Let's Play Mewgenics: The Bad Care Run

[Shifter55]

A few more days pass, Freeloader passes on Pica to one of her kittens, and we have a new cat contract Depression, so it's time to attempt the Boneyard.

For this group, we chose Ralphie(fighter), Maluca(hunter), Fleya(tank), and Jack Buckskin(cleric). The plan is to use Fleya's Gravity Slam to bring enemies into adjacency with her, causing them to get the debuff from Depression, while Maluca picks them off with her ranged attacks and leechs. As Fleya also has Wide Load I'm not especially worried about bringing cats near her, but it may cause issues with casting and movement at the start. I've also loaded up Ralphie with protective items to reduce the impact of starting next to Fleya, and ending up with 8HP, while Bear Traps for later in the run complete the build.

Party Stats
Fighter Ralphie
Brainstorm
Bull Rush
Skullcrack
Focus Band
Morphine Drip
Rubber Mask

Hunter Maluca
Make a Wish
Needle Shot
Gravity Falls
Leech Mama

Tank Fleya
Gravity Slam
Belly Flop
Wide Load
Depression

Cleric Jack Buckskin
Landscape
Prayer
Breath of Life
Pica
Bear Traps
Tie Dye Bandana

Almost immediately we get a weather change, this time someone has set up contraptions that spew sparkles on command at intruders. With low health from starting near Fleya and leeches being part of our build, this could be a problem as that's 5 damage spread across our units every time something activates it. We also found an item that could buff one of our cats' INT, but with it's reduction in CON and a Depressed cat on the field it's only really safe on our tank and cleric.

Party Changes
Fighter Ralphie
+Nip

Tank Fleya
+Bear Trap Mask

Cleric Jack Buckskin
+Glasses
+Blow


This time we are fighting Fenrir, with the shielded buff, overall he doesn't seem like a huge threat, and with Jack Buckskin we can blow down the grass to prevent him dodging our attacks. We task her on that while Ralphie and Fleya take the Turkey to the right.

Once the Turkey is dealt with, we get a chance to use Fleya's Gravity Slam, and... she lands right onto a Bear Trap previously set by Fenrir. This immobilises both of them, but Fenrir having a second turn after Fleya nullifies the effect of Depression as he moves away from her. Moving to corner him again results in 3 of our cats running foul of the traps.

Try as we might we can't keep the hunter miniboss contained, and he downs Jack Buckskin. Maybe blowing the grass was a bad decision? Since none of our melee cats can reach him, we resort to filling him full of needles with Maluca, the Leeches generated should also do some damage, with 4 damage a piece and immediately clearing a space for the next one to attack due to thorns.

As he also downs Fleya, we are starting to run out of cats, and Maluca is immobile from running into a Bear Trap last round, so she can't hit Fenrir. We use Needle Shot to trigger some adjacent traps, but it's going to come down to luck if she survives the next round. Thankfully, he fires at the Dummy, which responds by sending a sparkle his way, scoring the final point of his HP. Luckily due to the turkey dropping food, we have a way to regain HP after the beating we too, so Jack Buckskin is equipped with a Turkey Roast and we take the Hard Path!

After some rat only fights and buying a Leather Cap from the shop, here are the changes to the party:
Fighter Ralphie
+Study
+Purple Drink

Hunter Maluca
+Vivisect
+Leather Cap
+Speedball

Tank Fleya
+Goad
+Slack Off
+Broken Window

Cleric Jack Buckskin
+Whole Turkey


Once again we are fighting a Tarred Rad Rat, but we are going to have to watch the Dummy as it is likely to take burn from the bombs and magnify that damage five-fold. In the opening round we move the cats into the center of the arena, with Jack Buckskin healing up the HP loss from starting near Fleya, as two bombs get put down we take one out with Maluca's Needle shot, then gamble on using the Dummy to take out the other, trading a leech for the bomb and a bit of damage.

In the third round, Ralphie inflicts a massive amount of Bruise, exploiting Purple Drink and Brainstorm to make it a 1 mana spell for the rest of the battle. We also try some minor healing with Jack Buckskin, but this also revives 2 bombs that Maluca deals with using Needle Shot. Given the damage physical attacks are dealing, the needle shot would have almost killed the boss if used on them. Instead Ralphie deals the finishing blow, using Nip to soften the boss up as before.

Party Changes:
Hunter Maluca
+Dirty Claws
+Third Eye

Tank Fleya
+Whole Turkey

Cleric Jack Buckskin
-Whole Turkey
+Cat Food
+Cardboard Necklace
+Angelic Inspiration


For our second Junkyard fight we're dealing with the frustating Can Creeper, thankfully the spawn layout has given us enough of a spread to handle it's pattern of turning away from nearby foes. For it's first turn we get lucky and score a bonus 8 damage on it from it moving next to Fleya, and immediately where Ralphie can reach it. Maluca deals with the Fly it left, and Fleya gets into position to use her Bleed Thorns.

Once the miniboss has been backed against this pile of rubble, we use Maluca's ranged attacks to unshuck it from it's bin, also removing it's ability to knockback melee attackers, leaving it ripe for the pickings of our other cats.

