The Froskrafter: A Breakdown and Analysis (2 of 2)

Part two, you know the drill, let us get into the remaining seven gear cards and then look at what expansions have the most interesting synergies to explore with the Froskrafter!

Spiked Buckler

Crafting Cost: 1x Ironclad Spine, 1x Organ

As the Gorm's Knuckle Shield has shown in the past, a Node 1 Shield that has Block 1 is mechanically very strong. In truth even if the Spiked Buckler did nothing else apart from that it would be an auto craft to combine with builds, and it even helps the early game Frogdog Armor build by providing a useful down red affinity. However, that is not all it does; it has two extra elements, the first is this extra Barbed 2 mechanic. Barbed works like this:

Barbed X

A gear special rule. On a Perfect hit, gain +X strength for the rest of the attack.

This is helpful because it's bolstering the strength of the weapon, but by itself we wouldn't be too excited because this is a speed 1 weapon and Perfect Hit range bonuses are rare in the early game. The real meat is the other ability. Which means when you block a hit you have a 20% chance to cause a wound, which brings us to a really interesting little rules spot. Here's the text for Weapon Proficiency.

Weapon Proficiency

A survivor attribute listed on the survivor record sheet. Weapon proficiency represents a survivor's skill with a weapon type. May be earned for the following weapon types: axe, bow, club, dagger, fist & tooth, grand, katar, shield, spear, sword, twilight sword and whip. After reaching the first Hunt XP milestone, survivors can declare a weapon type to gain weapon proficiency in. A survivor must first declare a weapon type before departing on a hunt (write it in the space on the record sheet) and then wound a monster at least once during a showdown with that weapon type in order to gain levels of weapon proficiency.

So, if you read through that you should notice that nowhere does Weapon Proficiency require you to attack with the weapon type, you simply need to wound the monster at least once with it (via any method). That means, unless Team Death want to be big old party poopers we can run this shield and each time the monster has a hit blocked by our Barbed Shield, the survivor holding it qualifies for their weapon proficiency increase. This is frankly incredible and a lot smoother than the old method with the Knuckle Shield where we would partner it with +strength gear like the Steadfast Potion and the Monster-Tooth Necklace in order to help smooth out an essential progression.

Even when you have shield mastery sorted out, this shield is an easy fit into survivor gear grids because it'll have the Shield Proficiency armor bonus along with this passive 20% chance of automatically wounding the monster. Suffice to say, I think that this is a premium shield and a very high priority craft.

Acid Bombs

Crafting Cost: 1x Oily Sphincter, 1x Bone, 1x Organ

At the moment Acid Bombs are not a "weapon" per se, instead they are effectively an “item” that can be used alongside loadouts that are able to trigger attacks with a weapon. This is because we are still waiting for Thrown Weapons to get the love they deserve, and when that happens this weapon is going to be even better than it already is. Gimme a mastery which uses the GCE's Disarm mechanic please!

The Acid Bombs are a high strength ranged weapon that has enough activation limits to last most showdowns. The (1/6+/4) statline means around 3 to 4 of your attacks with this weapon are going to hit (more if you move into the blind spot because this weapon isn't cumbersome) and against Node 1 or 2 early monsters it will wound at a good rate (4+ vs Toughness 8 so 70% of the time). By itself that would make it a useful option for a hunting party, but it also provides a couple of green affinities that; while they do have not the best facings, are always nice to see because the weapon doesn't need it themselves.

The second ability on this weapon is a sweet little bonus treat, we have a way of removing moods by discarding them, there's a bunch of dangerous moods out there, with the Butcher holding a large portion of the really scary ones. That means this is a very tempting craft and I especially like having it on a Frogdog Armor Archer as an alternative option for when the monster is throwing a little stroppy tantrum. Calm it right down with a big old acid trip.

Another great card and set to become better if my personal campaign to get Thrown Weapon Mastery pays off.

