Lobotomy Corporation Part #50 - Day 24

Part 50: Day 24 - Gameplay

Day 24: Gameplay

Music: neutral 2

Medea, prepare to intercept-

Already got sights on it. I'm settling a score.

Tenebrais, what are you doing.

Kicking its ass, what do you think?!

THE GREAT TENEBRAIS HAS PERISHED! ALL IS LOST! ALERT THE OTHERS! AAAAAAHH!!!

...I gave her the stupid bullet shield. You can't blame this on me.

Well, it's not my fault your agents are out of control.

Manager, the clerks from all over the building have gone into open revolt.

Soooo… what, they're shooting themselves in the head again?

Manager.

Fine. We rewind, but because her and that gear're more valuable than a few extra hours of working.

Retry count: 6. I wanted to see if Tenebrais could tank a Punishing Bird chomp and the answer was 'not without a little extra finagling.' I regret nothing. :colbert:

Whatever, let's just take it from the top.

We still have a choice between White and Black bullets, and between the two I generally rate Black defense higher since it can kill agents, and it's what Scarecrow uses. We take the Black shield.

Some equipment shuffling and… oh, that's an odd glitch. Storytime! So, Kaori's been having her name get changed to Aurora every single time I close/reopen the game, and I have no idea why. I've got a mod that lets me change it back to her name, and I've been using it every time I open the game to grab footage. For some reason despite it supposedly costing 0 LOB, it costs 1 instead. Weird mod interaction bugs, I guess. :shrug:

Things should still be fine, our LOB account is starting to snowball in a good way.

You guys had better not screw up!

…

He's just gonna' be like that until he's replaced, huh.

This happens from time to time. I'm used to it. You should be focusing on the Abnormalities, Manager.

Ah-right. Thanks.

Our first new Abnormality is a bird, but it's not a Bird-it will not help us form Birdzodia.

The second one looks like the other half of the Yin amulet, of course.

Hmm… This cutie is more of a hottie, I think..!

Mizu's work got a Good result, and now the new bird has a fiery aura in its cell.

Oh… wow! Talking to you seems so much easier than just cleaning the room, sir! I'm glad you latch on to it so well!

Meanwhile, I bite the bullet: We're finishing Woodsman today, but to do ensure it I'm going to be having our one person who can work with it train their Temperance out of the range where work will be safe in the future. Eh, we'll manage.

…

Since Tiphereth's on the fritz, we're taking the orders from Tiphereth today. She's already given me a dossier, and now that Mizu's done it falls to me to give everyone their marching orders.

You're the only one here who's using anything less than WAW gear, mosshead. They're just letting you work as a middleman so you feel special.

Yes, well, why don't you put that new ALEPH gear to use and work with our new bird? Mizu reported it dealt Red damage, so it's all yours.

Sweet.

Hey Talow! Taaalow, where are you going?

Oh, me? I've got a pendant to handle.

Oh. Tools. Ew.

Yeah, I'll see you in a bit.

Tenebrais's armor has a 0.2x Red modifier, making her effectively unkillable by conventional Red damage attacks. It's very useful for working Abnormalities if we just don't feel like thinking about damage.

Count to twenty, put it back. Count to twenty, put it back. Got it.

Yin's Management Guidelines from yesterday showed that holding this amulet-called Yang, of course-for more than 30 seconds would drop its QC by 1. We absolutely don't want it to escape, so we have to get Yang's information a little bit at a time. Still, there's nothing stopping us from just grinding it out all at once.

So we do that, of course.

Same shit, different day, I guess.

While Mr.Blond is dealing with the Bird, I unlock the information on The Firebird. This particular Abnormality is one of the least-liked types in the game, in that its QC decreases on Good results. Its preferred work rates are also relatively high, making it very easy to set this thing free either by accident or on purpose.

Orders from the top, everyone. Bishop, Chinely, you're being called down to Central. Omni, you're staying here. That's all.

No work today again, huh…?

I wonder what they want me down there for?

Judging by the CCTV footage… I'd say it's bird-related.

It's time. Remember to follow the protocols.

Control's calling. We're all reporting downstairs.

Ah… the time has come once more to use my skills.

...Yeah, I'm going on-

No y'dont, kiddo. We're all reporting.

Maaaan…

I finished gathering the information on the woodsman, ma'am!

Hey, good work! We're getting called to lower, let's see what that's about.

Whatever it is, it's about a 6 on the hair scale.

