Kingdom Death: Weapon Types - Part 2 (Patreon)

This is the continuation of the article I wrote previously exploring the different weapon types in the game with the aim discussing a few key points, highlighting how to get good use of the different weapon types and hopefully giving you some assistance in using the rarer types in game.

The remaining eight types of weapon are from a wide range of power levels, some of them lack the weapons to support their power, others are just flawed from the start and some of them are downright amazing.

We shall begin with one from the first category the...

8. Whip

Surprisingly Whip Specialisation/Mastery is a lot better than you'd expect considering how rarely people use whips in this game.  The Specialisation is genuinely a very powerful tool, it allows you to remove the top card of the AI Discard Pile as a wound instead of the top card of the AI deck.  That's a massively potent piece of AI manipulation and can allow you to 'prune' a monster down to a less aggressive version of itself by the time you are on the second cycle of the AI Deck.  

On the other hand, Whip Mastery is very lacklustre, it provides +5 Strength to all Whips used.  This is a useful ability because it makes Whips viable in the late game, but it's just not good enough because if you lose your Whip Master then you're back to square one and unable to easily train up a new Whip Master because of the difficulties in scoring wounds.

Whips on the whole have awful statlines.  There are a total of 4 Whips in the game right now and as such it's worth looking at each one separately:

The first Whip is the Rawhide Whip, this has the same statline as the terrible bone dagger (3/7+/1) and is a liability in the early game.  However, it does have a very powerful ability, you gain the Priority token when you wound with the whip.  Having the Priority token each turn on your tank can really bring certain early game monsters under control, especially if you stack evasion onto that tank (Grease, Rawhide, Survival of the Fittest + Tall Grass).  The only issue is that strength, you need a lot of extra strength in order to be able to score wounds in a regular fashion (wounding a Level 1 monster on a 7+ with a three speed weapon is not good enough).  In addition, you need ammonia to build this, which means it's not a true early game option.

Next up is the Hunter Whip from the Leather Worker, this one is a bit more respectable with the statline of 3/6+/3 and a decent passive ability (2B Puzzle - on a perfect hit discard one mood card in play).  I'm of the opinion that this Whip should be used more often, it has almost the right statline for the part of the game you would use it in and really the only true problem I have with it is that it's a little tricky to activate the ability on because of the rarity of Down Blue affinities.

The last of the core game whips is where it falls apart.  The Ring Whip is nearly a well designed piece of kit. Nearly.  It has the statline of 2/5+/0 with Reach 2 and Sharp.  But it has the early Iron drawback which means that 19% of the time you are going to miss with all your attacks, always.  I think the Reach 2 on the Ring Whip is a good piece of design, all whips should have Reach 2.  It makes sense and gives them their own space to exist in the game.  However the 0 Strength + Early Iron makes this an unreliable weapon, perhaps the most unreliable weapon in the game.  You're going to miss all your attacks a lot of the time and even when you do hit you have no idea what your baseline strength is going to be. By the time you have the Ring Whip monsters will tend to have 12+ toughness, so the Ring Whip isn't going to cut it.   (As per most Early Iron weapons, the Rainbow Wing Belt from the Dung Beetle Knight expansion will fix a lot of problems and let you use Early Iron stuff effectively, however it doesn't overcome the 0 Strength/Sharp issue).

The final Whip is the best designed of the bunch, it's from the Spidicules expansion and it is the Silk Whip, it's statline is 2/6+/3 which is perfect for a weapon that you can potentially craft in lantern year 2 and it has the same ability as the Hunter's Whip, but the affinity layout is better.  

So the sad truth of the life as a Whip user is the Silk Whip/Hunter's Whip are the only weapons worth using and in order to be able to carry them to the late game you need to find ways to boost the strength of these weapons.  The single best tool for doing this (outside of being an Acanthus Doctor) is Cycloid Armor (Sunstalker), this gives you Sharp when you attack from the Blind Spot.

