Seed Patterns - Monster Era II Patterns

As mentioned on Wednesday's post, I have a rather large video to edit which means I need to get ahead of the writing portion in order to try and get that published asap, so for the next two weeks we'll round out the Monster Specific patterns, with Era II this week and Era III after that. I'll review the BF stuff the very week it gets into my hands, but I can't control when that happens.

The Gambler's Chest Expansion (GCE) has a selection of Era II patterns for the following monsters:

• Gambler

• White Lion

• Screaming Antelope

• Smog Singers

This selection includes two weapons (one of which is really an item in disguise), one piece of armor and two items, though one of those is an accessory (so effectively armor). We've also got another hybrid armor set in this selection, this time it is themed around both the White Lion and Antelopes. On the whole there's some great pieces of gear in this selection.

005 – Monster Trophy

This item is a breeze to craft, requiring two relatively available resources (though Pelt is important if you're making the Screaming Armor set and Perfect Organs are in a lot of demand) and no issues with needing Era II generic resources (as these are both specific resources). The other requirements are things which will naturally happen during a campaign, everyone needs ammonia to progress in settlement development and you're going to be killing Screaming Antelopes if you have it as a member of your Node 1 and 2 monster pool.

The item itself is a survival and perfect hit synergy card with some (I assume deliberately) awkward affinities. These two affinities point in exactly the same directions as the Monster Grease and Monster-Tooth Necklace, meaning our most powerful and straightforward options are off the table. Screaming Armor itself offers us a red and green affinity to connect to, though it'll need a bit of an unorthodox layout. Leather Armor also works well with this. That means we have at least two guaranteed armor sets that can activate this Perfect hit ability, but it is worth acknowledging that Screaming Armor doesn't have inbuilt survival gains to try and leverage the value from the increased survival cap a bit further.

The clear winning mechanic here though is Perfect hits, so we will generally be looking for either weapons with an increased Perfect hit range or knowledges/fighting arts that can perform the same job (ideally we get both). We also prefer weapons with higher speed because that increases the chances of getting perfect hits supported by ways of mitigating the downsides of that speed. So Katars, Spears, Swords and Daggers are solid weapon options, but we may look at clubs or axes because they have perfect hit synergies.

Overall this is simply a cheap, evocative and thematic piece of gear that can either further support +Perfect Hit Range builds by giving more survival to spend on surges or it can function as an affinity 'glue' piece that gives a trickle of extra survival during the showdown. A solid workhorse or should that be workdeer?

006 – Sprinter Helm

Sprinter Armor is a spiritual cousin to the hybrid armor sets we have in the Lion Knight expansion, it's one of those super exciting multi-monster armor sets that always interest me as long as there is a solid enough affinity base to ensure the set can work in a reasonable fashion (this is the main drawback of the Imitation Butcher armor set). The base sets here are a little wonky, while the Screaming Antelope set is almost always a great base for mixed/hybrid builds, the White Lion set unfortunately isn't (it can't even support itself very well).

We have another large roadblock in the way here before we can even get to that part of the discussion, the crafting recipe here not only requires the elusive Spiral Horn, but it also needs a Skull. This leaves only the White Fur as being the relatively common resource drop. If you're planning to try and craft this armor though you're going to have to keep all of these in the settlement storage because there is a large piece of chance tied to getting this crafted. We need to have all of these resources available when the Settlement Event Triathlon of Death occurs. So unless you're one of those lucky house ruled settlements that generate your settlement events in advance (a fun and tactical way to play) you're sitting on three things for a potentially long period.

Rare drops in games like this are fine, they can create moments of excitement and that leads to engaging stories. To highlight a great few of examples of this we have the Adventure Sword, the Steel Sword and of course the Perfect Slayer. All of these are very rare drops that may not be seen even over multiple campaigns, but when you get them they are settlement defining in one way or another and the wait feels worth it. This is also part of what makes Indomitable Patterns so engaging, they're randomly gained (less random than the above three weapons) and they're most of the time worth crafting and using either in an existing build or sometimes they even create a new build by their existence.

