Seed Patterns - Generic Era I Patterns

We'll start our deep dive into the Seed Patterns with the Era I “generic” line. The generics are the ones labelled with just the “seed” keyword, meaning that they are present in every single campaign. That ubiquity means they are the foundational element of our seed pattern experience because they are always present. The Era I patterns are also the easiest to craft because they require their material resources (bone/hide/organ) to be from Node I or higher monsters, that's as easy as it gets with this system.

One of the other things that has proven to be really interesting is the nature of these Era I pattern gears, while for the most part they are evolutions of Tier I Generic gear lines, there's also a couple of oddities that are very difficult to craft in the early stages of a campaign. I read these as being something that the designers are trying to get into your hands as early as possible in case the crafting circumstances do turn up, increasing the chance of getting them.

I'll be working through these in numerical order, but be aware that the pattern number system is different from Era order, so there are going to be gaps as we work through them. If I did them all in pattern number order then we'd have a situation where we'd be looking at vastly different pieces of gear per article, which I think is less useful than having all the Era I seed patterns together in one place.

There's a lot of seed patterns now, so if I've missed an Era I one (which is possible, the Era numeral is very small) or you found a useful, unique way to use one of these pieces of gear. Please do share in the comments, there's so many potential interactions that there is virtually no chance I haven't found all of them at this point. Let me know, I'm super interested to find out and learn from you all.

With all that written, lets get into the Era I seed patterns, beginning with.

001 Rawhide Headband

I will briefly note that I like the reference here to how some men choose to wear a bandana in order to conceal their receding hairline, male-pattern baldness is I am sure not a fun thing to have to go through at all and the social stigma that surrounds it is likewise unpleasant. I've never liked that particular part of our society, my grandpa and uncle both suffer(ed) with male-pattern baldness and as such I didn't find it odd or weird to see on other men. But I am keenly aware that bald or balding content creators have to either fully embrace it (like Northern Lion) or seek covering solutions that still result in chat being unpleasant about it. In other words, there's a good story in the flavour text here.

Our pre-requisites for this one are a Rawhide Headband, a survivor with (exactly?) 2 Hunt XP and Symposium along with the additional crafting elements of 1x endeavour and 1x hide (remember these have to be non-basic aka monster resource). The Symposium and 2 Hunt XP requirements are not a big deal, we'll always get those in your average campaign (though I'm not sure if it should read 2+ Hunt XP or exactly 2 Hunt XP here). The larger cost is the resources, we're looking at almost tripling the cost of a normal rawhide headband (an endeavour is roughly equivalent to a basic resource in value) meaning that this Rawhide set now costs 7 resources rather than the usual 5. That's a steep increase and we're losing one of the best head slot abilities in the game.

So I do not think I'll ever craft this to replace the first rawhide bandana because that set is effectively a loading platform for a unique and powerful ability. But I often do craft a second set of Rawhide as a cheap piece of protection, so the question here is would I want to increase the hide cost of that set to 6 and also spend an endeavour to gain access to this offensive ability? I guess that is where the meat of this decision is located, so lets take a look at its text.

While insane you may spend 1 survival to turn a monster <Reaction> into a <Failure> before you make a wound attempt.

(Note: It's not limited to once per attack.)

That's a lot of brakes and limitations put on this one; we need to be attacking, we need to be insane, we need to spend 1 survival and we have to do this before we roll the wounding attempt. The best outcome here is spending 1 survival and turning a <Wound> or <Reflex> into a <Failure> and successfully wounding (meaning it does nothing against existing Failure reactions).

It's honestly too reserved due to an overabundance of limiters, if we didn't have the survival cost and could only do it once per attack, or if we could do this after the wound roll (still costing the survival) then we'd be in a different place entirely. Instead what we have is something that is potentially costing survival for no net benefit at all.

I've found that this one has really underperformed, it's doing something that Luck/Critical Wounds does better (ignore reactions) and that doesn't cost survival to use. It's also making you spend survival for something other than survival actions when the Rawhide set bonus tells you “make lots of survival actions” every point of survival spent here instead of dodge/surge/dash/encourage is a loss of more than 1 point of survival (because that set bonus gives you 50% chance of returning a survival, which itself has a 50% chance of returning a survival etc etc.)

I like the idea of turning a Rawhide set into a damage orientated set as an alternative build, but spending an extra hide, plus an endeavour isn't worth that cost. The original headband is what makes Rawhide such an efficient purchase, your tank can use it to start with, then it can move across to a damage dealer before finally resting on a support survivor. The original headband is SO good that you'll find it being used with “headless” sets such as Rolling or Vagabond Armor in order to keep carrying that unique and desirable ability for as long as possible. The rawhide headband AI control is something that scales upwards the more potent monster AI gets, pushing a Legendary AI card to a spot where it can be removed as a wound is a key part of handling higher level monsters when you don't have overwhelming offences and defences. We're losing all of that and might even end up crafting a new rawhide headband later on, which means this item fell off in viability far sooner than the original form.

