Part 4: Jack of Plague

Part 4 - Jack of Plague (YouTube)

It's poison time!

The Soldier's Training fate interacts badly with the dungeon's curse, but not impossibly; the windfall we got was quite nice.

I got incredibly lucky and managed to avoid any of the dealer's Angry Mob encounters. They're first used here, and force you to choose between giving away a lot of your food (with a possible reward), or risk losing it or getting some serious pain cards. A few items have effects that let you escape the Angry Mob… including the Frost Fang I passed up.

The Suit of Plague

Ratmen are annoying.

You'll often fight their melee and ranged varieties together. The melee variety start out with two claw attacks, one of which is unblockable. The ranged variety can throw either a single spear or a barrage of three spears that all need to be blocked or dodged. To make matters worse, dead ratmen leave behind a poison cloud. Stand in it too long, and you'll get poisoned, suffering chip damage for a short while. It's not as if the damage is the end of the world, but with everything else in a dungeon that might kill you, you'll want to avoid poison.

From an escalation standpoint, ratmen are pretty good. They mix up features enemies have showed so far, with one more wrinkle added to keep us on our toes.

Also related to the ratmen… last time we saw The Suit of Hell. These enemies are exclusive to a DLC quest line, and they're basically ratmen reskins with a bit more power but no poison effect after death. They aren't considered a primary enemy type in this game. I wouldn't say they're much more dangerous, either.

The Jack of Plague

Here is a beast who hates your kind, and has grown fat and evil with that hatred. The Jack of Plague will kill you and suck the marrow from your bones.

Individually, he's not much more than a large ratman. In a group, enemies around him start attacking faster when he's hit, and it's easy to not notice in the middle of combat.

I also feel like killing his entourage makes him do his unblockable attacks more often, but don't quote me on that.