Acanthus Doctors - Discussion and Builds for one of the easiest "Overpowered" characters in the game (Patreon)

There is an image that often gets thrown about when people talk about the most overpowered build in the game.  It's this image:

This is the stereotypical Acanthus Doctor build that people like to talk about as being "Overpowered" and "Broken".  Today we're going to look at this secret fighting art, discuss what makes it so strong, why it's powerful but also why this image above is a poor build.

Acquiring the Doctor

It's relatively simple to get an Acanthus Doctor, 4 years after triggering construction of a Vespertine Bow an event called Necrotic Mistletoe will trigger.  This event will make you roll on a table and if you happen to roll high and also have the Sculpture innovation then you will gain an Acanthus Doctor.  The cost of this event is population, which is a replaceable resource, and the event can be triggered multiple times during the settlement's timeline.

In addition to all of this, because you are playing with Sense Memory, there is no reason why every single Acanthus Doctor shouldn't have Otherworldly Luck, you've invested a lot in getting this character, protect them from random Hunt Event/Settlement Event nonsense!

Red Fist

It is worth mentioning the Secret Fighting Art 'Red Fist' here because it has massive synergy with all the +STR tokens that an Acanthus Doctor gains.  In addition Red Fist is a relatively common SFA in most campaigns.  So try to keep your Red Fist survivor protected for a while and saved until it's time to use him to hunt with the Acanthus Doctors in tow.

Green Saviours

In 1.31 you could have ageless Green Saviours as Acanthus Doctors, these were very powerful and frankly completely excess to the needs of the campaign. In addition I actually quite like having access to 'other' items on Acanthus Doctors, in particular the Gloom Salve from the Slenderman expansion is super useful - Saviours not being allowed items with the 'other' tag is actually quite a drawback imo.

In 1.5 saviors have been changed, so we're going to see a higher reliance on Acanthus Doctors by players who are struggling to assemble the more difficult power builds.  Basically, expect people to start going on about Acanthus Doctors and be ready to educate them on why the build they have linked is not very good!

Layline Walkers

Acanthus Doctors do not wear armor, therefore the layline walker ability is an ideal fit for them. However you do not have that much control over making it happen.

Why the Top Pictured Build Should be Retired

It has so many sub-optimal gear items in the grid, just because you are allowed 3 satchels in the grid doesn't mean you should have 3 of them.  The Satchels do not provide that much potency because typically a settlement just does not have 3 fresh acanthus sitting around after a hunt, it's normally best served turned into Dried Acanthus.  Also, if you go the Flower route, you lose out on the amazing speed that Fresh Acanthus can be used through its natural resource ability.  So it's a huge balancing act that is only solved either by heavy Antelope or Flower Knight farming.  

In addition, the best acanthus gatherers are actually Screaming Armor survivors so in order to use three satchels you need to devote 2 characters to the job of setting up and replenishing supplies.  

3 Satchels seems super cool, all those extra affinities and slots for acanthus/flowers but in practice 1 or 2 satchels is optimal.

The Green Charm is marginal piece of gear, I know that the ability to cheat death (plus 1 armor) seems very powerful, but that is a random chance ability being used to avoid the worse case scenario.  It's better to use other items to avoid dying in the first place if you can.  I'm not saying that the Green Charm is useless, it's more that there are better options and if you can get them, you should.

Last of all, we have the Sickle.  The straight up truth is that the Sickle is not as powerful as the Pickaxe when you have the Dung Beetle Knight in the campaign (which this build does).  Stick with the Pickaxe and put the Sickle on a Screaming Armor survivor instead.

With all of that written, let's get onto some builds!

The Heavy Doctor

Expansions: Flower Knight, Manhunter, Dung Beetle Knight

This is one of the optimal versions of the build above, it is designed to require the Manhunter, Flower Knight and Dung Beetle Knight expansions plus the core game.

Armor: 12 on all locations

Strength Tokens: 6

Evasion: +5 and 30% chance of ignoring one hit per attack.

Utility: Survival Gain, Fresh Acanthus, Pickaxe, Resistance to negative tokens and gaining a resource of choice after a fight.