Therefore, the best Whip Users in the game are either, Cycloid Armor + Silk Whip/Hunter's Whip or Ring Whip + Rolling Armor and there are literally no other decent options for builds available right now.  That's an awful place for the weapon type to be in and I suspect that the 1.5 Changes are not going to be enough to make Whips desirable.

Best Whips: Rawhide Whip, Hunter's Whip, Silk Whip

Best Expansions: Spidicules, Sunstalker, Dung Beetle Knight

Best Armour: Rawhide, Cycloid Armor, Rolling Armor

9. Dagger

Daggers essentially have the same issues as Whips.  Daggers have a solid Specialisation (Discard a Hit Location from an attack to reroll a wound attempt that has failed) which supports the design of rolling lots of dice to attack with and pruning away the less desirable hit locations. The Mastery is also interesting because it gives you the capability to 'piggy back' off other people's wound attempts and get a second go at scoring the rewards from a good Hit Location card.

However, Daggers are almost universally garbage town.  The Bone Dagger is so bad that it will actually increase the chances of party wipes in the early game, this is because the statline of 3/7+/1 is so poor that it will cause a lot of hit locations to be discarded without wounds occurring and hasten the arrival of the trap.  Unlike items such as the Knuckle Shield, which have benefits to outweigh this risk, the Bone Dagger is just terrible.  It doesn't even have something like Deadly to bring its upside up a bit more.  Personally, I think that the Bone Dagger should have been (3/8+/2 + Deadly) which would have made it at least a little bit unusual and desirable.

I'm not going to go into detail about the daggers which I consider to be currently worthless, these include the Scrap Dagger and the Lantern Daggers.  They have the same problems as the Bone Dagger.

However there are two Daggers worth mentioning, the Acid-Tooth Dagger from the Gorm is one of the few paired weapons I consider good enough to use in paired.  This is because the triggered ability on the Acid-Tooth Daggers gives you automatic wounds on perfect hits.  That's an amazing ability and makes additional speed worth having.

The other really potent dagger is the Cult Speaker Knife from the White Speaker Promo Box and it is the premium choice for all dagger users however, as it is an incredibly powerful item that will allow you to pursue Dagger Mastery and be an effective combatant.   If you want to play with daggers you NEED the White speaker 'White Box', there's really no other late game option that is worth using.

Once again, just like Whips, Cycloid Armor is your friend if you really, really want to make good use of Daggers, getting Sharp onto Acid-Tooth/Scrap/Nuclear Daggers goes a long way towards making them powerful in the late game.  However you can also get a lot of mileage out of the Lion God's Ancient Lion Claws which will give you a boost to strength, especially when combined with White Lion Armor (that's not something you'll see me write/say often :D)

Overall Daggers have potential, but they are not the kind of thing you can push into without a lot of planning and support.

Best Daggers: Acid-Tooth Dagger, Cult Speaker Knife

Best Expansions: Gorm, Sunstalker, Lion God

Best Armor: Cycloid Armor, White Lion Armor + Lion God's Ancient Lion Claws (basically anything that gives you extra strength/sharp).

10. Twilight Sword

The Twilight Sword is the People of the Lantern specific weapon and in all honesty it's a very un-fun part of the campaign.  I'll probably write a full separate article in the future that covers why I'm not a huge fan of it and goes into how to metagame the Twilight Sword to be as effective as possible without disrupting the flow of your campaign too much.

Ultimately the issue with this weapon is the way that the Mastery removes your survivor from the settlement and the fact that this is a silver bullet for a monster who does not need it (The Watcher).

There's not much need to discuss the weapon itself, it's a solid weapon that becomes better and better - peaking at Rank 6.  And in the early game it's best wielded by a White Lion Armor user who can get around the cumbersome rule by pouncing.

