Part 3: Queen of Dust

Part 3 - Queen of Dust (YouTube)

If you didn't think the dealer was that hostile, the traps will make you rethink his place at the table. He's loving every second of pain he deals you.

My run could have been a lot worse. I managed to trigger all the rock fall traps, and didn't pick a helmet at the first chance… but it worked out! Getting gold loss pain cards on this dungeon is like getting a slap on the wrist. If you're doing this, though, wear a helmet. Not doing so would be a bad idea. What's a bit funny in retrospect is that only the default Fate in the game has no headgear, so anything but Normal mode has an advantage at this point of the game…

We briefly saw the Suit of Hell. I'll explain more when we compare them to our third Suit.

The Queen of Dust

The Bandit Queen was taken by slavers as a child and raised in the desert. Over the years, she has bribed and murdered her way to her current position as second-in-command of the desert thieves, proving herself capable of ruthless cunning.

The Queen of Dust isn't too hard, but she can easily catch you off guard if you're not expecting a stream of unblockable attacks to the face. She loves to spam them when you've killed all her allies… which you want to do because dodging ranged attacks is not my idea of fun.

Use weapon or artifact abilities if you have them. They're the best way to speed up the fight either in a damage race, or by interrupting her.

The DLC
I touch on this in the video, but I'm not sure if I'm sold on the way the DLC/update cards are presented.

The newer cards (all the fancy color-coded encounters) have different mechanics per quest line, which is a nice way of adding some variety. You have some combat-heavy encounters, some chance-heavy encounters, encounters that have specific unlock requirements (however annoying that may be)… that's not so bad. It's trying to reach people who have different preferences. My main issue is that some cards are just story cards. They're not the only cards that seem like that, but when so many encounters offer a bit more than "read this story, get a token," it feels like a bit of a waste to me.

Maybe there was no good way of ramping up some quest lines besides doing this. Story events do give you a bit of a breather if everything else in the dungeon is tough, and they guarantee a card token/unlock, which lets you feel progress.