also a Medium dungeon I’ve selected as well, which brings one extra factor into the mix: camping. We’ve briefly touched on camping before the last time we ran a Medium dungeon, but the relevant information is this: Eating a bunch of food at a campfire reduces stress, Sethera has a few camping skills that reduce stress, and Boudica the Hellion has one big one called Revel that takes away a significant amount of stress at the cost of some heavy debuffs on the party (you were up past your bedtime drinking and partying, you see). It’s not difficult (not trivial, but not difficult) to go through a Medium dungeon without needing to use the campfire, so if we use it as soon as we can, that’ll take the edge off as well. The debuffs from Revel can be taken care of with Medicinal Herbs, which, I assume, are gothic horror hangover cures. It’s also why I pack so many. I chose the Warrens specifically, by the way, not because it was the Medium dungeon on offer, nor because of that tempting Chirurgeons Charm, but because Sethera, Ren, and Boudica all inflict bleed, and while the pig-meat of the Warrens is generally resistant to blight, being so dirty already, it bleeds all the same, so that’s another advantage we have going in. “I submit myself to your gnarled, warty hands,” Seth says. You’re lucky they take that as a compliment. It takes a lot of effort to look that witchy. Anyway, there are just a few more adventurers to get going and, as I had hoped, the Ruins had a nice Medium dungeon all ready for us. Quinn will be basically an Arbalest that doesn’t heal here, but that’s what Junia is here for. And it’s good for LordCowCow to join us as well, now that he’s no longer threatening to steal everything in sight. You’ll notice on the map that there’s a new icon at the Ruins. We’ve done enough missions there that we’ve unlocked our first Boss, the Apprentice Necromancer. I almost did it, too, but this Cove mission had a Swift Cloak on offer, and I wasn’t about to turn down a +2 Speed trinket with only a move resist debuff to counteract it. Also, it’ll be a better opener for next week, so look forward to that. The party is pretty straightforward, though. A lot of the Cove has PROT, or percentile damage reduction, which we tried to get through last time by just using adventurers that pierced through it. This time, we’re using Paracelsus’ blight and Yui’s massive damage to break through all that. Dismas is here as a secondary attacker and Euryale is our healer. I thought about packing less, actually, since, as mentioned, Euryale can heal Bleed and Blight just as well as she can HP, but didn’t want to chance it. I’d rather be overprepared and have to grind a bit more gold than under and be caught taking damage where I shouldn’t. Introduced in the Crimson Court DLC are these Districts, little extra buildings you can put in the Hamlet for little extra benefits. They all cost various amounts of Heirlooms, Money, and, as indicated by the event, rare items called Blueprints. This is a free one that comes with the DLC, the rest come from the upper difficulties of boss fight. We have been saving, though, because one of these buildings is going to help out immensely in the long run. This is why I’ve been going out of the way to collect portraits: compound interest. We can trade in some of these other heirlooms as well, giving us the remaining few we need to make sure that our money troubles are going to be a thing of the past. It’s not an immediate thing, of course. 5% is pretty slow, as anyone who uses NCM’s bank feature will tell you. But that’s where part two of my plan to make loads of sweet cash comes in. To find out more about that, tune in next week. Also, I plan to be fighting a boss next week, so tune in for that too. -r ←Previous Post -- Next Post→

While hardly an expert due to his upbringing, Aduain seemed to have more experience with the various kitchen appliances than Fen did. He could only laugh as he excitedly offered what guidance he'd been given some couple years ago at this point. Somehow breakfast came out largely unscathed despite the hunter's less than technical instructions. Despite her unfamiliarity with the tech Fen's natural instincs and talent with cooking did most of the heavy lifting. It was all Aduain could to keep himself from salivating all over the luscious mountain of rice prepared before they were turned into riceballs around the fish pieces. He did his part of the lifting to bring the prepared meal to the table and Fen explained the dish while the others took their seats and began eating. For his part the fish boy was practically standing in his seat with anticipation of seeing everyone's reactions to the various flavors they'd get. Melissa seemed like she was suppressing a more pronounced reaction and settled for thanking the two chefs. Trevor made next to no comment on the food which left Aduain with little left to hope for with present company. More than a bit disappointed the boy slouched back into actually sitting and took some food for himself. His piece of fish must have had orange scales because he was getting a distinctly citrus flavor in his mouth. Tangerine or tangelo he couldn't really tell for sure. Another fun flavor at least. With some more food in his stomach it was finally time to process the business at hand. Apparently they were already known by the people of Prana as they were far from the first group of otherworldly protectors Mauvache had summoned. There were many teams, each with their own team name and leader. And they did still have the fuzzy friend that had appeared to deal with. "I'd go for Team Shark normally, not that I end up on a lot of teams." Aduain began speaking between mouthfuls of food. "But given our first fight that might be a bit too on the nose. I'll pass on being leader too unless no one else wants the job. The Hunter life's pretty much what you make of so dunno that I'd give good orders or anything." concluded as he was still actively thinking. "As for that thing..." Aduain trailed off as he looked at the Slakoth also seated at the table at Melissa's side. The same feeling of uneasiness from when he'd first seen it set in again and always seemed to when he looked at it. "Fuzzball or something but I'm not all that invested in it. Can't shake the feeling it's gonna get crazy big one day. Which I guess could be a fun fight if it waited long enough. Kinda over giant hairy things for a minute." The hunter concluded while clearly running through scenarios in his mind of the idea of fighting a much larger version of the cute little thing sitting in their midst.