Frogdoggles

Crafting Cost: 1x Aqueous Eye, 1x Scrap

After nearly a decade of dominance, the Rawhide Headband finally has a competitor, sort of. It doesn't really have a direct competitor here as the Frogdoggles are instead the AI equivalent of the Wisdom Potion (and also they do HLs), which means that they don't really replace the Rawhide Headband. Instead what this item does is give us access to playing the game in Oathsworn mode, where we get perfect information on the next AI card (and the next monster turn as long as it doesn't draw multiple AI) along with the top of the HL deck. The nice part of all of this is the Frogdoggles are not even “strictly better' than the Wisdom potion because you need to be Insane to gain this benefit.

Honestly beyond that I don't think I need to get too deep into how good this item is, the monster's main advantage against us in KDM is all the precious secrets it hides by keeping its two engines face down. It can't adapt or change its plans once they are set by the deck order, so it is in a lot of trouble. As long as you can maintain insanity either through support such as the Screaming Horns +Insanity or lock it safe with the Gorment Mask or Crimson Helm and you're good to go.

Anti-synergy with the Crimson Crocodile's Crocodileyes is also worth noting, you don't want these in the same hunt party strategy, but that's fine, Crocodileyes are most of the time a slightly better Monster-Tooth Necklace, so passing on them isn't a huge issue.

One of the best new items in the game.

Turbo Tonic

Crafting Cost: 1x Gaseous Bladder, 1x Mossy Molar

A very simple little item here, it's the speed version of the Organ Grinder Three; while you do need to be insane to maintain the modifiers here, both that requirement and the -1 accuracy are worth it if you have the right kind of weapon. To give one example, there are a lot of Perfect Hit weapons (and similar Fighting Arts) that like additional dice, and because this Tonic isn't reducing the strength or luck on the weapon you are attacking with, gaining +2 dice is a net positive as long as you're able to handle the punishments for higher speed attacks.

The blue affinity here is a nice little extra treat, this means it can support both the Lucky Charm and the Blue Charm, two blue affinity items that love to gain extra speed because they mitigate some of the monster's HL punishments.

In all, this is a very tidy and well designed (if expensive) item that isn't an automatic “must craft” but instead is more of a supporting element of certain builds. These kind of items, that are situationally strong, are some of my favourite designs in the game, they encourage and potentially reward experimentation.

Be careful with this against the Sunstalker though, soluble is no joke there, this also applies to the next item.

Vigor Capsule

Crafting Cost: 1x Elastic Tongue, 1x Organ

The +movement version of the Turbo Tonic, this is another very simple design, but it has a stronger effect due to the stat being increased. Movement is the most powerful stat in the game because it allows you to threaten the monster and also reduce its ability to threaten our survivor units.

Very notable is how this ability is activated, it uses an up facing red affinity, which is a very rare and desirable affinity, especially for White Lion armor. This can be connected to the White Lion Boots in order to complete both it and the boots puzzle affinity requirements, creating +1 movement, +2 movement when insane. White Lion Armor lacks a lot of protections and can't afford to take AI hits because it needs those armor points for attacking, so having 7 movement is a huge deal here.

It's not enough to make White Lion Armor completely viable (because you need to Node 1 monsters to make this work), but it is a large boon if you're playing with both of them. This is also REALLY helpful for the White Lion/Screaming Antelope Gambler's Chest pattern Sprinter Armor, a set that likes everything this item is providing.

Outside of that, this is a very powerful item and is a strong consideration for any survivor who can maintain being insane. It's solid piece of glue but it is so understated that it can be hard to visualise just how powerful this is.

Frogwhistle

Crafting Cost: 1x Spindly Paw, 1x Mammary Gland, 1x Skull

Crafting Requirements: Heart Flute

Warning future Harvester victim.

Outside of that, we've got an item with affinities that are designed to support the Frogdog armor and provide stinky survivors an offensive boost (insanity protection for everyone else). This is giving out survival on arrival while also giving a strength token and that is powerful for the stinky crew.

