Play by Forum: Hexplore It - The Sands of Shurax

I’ll take Health and First Mastery for my Gears!

Ugh on rolls for that caravan.

I will stash this time.

I’ll gain 1 to my first mastery to gain the sustain with no energy. And I’ll gain +1 to navigate. Y’all need to beef up your skills; it’d be nice to not have to worry about wandering.

Here are our missions at present:

There is no good reason to visit the Tarri quadrant, and if we go to the city-state we run a pretty high risk of rolling that level 6 boss. I say we camp (healing 3H/3E for camping + 1H/1E for the survival kits we all have + 2E for the waterskin) and catch another caravan outta here to try to get back to the waste. Also lets us hopefully discard one of the horrible circumstances we could face. I’m curious what boss 3 looks like.

Agreed with all that.

I’m traveling this weekend, and possibly less available than usual, which probably puts me at available the normal healthy amount for a sane person, but figured I should note it anyway…

Don’t forget you guys can increase the Difficulty, by the way. First step is an automatic Mutation on each enemy (with attendant higher payout and challenge), and +1 to all damage they do, and 2 more Outlast on anything with Outlast. (I’m not entirely clear on how/whether Opponent Mutations interact with Outlast enemies - there’s no special rules I can see in the rulebook and Outlast is a vital that can get increased by Mutations, but on the other hand that’s a lot of Outlast compared to the other vitals, and a lot of mutation abilities don’t interact with the Outlast rules.) Gets you a Ravager Crystal after every battle, plus the bonus mutation rewards. I don’t know if you want to go there quite yet, Chimminy’s still so damn squishy. But something to keep in mind.

Gear upgrade choices?

So here’s a question. If we don’t leave the caravan spot, we don’t reveal a new caravan master, correct? And Sarth only leaves the caravan if the journey ends prematurely. We didn’t end up at our chosen destination, but the caravan journey did complete. If we depart from here, do we get to do Melhin+Sarth again?

Entering this Caravansary by finishing the Journey is moving into a new Caravansary. Melhin and Sarth are back at their respective homes, I should have revealed a new Master. (Sarth’s is “The Wastes”, so you can take a journey with him at literally any Caravansary in the Wastes.)

Here is the new Master:

Oh hell yeah

It’s interesting to me - the game seems to assume that Caravan Events will fuck you up and that earning the Master rewards will be difficult, and across this and every other run of Sands of Shurax I’ve played in, we automatically assist with every event and arrive with a fully intact Caravan Master literally 100% of the time. I can see how you wouldn’t, even! but it’s never happened.

Hmm, in our game, which is in its early stages, our Caravan rides have banged up both us and the Caravan Master. We fail skill checks, and everyone loses energy at the very least. Even after one of us did some gearing-up, we’ve still had rocky Caravan Events.

I’ll suggest we each contribute 2g for the bribe, since we don’t really want to head back to Nemsynet at this point.

We have two gear upgrades? I must have missed that. 2 x Navigate please.

Oh, yes, I very much want to get back to the Wastes asap

The Master’s home is not their destination. It’s where they return to after you hire them. The destination, since you’re in the Quadrants, is any City-State or Caravansary of your choice. If you’re travelling from the Wastes, it’s a random d4 roll to the matching City-State.

The only reason to Bribe at this point is if you want to travel to a specific space that’s not a Caravansary, as Bribing allows literally any destination.

Ah, ok, I hadn’t understood that. In that case, I’ll just pocket the 2g contributions from each team member.

Still waiting on 2x gear choices from @Thraeg. In the meantime, movement proceeds as follows:
Camp. -1 to skill checks this turn, Heal 4/4 from Camp + Survival Kit. Raise 2 energy from Waterskin.
Akbar gains Rank 3 of Metabolic, which adds +1 Health.

Skills
Cheya tests Explore and Survival: 1 (2-1), 9 (10-1). Crit Success, Fail. Gains 3 gold (no one needs healing). Eats 3 food.
Akbar tests Explore and Survival: 1 (2-1), 1 (1-1). Crit, Crit. Gains 3 gold, and may either gain 1 food or heal all heroes 1 energy. Additionally, during the Circumstance step (which you would normally skip on a Caravansary) you may choose to play a Circumstance of your choice because you got 2 crits.
Orion tests Explore and Survival: 4 (5-1), 9 (10-1). Currently fail and fail, but could have a success on Explore depending on gear choices (or a Fairy). Eats 2 food.
Chimminy tests Explore and Survival: 6 (7-1), 2 (3-1). Fail, Success. Of course, you don’t eat food anyway.

Circumstance
Which Circumstance would you like to play, if any? Note that this is specifically worded as “play”. You cannot choose the Circumstance and then use your having Camped to discard it, I don’t think.


For reference. I doubt you really want to with that slate. But I think you’d be able to kill the Skeletal Dragon, it’s just risky. And Riding the Ravager would be…a thing. A thing you really want to do in the Wastes, though.

I’m only 70% sure that this isn’t some kind of amazing House of Leaves triple layered meta-boardgame situation, but I am loving whatever is happening here.

Yeah, we could definitely take out the dragon; it doesn’t even have a defend. With Orion’s Mind Trap and Akbar’s All Tied Up, we could probably even mitigate the chance of rolling the dragon’s basic attack. But probably best to avoid at this point and save our energy for the caravan. We’ll probably end up facing the dragon (and earning that sweet 20g apiece) sometime soon. Still, up to you @Ormus.

I am totally up for taking the Dragon out if we can handle it. Usual orders using ATU with Triggered Assault round 1 and Specialty Trap guessing 5 and hex for round 2 if needed.