Firebird is somewhat special: the main reason Firebird requires goods to lower its QC and escape is because it is one of the few Abnormalities which gives us a new weapon upon suppressing it. Tenebrais goes to work on it, and it'll be time to pick a fight with a WAW soon. :getin:

When suppressing a powerful Abnormality, the deathball is incredibly important-doubly so for one like Firebird, who will return to its cell on its own after a while. With returning Abnormalities like this, once they decide to go back they can no longer be attacked. Enemy at a sliver? Too bad! Try again. We need to keep our Agents together, but the floor we're on makes that difficult.

One of the weaknesses of Central Command's layout is that the entire floor is so spread out that there's no way to get everyone to stick together in a single spot like an elevator. In order to combat this, the best strategy is moving Agents constantly from the lower floor to the upper floor using the hallway to merge two groups together into one and then constantly and quickly moving them in as small an area as possible to keep them packed together. If Agents are always en route, they won't be able to spread out. The downside is that this is a very high-maintenance process, requiring a lot of pausing.

This is the weirdest exercise I've ever been in!

It's iinteresting… I wonder whyy we're having to meaandeer like this…

It is not ours to worry, but only to act.

Oooh… how saage…

Oh, he can still talk?

...

There are a few automated responses, but right now Tiphereth's not good for much else.

Right. Let's get down to it.

I'm going in. You chuckleheads had better be ready to back me up.

Firebird has only two abilities. The first is a passive ability which deals 5 Red damage to anything in the same room as it every second or so. This would have been a problem, but we have Red bullets now so we'll be fine as long as we don't get cocky.

The second ability kicks in when we attack the bird. It begins to turn on its side, which is our cue to get everyone the hell out of the way. (Not pictured: Tenebrais getting the hell out of the way.)

Once it's turned on its side, it dashes to the end of the room like All-Around Helper does-but unlike Helper it deals 120-150 White damage to anyone in its path. Don't worry about panic, though, Firebird has the very helpful ability to instantly kill anyone who it lowers to 0 SP.

Time limit aside, this is one of the less annoying WAWs to suppress. The higher-risk Abnormalities do not mess around, and many of them have a tell attack like the Firebird does which will maim anything in its path. Most attacks like these have a cooldown, so this is our cue to go in and attack-just remember to bring Red shields!

This is going way too smoothly.

Nonsense! This is a plan that I came up with, so of course it would go well!

I thought 'don't be there' was the Manager's plan originally.

That's too vague! You could never trademark it!

It's charging again! Heads down!

It's fine, it just charged through a bunch of clerks.

…

Just because I'm trying to keep them alive and they occasionally kick ass doesn't mean they count.

Pile on, boys!!

It's not difficult to avoid Firebird's big attack once we know the tell, so the only real question is if our team has enough total damage to handle the bird before it decides to go home.

It does.

Is everyone okay?

Everyone seems to be intact.

I'm okee-dokie! Wouldn't mind tussling with this hottie again.

I just can't believe we got into a fight with a phoenix.

My eyes are burning and I can't see right anymore, ma'am.

Now that you mention it…

There is one other quirk to fighting with The Firebird, and that is that anyone who hits it gets that special orange effect currently visible around all of our Agents. What does this do?

It cuts the Agent's Work Speed stat in half, and can only be removed by having the debuffed agent work with Firebird again. Given how many agents have it, this isn't really feasible. Judgement Bird's E.G.O gift has an unlisted passive which protects against this effect, but nobody has that right now, either. Normally this is just annoying, but we have Blue Star in the facility and it kills anyone who works it for longer than 60 seconds-which is now everyone.

Well… almost everyone.

Listen, Blue Star. I would really prefer it if you stopped sucking my pencils inside of you. I need those to dr-o my work. Do my work.

Omni's job today is to handle Blue Star in case it melts down so that I don't throw anyone else inside of it by accident.

What a lovely feather. Where'd you find it?

That Firebird left it behind when we defeated it. It seems to be some kind of E.G.O, so I'm turning it in until we can observe what it does.

I understand. I'll get to the bottom of it as quickly as I can.

Doesn't that just mean you'll be handing it off to me?

Um… more or less. Thanks, Yesod.

Hold on, I'm gonna' go settle a score.

Hey, chill for a minute.

Huh? Why? You saw that bird fight earlier, this suit makes me invincible to Red damage.

Practically invincible. We don't know the upper limit on that bird's crunching power, it might be able to go through even your suit. Best not to risk it, right?

...Tch. I'll wait 'til a day I get to work with Knight.

I don't think you'd survive even then…

Shut up and watch me.

