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Incursion Part 1 – Not Every Kobold Is Tucker's Kobold



Incursion (or, to use its full name, Incursion into the Goblin Halls) is an odd duck. Where the majority of Roguelikes have been inspired by 1st or 2nd Edition DnD, or GURPS, Incursion uses 3.5E rules, and they're not completely implemented yet. However, what is implemented is quite interesting, so I thought I'd give you a few newbie runs to show it off. I'm not going to be showing off a lot of the crunch, however, as it's essentially modified 3E DnD, with d20 rolls, feats, skills, et al. Basically, a lot of it's stuff you can easily look up via the SRD.

So, I'm going to mostly skip screenshots of character creation for now, except to mention that this first, rather illuminating run is using a Kobold Rogue. Kobolds are notoriously wimpy, but if anything can backstab the shit out of things, it's a Rogue. We give him Alchemy, Appraisal, Handle Device (Traps, basically), Use Magic, Pickpocket, Spot, Listen, Search... And, of course, Move Silently and Hide In Shadows. A fairly standard Rogue Build. You'll note, however, I haven't taken anything in Poison Use... I'll get around to it, but for now, I'm leery, for reasons that will become clear... Finally, for Feats, I get Ambidexterity (Because two weapons is useful) and Sneaky (Because being able to book it while still hiding is extremely important). He's also Neutral Evil (yes, alignment is in this game, and apparently will have a point at some point in the future. There's also a personality thing, but it's just flavour, so I always go Manipulative Plotter... MUAHAHAHAA)

The main thing of note in Incursion is this:



Five options of stats, or a sixth for Point Buy. I'm going to be using the five options system for all the runs, because it adds hilarity. However, I'm not going to be unreasonable... The first build, for example, has some nice stats, but Landed Noble is next to useless, and, even with only a passing familiarity with the game, I know I'm not realistically going to be fighting Mind-Flayers in my first run. Life Drain resist and Fear Resist would have been nice, but no... Endurance would have been really nice (Kobolds are weak), but I don't know what the Wand of Surtension does (And nor does the Incursion Wiki, from the look of things).. A Mithril Warhammer is not a very thiefly weapon, although immunity to Fear is hilarious... Nope, it's going to be an average build, with Swarm Tactics (Useful because all Kobolds start with a Horn of Kobolds, which... Summons Kobolds... EDIT: Although I forget that Kobolds always get Swarm Tactics. D'oh!) and Acrobatics (Useful when you actually remember it exists... Spoilers: I often don't.)





So, with the important decisions out of the way, we're off! Each area is briefly described, giving the feel of a DM narrating a dungeon crawl, and we always start here. To make things clear, every % we can see is somebody's corpse. And the very first thing I do, before even checking stats and inventory, is hit 'h' to Hide in Shadows. Monsters don't normally spawn in the first room, but some particularly speedy monsters can enter it... Which gets awkward really fast.

One thing that definitely spawns in this room is a number of Healing and Dimension Door potions, with some other, currently unidentified potions. We'll see why Quaff ID in times of danger isn't particularly useful soon, however. Tucker's Kobold this ain't. Either way, the potions are all looted without consequence, and it's time to take stock of what we have.




Yes, I did miss most of the skills in the middle.

Stat wise, you can see this is pretty much DnD 3.5. There's not much to mention here, except that, as an underground race, we have infravision, meaning we don't actually need torches! Yaaaay! We also, as a kobold, have an affinity to Vermin which... Doesn't come in useful all that often right now, especially since Animal Handling is not a skill we possess. Hell, I don't even know if its implemented.



Howeeeever, as soon as we look at our inventory, we see something's up. This game is not nice, and here's one of the first examples... A whip? A sodding whip? If we had a build good for that, sure, but... A whip? We immediately switch it out for a Shortsword and Dagger combo (It's even nice enough to ask us if we want to wield the Shortsword two handed for that slight bit of extra damage... No thanks, we have Ambidexterity, but nice of you to ask!)

However, the rest of our layout is pretty sweet for a starting character... Cloak of Nondetection (We're not able to be seen by, say, ESP or Divination spells), Bracers of Defence +2 (Much appareciated!), Gauntlets of Nimble Fingers, and... A variety of poisons? Ummm... Yeah, I should really have dropped those, except... Enemies use things. You don't want them to use those things, because odds are they're better at it than you are. We even have Potions of Dimension Door (Useful if you think you can get away with it), and Healing (Standard heal, good enough for 1st level) galore, and a bow for if we think we can shoot better than attack (We can, but switching between the two is somewhat hazardous)



Now, remember what I said about quick enemies? A 'b' is a bird, and in this case... It's a piranha bird. That's right, bloody wizards and their lack of responsibility! They're not very tough (As we'll demonstrate in a moment), but they're very, very fast. Also, this guy is just the first. Thankfully, we're hiding, and it (And its brethren) never catch sight of us.



Here's the statblock, attained by 'l'ooking at it, then e'x'amining it. Despite what it says about being True Neutral in alignment, in terms of how it feels? It's always hostile, and, as it says, there are more of them. Thankfully, 1d8+2 hitpoints averages out at around 6, and a sneak attack (IE – From hiding) with a shortsword does an average of... 6 damage! What a nice coincidence, especially since we also have a dagger to sneak attack with too!



However, it quickly flits away before I can attack it, so I explore a little further, and encounter the first two wrinkles in this dungeon... Brightly lit areas and Lava. Lava isn't too much of a problem unless it's in our way, and, if we had some kind of magic, we could use it our advantage, but Brightly Lit means we can't hide, and, although that 23 HP seems like a lot... We really want to hide as much as possible. So I try to avoid brightly lit areas as much as I humanly can.



Seeing as there's a lot to see, I'm always going to leave this image at the top of each update (After this one), the Symbol guide, because it gives you just some idea how much the game wants to eat your babies. Nearly every symbol here wants us dead. We don't want that.



A little bit of exploration (And the death of three piranha bats later), we get a hint as to what the deal was with the Lava. This is the Chamber of Four Elements, above us is a Chasm, and so far, all we've seen are Piranha Bird. Which is lucky, because look at that damage we did... No piranha bird is safe when Zigrat is around!



A little further, we come across a locked door, and... Fail to pick the damn thing. This basically means we can't open that door unless we want to attack it (Makes noise, not a great option) or rest for a while and try again (Takes time, makes us hungry... Not that we're hurting for rations right now, but it's annoying.) We take the latter option and go West. This will turn out to be a bad idea.



Bright... Clear... Ice. Everything in here, once we're revealed, can see us. If Zigrat (and I) had any sense, we'd turn right around and try another door... But this is a newbie run, so fuck that. Nearly all the doors are locked, but our skillpoints in lockpicking come through, and soon...



Wolves, and some sort of goblinoids. One wolf is even trying to hide (Shown by a purple background), how adorable is that? Looking at the statblock, if we get a good blow in, we can severely injure it. But something terrible happens. Something so terrible, I forgot to screenshot the event itself.



Remember how it said it was ice caverns? Well, ice caverns = slippery floor. Slippery floor = I pratfalled when backstabbing, revealed myself, and then the wolf had the surer footing overall. It was an embarassing death, and I'm glad to have shared it with you.

Next time, we try Kobold Rogue again, but BETTER. Promise. Even so, we already learned some things. First: Environmental hazards are definitely in the game. Second: Wolves hit harder than we do and are unafraid to make called shots. Third: AVOID ICE CAVES UNTIL READY.