Seed Patterns - Monster Era III & IV Patterns

Last stretch for the the Gambler's Chest Expansion (GCE) Seed Pattern cards and we're going to cover both Era III and IV here to get this series wrapped up. That'll let me get back to the Philosophies and the Frogdog Expansion Review.

With these two Eras we expect to see pattern cards that; regardless of their type, are either perfect for the entire mid game (Leather to Iron) or can hang with the late/end game gear. These pieces of gear should also not be too difficult to craft because we have less time to put them together when compared to the earlier Eras. Indomitable Patterns follow this design ethos, as do the King gear cards, they demand less total resources because the resources being used are very high quality. Without that kind of attention,

However, those Era cards that are capable of being crafted from Node 3 Level 1 monsters don't need to be end game in power, however they should have a lifespan that keeps them valid until at least the arrival of the campaign's Mini-Nemesis (Gambler/Watcher).

In short, I am holding these cards to a higher standard than the previous two entries, the design of this game necessitates that due to the reduced time we get to craft and use the cards.

In this selection we have cards for:

• The Sunstalker

• The Phoenix

• The Screaming Antelope

• Atnas

• Scouts

• The King

010 – Shadow Skleaver

Those of you who are familiar with my unbridled joy and enthusiasm for the Sunstalker should be aware of how much I also rate the Level 2 specific weapon known as the Skleaver (a portamento of Sky and Cleaver). I love everything about that weapon, and in order to properly assess this upgraded version I am delighted to get to write about the no-frills Skleaver.

Crafted at the Skyreef Sanctuary, this requires 1x Salt, 1x Black Lens, 1x Sunshark Bone and 2x 1,000 Year Old Sunspot. The Sunspots come from victory in Level 2 Sunstalker showdown only, meaning you need to save the spoils from two showdowns to craft this beauty. There is a steep opportunity cost with doing this, because the also excellent Denticle Axe uses 1x 1,000 Year Old Sunspot. That means in most campaigns I play, I tend to have to make a decision between a Skleaver or Denticle Axe (because I prefer to limit my hunts against L2 monsters as much as possible).

As a result, the Skleaver is not a cheap weapon, but what we get in exchange is an absolute powerhouse. This weapon is unusual in that it is one of a small roster of non-Slow grand weapons and it is packing enough power between that 10 strength and the Perfect Hit ability that you do want to scale its speed up a bit if you can. The affinities are not a huge deal here, but they synergise well with Cycloid Scale Armor to help remove one of only two mild negatives this weapon has in heavy (two-handed is the other mild negative).

All of this means we have an excellent grand weapon here, but it requires a lot of resource investment and at least two lantern years worth of showdowns (maybe more if the Black Lens and other resources are proving to be shy). One of the few negatives of this weapon outside of its economic investment is you tend to have to use it with a strength boosting tool such as a relevant armor set if you want to run it for as long as possible.

The Shadow Skleaver offers us an alternative, with this pattern and the cost of both a Stink Lung (not Gland as the pattern card incorrectly states, there is no stink gland) and Shadow Ink Gland we get to put a considerable upgrade onto this already excellent weapon. These two resources are a bit like the lens in that they're not super common drops from the monster resource deck, but you can have these in advance of crafting the Skleaver which would allow for an upgrade as soon as you match the other requirements.

The hardest part of this entire process is getting a survivor with Suppressed Shadow. This Secret Fighting Art requires a survivor to not only gain the Black Blood status card during the Sunstalker Showdown, but they also need to get 5 bleeding tokens, NOT die and then roll a 7+ during the story event (You can increase the odds of success by 20% through innovating Shadow Dance). Unconcious Fighter is a fighting art you can gain during the hunt phase, but that is tricky for arc survivors due to the extra barriers placed for attempts to gain Fighting Arts. However, Crimson Crocodile Armor offers a solution there as it allows for a maximum of 6 bleeding tokens before death by exsanguination. That's fortunate because unless I missed it (let me know if I did, there's a lot of cards to reference and check each time I write these), we have no Knowledge equivalent of Unconcious Fighter at the moment (I am hoping that the Sunstalker specific knowledge cards give us a higher bleed cap).

