Top Offensive Gear Items in the Core Game and Gen 1 Expansions: Part 4 (Patreon)

Lantern Glaive - Blacksmith

The Lantern Glaive is honestly the single best Blacksmith weapon apart from the Beacon Shield.  Things may change in 1.5, but currently Early Iron is a crippling drawback to have on a weapon.  The maths on it are horrific, look at these chances at missing when you put Early Iron on a weapon.

1 Dice: 10%

2 Dice: 19%

3 Dice: 28%

And it gets worse and worse the higher your speed is.  

However, the Lantern Glaive is good enough that the 19% chance of missing each time is an acceptable drawback (and we can virtually eliminate it with one expansion item).  This is because the Lantern Glaive is a 2 Handed Spear/Axe weapon with Sharp.  It's full profile is (2/6+/4/Reach 2/Sharp/Early Iron) and the combination of Spear + Axe is amazing on a weapon.  

Axe Mastery can be one of the safest weapons to attack with in the game if you are clever and use good Hit Location manipulation you will tear a monster to pieces and cripple it's offense throughout the fight (though remember, each permanent injury makes the trap happen more often - that's why Spear is an amazing second weapon type here).  

I love having Spear Mastery in the settlement with an Axe Master who has a Lantern Glaive. They are an absolute powerhouse.

As for mitigating the drawback on this weapon.  If you equip a Rainbow Wing Belt (DBK Expansion) and activate it (which is actually very easy), then each dice drops to a 1% chance of rolling a 1.  Which means that you only have a 1.9% chance that Early Iron triggers (assuming no extra speed) and you will rarely miss.

Nuclear Scythe – Dragon King

OK, so to be honest, the main reason that the Nuclear Scythe makes it on the list is because of the weapon mastery.  The specialisation ability is solid, but the Mastery is incredible, it gives you a free surge to attack with a scythe every turn.

However, there is no way that the Nuclear Scythe can sit much higher in the list than here.  This is because it's got an absolutely garbage statline considering how hard it is to make (2/6+/4/Reach 2) and its activated ability is so bad that it honestly makes it not worth using.  Scythes work best when you are insane, the 'edge ignites' ability of the scythe causes 3 brain damage just to get Devastating: 1 - Zanbatos are better than that. 

However, in the hands of a Cyclopian Armoured survivor (Sunstalker Armor saves the day again) you can get Sharp and extra accuracy for your scythe and that makes it good enough for the mid to late game.  This means you don't need to make a super strong survivor just to get milage out of the Nuclear Scythe.

So my main recommendation if you are hunting the Dragon King and want to play with Scythes you should also include the Sunstalker as a quarry.

The next two weapons are ones that frankly I think people need to talk about more.  The issue here is that the Vespertine Bow is just too damn good and it overshadows these two wonderful items.  So here I'm going to give them their time in the sun.

Sunshark Bow - Sunstalker

The Sunshark Bow is one of my favourite items in the game because of the unusual design and utility.  It's a (3/6+/0/Range 1/Sharp) bow that becomes a (1/6+/4/Range 1/Sharp) bow when you activate it's affinity ability (RR + Puzzle R).  It's also both a Melee item and a Ranged one (which is mostly a drawback, but it's an oddity you should remember).

However, it's expensive to make, requiring 2 Huge Sunteeth, an Organ, a Sunshark Bone and a Salt.  The Salt is no real thing, you can easily get 2 Salt every Sunstalker fight, but that's still 4 resources and three of them are monster specific.  So I can see why people don't build it too often, you need to aim to build it.

But, the Sunshark Bow is just an amazing item and it's one of my favourite bows out there, I sometimes get tired with fighting at long range and the Sunshark Bow lets an archer get in close and mix it up with the best of them.

Arc Bow – Phoenix

I'm pretty lukewarm on the Phoenix as a quarry overall.  I think most of it's gear is either redundant, situational or just not good enough.  However the Arc Bow is a phenomenal piece of kit - it's one of the best weapons in the core game - packing an amazing statline of (1/6+/9/Range 6/Slow/Cumbersome) with an affinity ability that gives it Range 8.

That's kind of it, it's sort of a 'no frills' item really, but sometimes no frills, just stats, is what you need.  About the only negatives are that you have to hunt the Phoenix to make it, it requires a wishbone and phoenix whisker (plus 1 scrap) and that it's Cumbersome - but we all know that Cumbersome on a Range weapon is utterly meaningless in KD:M, anyone who tries to claim otherwise is just kidding themselves.

Amber Edge - Spidicules

The Amber Edge is one heck of a unique weapon. It's overpowered as heck in the early game with it's (1/6+/4/Slow) weapon, which is an amazing statline for LY2 and the cost is just 1 bone, 1 Organ and 1 Chitin.  So it has a low monster resource requirement. 

On top of that,  it has a crazy triggered ability, if you wound the monster with your attack you get to immediately make another one. No limit to the number of times you can do this in a round.  It's insane.

The weapon does have a drawback however, it's a Scimitar, which is a weapon type we do not have a proficiency for (yet) and it also doesn't have deadly.  So, using the Scimitar means you will not build up your proficiency and in the early game you will not contribute to generating resources via critical hits (in fact you will do the opposite because you will be dealing so much damage to the monsters in proportion to everyone else).  

This issue is mitigated by building the Rawhide/Luck Charm/Fecal Salve* build and training fist and tooth on this survivor.  It's a damn effective build, you get to punch the heck out of the monster and crit on an 8+ and when you need to kill the monster quickly because of attrition/bad luck you can carve them up with the Scimitar.

(*Fecal Salve can be any left or right facing blue affinity item)