So all of this preamble is to say that there are some odds stacked against this particular gear card, but they are not insurmountable. We'll move on to looking at the Sprinter Helm in isolation and then after that we'll look at the sprinter armor set.

At a baseline, this helm has reasonable stats and a strong 'if insane' stat boost of +1 movement. Movement is the king stat in any grid based game, especially one where the survivors tend to be outpaced by the monsters. It has an OK, if not inspiring level of armor points as 3 is the bare minimum we'd expect for a card like this.

The affinities are, well let us be honest here, they're not great. This is a layout that forces middle row positioning and red up plus red down is not my favourite combo to try and activate. In addition to that, we also have the requirement that we're not using this activated ability without some way of gaining pounce. That means we need a way of generating pounce and the most common method is with the White Lion Coat (there are potentially other options, but they are not reliable). That means you could use this in a mixed set with White Lion Armor pieces, but the honest truth there is that's taking a suboptimal armor set and removing one of the few optimal pieces it has (the set bonus card). I don't feel there's much use to discussing this one outside of it being used inside its armor set. So we'll take a look at that now.

(Note, we could swap the columns that the skirt/coat and helm/boots are in if that works for the particular loadout, but this is probably the best choice unless you do not care at all about that green affinity.)

Sprinter Armor has an almost respectable 4 armor points on all locations, which considering how frankly difficult it is to craft this armor set is, feels too low. Part of the reason it's taken me so long to write about the seed patterns is I only managed to craft this one after nearly a year and a half of running campaigns to try and get the events to line up right. This is one rare armor set that needs the stars to be right if you want to use it, most of the time it turned out the pattern was a dead draw – some times I even had the Triathlon, but it turned up too late in the campaign for me to want to consider this armor set, I'd already spent the resources on more reliable stuff that got me through the early and mid game. (Has anyone seen any events/occurrences that make the Triathlon happen more often? Please let me know!)

When I did finally craft this helm though, the armor points were a bit of an issue and I needed to use a shield to prolong the lifespan of this set. This is something that happens to most Node 1 or 2 armor sets, which isn't a deal breaker – but as mentioned above, I expect better when it is this awkward to craft the gear.

In use though the real big elements was the boots and the pounce, this armor set felt really good when using it with the Counter-Weighted Axe because that weapon provided the missing affinity, has a great puzzle ability and Reach is always such a great tool when combined with monster-movement abilities like Pounce. This also felt good with the Bone Club, though Dash had to do a bit of heavy lifting at that point.

I really appreciated having that +2 movement in particular, though I needed to support this set because it doesn't generate its own insanity, 7 movement is really good at getting you into opportune spots to attack and also dashing out of harm's way. There's a lot to like about the set, though I do find the Screaming Armor waist piece to be pretty useless a lot of the time, this set doesn't really care about the green affinity and the Screaming Skirt's ability is fine, but I'm never high on abilities that work when you're taking severe injuries unless you're dealing with a Gorment Armor “Wolverine” build.

The ultimate sticking point here is that difficulty in crafting this. Living in magical Christmas Elf Land would mean it is possible that you could craft this in Lantern Year 3, if you got the White Fur from your 1st or 2nd White Lion and the Antelope dropped the Horns on its first fight AND you got a Skull from your basic resource drops AND the triathlon happened in that year. But, if that happens to you, go buy a lottery ticket asap because in my experience you're luckier than Charlie Bucket.

My final verdict on this one is; the Sprinter Helm is a craft in a limited window, if you get that window it's fun, but the armor set definitely falls off when progressing against the higher Node 3+ and Level 3+ monsters, but it is definitely superior to its parent pounce set, the White Lion Armor. I'd rate this a lot higher if it was more common to craft it in the first 10 lantern years. Perhaps we need a People of the Triathlon settlement who perform the Triathlon every 4 years or something?

