Gear Tableau Building & Slot Efficiency

Gear Grids are one of the best (mostly) original mechanics in Kingdom Death; they provide a tableau building puzzle that you get to construct before going on each hunt. If I am honest; I think gear grids are the single best mechanic in Kingdom Death and the only negative surrounding them is how Armor takes up 5 of 9 slots (another reason why things like Crystaline Skin really matter). That is not the fault of the gear system however, it is the fault of the armor system and before we dig into it, I'll expand on that.

Sometimes I wonder if Kingdom Death would have been a better game if it had a 12 square grid which players can orientate either 3x4 or 4x3. 5 of 12 slots is a far more palatable percentage of your tableau for armor to encompass. For as ascetically pleasing as a 3x3 grid is; the number of slots it has is a really noticeable drag on the game's variability. (Of course, before we move onto the actual topic in hand, I do know that larger gear grids will result in an overall increase in power for survivors. I am simply of the opinion that it would only be of benefit to the game experience to have an extra three slots for each survivor's tableau. It is not like survivors will get more powerful weapons or armor as a consequence of this change, instead they would get more versatile builds and be able to play more situational gear cards). Anyway it is an interesting thought, and perhaps I'll try it out as a house rule in the near future. What can be said though is that more games should use square equipment cards with some kind of layout tableau for wearing it, this is one of the best elements of Kingdom Death: Monster's design and the fact that it is not being used elsewhere is frankly criminal.

So gear cards as a construct are tableau elements that provide multiple different potential features and can be placed together in certain combinations in order to generate more value that they could individually. The key features are:

Defense: By providing armor points, a gear card can ensure that your survivor lasts longer in the showdown. Defense can be leveraged in a purely passive manner; as something that protects a survivor from AI cards. But it can also be leveraged in a more aggressive way; being something that protects a DPS (Damage Per Swing) survivor from reactions that could otherwise harm them. Various defensive benefits include armor points, block, deflect and evasion.

Offense: Simply put, this is the ability to convert the properties of your survivor's actions and gear into wounds. Most of the time this is the province of weaponry as an attack is the purest form of this. However; there are other methods of dealing wounds and if these alternatives do not interact with the Hit Location deck, thereby denying the monster any retaliation for the wound, they become more powerful than attacks. As mentioned previously in the action economy articles, the showdown is 4+ activations vs 1 powerful activation and 0-4 reactive activations. This is a portion of why Deadly is so strong – anything that skews this balance of reactive actions is a huge deal. It's also a part of why Tank and Support survivors are so strong; they generate value in the showdown without triggering reactions. Same with weapons that can attack without causing reactions (like Katar specialists or Spears vs. Traps) – you get to break the balance between the monster and the survivors.

Affinities: Probably the most interesting portion of the entire gear system due to how it makes positions matter and contributes to that synergistic tableau feeling. There is nothing that can make a marginal item with edge case uses into a useful part of a build as well as good affinities. Gear cards like Armor Spikes transform into useful tools because they provide affinities that activate other very powerful cards. The strongest affinities are left or right and down facing blue (yes blue is just a good affinity in general); left facing red and right facing green. This is because they connect to many important pieces of staple gear like the Lucky Charm, Monster Tooth Necklace and Monster Grease.

Control: Control is anything that can impact on the monster's behaviour. From gaining the Priority Token; through abilities/debuffing such as Daze and all the way to the staples that are AI/HL deck manipulation/scouting control. Control gear seeks to manipulate the monster's capabilities in a negative manner. In any game where control abilities are strong options they always offer a safer and more consistent route than aggression and damage. They also greatly supplement damage in Kingdom Death by allowing attacks to line up against the hit locations that they are most optimal against.

Action Compression: Anything that lets you perform the equivalent of multiple actions is something you should always pay attention to. This is discussed in more length in the Action Compression articles that came out just before this one. You can check them out here and here.

Slot Compression: Anytime that you have a gear card that does more than one thing at the same time you should be paying attention to it. Be it armor that protects more than one slot or a weapon that has block or armor points built into it (shields, swords). When you only have 9 slots in a game which asks you for armor and a weapon and leaves you with a stingy three slots to smooth out affinities, provide additional defense/utility and have stuff for the hunt phase; slot compression is nothing to be sniffed at. Unfortunately, most of the time the design ethos of the game punishes slot compression gear by making it a lot weaker than it needed to be. That seems to be changing as we are seeing a slight break from that model with some of the new beta card releases.