With all of that done we get a frankly incredible weapon. The treatment here not only improves the statline of the weapon to (2/5+/13) but it also removes the two-handed keyword while bestowing four new abilities, you always cause Sun Dial plus Light & Shadow to be in play (aiding the superb L3 weapons Ink Sword and Ink Blood Bow, something that previously required the Sunspot Lantern, which is a decent item, but not on the same level as this weapon); you gain a permanent Devastating 1 (instead of the Perfect hit version from before), the razor sharp dice for between +5 and +10 extra strength (Average 7.5) AND the ability to “shadow-step” aka teleport around into the shadows of anything other than the monster. Oh also there's currently no rule stopping you comboing this weapon with Cycloid Scale Armor (which will give Sharp to stack onto Razor Sharp) or one of the various Node 3 Monster-movement/attack armors from the Phoenix or Dragon King (if you are like me and prefer two Node 3 quarry monsters for variety and spice).

The only significant losses when compared to the original weapon are the removal of the affinities, the bone keyword (relevant for Skull people and Bone synergies) and the other keyword keeping it out of the hands of a savior (which is fine, you want this in the hands of a Grand Weapon expert, not a disposable hero).

I greatly rate this weapon as a contender for the best overall (non-negative pattern number) Era III weapon, though you do need to plan your campaign in advance, ensuring that you get Shadow Dancing and have a way to secure gaining 5+ bleed tokens without dying. This means that for Arc Survivors we want to pair the Crimson Crocodile with the Sunstalker as quarries, for non-Arc Survivors we can be a bit more flexible in our quarry choices, but the Crocodile will still help a great deal because it is more reliable to gain than a Fighting Art.

014 – Beast Hunter Helm & Beast Hunter Armor

This is the game's first dedicated archer armor set, we've got a few sets that function for range attackers; like Rawhide, Dancer, Gorment and Frogdog, but these all tend to have accidental properties that make them good for Archer class survivors. Instead the Beast Hunter Helm is providing us with our very first dedicated Archer set.

Constructing this one is relatively simple, you need records innovated and a living survivor who has personally killed any level of Phoenix. The other parts of this gear card are relatively common resource drops plus Iron. However, once you have the helm, you still need to provide the rest of the armor set pieces in order to get the full benefit.

To begin with though we'll look at just the Beast Hunter Helm in isolation. It's a bit of an odd duck, because the armor set cares about bows/arrows while this Helm is instead providing some AI manipulation. We get to pull an AI card from the discard pile (temporarily reducing the monster's overall life total) and lock it away onto the Basic Action; how effective this is depends on the particular monster. Some monsters utilise their Basic Action a lot more than others; but even then, pulling a dangerous Advanced or even Legendary AI card away from the deck right at the end of a lap (a full run through the deck) is a potent move to undertake, especially as at the end of the first lap we have full perfect information about a monster's particular move set, so we can take the greatest threat out, knowing we won't have to deal with it at all if we can finish the monster with that card placed on the Basic Action.

That works because the rules for Monster Death care about if the monster is wounded when there are no AI cards in the AI deck or AI discard pile to move to the wound stack. That means we can effectively reduce the monster's health while also removing one of its offensive options on at least a temporary basis. It's similar to a monster gaining a mood card, while that mood card is in play, the monster has traded health for a modifier, that modifier may be temporary, but if the monster dies before it is discarded then it was effectively a permanent removal.

Also, please don't ask me if you can stack multiple AI cards out of the deck or not, I've been playing under the assumption that you can't because if you can, there's some abusive things you can do that make the showdown become trivialised.

All in all, this is a strong piece of gear, and it has a 'fire and forget' effect, which means that even though it doesn't synergise well with the rest of the armor set's game plan, you can squeeze this one in without too much tempo loss.

Beast Hunter Armor is a very good selection of gear cards, with only the Faulds being a bit of a duff gear card. Though we do have an Indomitable Pattern replacement for those Faulds (as long as my understanding of Outfit vs. Hybrid Armor is correct). This is the layout without the Violet Phoenix Faulds, when you are using them (assuming that my previous assumption is assumed correctly) then the Plackart gets its desired down blue affinity. Even without that piece of gear though, we can easily get that down blue from a bunch of different sources.

The armor set bonus is the real big thing here, we have another “monster-movement” bonus, this time allowing our archer to kite backwards three spaces and then make a very accurate attack; the +3 range is a nice touch, meaning if we were in range at the start of this move, we're in range at the point we make the attack. I also appreciate that this allows for arrow activations and the extra accuracy really helps there. Combine that with the 5 armor points on all locations and we have a solid armor set that is very focused.

