Tower of Voices: Second Run Voting Thread

Well, that was not the outcome I wanted. That said, outside of Malia’s trickery, this was a winnable fight. If you remove the +40 from her betrayal, the difficulty was -7, aka a guaranteed win.

We’re still in the room we got the key from, right? With the coin door? Take, head to that door. Nagi should be behind it. Let’s ask for new armor to replace the damaged set and for healing from Nagi. That will save us from having to deal with Dreg again.

 

That sounds good. New armour is, regrettably, more important than new clothing. Though keep your shattered ask, we may well get ability to fix it later.

After that, I think we continue exploring this floor and trying to find the minotaur again.

 

Newest Chapter: I realized I forgot to factor in Take's previous armor into the fight... My bad, not that it would have changed the outcome, but yeah I'll try to remember to factor in armor.

 

Wow three run-ins with Bellows already? Sorry we don’t have more time to deal with this, Take.

So as for the strategy, we’ll be going with much the same as before; that means using the kunai to go for the eye, targeting the knees, and keeping out of reach. But this time we’re lacking mana. I have an idea to compensate for that, though. Take, lure it into the now empty room you’re in, then slip past when you have an opening to go into the previous room where we got the key. Try to lure Bellows into stepping on whatever trap is set in the floor below where the key was. Make sure you stay out of reach, as we don’t know what it is, but it might give us the edge we need. We’ve only got two smoke bombs left but employ one if needed.

 

Yes this was unfortunately soon. Keep your distance and try to lure Bellows to the trap.

 

Reminder only the one where you chose to wait was a scripted encounter. Take's RNG has just been terrible. Poor Take.

 

Newest Chapter: Take's rematch

 

Oh, new gear. And A gear, curious what the deal with that is. Glad I remembered the floor trap, I think we win if it’s a tie but that -10 made a difference.

For now, Take, it’s probably safe to head back into that room where Nagi was and take a rest. Set some caltrops in the doorway just in case, but it’d be good to get some mana back. After that, we can continue exploring the floor. There’s still one more person we need to find, Dahlia’s replacement.

There’s also a couple long term things I wanted to figure out as we finish exploring the floor: 1. Which path do we want to take and 2. Do we want to bite the bullet and use the golem time?

1. For those who don’t know, we’ll have a choice between two paths for the third floor. Short version is one provides great rewards for overcoming great challenges, while the other is about taking debuffs and fetishes in exchange for powerful items and abilities. I’m leaning towards the Tower Below path this time because Take just lost her virginity. The boss of the Tower Above path can be skipped in exchange for the Chosen’s virginity, and while as only a third floor boss the fight should be doable, Take’s in a rough state. A lot of her equipment was destroyed, she’s using up her kunai and smoke bombs, and she’ll burn through mana quickly. Not to mention we don’t know what the new items do yet, so I can’t count on them.

2. Because of the problems I mentioned above, it may be worth taking the risk of using the golem tome. It’ll come with a demonic curse, and some of them are pretty brutal. That said, we’d be able to immediately get an ally to support us if I’m remembering the effects correctly, and that’d be a huge boon considering our state. I wanted to bring it up but I’m not enthusiastic about the idea, and wanted to hear other opinions.

 

So the third floor would then be unknown.

Did Yulia gain any party members on the third floor? If not, using the Golem Tome may well be worth the risk. Otherwis we would have to be lucky enough to meet at least Nagi before meeting the floor monster.

 

Isn't that where she met... Cherchiel, or whatever her name was?

Is that certain, or are you just making assumptions based on what happened last time?

Personally, I am not a fan of the whole "taking debuffs and fetishes in exchange for powerful items and abilities" strategy - that seems like the kind of thing that will snowball into massive debuffs down the line, potentially to the point where all the debuffs will make it impossible for Take to win. Way too soon for that, in my opinion. For the same reason I would leave the Golem Tome for later.

 

Lehe confirmed these early floors are the same, so it's safe to assume this rule will carry over.

And yeah, we recruited Cherchiel on the third floor last time, and angels have to serve you if you take off their visor (which is what happened to Cherchiel). Which may be a viable path, but if we exploit that too hard we'll likely face consequences.

My concern with our current status is we lack firepower. If it weren't for the trap we could exploit, the DC for the Minotaur would have been 17. We have Cloak and Force Lance, but we don't have a way to restore mana without resting right now and our new debuff will make us burn through mana faster. The kunai and smoke bombs are limited in number. Maybe Dahlia's replacement can tell us what the gauntlets and mask do, and maybe they'll be viable for Take. But I'm worried that we won't be able to take on a tougher monster than the minotaur, including the next floor's wandering floor monster and boss. A golem or two could bridge that power gap.

 

Also Take's first set of armour was destroyed and she had use Nagi's deal to replace it with weaker rather than powering up.

 

Not quite:

Similar, but not the same. So let's finish exploring this floor before we start making plans for the future ones.

 

Newest Chapter: New Dahlia who dis?

 

Nice to meet you Cerami. Glad we got straight to “not the Archdemon of Gifts” I was about to ask about that. I guess Dahlia really did do that simply for the love of the game.

It might be worth it to accept a fetish or two in exchange for some clothes for Take, if Cerami could also identify the items we got from Bellows for us as a bonus. Take’s currently half naked, and a fetish or two won’t make much difference. Yulia’s combined fetish level was over twelve by the end iirc and it almost never came up outside of flavor.

 

Clothes really should be the next problem now that we are not constantly in immediate danger of a fight.

 

I’m return. Personally I’m in the party of taking debuffs for power like the tome and clothes too.

 

Newest Chapter: Embracing your truth

 

Well, Take has clothes again. I don’t think we need anything else right now, at least not urgently. As for the Challenge Gears, it’s interesting that we aren’t guaranteed to get them. Will we know what the challenge for them is going forward? Will the challenge be centered around the wandering floor monster or could it be related to some other obstacle on the floor, like Malia on this one?

Well, as proven here, the item drops are very valuable, so for now let’s keep killing them. Especially since exploration gets a lot easier without them around, which will become more evident on the larger and more crowded floors.

Speaking of, I think we should equip both of these new items. Given our spells’ cost and the lack of ways to recover health or mana besides resting, this should be a viable fighting style short term. Let’s also finish exploring this floor, as I suspect we’ll be able to test them out before we move on, and I’d rather get a sense of what combat with these looks like before we pick our next floor.

 

Given the drawbacks of the gauntlets and the helmet I'd think you are better off donning them only when a fight is imminent and trusting your agility and ability to spot the traps otherwise.