If you have multiple stinkos, and there are many pieces of gear that you can get easily with that keyword, including the Froskrafter's Acid Bombs, Long Club and Crest Axe in addition to the Organ Grinder staple crafts of Monster Grease and Fecal Salve.

If you have a full stinky squad, this is +4 survival and +4 strength tokens for the showdown and that's a really good deal for a slot. So outside of the usual Noisy keyword issues (such as clever house rules, the Grim Muffler gear or nemesis showdowns) this is a really solid instrument that is doing a lot of good work.

Lure Lantern

Crafting Cost: 1x Bioluminescent Tonsils, 1x Scrap

Our final gear card is an essential item for preparation to hunt the Frogdog alternative variant known as the Bullfrogdog. The Tuskworks crafting location uses lots of copper in order to craft its gear cards and this item is how you are going to get access to them. The Blue Affinity is a nice bonus, but the main reason we want this is for its ability. It functions in the same way as the Bone Pickaxe, Bone Sickle and Skylure by generating an additional Special Hunt Event known as the Noodling of Death. We'll go through that in a moment.

The final key element to understand before we move onto the event is how this is crafted, the Bioluminescent Tonsils are a Strange Resource drop that comes from the Level 2+ Frogdogs (not Bullfrogdogs) and because these lanterns can sometimes archive themselves during the noodling, AND you need a lot of copper for the Tuskworks. This means that I've found I need to get 4+ lanterns, which is a little frustrating because it tends to make the Frogdog lionise the timeline, I've hunted this monster and its Bullfrogdog variant anything up to 10 times in a campaign (with around 4 to 5 of them being the level 2+ normal frogdog) and as someone who loves variety in the monsters, that has been a bit dissatisfying. I'll get more into that when I break down the two showdowns, but a big negative here is the Bullfrogdog doesn't drop the tonsils.

Suffice to say, don't spend the Bioluminescent Tonsils on anything other than Lantern Lures until you are completely finished with your copper needs. You don't need to automatically craft all the lanterns, just enough to ensure that you have lanterns on the survivors who are taking them out for that particular hunt.

One more thing to note before we move onto the Noodling event itself, do not mindlessly equip this item on survivors with two-handed weapons or one armed survivors either. That is because the event can cause a lost arm. I'd go as far as making sure your Lure Lantern survivors have ways of preventing the injury (like Dried Acanthus) or modifying the odds (rerolls, Otherworldly Luck etc).

Noodling of Death

This story event is templated in the same way as the other 'layer cake' exploration events (Mineral Gathering, the Lion God's Spelunking of Death and the the Dung Beetle Knight's Spelunking of Death for example). We have multiple different tables nested one after another and we can only roll the lower down options if we get there.

The very first layer of the iceberg breaks down as follows:

• 30% - Lose an arm and the Lure Lantern

• 20% - Get a (wet) random Vermin Resource

• 20% - Get 1x Burnished Encephalomatter strange resource (the copper we desire) and 2 bleeding tokens

• 30% - Move onto the Clear Waters table

Clear Waters Layer Table

• 30% - Lose 3 Survival and 3 Insanity

• 30% - Gain a (soaking wet) random Basic Resource and a -1 Evasion Token

• 40% - Either gain 1x Burnished Encephalomatter strange resource or progress to the Eventide table

Eventide Layer Table

• 40% - Gain the Living Film Parasites impairment (which makes all your light injury boxes single use, permanently and for the rest of the survivor's lifespan. This effectively means the survivor has 5 less points of soak, which is a big deal)

• 30% - Gain a Golden Frog vermin resource

• 30% - Either gain +1d10 insanity and +1 understanding or gain the Buccal Blood Breathing Secret Fighting Art and Proceed to The Bottom Table.

The Bottom Layer

• 30% - Death, the hunt party gains 1x random basic resource (phrased as “A random basic resources” thanks to a typo)

• 40% - Test Courage, if you fail gain 3x Burnished Encephalomatter and the Fear of the Dark disorder (easy to remove that at the Barber Surgeon). If you succeed then you gain 3x Burnished Encephalomatter, 3x Frogdog Resources and +1 courage.