That means I consider this one to be a duff and the final verdict is: Do not craft.

002 – Elder Aegis

Our requirements here are Protect the Young (PtY), Paint along with the material requirements of a Founding Stone and a Round Leather Shield. That Round Leather Shield cost also means that we need ammonia plus the leather worker before we're going to get to use this. We also need to expend a Founding Stone, which are sometimes in very limited supply, but it is very possible for a disciplined player to hold onto at least one Founding Stone until this pattern becomes available.

What we get in exchange is a fair upgrade over the normal Round Leather Shield, even before we activate the affinities we now have a shield with Deflect 1 that can be picked up pretty early on (note that we are losing the passive +5 armor points the normal shield offers).

The activated ability is a really strong one that scales over time and can be very carefully controlled in the right circumstances (especially when you score an Ageless survivor with a front line play style or have a Shadow Caeser in the settlement to allow retired survivors out on the hunt).

We've got 16 Hunt XP boxes total, so with a retired survivor sent out alongside a complete newbie this is giving us an extra 20 armor points (+25 with Shield Specialisation), that's a great power level ceiling for a shield. It's got a long life span and is a very efficient craft.

The floor of this gear card is 1 deflect, and to be honest I think that's weaker in power to block 1 + 5 armor points, but it's not a large gap between them, and it's relatively easy to have a 4 or 8 hunt XP gap between this chosen “elder” and the youngest survivor in the group. It's also worth noting that this shield even has an extra point of strength for levelling up Shield Mastery, every little helps here.

That means this one scales for a very long time, its power from moment to moment does depend on how you manipulate the situation, but that's not a bad thing because it rewards players for planning and preparation. Yes, I like this one, but the Birth Principle is a heck of a step backwards from Survival of the Fittest (SotF) in power level at times. I do recommend PtY for players who are struggling with population management, but once you get that skill set sorted out PtY has a noticably lower power ceiling than SotF does.

Final Verdict: I'll craft this if I've selected Protect the Young for some other reason, but in isolation this gear won't increase the chances that I select Protect the Young in the first place. However, if you are PtY you should always save a Founding Stone and aim to craft this. Its good, but Survival of the Fittest is a heck of a thing to give up. (Note if you have the Story in the Snow settlement event then you could craft this and then drive up your cheating count to pivot into SotF if you draw that card. What a weird thing to acknowledge!)

011 Tithe Box

This one costs 1x monster bone 1x monster hide and a broken lantern along with the need for Bloodletting innovated. Bloodletting is pretty much an essential innovation for settlements due to how brutal Plague is without it, so the requirement is no stretch.

Our costs here are the lack of affinities (so we'll want to put this in an L-slot), -1 movement and the fact that this does nothing at all until it is filled up. In order to fill this up we need a Seed Weapon to deliver killing blows. That means this is not going to be the first craft we want to make, we need some other early seed weapon and we're going to also have to engineer showdowns in order to get the killing blow with the right attack (not too hard most of the time, but rough showdowns may delay that).

Once this mini-quest is achieved, we're getting +2 accuracy, +2 strength and +2 evasion. That's a selection of stats that any front line survivor, especially off-tanks will be able to make great use of. Losing 1 movement here is not a deal breaker, 4 movement is a very viable amount to manage (especially with the Regalism philosophy).

Final Verdict: A fun, mild quest with reasonable requirements and a powerful unlock. This is an easy craft for me and something I'll enjoy doing every time. This juice is worth the squeeze.

021 Masamune

This is not one I've managed to craft so I haven't used it yet, meaning we're on theoretical observations only here. I try to avoid this where possible, but getting 2+ accuracy onto a survivor and having them inexplicably survive is just not a thing I've engineered in my attempts. I've had all the pieces together, except the survivor failed their Green Charm roll.

Crafting this one as such is a bit tricky, you need to get that 2+ accuracy survivor, have them inexplicably survive death (which is a specific, defined phrase in KDM) unlock the Blacksmith and have a survivor with a dismembered arm on top of the crafting costs. The dismembered arm is even going to be healed during this process. I think this is all reasonable, though this being an Era I rather than Era III pattern card is a little questionable. It doesn't feel like Era I when compared to the other members of this list.

When crafted, one of the key things we're going to need once this beast is unlocked is a way of generating bleed tokens. The perfect tool here is the Story of the Young Hero ability which is unlocked through the Storytelling innovation when it triggers White Speaker. This allows us to bleed ourselves for 2 tokens at the start of our act and thereby ensure an activation of Masamune every turn without too much work. Outside of that I'm not super excited to use it, though maybe if you wanted to be the ultimate meme-lord you could combine it with the Muramasa hunt Rare Gear which will bleed you on successful critical wounds (until you inevitably break it on a super dense location – btw Muramasa is one of the only places where I think utilising the Scrap Rebar is justified).

