The Masquerade: A Discussion on the Mask Maker and Masks (Patreon)

I thought it would be interesting to write an article discussing the various masks in the game, how to acquire them, their functions, build uses and other interesting things.  Because this is an awkward part of the game to access and a small guide about it seems useful.

The Butcher: Our Invitation to the Ball

Everything starts with this gear card here.  This is the Forsaker Mask, a rare item that can only be gained by beating the Level 3 Butcher.  That's no small feat in itself, but it can be done.

Surprisingly the Mask heads come on the Rawhide Sprue, which is a bit deceptive, because you're not going to ever manage to get the Forsaker mask unlocked in the early game. The Butcher just isn't a high enough level at that point.

So, there are two ways to gain this Mask in the Butcher showdown rewards. The first one is to roll a 10 on the rewards table, which when combined with the +3 bonus you get for beating the L3 Butcher gives you a total of 13.  The only reward result that gives you the mask. 

The more reliable way is to make sure that you have innovated Memento Mori when you beat the L3 Butcher.  You then get the mask on a 2+ (in exchange for a survivor cutting their own face off, which has no in game cost, it's just weird).  Memento Mori is one of those innovations that doesn't do that much by itself, but unlocks a lot of rare events, so bare in mind that it's power is random and hidden when you next have the option to innovate it.

Do not forget the useage of the Heart Flute to get extra rounds with the Butcher if you need them.  Butcher Farming is a very effective way of getting Scrap anyway (choose the L2 Butcher for scrap farming), farming is something I can discuss in the future if you want to read about it.

The Forsaker Mask is really powerful in its own right, gaining an additional activation has a huge amount of uses.  The most ridiculous of these is combining it with Blood Paint and dual one handed weapons (Having the Dragon King's Blast Sword as one of these is really good).  Then you can activate weapons for attacks (or other utility actions such as Block) up to 6 times per round.  You too can become an avatar of The Butcher.

The other option, and the one we're going to explore here, is to trade in the Forsaker Mask and get the Mask Maker Location.  You can then go back out after the Butcher to get your Forsaker Mask again, but be aware - you will not get it via the Memento Mori trigger if that's how you got it the first time.

The Mask Maker: A Random Gift 

There is another way to get access to the masks below, and that is via the Mask Salesman Hunt Event.  This encounter happens on the roll of a 53, but also settlements that choose the Conviction: Romantic Principle (which I do more often than not because of Vagabond Armor), you'll get one of the following six masks at random and you can trade it for either a piece of gear, gear + survival or your name.  

Generally from this event I tend to get offered the Man Mask, which is one of the least interesting masks. Sigh.

Otherwise you craft these masks from the Mask Maker location.  They cost  6 Bone, 4 Organs plus the following extra cost unique to each mask:

Antelope: Pelt

Death: -1 Population

God: Founding Stone

Phoenix: Small Feather

White Lion: Shimmering Mane

Man: Skull

This Masks vary in potency, but they all share a few specific benefits and limitations which I'll discuss before moving onto the individual masks.  

They are all unique and irreplaceable, which means you can only have one in the settlement at a time and if the survivor wearing it dies you'll need to make a new one. 

They are accessories, not armor. So they can be worn by Acanthus Doctors, Leyline Walkers and Vagabond Armor users without ruining their respective builds. 

I'm very disappointed that the three animal specific masks do not have the set + outfit keywords, so they can be combined with their matching armor sets.  But in truth, only the Antelope one has a decent chance of working with it's respective set because the affinities on the Phoenix and White Lion ones are screwy.  The White Lion one can be worked around, but it's tricky and not really worth the effort.

As a quick note; the most useful gear items you can get for activating the various masks are Cycloid Armor and the various Lion God Mehndi.  Cycloid Armor gives you a load of prismatic (R/G/B) affinities and the Lion God Mehndi have very good affinities (including built in ones) and decent abilities.  Otherwise you'll be looking to build in the Charms from the Stone Circle in order to get the few extra activate them.

Hunting Legendaries: 

Three of the masks link to hunting legendary monsters. I'm not going to go into too much detail here except to note that these are difficult fights against the most powerful versions of the core game monsters.  If you want to do this you should note that the White Lion is the "easiest" and the Phoenix is the "hardest".  

The rewards for beating these legendary monsters are pretty sweet, they include Timeless Eye, the Adventure Sword and one of the most fun and overpowered Secret Fighting Arts in the game.

Detailing of the Masks:

Let's now look at each of the individual masks. I'm not going to always provide full build gear grids here, but I will give you some ideas on how to use them. 

Antelope: 

Cost:  6 Bone, 4 Organs, Pelt

Affinities Required: B, B, R, R

Ability: +1 Knight each activation if insane

An extra move is not that useful most of the time, however there is one category of weapon that does appreciate this, and that is cumbersome weapons.  Most Bows are cumbersome, so the Antelope Mask is very useful for them.

