We actually have the hive exam already from that gnome interrogation, so we don't have to go in totally blind. Which is good, because holy shit what a weird enemy. It seems the tip about going in and charming it wasn't for nothing- 200 blue shields that regenerate fully each turn is pretty much an impassable wall for a single gnome. However, it IS vulnerable to charm. Or at least, charm will work on it somewhat. It also has next to no armour. Poison might work as well...
Ah, but it has an insane 13 freshness recovery per turn. So trying to lower it's freshness to 0 is probably hopeless. Stun regen of 10 is a fair bit, but with the the herder staff or even charm wand, it sould be viable to stun it out.
The recommended strat seems pretty shit. With a 69 morale cost, we won't be able to use this enough to really stun the enemy.
Though this kick in the nuts might work for destroying it's morale. I briefly consider sending the gnome in a loader suit, but that has 60% charm taken as opposed to the 10 or 15% of other outfits. The tentacles might bypass armour and fuck us with a charm attack. We're still pretty in the dark, but nothing for it but to suit up and-
Seriously? NOW?!
Well, I was planning to bring our shade along, but I dont trust the gate to stick around for 9 hours. Certainly not the 24 for spraygun ammo, assuming that even works for the cursed spraygun. At least we've got all those holy hand grenades and a couple herder staves.
Uh... where is all my shadowrealm gear?
Apparently it's a 1 turn mission? Wtf?
No enemies to be seen...
Ah, it's plot bullshit. Alrighty then.
Second verse, same as the first. I brought pretty much one of every race, as well as 3 goblins in avenger suits. We should be ready for... whatever this is.
Well, this is starting to look pretty bad. If it just wipes the team arbitrarily I'll be incredibly pissed off.
Ah, the ol' prison break mission. Fair enough. I mean, not really fair at all; but I suppose it gives a chance to players that didn't prep for this like I did.
At last, something to punch! Or, char into ashes with our electro shield, as the case may be.
It's got gear to steal too. Nice!
One of them has some sort of ranged attack too? Shields absorbed it for me.
Lightbane gets to punch one out. Fun fact, Bugeyes don't normally get a punch attack, so this is probably the only way to get wrestler titles for a bugeye.
Most of the crew is locked in cages scattered around, and it seems we can't claw our way out.
Apparently it's the weird bone shields that have the ranged attack?
Not allowed to fire it though.
Jaedar took a few cuts standing next to the bars of his cage, but is honestly barely hurt. This mission is a cakewalk for sure.
Not long before we've piled up a bunch of unconscious wraiths and taken their gear. Having all 3 goblins start outside the cages helped for sure, but honestly anyone we brought could have handled this.
Level is actually fairly big, but thankfully not that complicated.
We find escape tiles after a bit of exploration, along with a giant purple gem thing.
Our goblins are going insane, 2 of them were ratmeisters on the last mission and have low freshness still. Whoops. Their lowish voodoo power doesn't help matters either.
Gems are pretty heavy, would be a pain to carry back to the escape tiles. I'm confident we can just clear the level anyways, this avenger armour is amazing here.
Well, that certainly looks more dangerous than the wraiths.
Yup. Would rather not get hit by that thanks.
Fortunately we've got catgirls with a bajillion TUs. The enemy is, predictably, kinda tanky though.
I try a 'pure innocence' on it for good measure as well, but no dice.
More weird loot. Definitely don't want to escape without this stuff.
After a while it occurs to me I can use NV mode to see better. Quite helpful in this place.
Annoyingly, the demon doesn't stick aorund to fight but keeps wandering off. He moves quite far each turn so it's hard to keep up, but we'll corner him eventually.
One 'eventually' later...
He actually finds us! Thakfully Echidna dodges his attacks. Mind you, she's tanky in this place as well, anyways.
Using the wraiths stun weapons works a treat, and the beast goes down.
Huzzah!
Okay, there were definitely more than 3 enemies. Like, 12 at least.
Pretty decent skill gains, since a lot of people that don't normally get to melee got some practice.
Very stingy loot. Hopefully thoe last 2 items are as important as I'm hoping. Also, we picked up a demon heart at one point... maybe it's not here because it was in inventory?
Bah! I suppose that makes sense, but it makes that herder staff way less impressive.
Title for everyone! Not amazing, but more voodoo power is always welcome. Shame I didn't bring Gandalf (was worried about the lowered armour)
Finally the loot from our last mission arrives to be researched. I'll feel a bit silly if the robe gives awesome shit, we could have done that one ages ago by killing our first captive.
Time for Aziri's mission! Freshness isn't ideal, but 70 of 90 isn't too bad.
I decided to go with this in the end. Flask to recover stun, tesla coil in case theres other enemies besides tentacles, motion tracker for the same reason. Wand and herder staff should be our main tools against the tentacles. Staff has a kill melee, but if the hives are ranged and immune to voodoo we can play popamole with the wand.
Down we go!
Gah, psychedelics too. Not sure if that's mind or charm damage, but it doesn't seem to be doing much to us.
A bit of exploring later, and we round the corner into some tentacles!
We got hit a few times, but the damage is minimal. Seems this was the right choice!
Seduce doesn't seem to be working. Minimum 126% accuracy my ass!
We'll try the wand next. It's not like this thing is going to dodge it.
Ugh, it drains our TUs and freshness on hit as well. We can keep morale up easily at least, the tentacles don't seem to hurt that. It's clearly got way better reactions than us as well.
I give up on trying to popamole at it and just end the turn out here and tank it's attacks. It just means it hits us on it's turn instead of ours.
It's shredder our flimsy armour, unfortunately. We're taking a fair bit more stun damage now, and the canteen is running out.
I decide to change strategies yet again and go in for a melee bonk with the staff, only to find there's another fucking hive! Fuck it, we'll hit this one instead, we won't make it to the second one without getting whipped a million times.
Well shit. We've got almost no freshness, the canteen is done, and we don't seem to be hurting these fucking things.
JESUS CHRIST. No wonder we were losing. 412 health? I'd need to wand it like... 15 fucking times in a single turn! How the shit could I possible stun this thing? And those voodoo stats... no way in hell innocence was going to work. I think the actual play here is like.... a loader armed with a metric fuckton of poison weapons. Maybe chem grenades? I forgot about chem as an option, it'd at least fuck their morale. The toxilance should work wonders as well, come to think of it, since it scales with bravery and hits like a truck. Assuming we could get close enough. A lightning tome could also work, except we'd run out of TUs before killing a second Hive I think. Maybe if we brought pillow books as well....
Welp, we're fucked.
They can't move, so we can at least run away... I discover while doing so that going insane or berserk with your last character isn't actually a mission fail like I'd thought.
Because of our insane bravery, we can still act on like... 2 out of 3 of our turns? But we need to save TUs for a whole turn to get to full anyways, and either insanity or berserking will empty them.
Our exploration reveals there's a ledge overlooking the tentacles. However, we don't have any freshness left, so it's useless to us.
Last ditch ploy. I'll try kick this one in the nuts, hope it goes berserk and they beat eachother up for me.
Yeah, that didn't happen.
Well, that was a totally fair and balanced mission.
Yep. Not salty about this at all. No sir.