That one time I had a dungeon fever dream

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So, to preface, I want to say this was a few months ago (8 months flew by whew), I woke up at like 3am with this idea, and smeared it all over a friend's discord message, so anyways, here is:

A proposal for an optional level 100 dungeon that revisits kugane!

Theme/dungeon name: Kugane Festival

The quest would start with Hancock sending you an invitation to participate in a festival they are preparing in Kugane, a celebration and live play of how the WoL liberated Doma, with you as one of the main actors

As you arrive, you are met with Hien, Yugiri, Gosetsu and Tataru (in her Yukata) greeting you. You are able to ask each one of them what they have been up to

Upon finalizing the details of the play the scene turns to night, with taiko drums playing on the sides of the kugane streets, with onlookers cheering for the festival and the play starts

In the first act you fight against people dressed up as garlean soldiers, when you "defeat" them they flee instead of falling over, and once you reach the first boss you fight a Temu Zenos (a skinny guy wearing an armor too big for them), despite appareances, he can pull off some of Zenos's signature attacks as lesser replicas. Halfway through the fight a Spirit posseses them, sending the party away with a knockback and down for the count debuff

The boss visibly changes to be bigger and bulkier, and the attacks get more complex or faster as well. Upon defeating the boss the spirit vanishes and Hancock congratulates you for your convincing play, upon interacting with him, they realize it was not a play but rather a real fight. Then you get interrupted by a scream coming from the street and Hancock hurries you to help

As you run through the streets you find more and more onlookers running away from forest spirits, prankster monkeys, the lamps with tongues, wisps, etc (Mount Rokkon enemies pretty much), all the way untill the second boss

[I blanked here so I have nothing for the second boss]

After the fight Hancock says "We have to find the source where this is coming from, lets go!" And you walk into the forest through a stone path with Tori gates, as you progress, fox spirits and wisps continue attacking you, but instead of killing you, their AoE attacks will turn you into a random cat minion (Fat cat, Tora jiro, Coeurl Kitten, etc) for a few seconds (you can still move under the effect) with the spirits laughing when they do hit you

Upon arriving at the final boss, you see a shrine with a statue pedestal with talismans scattered across the floor, and you hear a whimsy laugh from a Kumiho (think Ahri from league) and a mocking "Oh?, are you here to keep me entertained?" As the boss appears behind the adventurers, only to banish and appear at the center of the arena

The fight starts, and there is 2 gimmicks here, clones and the cat-debuff previously mentioned. Getting hit comes with Thrice-come curse, turning you into a cat for 15 seconds. Clones on the other hand will be each performing a mechanic (cleave, donut, circle) and tether between them to switch places before resolving.

Halfway in the fight the boss will sound a bit annoyed, "Where are your manners?, you should be treating a damsel with more care!", "why dont you take a break", As a knockback pulls your souls from the bodies of the adventurers, turning them into the aforementioned random cat minions to solve a mechanic

In this mid phase, the 4 adventurer bodies get possesed by spirits that start throwing generic attacks to the members, the Tank body earthshakers, Dps ninjutsus, and the healer wisps that fly around the arena. The goal of the mechanic is to collect talismans scattered around the area to fill the duty gauge, lets say 30 or 40 talismans between all the party members, wich purges the spirits and lets you take control back

The battle continues with more of the clone attacks with the possesed spirit attacks mixed in, to end off in boss dashes similar to Black Cat's and Howling blade

The dungeon ends with the boss squealing "you are no... fun..." as the Statue reappears over the pedestal, with sealing talismans over it

Hancock congratulates you and the post dungeon cutscene is a lore dump about the shrine

EXTRA TID BITS:

For duty support the roles are pretty given
Yugiri as DPS
Gosetsu as Geomancer (Healer)
Hien as DPS or Tank
Tataru as DPS (Arcanist)

Some special notes:

Yugiri is able to cast Ninja LB3 with a single LB bar for flavour
Instead of turning into a random cat minion she turns into a random lizard minion

Gosetsu prays and wishes a good rest after defeating spirit enemies

Hien is able to use Kaiten just because, will also call out about important attacks as a leader. As a extra note, will give either Poetry or Haikus at the end of bossfights

Tataru will accidentally spawn more carbuncles after every boss, each behaving in a different way, first carbie wanders around (the evil carbie), second one beelines to safe spots (the goodboy carbie), third one follows a random party member now and then (the friendly carby), with flavour lines as she spawns them, "There is TWO OF THEM?", "... since when there was a third?". Those all use the carbie attack animations from before the SMN rework

To close things off, you get the Festival orchestrion roll, and a carnival vendor appears in Kugane. From them you can get some pyrotecnics, kugane-themed food items (the ones already in game) and some kugane furniture (nothing too complicated, just slap some reused assets and you're good to go) for hefty gil ammounts as a gil sink

Anyways, that was my 3Am fever dream draft of a dungeon, hope you liked it, try rabbit and steel if you can and brush your teeth!

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