A little bit later, we get all of The Firebird's information taken care of-just 100 more PE boxes and we'll have all its buyable gear. This also lowers it to 1 QC as well, so here's where I do something dumb:

Couple seconds. Everyone get ready.

I can't help but think this can't be good for all the clerks around here.

It's fine, Tylana. Small fry don't count.

This isn't the time to be talking! It's coming!

During this breach we get into an interesting situation here. The Firebird is about to charge, and our deathball is split between the melee attackers and the long range attackers. The correct play here is to grab that front group (all of it), and have them run towards the room above to get them to run past the Firebird. The team in the back can simply run through the door they're right next to.

The end result looks like this, with our Agents completely untouched by the Firebird's big charge attack. We finish it off shortly thereafter. Firebird can give out up to three feathers, so this would be good… except we've already beaten it up today, and it only gives out one of its E.G.O weapon per day. Further suppressions are useless.

Being an idiot, I forgot this and we'll be beating it up a third time. :eng99:

Violet Dawn.

So how's fighting the Firebird?

It's basically a phoenix, so it's hot and kind of stuffy. Not being weak to Red makes it bearable, but if you get hit by that charge it's all over anyways.

The bullets help a lot, though.

Oh yeah, those seem so cool. BAM out of the wall and then we're protected like that!

It'd be better if they didn't explode right near your ear.

Violet Done.

You're releasing the bird again?

I want more of those feathers. They're useful.

The fight goes just like the two others, and I'm very pleased to find out just how good this facility is at chewing through Firebird.

The gear?

Firebird's suits have been extracted fully, which leaves only the Woodsman.

Mmhm… Focus on it, then. We're finishing this today.

Yes, Manager.

Ghh…

X, are you alright?

Fine. It just turns out that staring into a monitor inside a dark room all the time gives you a bit of a headache. Doubly so when the thing you're staring at is a flaming bird.

I see. Let us proceed with caution, then.

Luckily for us, Gaia's Work Speed is already in the trash so the Firebird's debuff doesn't really change how long he takes per work.

I'm just glad to be contributing!

I just realized you weren't around for either fight, Mr.Blond. What've they got you doing?

Portrait duty. I'm keeping whoever got the other end of that thing safe by not participating.

Want to trade?

Nah.

Fighting the bird is good practice anyways, Fat Sam. We should learn as much as we can.

I'm all done, ma'am! I think that's just enough PE boxes to finish getting everything, ma'am!

Let's see…

Yep! It looks like we're all set. Good work, Gaia.

Thank you, ma'am!

Hey… should you be stepping on the corpse of a clerk like that?

Ehh, it's probably fine. Nobody really cares. And I mean… when I do this it goes crackle-squish!

Oh… ew… I didn't need to see that.

Me either! It's the sound I like.

Nngh… Angela, remind me to seriously question our hiring practices.

You are the one in charge of hiring, X.

Then remind me to read the damn resumes fully.

Yes, Manager.

Manager, here's the information on the feather we acquired.

Don't you mean 'feathers?'

No, sir. Only one appeared today.

You mean we did all of that for nothing?! Gah!! :doh:

Sir?

You are dismissed. X, it seems you are unwell. Perhaps it would be best to end the day?

But… gnngh. Yeah. Okay. I need to lie down.

zzz… Huh? Oh, that's the bell. You guys finish up, I'm going for a beer.

HAHAHA! Fine work today with the Blue Star, Control-boy!

It's Omni, sir.

Omni-boy then! You should take off that mask sometime! Can't see that smile if you have the mask on!

I don't suppose you'll be sticking around to help us clean up, will you?

I should get back to Central. I'm sure the others are having a hard time without me.

Things sure are going smoothly, huh.

That's what happens when all the clerks survive.

Ah, you're cleaning up today! Good, good. Make sure you be extra thorough, and let me know if you see any agents who are doing something outside of the policies we've put forward, okay?

Sure.

Great. There were some discrepancies raised in our paperwork at the last Upper Sephirot meeting, and I can't let that stand! Something about altered access logs, so focus on people going where they shouldn't be-I'll be happy to handle the removal process from the Control Team.

Got it. Have a great day.

Of course!

...You're not going to really do that, right?

Of course not, Chinely. This is a lead, and I follow leads.

You're so cool, captain! :swoon:

I'm the Sephirah of the all-important Control Team! Of course our results would be this great!

Congratulations to Tenebrais on joining the maxout club. :golfclap:

And of course...

No Abnormality selection today, since there'd be nowhere to put it.

Next time, on Lobotomy Corporation: Angela delivers another A lecture.

New Guidelines

Warm-Hearted Woodsman
The Firebird

New Gear