2 attempts at the Noxious Cellar

Weaver told the party that it’s time to head into the Noxious Cellar. She is now ready to proceed along with her Personal Quest.

Before heading into the cellar, the party was approached by a Vermling wanting to unload a piece of metal covered in sludge. The previous time, the party got the Curious Gear artifact. This time, the party was tempted to also buy the thing. But it’ suspicious that good things happen twice in Gloomhaven, so they refused to pay and laughed at the Vermling swindler’s attempt to get some gold out of the party.

The Noxious Cellar is an interesting quest. Getting to the remains of Xorn meant going into a curious shack in the Sinking Market in Gloomhaven. Finding a switch on the ground amongst flat stones placed in a radial pattern, the party activated it and found themselves sinking into the ground. Soon, the party was separated and each of them have to deal with the coming quest on their own.

This scenario is a tough puzzle to crack. The party’s first attempt was a failure. As each character needed to fight on their own, they found themselves defeated by the enemies when trying to clear the rooms on the way to the treasure. 

As this didn’t work, the second attempt saw the party trying out a different strategy.

With each on their own, the heroes will attempt to break out of the rubble-filled room, and move as quickly as possible towards their goal.

Tinder and Brutus used jump and also losing some high movement cards to get into the adjacent room. Weaver managed to clear a small gap, the room, turned invisible and then summoned the Burning Avatar to aid in dealing with the enemies.

After that, it was a sprint to the goals. Brutus was the first to reach his goal, being able to utilize the Boots of Striding to enhance his movement.

Tinder found the going tough. He didn’t have that much movement, and the Ooze had poison effects. Although he summoned the Battle Bot, he was down to really low HP. It was only when the combination strike with the Battle Bot finishing off the Elite Vermling Scout and Tinder doing the same to the Elite Ooze that gave him hope of completing the quest.

That leaves Weaver. The Burning Avatar took the hit from one of the Spitting Drakes. Weaver herself was also poisoned, but she just had to press on.

Eventually she reached her goal, but she was exhausted in the process. But that was okay as all three heroes reached their goal.

So, the jump and sprint strategy worked. The Living Corpses in the starting area moved slowly so after leaving them behind, they were less of a threat. For the remaining enemies, it’s not to kill them, but rather to dash pass them and stopping them from dealing too much damage. Brutus was down to 1HP and Tinder was down to 7HP (but only because he healed himself at the final round.

Oh, the donation to the Sanctuary of the Great Oak helped, but barely. The Blessing card didn’t appear in Weaver’s attack until at the very end. Well, at least it appeared.

With all of them reaching their goal and picking up pieces of a gruesome staff, they returned to their quarters, and found out the next step of this quest... a return to a secret room in one of the Crypts they previously explored.