• 30% - Gain the Dark Water Pearl Rare Gear and +6 hunt XP

Note: I'm going to cover the Dark Water Pearl, the Indomitable Gear and other bits in a single post all together.

So that's a lot, a heck of a lot, and the first thing to note is how much more dangerous and bad these tables are for the survivors rolling on it. You really do want some severe injury protection on these survivors, meaning they're spending two slots on this (and we can't even use the Gorm's Regeneration Suit because it only works in showdowns). Also this table is very stingy with the Burnished Encephalomatter, this might be in part because other later expansions have copper resources that can be used at the Tuskworks, however I can't do anything other than speculate about that right now.

As it stands though, if you get offered some Burnished Encephalomatter, take it and get the heck out of there, because the Eventide layer absolutely sucks to roll on and it doesn't provide any of that resource at all.

From a thematic standpoint I really love the look into a new part of the game's world, but from a mechanical one I hate this table so very much. It reeks of KDM's 2016 design philosophy rather than its 2020s one and right now if we want to use the Tuskwork Crafting Location we have to interact with this because we have no other options.

You know what's the worst part of this, I started working out the return on investment that the Lantern Lure offers, and each lantern lure provides less than 1 piece of copper. It's something around 0.7 to 0.8 copper per lantern you craft (I'm going back of the napkin math here, I'll work it out in full for the review later).

You need 7 copper for the armor set and then more than that for the weapons. Therefore, if we want to make 1 full set of the Tuskworks Bullfrog Armor, a weapon to go with it (not the Scimitar though, screw that weapon costing 2 copper) and the shield we need 9 copper. That's approximately 11 level 2+ Frogdogs we need to hunt in order to craft stuff and the Bullfrogdog doesn't even drop the tonsils or any copper. Not even the Indomitable Resources that come in the box have the copper keyword. Heck, the Tonsils could have had the copper keyword themselves and that would be a better route than trying to get the copper via noodling.

This entire story event is pretty much the worst part of the entire Frogdog expansion and it's huge stain on the Tuskworks. Absolutely insane, I've not seen such a mismanaged design from Team Death in possibly half a decade and I'm astounded more people aren't pushing back on this one. I guess it's still a young expansion and this is end game content that a more limited number of us have had interactions with.

Expansion Synergies

So the key expansion synergy we'll be looking for in the future is anything which fixes this awful copper resource situation, but that is mostly a Tuskworks issue and we'll get into that with more detail in the articles on that crafting location and its gear. So we'll get back to just the Froskrafter here and I'm going to walk through each of the Quarry Nodes first, then after that I'll note any Nemesis monsters that are interesting considerations.

Quarry Node 1

The clear leader here is the Crimson Crocodile, not only is it a fantastic monster, but the armor set is a superb tool to help with all the insane (Insanity 3+) requirements that multiple gear cards have in this crafting location. There is some friction that you need to be aware of; gaining the Immortal disorder is undesirable for Insane threshold survivors and the Crocodileyes do not play with the Frogdoggles. But these are not a large dealbreaker.

The Gorm also provides an armor set with synergies for the weapons; Gorment Armor is incredible at locking in Insanity and keeping it safe and the set also loves the Spiked Buckler even more than it loves the Knuckle Shield, but unfortunately none of the Frogdog gear cards help the Gorment Mask activate and Gorment Armor is another candidate for a “bow set” so there's friction there. Also in some cases the Gorment Weapons in some cases obsolete the Frogdog ones; especially the axe and dagger, I'd prefer to use the Greater Gaxe and Acid-Tooth Dagger over the Crested Axe and Vertebrayonette.

The White Lion is a really surprising candidate for synergies, not only does the Vigor Capsule have that perfect connection with the Boots, but the White Lion offers a great early game bow for the Frogdog Armor and having the Acid Bombs is a huge boon when fighting the kitties. If you're interested in exploring the White Lion Armor, the Long Club is a great weapon to utilse with Pounce.

