Airshark says:
... the worst outcome would be... Not knowing anything extra ...
I figure this sounds like a Decipher, so still a success but at a large cost. The cost being that you learn how hard it will be.
Airshark says:
... this dice roll brings us back to square one ...
But: "
nothing never happens", so even on a miss you would have learned something, even if just by being blown up. I don't really like that answer, though, since tends to block your progress for fear of being blown up again.
Airshark says:
... being very careful is indeed the most logical ...
You may also be able to learn --maybe not yet, but as you progress-- to use them to your advantage (against the enemy?).
Airshark says:
... If spraying it with water didn't set it off ...
I think it is hard to know what will set them off. So even spraying them might be a risk as it needs to be done in the dark till you work out how to get by without torches.
Airshark says:
... make the journey slow and difficult ...
That it will.
TheGenerator says:
... water would make a part of the spores heavy so they fall to the ground instead of up into the air (before exploding). So there's less material to explode. I don't know if that makes sense in our world :)
In our (the players') world, puff-balls still puff in the rain (if stepped on), so the water does not get inside them to make them wet (same as it does not get inside us to make us wet... on the inside... more than we already were). The wet air around them does make the spores fall much quicker, but wetting the shell does little.
In the fictional world, it can help, but you have to ask yourselves if it is worth the time and effort. I suspect there will be enough of them that you might eventually decide to find another way, especially as you get further from the 'well'.
The longer you spend, the more water you need to drink, and you also only have a limited supply of torches, each of which only last (and I am being 2-4x generous here) maybe an hour?