RUNEvember Session 4: World's Grave

The clock fills up SO fast. It fills on both movement and actions, so if you go to one area, do two actions, then go to another area, the first segment (for Famished) will already be full. After 3 areas it'll be completely filled. There weren't that many things that cared about the clock, though, so it's not a big deal, but then again that's a thing in and of itself. This might have been a good use case to have it fill up only by taking actions. All told, the exploration is very straightforward: it has one triangle near the beginning but the rest is a straight line, with the Rune Lord at an area off of the Sigil. (There is a 2 <-> 6 secret passage that opens up late on the clock, which can help people who are struggling.) One thing you can do is that you can use the Remains you're accumulating to raise your max HP (which I'm assuming ends at the end of the Realm, for sanity's sake). More on that re: the Rune Lord.

Equipment here is cool. The Spinal Lance is a Versatile weapon that switches between a heavy Adjacent stance and a heavier Same/Adjacent two-handed stance. It has a gimmick where if you roll all 1's with it, it splits into two Spinal Clubs. (I don't know if this was supposed to be a permanent split, I'm going to assume otherwise given my equipment limits because that would be super punishing to me in particular.) The Reliquary of Jarmencia is an item that lets you spend a 5-6 to either corpse explode a Remains object, dealing 2 Harm to enemies at same/adjacent, or deal 2 Harm to one Undead. It has no range, so it seems like it'd be pretty good if you're fighting Undead, but other Realms don't have Remains as a thing so its use is a bit limited.

The enemies here are mostly not terribly threatening, but they do use the Remains mechanic in some cool ways. One enemy is normally fairly sedate, but if it starts its turn next to Remains, it transforms into a much nastier enemy. Another enemy can summon that first enemy, but also on a 6 it can consume those enemies to restore Health. Yet another enemy eats your stored Remains on Harm and spits out reinforcements. It's all pretty cool stuff.

Now, as for the Rune Lord...well, the first stage is a pretty standard fight. The real fun happens at the start of the second stage: you take a scaled up amount of Harm based on how high your max HP is and the boss summons a helper with as much Harm as you took. This is a very fun Soulsy thing: give you something and reveal it's a trap later! Love this. (The fight isn't terribly hard afterwards, so it's not that impactful. But still, fun concept.)

The Rune (unnamed, I'm calling it the Osteomancer's Rune because that's the Rune Lord) lets you tank your Health by 4 to gain +1 Stamina. Definitely a worthwhile trade, and I'll be using it because I love that kind of glass-cannon feel. (To keep things interesting I think I'll ditch the Festering Longsword, Drain offsets the penalty too well when you're much more regularly getting 6's. Probably the Amulet too once I get another piece of Gear I'd use frequently. Fate's Foe stays though.)