The individual armor pieces offer us protection via the Plackart (which is still one of the best armor piece abilities in the game) along with fuel for the Plackart via insanity gains when departing. The last little bonus comes from the Screaming Bracers, that +2 on terrain activation rolls is really good, often completely removing the worst results on the dice roll and increasing the odds of getting the best result.

We also have three complete affinities and three half affinities in each colour, that makes this set an excellent loading platform for whatever items or bows your heart may desire. In short this is a really good armor set that is well worth the effort of tracking survivors that kill phoenixes, innovating Records and building each individual part.

019 – Ornate Rapier

(Note: This entry was uploaded by accident in the Era II section, it has been moved here to correct that error. You're not experiencing Deja Vu.)

In order to craft this Ornate Rapier, one needs to prepare in advance, while Atnas isn't a tough opponent, we do need to plan ahead because it is unlikely we'll get the resources needed during the fight with Atnas. The fastest goal here would be to have a 2+ Weapon Proficiency sword user to send into the Level 1 showdown and keep them alive after that has happened. But you can always create the sword specialist after the fact as long as they're a survivor from the showdown against Atnas, which is a neat way of performing this process in reverse (technically they don't need to be a sword specialist at the time they fought Atnas, they simply need to be one by the time the crafting happens).

The weapon itself is a reasonably solid option, though that Frail does mean you may need to replace it at times (one can have a maximum of one Ornate Rapier in the settlement, but that doesn't stop you re-crafting it when/if it gets lost/broken). It has a minimum strength of 8 and a max of 13 thanks to the Razor Sharp dice, which is a solid weapon that has a good lifespan. Of course that is also going to depend on your monster mix, frail is something that can normally be managed, but against certain monsters it's not a viable option without HL manipulation. In particular I've come to very much appreciate the Blood Compass Lantern because Frail weapons are only destroyed if you attempt to wound a Super-dense location, and that can let you discard them instead. So any tool that lets you discard hit locations in exchange for some other benefit are great in association with a weapon such as this.

Of course we can't complete a discussion of any sword without acknowledging that Regalism and various Sword Based Fighting arts exist. For settlements with access to things like Sword & Shield Style or Combat Conviction, or Vagabond Armor the Ornate Rapier becomes even stronger. Personally I'm still not super into swords, they've become better with more and more support, but I can't deny that this sword is an excellent weapon considering that you can have this one constructed right after the initial Atnas showdown and it'll serve you well for the following years.

-020 – Plasma Cutter

Another one of the negative patterns, this one is honestly something that I'm not interested in using in the future, it's too immersion breaking for me. However, while I did use this weapon I cannot deny just how bonkers good it is. We need to archive some Flammable gear (Sunstalker or Dragon King plus Phoenix as quarries is pretty straight forward), I chose to archive some Monster Grease against a Sunstalker because not only is it flammable, but it's also soluble, meaning it's more likely to get archived and achieve the trigger (I also had some other flammable gear in case the Grease evaporated on the hunt, but that didn't happen, so I got to archive the cheapest option).

I find the crafting cost for this weapon to be honestly very low, sure we need a Shimmering Halo, but everything else isn't too hard to come by. Once you're in Phoenix territory you should already be working towards Iron.

The design on this thing is also pretty bonkers strong, we've got between 26 and 31 strength (average 28.5) with 3 speed and standard accuracy. The brakes on this thing appear to be the irreplaceable and sentient drawbacks, which are honestly not enough in my opinion. There's loads of ways to keep stocked up on insanity and while you are utilising this weapon in your hunt party there's very little fear of losing the showdown outside of instant death effects or bad luck.

We also have an automatic wound to critical wound conversion when critically wounding and this beast of a blade is a sword, giving it all those lovely sword synergies that Team Death keep pushing harder and harder.

This one is really good for sure, but I shan't be playing with it in the future unless the toughness levels on monsters continue to climb even higher.

028 – Reaperjaw

Not a monster specific pattern here, but I'm classifying the Dreaded Pack as an honorary monster because while I did cover it when discussing the Scout mechanic I wanted to include it here for completeness's sake. While I am totally done with scouts unless they get a rework to make their core design thesis less feast and famine, I did indeed use this one while testing Scouts out and it was a very solid weapon that performed well for a good long duration while also paying for itself.