Masamune is a reasonable weapon if you can keep activating it, the combination of insane speed, high strength, high deadly and even a defensive option by activating it for 2 Deflect tokens (though again you'll need bleeding tokens to do that as any activation of the weapon requires feeding).

I've not gone into the details of this weapon's historical influence, but if you want to read more about Gorō Masamune wikipedia is (as always) a good place to start. Both of these two Katanas take their names from famed Japanese swordsmiths, Muramasa being named after one of Masamune's students; Sengo Muramasa.

Katanas are not my jam in Kingdom Death, the limitations in getting the Mastery (requires People of the Sun or killing an L3 Sunstalker) along with the overall memetic design of the weapons in the game and the way that the mastery puts a lifespan clock on the user's presence in the settlement do tend to hold me back somewhat. They're also just not something that interests me as far as weapons go. I don't remotely have the level of weebness that Adam has, most of my exposure to Japanese culture has been via “required reading” when learning about elements of Kingdom Death's influences. There's a few things which I absolutely adore; Junji Ito's entire catalog of work (I've even got a metal rendition of Junji Ito's Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines magic card) and every single piece of Hirohiko Araki's JoJo's Bizarre Adventures being the two prime things (read Berserk, wasn't for me). So there's just a large disconnect that means I'm less invested in Katanas than any other weapon type.

However, Final Judgement is very much if you get a chance to craft this, you should, it healing a dismembered arm severe injury alone is an impressive and hard to achieve thing that could save the career of a spear user and the weapon is statistically viable especially thanks to Storytelling/Story of the Young Hero, so it will be an adventure to use it when I finally get the option.

Final verdict: Craftable! For the memes!

022 Jarngreipr

First note here, the head slot is a clear typo, this isn't a head glove, so I'm going to assess it based on its place as an arm accessory.

Crafting Jarngriper is easier than it looks, because if you are following the Settlement Milestones (as you should be, check the Game Over story entry if you don't know what I'm writing about here), then we're getting Acid Storm in the lantern years 3, 7, 13 and 19. We can also force the Thundermaul via Barbaric principle, but that is such a terrible principle when compared to Romantic at the moment that I'd rather just gamble for the Thundermaul during hunts. The rest of the craft is pretty reasonable by the time the LY13 and 19 crafting windows turn up and we should have enough spare population to inflict the Ruptured Muscle on two plebians rather than any survivors of consequence.

If you're not familiar with why the crafting process is this way, it is because Járngreipr is one of Thor's three key possessions, the others being Mjölnir and his belt Megingjörð. Járngreipr are the gloves that Thor required to be able to wield Mjölnir. This is why we need an Acid Storm and the Thundermaul (Mjölnir analogue) in order to craft these gloves, and it is why they prevent the arm injuries that the Thundermaul would typically inflict. So this brings us to the intended thematic use of Jarngreipr; which is to wield the Thundermaul with less penalty from the Perfect hit result.

However, even outside of that specific designed interaction (which still isn't good enough imo, complete immunity to arm severe injuries is what we want), we still have an incredible accessory due to that eye-watering +5 strength bonus. That's a big number, nearly as much as a Sharp dice adds on average, but because it's a straight strength bonus it's better than Sharp (because you can combine it with Sharp). We've also got a great selection of really solid affinities and a puzzle ability bonus that any two-handed weapon user will appreciate.

Final Verdict: Easy craft every time you have the opportunity. Even when the Thundermaul user is retired/dead this accessory still has a huge amount of value and power. In fact I'd go as far as to posit that this is better when not used with the Thundermaul because it doesn't prevent all arm severe injuries.

024 Backstabbing Stone

The crafting demands on this one are very low, which is appropriate because of how weak this gear card is as a weapon. We're trading in here one of our limited supply of Founding Stones in order to gain +1 accuracy on the original form. We also lose the Archive for Critical Wound ability, which is another price that might be hard to pay early in the campaign (which is one of the few times where this will be relevant).

There are some synergy combos with this stone that can be utilised, the Masamune needs bleeding tokens to attack, the Crimson Crocodile Armor set utilises bleed to gain more armor points. But the price being paid here is really steep, we're spending an activation plus inflicting both a Knockdown AND a -1 movement token in addition to the bleed and priority target token.

This card feels like it is designed for an entirely different game than Kingdom Death, one where betrayal is a core part of the game rather than one where teamwork and cooperation is the heart and soul of the entire affair.

Final Verdict: Unless someone who isn't me works out a broken combo to use this stone with, I think it's an easy pass.