008 – Dream Keeper Cowl

In contrast to the Sprinter Helm, the Dream Keeper Cowl is a very easy craft, we simply need some generic resources from any Node 2 monster and Face Painting innovated (which is a normal innovation for settlements). The item itself is appropriately small in scope; 1 armor point extra to the head and an affinity that isn't super useful, but may have some applications.

The major draw then is the ability, which gives you a +1 Luck token to leverage alongside things like the Lucky Charm and Deadly weapons, but the price paid is that -1 permanent luck penalty. This means a survivor running the hood is probably not going to be able to consistently be a luck based attacker. We can get around this by playing “red shirt” strategies, where we have one disposable survivor utilising the hood, and the rest of the survivors work on needed weapon proficiencies.

As for how long this one is viable for, Luck has the neat trick of scaling effectively infinitely, with only luck immune/resistant monsters roadblocking the strategy much at all. Even monsters that punish critical wounds (like the Manhunter) are fine because this survivor is a disposable hero. As such this is a good little craft for players who can turn lost weapon proficiency gains into resource gains elsewhere. It's also very good when you're in the latter part of a campaign and you don't care about weapon proficiency advancement any more, that red-shirt becomes really tantalising at that point.

Speaking of strategies that cause salivation, Gourmundism has a fun little trick with this one, the knowledge Digestion II allows us to spend an activation to consume a positive attribute token LOPLY (once per lantern year). That means we could use this hood all showdown and just before the monster dies we eat the token, which cancels out the -1 luck gained during the aftermath. This is just one example of the creative ways you could handle this, the Dream Keeper Hood offers some interesting corner cases where you can mitigate or overcome its negative. Gear like this is always interesting to play with.

Cheap, potentially powerful and with an ability that can have its parity broken in various ways makes this a solid piece of gear, if you've figured out other interesting combos/ways of cancelling the luck loss on this one, please let me know!)

015 – Hushing Harmonium

OMGOMGOMGSQUEEEEEE! IT'S A NON-NOISY INSTRUMENT!

Before I fall off my chair with excitement, let us first look at crafting this one, we need three specific resources, two of which drop from the Smog Singers, there are two tongues and one set of vocal chords in the resource deck, plus the Smog Singers are a soft target that is easy to hunt repeatedly. Also those two resources are not used in crafting the armor set or spear of life (the armor is the best overall gear from the Chorussem) , which is a big plus.

All the other requirements are also pretty straightforward, we're deafening a survivor who survived fighting the Smog Singers, it's not a stretch to send in a disposable survivor (or one who's already deaf, no rules against that) and Drums is a staple innovation that every settlement needs.

The weapon we get here isn't much use for attacking, it's got a terrible attack profile, about as much use as a wet noodle in a whip fight. Instead what we have here is a powerful Ballard that needs 12 wounds already inflicted, being hushed is useful against The King, but not being threats for the rest of the showdown can cripple some monsters a massive amount. This is a great tool to have, even if it can only be utilised against the higher tier monsters and their larger health pools (note that Ballads have a bad time against Life monsters).

The other major deal here is that this is an instrument without the usual downside, that means we can use this with all instrument synergies like Rhythm Chaser, Infernal Rhythm (Strain Fighting Art) and even in combination with another survivor who has the Grim Muffler plus Vespertine Cello. While this doesn't completely open instruments up to being a general broad hunting strategy, we're a step closer to a party of bards and that means a lot to me.

I personally think this one is an easy auto craft because everyone has access to Drums and the King comes in the GCE, so we have a campaign structure that rewards us for playing with both these monsters together.

Final Thoughts

I don't think there's a single bad pattern card in this selection, while weapons and armor do have a finite window in which they're useful (unless they're end game power level) that is simply a natural part of gear life cycles. Not everything can be an Organ Grinder item. Personally it is the Harmonica that excites me the most, but there are no losers in this selection at all and it is always a delight to be able to state there's no wasted cardboard here at all and that makes me happy because I prefer to praise rather than criticise.