It was decided when heading south from Ala Championlisted the Large Taker's lair to the home of Iquila the baying troll—the first true night troll of this run—that Bim and Cerol would veer a bit east and pay a visit to Rockzenith, the closest dwarven fortress for a drink to celebrate Cerol's graduation from recruit to bowelf, and so that Bim could pick up some metal armor.
Cerol, perhaps due to his elvish nature, was fond of the finer things so he was easily outfitted at the various elven meadhalls along the way: +steel helmet+, *bismuth bronze brigandine*, *bismuth bronze cuisses*, a pair of *bronze sabatons*. Bim being dwarvenly <<< austere <<<, like most foresters and rangers, opts for plain, unadorned, unimproved iron. Modding notes on armor:
Here the cuisses are just the GREAVES renamed, with [LBSTEP:1] instead of [LBSTEP:2] since they are thigh guards. Sabatons, which are historically just metal foot coverings, here are the boot entry renamed, along with [UPSTEP:1] making them really a combination of a greave and sabaton due to DF's odd way of attaching armor to the body. The brigandine is the medieval precusor to the modern flak jacket, and was often sleeveless, but for our purposes here in DF is long-sleeved for simulation's sake, as brigandines were worn with arming jacks which included plate arm protection, or over mail shirts, and DF doesn't actually layer armor).
At The Umbral Bone, home to Iquila the baying troll, Bim, now wearing a pair of iron gauntlets (which in this world only cover the hands, not the lower arms) and iron sabatons, cuisses and a helmet, has set up a partial enclosure of campfires around Cerol. He, for some reason, has skipped wearing the brigandine…
The hope here was that Cerol (due to the long reload time) might fire a few useful shots. The full encounter though, needed to move along quickly if it was to be a success.
What Bim found upon opening the door was a night troll family: a baying troll child and the groom of the baying troll, and somewhere in the mound, Iquila.
So Bim followed the normal night troll gambit, multi-attack (quick attack + dodge away), kiting them out of the lair and into the open, always targeting the leg/foot first to drop their speed and kill the charge:
If the night trolls have wings and are now out in the open, it would be advised to slash a wing to kill flight, but as spouses have been weak in the past and the wing never appeared as a good shot, Bim just went with what was targeting as green (easy, easier) or white (normal), prioritizing disrupting the attacking limb (in this case the groom had featured a grab attack):
Death of the groom:
Leg shot to the baying troll child:
The encounter was working as it should, like clockwork, every order in the attack sequence firing properly (even Cerol too, fired 2 shots that both hit). This was presuming Bim wasn't fighting too far above his stat tier. Then (for this fight) there was an unfortunate incident:
Perhaps gauntlets should have been left as they were covering the lower arm, rather than made more realistic! >_>
This was perhaps where Bim may wondered if the brigandine would have helped, being metal armor. It may or it may not have as this was a bite attack, which is a penetration attack like any weapon stab, and through any armor, its low contact edge attack converted to focused blunt. Night trolls, who are arguably among the most dangerous creatures in the game, can be very good at two things: grappling and biting. A character can address the grappling by using the multi-attack (quick attack + dodge away) to counter their often superior grab attack. Since your character has already opted to
dodge away leaving one empty tile in-between themselves and the night troll, any successful grab made by the troll is broken. The multi-attack gambit (quick attack + dodge away) also helps to defend against the bite as the above image shows. Bite attacks contain this token in the raws [ATTACK_FLAG_CANLATCH] which allows a bite to be part penetration strike and part grab. The baying troll child landed the bite successfully and was able to latch on. Latching is similar to grabbing as this allows the biter to "wrestle" using the mouth where they can shake the bitten part around causing severe damage. But the dodge away component of the multi-attack can allow you to break the grip/latched bite and have you ending up one tile away from the troll. Also if a night troll has been featuring more bite attacks in their attack sequence, you can opt to have them keep the grab attack in their attack selection by leaving certain targets untouched, as Bim did here:
Bim also checked this screen to evaluate the damage done. The baying troll child was heavily bleeding and faint, so Bim chose to jump away, create distance and let it bleed out:
With that all done, Bim and Cerol fast traveled out of the site to heal up Bim's broken arm, before returning to tackle Iquila herself.
Stats before the two trolls:
Stats after (a good haul):
As you can see, Bim's not much of an archer, as he's been doing a good bit of melee. Likely though, the fight with Iquila will be melee as well.
Just a look back at the big mistake of the fight (everything else was as it should be): scouting the site.
In the first image you can see Bim skipped a proper scout of the mound since his field of vision still has unknown terrain at the edges. He didn't know how big the mound was and this does affect what choices might be made at the start.
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Topic: What's going on in your adventure? (Read 2102435 times)