11. Katana

Katana Mastery is the People of the Sun showcase weapon; however you can also trigger it in normal campaigns by beating the Level 3 Sunstalker (Which is probably the easiest of the Level 3 "Phoenix Tier" monsters).  It's really just a case of style over substance.  You get a solid ability when you get to 4+ levels in Katana Mastery that combos well with Timeless Eye.  But just like the Twilight Sword, completing mastery of the Katana will remove your survivor from the settlement, which mechanically is not a very desirable thing.  Though it is very cool from a story point.

Katanas themselves are a very, variable, weapon type.  The best one of the limited bunch is the Rainbow Katana from the Weapon Crafter/Phoenix and that's probably the blade you should go for if you want to pursue Katanas.  Just make sure you also build the sheath as well in order to get access to block 1 and protect the blade from breakage.

Armor-wise the Katana pretty much fits with anything you want to combine it with and because the Blood Sheath gives the Katana Sharp you do not need to rely on Cycloid Armor to carry the Katana into the late game.

The Gloom Katana from the Slenderman is OK, but not anywhere near as good as the Rainbow Katana.

12. Thrown

Poor Thrown Weapons, Poots has (to date) adamantly refused to give Thrown Weapons a mastery.  In my opinion this sucks, thrown weapons are fun, they're cool and the few that we have are pretty darn excellent.  

Bone Darts are probably the best of the Bone weapons in the game, they are an essential purchase for a starting hunt party because they provide a high strength weapon with range that stops the White Lion's 'Ground Fighting' ability from utterly crushing a newbie group of hunters.  Many a campaign has experienced a total party kill in lantern year 2 because they neglected crafting one set of bone darts in order to handle that mood card.

The other thrown weapons are scattered through the various expansions, we have the Dragon Chakram (2/6+/3) for those of us who want to be Xena; Spidicules gives us the Throwing Knife (4/9+/2) and the Sunstalker has the amazing Sunspot Darts (4/7+/3 - Deadly).

Right now there's just no support for building a Thrown Weapon character because of the lack of mastery, the only current Weapon Mastery that supports thrown weapons is Fist and Tooth Mastery. So that's probably the Mastery you'd marry with Thrown Weapons right now.

Best Weapons: Bone Darts, Sunspot Darts, Dragon Chakram

Best Expansion: Sunstalker, Dragon King

Best Armor Sets: As always; Cycloid

14. Tools

Technically not a weapon, tools become one when you defeat the level 3 Manhunter.  The Toolbelt from the Manhunter is an amazingly powerful weapon that will turn a pickaxe from being a tool that you don't really want to swing with into a powerhouse "weapon" that will help you beat the Level 3 Dung Beetle Knight.

The Acanthus Doctor Tool Build is one of the most overpowered evasion DPS characters in the game and is only held back by the lack of a Tool weapon mastery.

I will write more about this in the coming weeks with a short build guide on the Acanthus Doctor Tool Build - how to optimise getting it etc etc.  But for now let's just say that the Toolbelt is a game changer.

Best Tools: Toolbelt, Pickaxe

Best Expansions: Manhunter, Sunstalker, Dung Beetle Knight

Best Armor Sets: Nude with Toolbelt + Shadow Saliva Shawl or Rolling Armor + Toolbelt + Shadow Saliva Shawl

 

Defensive:

There are only three weapon masteries I would class as 'defensive' at the moment, and they are amongst the top 5 masteries in the game.  These three each have specialisations that provide so much power and utility to a settlement that it is worth trying to master at least two of them as soon as possible and getting the third one done shortly afterwards.

1. Shield

Shield Specialisation takes one of the most efficient ways of gaining armor points (AP); The Leather Shield, which is 5 AP for 3 resources, and doubles the amount of AP it provides.  That's the equivalent armour you get from full Rawhide in a single item, plus it has Block 1.  

On top of that shield users are no longer knocked down by collisions with monsters, which is a damn useful thing to have until you get Fist and Tooth online (and still somewhat useful after that).  The Mastery is an insanely good way of protecting glass cannon characters.  Effectively you can have a naked Death Mask/Ink Sword DPS character sat next to your Shield Master and they will never get targetted - which makes them immune to most non-AOE style attacks.  Combined with stuff like Beacon Shields, Blood Paint (so you can attack and Block) and so on you can increase the speed at which you kill monsters massively.  