024 Master Bone Dagger

The Master Bone Dagger is custom built for Dagger lovers like myself, this takes a cheap early game weapon and as long as you have that 5+ rank Dagger specialist you can convert it into a potent weapon for the mid game. The crafting cost here is very reasonable, everything comes from the Basic resource deck and therefore the only brake on getting this out is dagger proficiency and we can start work on that from LY1 with the bone dagger if we desire.

I've analysed the Razor Sharp dice before here so we'll short cut to note that Razor Sharp = +5 to +10 strength, with an average of 7.5 strength per hit over the entire showdown. Because it is distinct from Sharp it can also be combined with that ability for an additional 5.5 average (Cycloid Scale Armor for example will do this). So this is a weapon with a lot of potential power and a lifespan that could last most of the campaign if we have access to a good armor set or item(s) that can boost its strength to be viable against the higher level monsters.

On top of the solid strength boosting dice, we also get two additional abilities and a base statline of (3/6+/2). The first is Persistence 2, an evolution of the Persistence 1 that the Bone Dagger has. I like Persistence on higher speed weapons, especially Daggers because they sometimes have additional perfect hit synergies. More survival means more surges or Dagger Mastery stabs and that's a great thing. We also have impeccable, which is a great little boost to overall damage, you'll only have a 1 result when wounding 1% of the time (you have to roll a 1 then reroll it into a 1, which is 1/100 aka 1%).

All of this comes together to give you a Fen coded weapon, it's doing everything I like and justifying purchasing a Bone Dagger all the way back in lantern year 1.

Final Verdict: As a dagger enjoyer, this is a prime craft for me and something I'll be trying to put together every time I have the option available.

027 Mighty Bone Axe

We have another Bone Smith weapon upgrade here and it's for another one of the weaker options, the Bone Axe; like the Bone Dagger, isn't quite as good when compared to the default options. In the case of the Bone Axe it's a simple case of being expensive for when you'd craft it. But, if you're crafting a Bone Axe with the goal of turning it into a Mighty Bone Axe then we've suddenly overcome the main issue (investment cost).

The crafting requirements here are also very low, bold isn't a hard thing to get fairly quickly and everything else is just “another bone axe but with monster resources” in cost. Even the bleeding tokens given to departing survivors isn't a huge deal when we consider stuff like the Crimson Armor. Sure you probably don't want to do this before heading in against the Butcher (maybe, I think I still would do it, but the early showdown game would involve a fair bit of bandaging).

The weapon we have out of this is pretty much perfect for the investment. This isn't a good craft late game, but considering how low the barrier to crafting actually is, we can get this online before even its peer The Zanbato would be an option. 6 strength is no slouch, and Heroic is the same as Impeccable above except for the attack roll instead of wounding, attack rolls are less valuable than wounding rolls, but you still need to be able to hit before you can roll to wound – so when you have 6 strength, one shouldn't complain. It also has affinities which work well with the Monster-Tooth Necklace and White Lion armor, not a bad bonus to have when you don't need affinities yourself.

Final Verdict: Easy craft if you get this early enough. The mighty bone axe can remain viable all the way up to Node 3 Level 2s, which is great considering how cheap this weapon was to build in the first place.

Final Thoughts

Era I Generics is a discordant selection of gear cards, we have upgrades for Tier 1 crafting location gear (Bone Smith, Skinnery) which really do feel like Era I. Then we also have an upgrade for the Round Leather Shield which feels Era II in flavour, and the Jarngreipr/Masamune are absolutely Era III in their feel and texture because of that Iron requirement. There's not even any specific crafting limitation that is being bypassed for those two gear cards because they require specific named resources, not generic keyword ones. It's a little odd, and this does impact on the core experience overall because the “higher tier” crafts require specific named resources, but those resources include Iron, which can only be rushed post Ammonia/Leather and the early game patterns may not be present when you'd like.

That means even this core selection has some ordering issues where you might get a Mighty Bone Axe pattern when you're needing weapons with much higher strength, this can be alleviated with spamming the pattern system as hard as possible through Insight and spending spare endeavours (I certainly have a LOT of endeavours available when playing with Arc Survivors), but it's not a direct fault of Era one's selection there, more an overall issue with the randomness of Seed Patterns (which one can house rule as I discussed earlier in this series).

I really like this selection from a flavour view point, especially Jarngreipr's interplay and links with Thundermaul which is. So. Darn. Good. I'm very happy to have this lot as a core selection, though I do think that the Rawhide Headband needs some buffing in the future, it's very underwhelming even when used by a Tank/Off-Tank/Damage dealer because of all the limitations put on it (too expensive to activate for the pay off).

One real miss out of eight gear cards along with some situational weapons that might be too weak when you unlock their patterns is not the start I would want for a foundational selection of seed patterns, but it isn't a deal breaker.

Overall though I'd give this collection of gear cards for Generic Era I a thumbs up, solid start.