Quarry Node 2

It should be no surprise that the Screaming Antelope is a great fit here; not only does the Screaming Armor set support the Insane threshold gear cards, but having access to a lot of Acanthus in order to smooth out the Noodling woes is a massive benefit. I'd even recommend the Screaming Antelope Knowledge as being the one you pick for your campaign.

The Flower Knight offers us a green/blue bow without cumbersome, meaning it's perfect for the skirmisher playstyle that the Frogdog Armor excels at, and we can also get Otherworldly Luck here in order to make the Noodling a bit less of a losing proposition.

We have less synergies with the Smog Singer gear, but if you want a generic tanking set then this is a great place to get one, but I do think that the benefits here aren't as large. With mostly the Spear of Life offering any real connections to the Froskrafter. The Frogwhistle doesn't have a ballad so any possible synergy there is non-existent sadly.

As an aside, I'm not 100% sure that the Frogdog Mask offers protection against the Smog Singers; they're not strictly described as producing “gas”, instead it's always listed as 'Smog' which as far as I'm concerned should be the same thing (therefore allowing the Mask to ignore various Gas reactions half the time), but perhaps someone wants to punt that one at the Dark Tastemaster to see what they think.

Spidicules is another very interesting option; there's some good medical support for dismembered armors and the Frogdog Armor set matches up very well against the brood mother during her showdown. Spidicules is a very 'attack and retreat' kind of monster, and Frogdog Armor is able to keep up with that through its jetty boots. The Frogdog gear also offers some nice mixed set combinations with the Silk Armor and it is fun to experiment with mixing those pieces up, especially because of the Silk Sash and Robes who offer additional ways to pump up armor points.

Quarry Node 3

As another “Insane” monster, there are some synergies with the Phoenix and notably its Feather Shield and we also have the Arc Bow here as a compliment to our archering, but the big two monsters are absolutely the Dragon King who smooths over that Scythe Progression and of course the God Emperor of Bows itself, the Sunstalker. Cycloid Scale Armor lets us do really cool things with the Grappleclaw and Vertebrayonet and as I wrote previously the way that the Sunshark Bow plays with the Frogdog Armor is delightful.

Quarry Node 4

At Node 4 we're less about direct gear synergies (though Items may still be impacting here); though the Rolling Armor set continues to excel at letting us use cool armor cards for a lot longer than one would normally get to use them. I really like the Frogdog Boots with Rolling Armor in particular, though you can't utilise it as much without some form of armor point replenishment.

The King and Lordsruin offer the final progression point for Scythes or Whips, but because the King set is a very affinity hostile armor set it's hard to use most of the items there. Sadly none of the King resources offer us any copper either. I hoped that the King's Coins would have that keyword, which would have been very thematic as well as a surprise backdoor synergy, but they do not.

Nemesis Monsters

The Butcher is a good foe for Frogdog Weapons, but then again The Butcher just fits everywhere really well. Likewise the Manhunter is a solid shout, perhaps the Hunter's Heart can undo getting squished flat.

The Slender Man and Lion Knight both offer anti-synergy at the moment. Though I do like the potential lore implications of the Dark Water Pearl (Dark Water being something that is intrinsically linked to Slender Men). The big one I really like though is of course The Black Knight; it's a good catch all expansion, and while it doesn't have a huge amount of direct, overt synergies there is still some fun things to explore before most of the Frogdog gear sunsets and stops being of use. The Frogwhistle for example pairs really well with the Count Armor.

I'm going to cover some musings on the gear grid system in general and week as well a review of the Holiday release over next couple of weeks as a little break before getting into the Tuskworks. January 2025 has been a real “KDM Armor Set” month for me with the video and these dives into the Frogdog, I have some thoughts about that system which I want to put down, because honestly the gear grid tableau and its affinities is a revelatory system that other game designers seem to be ignoring, much to our collective detriment.