Kingdom Death: Beta Content Review – Sky Fisher Melo (Patreon)

She cast the line and watched the faintly glowing lure disappear into the darkness overhead. Feeling a slight pull, she let the line slacken and braced her feet, driving her heels into the stone mouths. With a sudden yelp, she was yanked out of view, leaving just the echo of dismay in the emptiness.

Melo is our latest beta content release, this time providing a new Fish resource for use with the Sunstalker fish alongside an alternative craftable skyfishing gear card. Skyfishing is one of the more intriguing elements of Kingdom Death and part of the reason why I wrote the fun thought experiment of “What if Kingdom Death is an analogue world for that of one in a Deep Sea Trench?” While it is not a real theory that I consider anything more than just amusing, it is a helpful way to look at the monster designs and notice just how many aquatic elements and themes are borrowed. Sunstalker, White Lion, Screaming Antelope, Smog Singers, The Sky Whale, Gorms, the Lion God and even the Dragon King (Godzilla) have elements that are either overtly taken from aquatic environments (such as the White lion's shark teeth) or reference them (like the Screaming Antelope's Clam-like body mouth or the Dragon King serving as a Godzilla analogue). Skyfishing has always been a part of the game I've liked as it adds texture to the world and more decision space to the Hunt Phase.

The Miniature

While Melo is absolutely a beautiful sculpt, covered with details and wearing an interesting alternative Cycloid Scale armor design; this is not a model that I would want to put on my game table at any time. There are far too many fragile elements to this piece and I suspect that we'll see Melo in dioramas more than as a player pawn.

Outside of the fragility of all those ropes and rods I do like the aesthetic of this survivor, she's got a Sunlure hanging from her belt along with a bag of monster grease and one of the better lantern designs. In particular I'm really thrilled to see a sculpted depiction of the Sun Lure gear card as that's something I've always wanted Team Death to show us.

A good one for the display cabinet, though I do wish they had also put a Brightfish hanging from Melo's belt as that like all the fish it is a really fascinating piece of art.

The Game Content

To start with I would be remiss if I didn't point out the typo on the back of the gear card; here it is.

Minor issue, but absolutely not acceptable for the price this box is sold at.

In addition the Strange Resource card is marked on the back twice, once by the lack of rounded corners and once by the large “BETA” band on the back.

Considering the Skyfish Rod is intended to give you a random fish strange resource, the lack of rounded corners and the marking on the back of the card is pretty unforgivable. Sure there are ways of getting around this, such as rolling a dice, but this really is a massive slip up on the design front. We don't have opaque backed “American” size card sleeves, they're all transparent – that's the problem we have with the Basic Hunt Event cards. So marking the back even more distinctly when there is a randomisation system baked directly into the Beta content release is honestly mindboggling. I can forgive the corners, while it isn't ideal you can corner cut the cards to match, but that blue band and text is just. I don't have words except for:

Do.

Better.

Skyfish Rod

Crafting Requirement: Skyreef Sanctuary (Sunstalker Crafting location) or Barber Surgeon

Crafting Cost: 1x endeavour, 1x Perfect Bone, 1x Organ

The Skyfish Rod is an interesting piece of gear with a fundamentally uninteresting crafting recipe. This is another Perfect resource crafting gear card to stuff alongside the many, many others. That means this is competing with the Zanbato and especially the First Aid Kit (Which also requires the Barber Surgeon) for resources and I cannot see myself crafting it before either of those two options. At this point it is almost seeming like the costs are designed by rolling a dice on a table that is mostly full of “Perfect Resource” entries, we've had so many of these. I like the idea of Perfect Resources, but this is way past too much.

Setting aside the Crafting Cost, the Rod itself is actually a neat piece of design, it is a resource generator that provides skyfish as long as you are willing to spend 4 survival per hunt phase on it. That combos well with survival replenishment options like Dragon/Lantern Armor, the Reverberating Lantern and similar, this can accelerate you towards getting the Filleting table a lot and the cost is very well balanced. It's not so low that you mindlessly spam every single hunt phase each year, but it is also not so high that you don't want to use it at all.

On top of that it has a lot of red affinities; one of the things I have often extolled is if you are designing a gear card with limited or specialised uses, good affinity design can be a make or break factor. We get a LOT of red affinities here, which is interesting and balanced. Red affinities are the weakest of the three affinities (but stronger than Yellow affinities that's for sure), but they are useful and giving us three half affinities means that builds are more likely to be able to squeeze this one in and unlock some other puzzle affinity pay off.

The Brightfish is also a very interesting resource, first of all, Skyfishing doesn't have any random fish drops, so Brightfish doesn't interfere with the gaining of the Filleting Table innovation, it is an extra option that can randomly drop from the rod, or be deliberately chosen during the “harpoon” portion of Skyfishing. What it does do is give you a way that your tank survivor can start the showdown as the target (though if you randomly draw Jowls from the rod and lose your nose, your tank can't fish anymore in later lantern years otherwise they'll die during Jowls 2: The Revenge and leave your party without a Tank for the showdown (they can keep fishing for this hunt though if they also have the Sun Lure because you can't draw a second Jowls during the same hunt because you already have the only card in your possession).

So in truth, I like these two cards and I think they are both smart, neat pieces of design. It is just frustrating that they are let down by disappointing quality assurance. This is not as bad as Repokratis's Gloomleather Hood, but it is definitely not acceptable.

Summary

I think this one is a pretty easy skip. It is a fun piece of content and it doesn't overly interfere with the goal of unlocking the Filleting Table, instead supporting it and making the process faster, but the sloppy physical design of this card, with both a typo on one card and that frustrating Strange Resource card back, make this one below the standard that Team Death have set themselves (though ironically it IS on brand for Beta content quality assurance).

While the Skyfish Rod in isolation is a solid piece of design and the miniature looks nice; like most beta releases there simply isn't enough to justify the cost here and it is a bit worse than normal for that line because of the above mentioned design issues. One for collectors only.