Drawbacks: -1 Movement, Pickaxe can break on Mineral Gathering (1.5)

Required locations: Bone Smith, Organ Grinder, Wet Resin Crafter, Barber Surgeon

First of all, it's worth noting that the non-calcified versions of the Carapace bits are absolutely fine and you will use them at the earlier parts of the game.  

Overall this build is solid as heck, it does exactly what the top build does, but it's better at it.  

Spit Doctor

Expansions: Flower Knight, Sunstalker, Gorm, Manhunter

If we change up the expansions in the campaign we can get another build that is in my opinion the better version of the Tool based build.

Armor:  7 in all locations with 9 in arms and body and the ability to gain 3 armor on all locations when targeted while monster controller 

Strength Tokens: 7 doubling to 14

Evasion: +6

Utility: Mineral Gathering, HL Shuffling, self heal, bandages, dark spot for Ink Sword

Drawbacks: None

Required locations: Bone Smith, 

Flex Spots: Crest Crown, Bone Pickaxe (can be Sickle)

The core of this build is the interactions between the Toolbelt, the Tools and the Shadow Saliva Shawl.  Normally the Shawl reduces your speed on your weapon to 1, however tools are not weapons, they do not have the weapon keyword.  As such you are able to swing at speed with an incredible weapon.

Additionally as you can see there are a lot of flex spots in this build, we can easily add in plates from the Dung Beetle Knight 

There is a better version of this build, but it's for non-Acanthus Doctors. I'll talk about it one day in the future.

However, with these builds we are straight up limiting ourselves too much.  There are two other areas we should consider when building the Acanthus Doctor.  The first is using actual proper weapons and the second is using Rolling Armor.

Doctors keep Rolling

Expansions: Flower Knight, Dung Beetle Knight

Rolling Armor is unique in the world of Kingdom Death because it does not have the armor keyword. This means it can be worn by layline walkers and Acanthus Doctors without disabling their abilities.  The additional utility that is gained from Rolling Armor is so powerful that it's actually stronger than the generic +strength +armor that the Acanthus Doctor SFA gives.  In addition you're not just building a lot of stuff that's useless when your Doctor dies or retires, you're building what is easily the best Tank Armor in the game.

Armor: 11 with 13 on body and 30% chance of ignoring one hit per attack

Strength Tokens: 4

Evasion: +5

Utility: Resistance to negative tokens, Pickaxe

Drawbacks:  Limited Support utility, pure DPS

Required locations: Bone Smith, Wet Resin Crafter, Gormery

Flex Spots: Any apart from the armor

Of course, this kind of build isn't getting close to what we could be doing with the rolling armor variants of Acanthus Doctors, we can get away from the trap/lure of having the Tool Belt and suddenly we're in a world of real powerhouse builds.  (Also Cycloid armor survivors are better with the Tool Belt than Acanthus ones, so we're freeing up the Tool Belt to go on a more deserving survivor this way).

Let's see one, which should give you ideas for the routes you'll take in the future.

Armor:  12 on all locations (8 without calcification)

Strength Tokens: 3 (4 when survival hits 0)

Evasion: +2 and Ripple Pattern

Utility: Reroll attacks that are 1s, Block 1, Satchel, lowered Knockback distance and no colliding with other survivors.

Drawbacks: Doesn't look as flashy on first inspection

Required locations: Dragon King, Dung Beetle Knight, Phoenix

Flex Spots: Weapon (Perfect Slayer would be amazing here), Feather Mantle, Satchel

We can go further than that by including a Beacon Shield and that is more like it, it is what people should be looking to build with their Acanthus Doctors, take advantage of the combination of Rolling Armor, Shields, good weapons and build proper tanks, not these DPS Doctors who are awful tanks.  These are real builds, ones that have power, utility and presence by filling a role that's just not middling DPS that is created when you have lots of +STR and Armor.  Armour doesn't help you beat high level monsters, it's evasion and block/deflect/cancellation that does and that's the kind of thing I want to see people doing with Acanthus Doctors in the future, not the build at the head of this post!

So next time someone posts that awful thing, tell them to use their imagination and make something better.