The main trick with that is to essentially build a character who can tank hits (Phoenix Placard + Rolling Armor is one such route) and has zero offensive capability apart from a Beacon Shield/Fetosaurus.  Then your DPS character rocks Blood Paint with 2 high damage/crit one handed weapons.  With the right weapons you will mince up most of the strongest monsters in the game quickly.

Best Shields: Knuckle Shield, Leather Shield, Beacon Shield, Blast Shield,  Fetosaurus, Grinning Visage

Best Expansions: Gorm, Green Knight (FK + Gorm + DBK is all you need)

Best Armor Sets: Cycloid, Gorment, Leather, Rolling Armor

2. Fist and Tooth

Fist and Tooth is intensely desirable because of its specialisation, Mastery of this allows everyone in the settlement to stand up either at the start of the monster's turn or the start of the survivors turn.  Which turns all collisions and bash into beneficial results because you can choose to stay on the floor and not be a threat for a turn without losing the opportunity to attack the following survivor round (do not do this vs the King's Man).

The Mastery is just a straight set of stat boosts, so I do recommend that any survivor who completes their first mastery should then work on fist and tooth for their second master, Ageless and Storm survivors can achieve this quite often (especially Storms).

There is only one Fist and Tooth weapon at the moment, it's the Cult Speaker Dagger and it's amazing.  But you can also improve your fist and tooth ability via Acid Palms and Cycloid Armor.  The latter comes from the Sunstalker, but the former can be gained either by chance when hunting a level 2 Gorm or one survivor will gain the ability when the Dragon King first turns up at the cost of losing one gear slot to the Husk of Destiny.  

There's not that much more to say, you only have two fist and tooth weapons in the game and outside of Cycloid Armor/Acid Palms the only way to improve your training of Fist and Tooth is via Luck (Luck Charm, Graves) and a few Fighting Arts such as Monster Claw Style.

Best Fist & Tooth: Cult Speaker Dagger

Best Expansions: Dragon King, Gorm

Best Armor Sets: Cycloid, Brawler

3. Spear

Spear is the most unique and powerful of all the masteries in the game, it is one of only 2 ways to cancel the trap alongside the blue charm and it is one of the reason why you build a King's Spear as soon as possible and max the mastery out as a priority.  

Spears are almost always very powerful weapons in their own right, they have at least Reach 2 and tend to have 2 Speed plus good accuracy and strength.  In addition they have massive synergy with the best monster armour currently in the game (1.5 Screaming Armor) and a good Spear Gear set will carry you through the entire game from start to finish.  Being able to set up one survivor with all the stuff they need so quickly is a huge benefit for the rest of the party because suddenly you're just splitting all your resources between three survivors because the fourth has all they need to complete the campaign apart from the occasional upgrade to their shield and weapon.

Spear Mastery is also one of the most effective ways of controlling troublesome monsters who like to target anything other than your evasion tank.  You can line up behind the tank and for the cost of 1 survival you're able to give them the priority token turn after turn after turn.  It's amazingly good.

I adore Spear Mastery due to its unique specialisation, the overall power level of spears in general and the fact that there are spear/axe hybrid weapons. Which are insane in the late game in the hands of an Axe Master.

Best Spears: King's Spear, Amber Edge, Finger of God, Sky Harpoon, Lantern Glaive

Best Expansions: Sunstalker

Best Armor Sets: Screaming Armor

So there we are, that's my general thoughts on each of the types of weapons we currently have along with some ideas towards builds and how to make use of some of the less powerful weapon types out there.

If you have any questions, please ask.  In addition I might start opening up a 'build doctor' thing where I take on Patreon's suggestions for how to focus a campaign around a particular weapon/weapon type and provide a strategy guide for getting there.  It depends on interest. :D

Next time.  Level 3 Dung Beetle Knights and how to neuter them.