"Weaponless" Support - A Flexible Build for those who want to make their friends shine (Patreon)

OK, so one of the issues as an experienced player is you'll often find yourself in a position where it's too easy to be 'do this, do that' and even if you try to avoid this the less experienced players in your group will defer to you. 

It's not surprising to be honest, lets face it Kingdom Death is an intimidating game with a lot of moving parts and while the truth is it's very simple at it's core the variety of choices and some of the more intricate parts of the game can feel overwhelming.

So how can we avoid being the "Alpha Player"? How can we give the fun parts of combat to our friends and instead let them do the work.  What can we do with the 4th survivor in a 3 survivor game or how can we make the 5th survivor interesting without weakening the monsters too much?

Well here is one such method. I present the "Weaponless" Support build. The grid presented here is just one of a number of different possible combinations and I would not recommend you stick slavishly to the items I have put up here, because there are a lot of variations you can put in based around  the core principles I'll break down here.

The Core Idea:

So the core concept here is to build someone who each turn is going to do things to help the other survivors. The primary tools for doing this are the Cat's Eye Circlet and the Rawhide Headband, these two powerful items provide a huge benefit to any hunting party which just cannot be completely replaced by any other item. We have some items which are similar to the Circlet (Wisdom Potion, Trash Crown, Necromancer's Circlet, Apostle Crown etc) but the only item that comes close to the Rawhide Headband is the Blue Ring from the Spicules Expansion.  

We are planning to pack as many support items in as possible in order to help the other survivors, the obvious armor for this is Rawhide, not only is it cheap, but it is very cost effective and it has the amazing survival recovery ability to boot.  

As for attacking? Well we're going to take on the icky duties of levelling up Fist and Tooth, it's a horrible job, but someone has to do it.

Fist & Tooth:

So, how are we going to maximise the potency of our Fist and Tooth when we do swing with it?  What little tips and tricks are there which will enable us to get the maximum amount of power from our tiny fists?

The first trick is very simple, you make sure that your survivor tosses the founding stone for the +1 STR in the prologue fight, you then breed and pick 1.5 Survival of the Fittest for +1 Str (and +1 Evasion).  Next you kill someone off and pick Graves.  This gives you a 50% chance of gaining +1 Luck - which you can reroll with some lifetime rerolls from your lovely plebs who sit at home and don't hunt.  Just one reroll gives you a 75% chance of getting the result you want and it jumps up to 87.5% if you are willing to spend 2 rerolls on it.  If you do this you will have +2 Str and +2 Luck (and Deadly) on the above build.  This means you are wounding an 8 toughness monster on a 6+ and you are critting them on an 8+.  That is very effective vs. the White Lion, Screaming Antelope, Gorm and Flower Knight.  

Additionally Critical hits scale with monsters, as long as there are crit-able locations you do not care how tough the monster is, you will punch them right in the weak spot and grab some resources out of their butt.

There are four other routes which can help also, the first is the Cult Speaker Knife (See below). 

The second is to have the Dragon King expansion, at lantern year 9 he will turn up and for the price of gaining Destined (which is a very soft disorder) and the cursed Husk of Destiny you gain the Acid Palms ability, which is an additional +1D10 strength when attacking (and that stacks with Sharp)!

The third method is to farm the Level 2 Gorm, eventually you will fall over in some acid and burn your palms, gaining Acid Palms at the cost of 1 movement.  This might be preferable to losing a slot on your grid to the Husk of Destiny!

Finally we have King's Man/Bone Witch combo.  Yes that's right, everyone's greatest hate actually has a use.  You get yourself the guide post innovation from the King's Man and then send out a sacrificial party each time she is due to turn up.  Eventually you'll roll the 8+ required and she will grab up that Guidepost, teaching 4 survivors the Monster Claw Style for just one bone.  That's 4 back up fist and tooth guys you now have.  Who said the Bone Witch is all bad?

(1.5 Sculpture will also allow you to 'copy' Monster Claw and keep it safe to put onto your fist and tooth support survivor whenever you need to make a new one. But I am not convinced that 1.5 Sculpture will remain the same as it was when teased on the kickstarter, it's too broken).