Also, the White Lion set's Pounce ability works well with an additional movement, because it will allow you to move and then pounce from the correct distance.  The Screaming Armor 'Slam' ability also requires a movement activation and benefits from you positioning yourself well.

The affinities on this particular mask are easier to reach than many with the right armor and gear.  White Lion Armor gives you 2 Reds and Half a Blue to expand from, Screaming Armor gives you 1 Red and 2 Half Blues and Rawhide (which is great with Bows) gives you a Blue and a Red.

However, you might find that the Lantern Mehndi or Butcher's Blood from the Lion God are required to make the builds work well. Especially the White Lion one.

Highest Synergy with this mask is with the Screaming Antelope Armor.

Rating: 4/5

Death: 

Cost: 6 Bone, 4 Organs, -1 Population

Affinities Required:  You must have no affinities

Ability: +4 Luck, -4 to all severe injury rolls.

This one is very straightforward to take advantage of.  You build something with very high evasion and if you can you also grab a deadly weapon so you crit on a 5+.  

Or you take various items that make it harder for the monster to target you, such as the Bloom Sphere and Bows.

There is also the utterly ridiculous step of combining this mask with the True Blade Secret Fighting Art and Vagabond Armor.  Which means that you'll have a Deadly 3 Weapon with 4 luck.  Meaning that you crit on a 3+. You can even add Blood Paint to that gear grid and dual wield two ridiculous swords.

The Death Mask is a high risk, high reward item that's very easy to make use of.

5/5

God: 

Cost: 6 Bone, 4 Organs,  Founding Stone

 Affinities Required:  2 B, 2 R, 2 G

Ability: +1 Survival at start of act if insane

The Affinity cost alone on this one makes it a highly prohibitive item to utilise.  We're down to builds that use the Death Mehndi (which gives R, G, B affinities) and clever Cycloid Armor grids in order to get it activated.  But once you've done all that, what do you get?  

A good, but pretty generic ability.  For the record, Deathpact, which you get from the Level 4 Manhunter, has the same ability, but has no affinity activation cost required and doesn't need you to be insane.

Honestly I consider this one to be just +2 Armor points to the head.  God, truly is dead in the world of Kingdom Death.

1/5

Phoenix: 

Cost: 6 Bone, 4 Organs,  Small Feather

 Affinities Required:  4 R

Ability:  If Insane you may dodge one additional time per round.

This is a very potent ability, but it's a hard one to unlock.  White Lion Armor comes close to getting this job done if you add in the Cat Fang Knife and/or the Lion God specific WL Armor boosts (Ancient Lion Claws, Golden Plate).

You can even consider sticking the Red Charm into the build and wielding a bone daggers (or two).  It doesn't matter how weak the Bone Daggers are when you have the unstoppable ability from the red charm giving you a 50% chance of wounding regardless of monster toughness.

To be honest, I don't understand why this mask isn't the White Lion one. It has so much synergy with that armor set.

The other way to make use of this is via the Cult Speaker Knife on a Leyline Walker.  You build heavy evasion with just dodges and a shield as protection.

3/5

White Lion: 

Cost: 6 Bone, 4 Organs,  Shimmering Mane

 Affinities Required:  G, G

Ability: If Insane activate to lose all your survival and gain that many +STR Tokens.

So, this one is for combining with the Red Fist Secret Fighting Art.  You don't care about having no survival if you have Red Fist plus tokens.

There are also numerous other things you can do with this, of particular note is stacking up even more +Str via the Acanthus Doctor secret fighting art.  The White Lion Mask combines with the Acanthus Doctor SFA to create a survivor with sky high strength (especially when you add in the Gorm Power Potion that gives you even more +STR tokens).

Without Red Fist, this one is a risky item to use, but works well on a Leyline Walker evasion build (Leyline Walker, Cult Speaker Knife, Shadow Saliva Shawl, Monster Grease + Leather Shield) because having no survival is less of an issue if the monster can only hit you on natural 10s.

The other way to work it is to include activated +Survival gear items like Seasoned Monster Meat (DBK) or items like the Frenzy Drink (White Lion) that disable your ability to use survival anyway.

This is a powerful mask that can become utterly ridiculous with the right gear and SFA in support of it.

4/5 

Man: 

Cost: 6 Bone, 4 Organs,  Skull

 Affinities Required:  G, R

Ability: If insane you may spend negative attribute tokens as survival.

This one is kind of difficult to manipulate.  There are few ways in which you can gain negative tokens.  Most of the time they're gained via Overwhelming Darkness/The Forest Wants What it Wants or hunt events.

It works really well with the Pulse Lantern from the Gorm expansion.

However, it's not that hard to activate this mask, so it's not too bad.  I wouldn't craft this mask at the moment, but I have used it when I've gained it from the Mask Maker.

2/5