Statistical increases: Gear cards that provide additional stats are something that are both relatively common, and are also very powerful. The entire game economy in the early game revolves around items that provide stat boosts – Lucky Charm, Weapons, Rawhide Armor. Just above everything you're often chasing after increases your stats in one way or another, because early on the monster AI and player options are so basic that the game is dominated by 'hit it hard' strategies on both sides. Also these bonuses scale into the late game when they are not on weapons/armor.

Movement: While just +2 Movement is a statistical increase, there are numerous other movement options that are in the game on armor sets. It is in fact one of the most common ways that armor adds value to a character outside of straight defenses and affinities. One example is the Leather Boots, easily forgotten about, this is +1 movement, but only at the end of your act. It's a minor boost that is easy to forget because often it is not relevant to use it. But there are some situations (such as when fighting the Butcher) where it can make a difference because of how the monster reacts or targets.

Another version is the Pounce ability on the White Lion Coat. This ability is a little awkward and underpowered in general, but it does still provide additional value (even more so with the Sun White Lion armor that fixes the ability into being playable). The Screaming Armor's Slam is another example of something like this, especially when combined with the set bonus. It's also worth noting that Slam is a much stronger ability due to being linked to a weapon type that has a much stronger overall power (Spears are one of the best weapon types in the game alongside Fist & Tooth, Shield, Scythe, Novel Sword and Bow).

Resource Generation: This one isn't common, but it comes in few options. Most of these are great because they are reliable and also provide some additional affinities when they are not doing anything else. Occasionally you also get surprise tool synergies which turn these resource generators like the Pickaxe into viable weapons, thereby providing additional slot compression, albeit at the cost of weapon proficiency progression.

Healing: Another rare option. This is any way of regenerating armor points or insanity or anything else that represents "damage" (like Hunt XP) during either the hunt phase or the showdown. This category also includes survival gains, simply because survival is ways of avoiding damage like dodges, dashes, block surges and so on. Insanity is an area that is especially prone to abuse because there is no upper cap on Insanity, there are items/disorders that scale with it and you keep your insanity from one showdown to the next. Insanity is always a nice, easy way to break the game.

Utility: Finally we have the utility category, to be honest it's always a pain to have to create a dump site for all the miscellaneous different abilities that aren't covered by the above. But Monster is a game with a lot of different words written on cards. So rather than have an infinite number of categories I tend to lump them all together under Utility until there are enough of a given option that it can be peeled off.

So with all of that written, let us put it into practice with a look at one of the best examples of how Slot Compression works and how it can fail. We shall assess Gorment Armor!

Gorment Armor is a 4 or 5 slot armor set that is constructed from the skin, bone and fat of a several very angry little baby face elephant chemical factories. It comes in exactly one style, that is the wonderful choice of dressing like the gimp from Pulp Fiction, and it has a lot of mechanical themes – but the prominent ones are shields and regeneration of injuries. We'll look at each piece individually and then discuss the discord that sits between them all.

Gorment Mask

Debatably one of the best head gear options in the entire game (If it had just 1 more baseline armor point that is), with just 4 courage this mask makes a survivor entirely immune to all intimidate actions from any monster currently in the game, and even at lower courage levels this mask mostly blanks intimidate actions from the monster you are facing.

However, the mask demands not just courage from its survivor; it also needs a blue down and a green up to complete the affinities here. That turns out to be a huge ask; because nothing in the early game Gorment Armor gear offers those affinities. That means this is a three slot affair if you want it activated and given that it is the single best piece of gear in the armor set; not activating it seems unwise. The Leather Shield fortunately covers the green up affinity while also having synergy with the Arms/Body pieces and the Gorn/Armor Spikes can provide that down blue (Gorn is the better choice, it has a lot of slot compression built into it if you can get musical synergies – unfortunately Rhythm Chaser doesn't work with Gorment Armor because of the heavy keyword).

Gorment Sleeves and Suit

Best discussed as a pair due to how they link together. These two cards cover three slots (arms, body, waist) and the Gorment Suit demonstrates one of the most potent forms of Slot Compression currently in the game.

However; while this combo provides one of the green affinities that the pairing needs; in order to activate the Sleeve's cost reduction (which is very important in the early game) you need that Leather Shield + Mask. That's not too bad; though it does make the armor set a 5 slot set by default if you want to capitalise on it (4 armor pieces + shield).