Other Armor Sets:

Later on, you might want to upgrade your armor a bit, especially if you start transitioning into being a brawler/support type when the rest of the group becomes more confident.  There are three armours (all expansion ones) which are ideal for this and I'll run through the advantages (and disadvantages of each).

1. Brawler Armour - Lion Knight

This armour is the most obvious armour for anyone who wants to really benefit from Fist and Tooth.  It gives you 4 armour points on all locations, -1 damage when you are attacked, extra insanity when departing and +2 movement when insane.  

The grid for it is a little rough, there are no affinity synergies (because Phoenix and Lion gear suck for affinities). But if you are sticking support stuff in the rest of your grid, that's not too much of an issue.

The  other drawback is, apart from the extra armor it doesn't provide much protection, so you're very dependant on your fellows to protect you.

2. Rolling Armour - Dung Beetle Knight

Rolling Armor is one of the most powerful and awesome armour sets in the entire game, not only is it genuinely great on all types of survivors, but while you are building/calcifying a set you can quite easily use the other parts elsewhere to improve survivors own armour sets. 

This is because Rolling Armour isn't Armour and it doesn't occupy slots.  So if you want to beef up your rawhide armor you can attach the Shoulder Plates to your load out and gain some extra defense.  

In reverse you can also use Rolling Armour as a way to carry the Rawhide Headband into the late game, while still being really tanky.  In People of the Lantern there is not much need to do this, but in People of the Stars/Sun with the higher difficulty level present in those two campaigns, it can be an immense benefit to have a Rolling Armour/Rawhide Headband Tank.

Rolling Armour also synergises with the Pulse Lantern, if you plan to go that route of Monster Control.

3. Cycloid Armor - Sunstalker

For the more offensively minded, especially if you are on your second Survivor because the first one has retired/passed away. Cycloid Armor is an excellent option.  It gives massive survival gains, has the amazing Prismatic ability, provides evasion and even has a built in Fecal Salve.  

But ontop of all of that, it also has the Cycloid Sleeves, which in combination with Shadow Walk ability (Cycloid Jacket) will give you the ability to gain sharp on your attacks, so you can punch with sharp fists, which will help you hit and wound the higher level monsters with relative ease.

The armour set, when set up correctly, also has +1 Accuracy, which is a big benefit for the normally inaccurate Fist and Tooth user.

Cult Speaker Knife:

It is worth mentioning the Cult Speaker Knife here from the White Speaker Promo box.  This is a Dagger/Fist and Tooth weapon (currently the only Fist and Tooth Weapon out there) and as such it's something that you may want to transition towards if you reach the point where you can break out of pure support and start contributing more to the fight. 

The great thing about it is it allows you to train dagger while still benefiting from Fist and Tooth, and it is also a Deadly Dagger - which is highly desirable indeed.  

You can get it by innovating Story Telling and then triggering the White Speaker event.  Just make sure you have the resources available in advance. ^_^

Also training up dagger is normally very unfun in my opinion as the weapon runs counter to the optimal pathway in the game, but the Cult Speaker Knife is powerful enough to make up for it's drawbacks.

It is also STUPIDLY powerful with Rolling Armour and on Wayline Walkers.

Other Support Items:

There are many, many other support items you can run in this build and I will list a few you can consider here.  If you want to know more about a specific item, please just ask in the comments, but keep it too one or two items at the most thanks. :)

Pulse Lantern (Gorm); Bloom Sphere, Crest Crown (Phoenix); Beetle Bomb, DBK Errant Badge, Trash Crown (DBK); Reverberating Lantern, Death Pact (Manhunter), Blue Ring, Green Ring (Spidicules);  Apostle Crown, Sunspot Lantern  (Sunstalker); Necromancer Circlet (Lion God); Scavenger Kit, First Aid Kit (Barber Surgeon) and many, many more besides!

Conclusion:

So I hope this article has given you some food for thought on how to handle a few of the more annoying aspects of the game (being the most experienced player, getting fist and tooth for your settlement) and I hope that this instead gives you some ideas for how to make a survivor build that allows your friends to feel like the badasses and keep coming back for more and more!

Till next time, may your fuzzy groin hits be criticals.