Unfortunately on our first hard route battle, Ralphie gets downed by one of the Spikey Cats we encounter, causing a concussion. Thankfully he does not rely heavily on his starting INT for casting, but it demonstrates the dangers of walking past a cat with Depression! Outside of that, the fights are fairly uneventful, but looking through some trashbags, Fleya finds a rare Human Head!

Party Changes:
Hunter Maluca
-Speedball
+Human Head

Tank Fleya
-Whole Turkey
+Cat Food

Fighter Ralphie
+Enrage

Cleric Jack Buckskin
+A Snack


For our rematch with Chubs and Nubs we use Jack Buckskin's Prayer ability to give all the other cats an extra 4 mana right away, and heal Fleya up. The elite buffs the bosses have aren't particularly concerning, but we will want to get that bird investigating the tires, ideally with Maluca. We also use enrage on Jack Buckskin to give an easy boost to his healing later on.

Unfortunately we forgot Dirty Paws also makes allied bleed increase, so we may have a situation, but using Ralphie's nip we get some decent damage on Nubs from the Focus Band pushing him into a trash pile. Unfortunately due to the single point of thorns and fairly significant damage of Nubs creep shot, our fighter goes down on our next round, thankfully we can easily move Jack Buckskin to revive him. Maluca almost finishes off Nubs in return, but we'll see if the leeches spawned in will finish the dog.

As the leeches sacrifice themselves to deal the killing blow to Nubs, Chubs gains a multi-hit attack and almost takes out Jack Buckskin! We want to get some healing in with the state of our party right now, so Fleya immobilises Chubs to ensure they don't interfere with our plans.

Fleya bleeds out the next round, but we revive her with Prayer and use Nip to set up for Maluca again, unfortunately I should have knocked the dog back to avoid it dealing a heavy blow to all 3 of those cats, taking 2 of them out of the fight! Thankfully Chub's health is low enough that we can just kill them before anything further happens. Now, on to the Boneyard!


On one of the normal fights in the Boneyard, we come across something that will absolutely wipe our party if we don't adjust our equipment - A champion Tatters and some skeleton cats - so we quit out of the fight to redo that.

Party Changes:
Hunter Maluca
-Leather Cap

Tank Fleya
+Leather Cap
+A Snack

Fighter Ralphie
-Purple Drink
+Upper

Cleric Jack Buckskin
+Purple Drink
+1 Bleed Status


So the goal is to rush the Skeleton Cats and kill them before they revive, while avoiding the pair of Tatters. If we are lucky we can take out the regular one, but with their ability to increase the costs of Abilities, we need to keep the number of hits to a minimum. With this in mind we use Uppers on Ralphie to give him the SPD to move most of the field length so he can directly attack from outside the Tatters' range.

Thankfully the champion Tatters does not get any more than 1 Leech during it's first turn, and with Maluca having 13 mana from Jack Buckskin's heals, we should be able to take it out with needle shot. A crit allows us to kill it in 2 shots, only increasing her ability costs by 1.

Ralphie takes out the Butt Zombie Fleya pushed back, and uses Enrage to buff the Tank's attack, while this gives her confusion, her health should accomodate for any self-harm. The mana boosts from Jack Buckskin prove handy as Maluca disassembles both Skeleton Cats with needle shot, and takes out the remaining Tatters, we have enough mana that she can use Vivisect to destroy the Skeleton Cat that hadn't taken it's turn yet, sidestepping the high HP of its corpse. With a lucky crit Ralphie is able to take out the other one, and use his dash to get in position to take a coin. Jack Buckskin and Fleya then team up to finish off the last Butt Zombie.

Party Changes:
Tank Fleya
+Ass Blast
+Stem Cells


The miniboss for the Boneyard is Mama Maggot, and with the Shielded buff we have a bit of a fight on our hands, having to deal more than 12 damage a round to even scratch her. We open with the usual mana boosting from Jackbuckskin, and use Gravity Slam to pull the Pigeon into range of Ralphie's attacks, with his Study passive netting a nice +3 INT from his turn.

With a Spookie being disturbed from it's rest by the miniboss's trample, we lose Jack Buckskin's mana to it's attacks, and a Diggy Maggot pulls Maluca into range of the Burfer Maggot, surrounding her with spikes we'll need to break out of. Thankfully she is more than capable of handling both the Spookie and Burfer with her abilities.

The next round is a bit of a disaster as the extra turns granted by Mama Maggot's abilities allows her newly spawned offspring to down Ralphie and surround Jack Buckskin. She breaks the spike to escape, but with only 8 HP remaining the maggots still get her. Maluca also falls to the Chargey Maggots, so it's up to Fleya to handle the fight, and things look grim.

Depression allows us to mop up all but the last Burfer Maggot, and deal some damage to the miniboss, but with only 7 HP remaining the onslaught of tumor shots defeats our party.

There wasn't really a lot we could do there, even with depression and needle shot removing most maggots the large amount of enemy turns kept our party on the back foot. Without a reliable way to keep Mama Maggot from rallying you are kind of screwed.