The real problem lays with the Gorment Suit's Guard ability; it demands a blue and red affinity in combination with its connected green and a blue one (from Mask + Gorn) and that means you're either putting a Red Charm in for just the affinity and no other benefit; you're ignoring Guard entirely (which Ranger Gorment Armor builds can do, but they do benefit greatly from having Guard active) or you are slotting a two gear card combo into your build in order to get it active. This often involves things like Knuckle Shield + [a card] or Monster Tooth Necklace + [a card].

Gorment Boots

This brings us to the problem of the boots. These boots are one of the two largest downsides that hold the armor set back (the other is the set bonus, which like White Lion Armor is an armor point too low). The boots have a marginal ability which will sometimes be useful, but they are probably the worst boots in the game right now. This ability they have would be fine if the boots offered a useful affinity (left/up red, up green, down blue) there by reducing the pressure for the remaining 5 cards to provide specific affinities. Instead they are bizarrely affinity free and that holds them back a great deal.

Regeneration Suit

Finally we have the fifth piece of the armor set; this is an optional piece, but because it offers an up green affinity plus an additional 7 armor points to the set – it becomes almost compulsory when you want to transition Gorment Armor from early game to mid/late game. It also demands another green affinity in the gear grid. You'd expect a L3 locked piece of gear to be a very impressive option, and the Regeneration Suit is a decent item. It's just not fit for using alongside the rest of the Gorment Armor set and instead it tends to find its home elsewhere in builds that want its green affinities.

The issue is that the design team in the early days overvalued the concept of taking permanent injuries and then healing them. Whereas the community has demonstrated amply that not taking injuries in the first place is the optimal way to play. (This isn't a big, surprising revelation, it's the same in any game where an injury can also mean immediate death - the only correct answer is to avoid situations like this wherever possible.)

Gorment Armor Overall

The above layout pretty much demonstrates the issues with the armor set. All of the benefit gained from that slot compressed Gorment Suit is lost because of the Regeneration Suit and/or Gorment Mask demands plus the boots failing to contribute. (I'm firmly of the opinion that the boots should be some combination of left & right red plus either up green or down blue in order to reduce affinity pressure on the armor set). We've got room to fit a red affinity between two slots (we can go either horizontal or vertical) but really that needs to be coming from the weapon and/or shield if possible. There are options, but suddenly we're locked into 8 slots that need to provide certain things while the Boots do nothing to ease the pressure.

All of this ends up leaving the Gorment armor in a weird place. It wants to be a tank set; where the survivor wearing it endures with a shield and regenerates the severe injuries they do suffer during the showdown but it lacks the armor points required for this job and it can't support its regeneration with anti-injury gear too well because of how many slots are lost.

However, you can pivot into one option where you take advantage of the Slot Compression on offer in Gorment Armor by using bows. Bows adore additional slots because they can fill them up with useful arrows. This is one of the main ways that you can skip past the armor set's low armor points, enough distance from the monster and you should be safe. Guard can even be utilised in a build like that to allow survivors to increase distance from the monster (this will be super valid with a shield, bow keyword weapon).

In fact, I am generally of the opinion that using Gorment Armor as a 4 slot archery set is one of the more optimal routes for this armor set, archers tend to not need much in the way of protection as they are able to use distance and other survivors as meat shields. Typically Rawhide or Dancer armor is the main armor set used by archers, but I do personally think Gorment Armor is competitive, because Rawhide and Dancer armor are not used for Bow specific synergies, they're used for utility and economy reasons. This makes Gorment Armor especially enticing if you can get the Gorment mask active and ignore those intimidate actions entirely.

This all results in Gorment Armor being an interesting creation, certainly one of the most engaging and exciting ones outside of the Hybrid Armor sets. It contains almost every single element that surrounds slot economy and also demonstrates how failure to design with that in mind (Gorment Boots) and poor levels of armor points can force an armor set into a marginal space in the game.

Summary

Slots matter in this game, you may sit at the start of your first game and wonder 'how on earth will I ever fill up this gear grid? I've already thrown my stone away and all I have is this kilt to protect my thighs and unmentionables' but any successful settlement soon ends up in a world where they have more gear than slots and at that point squeezing as much as you can out of each space becomes a huge portion of the game's optimisation. Knowing what aspects a given piece of gear offers can help you assess any new gear you run into with rapid ease; tools that will become very useful when it is time to sit down and experience the Gambler's Chest content for the first time. Coming to you in 202...3?