Dungeons & Combat FAQ

DUNGEONS

What are Dungeons? Dungeons are the areas of Purgatory where Revenants gather and Executors are expected to do their duty of keeping them under control. Each dungeon corresponds to a Layer of Purgatory and manifests as a twisted shadow of the Layer it is attached to – because of this, each dungeon location is colloquially referred to as an Underside, and when exploring them, Executors should be on their guard. Dungeons and Undersides are used interchangably on this page, just as a heads up. For players, dungeons are the event logs where the combat-focused aspects of the game will come in. This is where your character should be prepared to get their fight on and push through to the next layer of Purgatory! Participating in dungeon logs is also the main way of getting new powers and memory regains in Can Cry, so be sure not to miss out if you can avoid it! How will Dungeon logs work? Progressing through an Underside is mandatory for passing onto the next layer of Purgatory. However, each Underside will initially be locked off when characters arrive in the appropriate layer, necessitating some degree of investigation or puzzle-solving to open the way to the Underside. For each layer, the Executors will need to do three things: Identify the Sinner who controls each layer of Purgatory, identify their Authority that allows them to control their layer, and through whatever means they settle on, usurp the Sinner's Authority. This will cause the Sinner to retreat to the Underside, at which point the Underside will become accessible and a dungeon log will be posted. The dungeon log will outline all of the locations, obstacles and enemies that can be found in the Underside that players can use as prompts for their own toplevels. There will, however, be a handful of mod-posted mandatory combat prompts in the comments that must be cleared for the dungeon to be completed. These will usually involve one or two powerful Revenants that will have their own clear requirements and the Aberrant who is in control of the dungeon. For more information on how combat will work in dungeons, see the section below! Is participation in Dungeon logs mandatory? It's not mandatory, but it's heavily encouraged, as Dungeon logs are where the majority of the game's action will take place. In addition, characters who do not tag into dungeon logs will miss out on their memory regains and powers for that month. There is no comment minimum for dungeon participation, and you have the whole month to get in and take part so try not to miss out! What can we find in Dungeons? Dungeons are pretty much exclusively occupied by Revenants, as well as an Aberrant at the end who controls the Underside of this layer of Purgatory. Spectres do not naturally appear here, and it's very rare for Spectres to wander down to Undersides, as they have an instinctive understanding of the danger that lurks here. Do Dungeons disappear when they're cleared? Nope, all dungeons will always be acessible when they're unlocked! In fact, it's encouraged for characters to revisit old Undersides and use them as testing grounds for their new powers or places to train and spar, as doing it around Spectres is just asking for trouble.

COMBAT

So about that Combat... Combat (with a capital C, so you know it's Important) is the catchall term for mod-controlled, mandatory combat encounters that take place in dungeons. Players are, of course, free to play out whatever kinds of fights they like in their own threads (and information on different kinds of Revenants will be provided to allow that to happen) but Combat is a little more structured and has some clear requirements. There's two tiers of Combat to keep in mind: Mid-Tier Combat and Boss-Tier Combat. What's Mid-Tier Combat? Mid-Tier Combat can be thought of as the mid-dungeon boss encounters. There will be one or two of these, depending on the dungeon and they must all be cleared before the final Combat encounter is unlocked. Both Mid-Tier Combat encounters will be available as soon as the dungeon opens and players are free to – and encouraged! – to tag in and go ham. Mid-Tier Combat is not mod controlled. Each Combat toplevel will contain a description of the enemy Revenant, an outline of its powerset and fighting style and a set of basic win conditions that must be met for the fight to be cleared. Some fights may also include optional bonus conditions that can be cleared for fun extras. As mentioned above, each Mid-Tier Encounter will come with a number of win conditions that must be met. Some of these are basic OOC conditions – the most common of which are "comment count" and "participation count" which refer to number of comments posted and number of characters participating respectively. Some of these win conditions are IC situations that must occur in the thread – these exist to give players hooks and a sense of direction to take the fight and to encourage Thinking With Cool Powers. If "at least 1" IC situation is called for, it doesn't need to happen in every thread, just somewhere under that monster's toplevel. Bonus conditions are just that – bonuses! They're not necessary to clear the encounter and not every Combat toplevel will feature then, but they can lead to some fun little IC rewards if met. In short, get creative! The prompts and challenges are meant to encourage, not limit. And if you happen to pull off something particularly fucking radical, your kindly mod might see fit to reward you. What's Boss-Tier Combat? That's a good question! Boss-Tier Combat is very different from Mid-Tier, as is it directly controlled by the mod (so me – hi) and requires players to sign up beforehand to ensure their participation. Caps for Boss-Tier Combat participation are low, and will often not exceed more than four players at a time. In Boss-Tier Combat, players will be facing the Aberrant who controls this layer of Purgatory and they must defeat it to continue making their way further down. Boss-Tier combat is lightly based on D&D style combat, wildly shaved down so there's no big list of stats and abilities to worry about. Rather, players only have to worry about two things: Durability and Movement. Durability is essentially just your HP. It reflects how much damage an Executor can take during battle before they have to withdraw. When knocked down to 0 Durability, an Executor is out of the fight! By default, Executors begin with 5 Durability – however, if you're so inclined, you can sacrifice one point of your Durability to add to your Movement if you feel this better reflects your character. Movement dictates the number of actions you can take during a turn of Combat. For each number of movement you have, you can take that many actions during each turn. "Actions" are defined as things that progress the flow of a battle – so moving, dodging, attacking, blocking, all that good stuff all count as an individual action. Talking does not, because I know we never shut up. Executors start with 2 Movement by default, though like with Durability, you may sacrifice a point of Movement to add to your total Durability if you think this better reflects how your character would fight. Got all that? Nope? TOO BAD ON WE GO. Fights will progress on a comment-by-comment basis, with a turn order dictating the reply order, and each reply from an individual serving as their turn for that round of Combat. Combat will cycle through each participant of the fight until either the Boss is defeated or all participating Executors are unable to battle. What happens in that case is a surprise. :) During Combat, the effectiveness of each action will be rolled behind the scenes, with the dice count varying on intended fight difficulty. To simplify things and make them a bit easier to understand from a player perspective, Boss-Tier Combat also employs something called death numbers. Each Aberrant is assigned a death number and each roll of the dice will dictate the effectiveness of their attack in comparison to said death number. The current state of death numbers is a big of a work in progress, but the lineup so far is as follows: 10+ Out From Death Number: Miss. 10 or Less Out: Glancing Blow (counts for half a hit). 6 or Less Out: Regular Blow (counts for one hit). 3 or Less Out: Critical Blow (counts for two hits). Death Number: Immediately Fatal Blow. It should be noted that the dice rolls behind the scenes will always come secondary to what makes a fun and engaging fight for players or for what makes more sense from an IC perspective. Bonuses and the like will be applied for fun or clever ideas or good use of teamwork, and if players suggest something Fucking Radical And Audacious enough, the mod may simply say "you know what? alright lads" and let you go ahead with your nonsense. If you're still confused or you'd like to see an example of this system in action here then check our the Boss-Tier Combat test that was conducted prior to the game's opening. In addition, the Combat system currently is a wee bit experimental and definitely a work in progress. Aspects of it are expected to change based on player engagement and feedback, so pardon our rough edges!