It costs 1x Iron and 1x Perfect Bone to construct Grimjaw in the first place, so this weapon's actual total cost is 3x Iron, 1x Perfect Bone and 1x Bone. But if you want to continue to use this weapon for even longer you'll need to get a replacement Grimjaw along with some other gear card that is not scout (most scout gear outside of the weapons do not have affinities). Generally it seems we want 'sans-armor' survivors to be our scouts because that 4 slot gear grid is incredibly restrictive, and if we do have a nakie survivor then we can slot the three gear cards in that make Reaperjaw gain Razor Sharp plus Barbed 6.

It's a solid enough weapon, certainly one you should craft if you are playing with scouts, but the only time I now use Scouts is when playing with 5 players and we ignore the “Extinguished Guidepost” rules when doing that because it's proven to make the game experience bland, with super low risk strategies dominating the game.

There's potential here, but it is very much held back by that scout keyword and the absolutely, ridiculously tiny gear grid.

025 – Heartseeker

Heartseeker is an incredibly fun weapon that I think has exactly the right design for how expensive and late game you get it. We need not only to put together that 2x Deathmetal and 1x Pylorix, we also need to have a survivor get sucked into Kingdom Death and be willing to inflict a broken rib on them. All of this are things that can just naturally happen while playing, there's not much need to artificially force the stars to align and I appreciate that.

The weapon itself is very restrained and clean in its design, that grand + sword weapon type combo is potent and Impeccable does a lot to erase rolling the 1 to wound result from your attacks. Razor Sharp is also here to continue being Sharp++ and the only really unique thing we have is the ability to ignore First Strike when using this weapon.

Of course, the most notable First Strike monster you'll be facing at this time is The King itself; that monster has a bunch of First Strike Inflorescence and Face related HL cards and Heartseeker allows the attacker to deal with the other hit locations before resolving those. We'll have to see what other LY21+ monsters turn up to determine how effective this ability is going to be overall, but for the moment I consider it to be a mild positive as it is certainly useful to get to score other wounds before you're sucked inside the King.

026 – Death Defier

Death Defier is our final monster Pattern weapon in this series and it's another very straight forward, no-frills design which I appreciate. It's a grand dagger this time and it has the now customary Razor Sharp bolstering its strength a great deal, the stat profile is therefore quite respectable at (3/6+/14-19) with that strength being between 14 and 19. The really enjoyable part of this weapon is the Blindside ability, which means that as soon as you score a successful wound (not just attacking, but when wounding) the monster from the blind spot you get to downgrade all reflex reactions to failure ones until the attack ends (that means other survivors could sneak a surge attack inside your own attack at an appropriate survival window).

Finally we get immunity to survival loss, we'll still reduce our survival when paying for various things, but anything that seeks to make us lose survival won't work. That's a very useful tool on hunts and as such this weapon might even end up being a hunt support gear card first and a weapon second for certain survivor builds.

In all, this isn't a super exciting weapon to end this series on, but it is a solid workhorse and like its longer cousin Heart Seeker it holds an interesting place in the showdowns against The King.

Final Thoughts

On the whole the Seed Pattern System continues to impress me with its mechanics, crafting designs and a gear cards. There's a lot of texture and variation to explore in the game now and as someone who replays this game a lot I really appreciate it a great deal. Some gear cards are super exciting and forge unique paths through the game, others are just solid workhorses or glue for builds that didn't have such support before. There's no doubt that Seed Patterns are one of the strongest mechanics Team Death have presented in recent times (along with Indomitable Patterns and Arc Survivors) and they provide a bit of space where more crazy and wild designs can be included, especially when they class them as a negative pattern, thereby making it easier for players to justify not including certain pattern cards for thematic or mechanical reasons.

On that note, I do think the Plasma Cutter is ridiculously pushed to an extreme level, there's not many weapons that you could theoretically craft in Lantern Year 8 that have the power this one has. The stars to need to align a bit for that one to pay off, but it is still a heck of a weapon to get at any point during a campaign, that 21 strength and Razor Sharp looks absurd when you compare it to the Heartseeker and Death Defier, both of which can be crafted in only the third decade of a settlement's lifespan rather than potentially the first (or more often the second). I don't really know what to say about it, that's a base strength of 26, so our worst possible successful wounding roll is 21+5+2 for 28. Sheesh.

Overall it has been an absolute joy to go through all of these gear cards, I'd love to read any unique combos or situations that this system has offered you all while playing, the combinations are so varied and wild now that I hope we'll still be discovering new tricks in the upcoming decade(s) as this Kickstarter moves towards concluding.

The Gambler's Chest cannot get onto the Simulator fast enough for me.