Expansion Combinations and Synergy - Part 1: Quarries I (Patreon)

With the second wave, including all the original expansions, coming out soon (well some point in the first half of the year, hopefully). I wanted to give you guys a few thoughts on what expansions work well and how they provide synergy with each other and the campaigns currently available. This is less about, what expansion is best, and more about what expansions work well with what.

I'm also going to provide some notes on the core game monsters here, because in the end it's important to see what synergies with what when you include the core game monsters in the picture.

Gorm:

The Gorm has a high level of synergy with the core game itself, it fills in gaps in the progression of axes, grand weapons, swords, daggers, shields and clubs, while also adding in an armor set that is flexible and takes up only 4 armor slots.

Ultimately the Gorm is an expansion that just fits with almost anything else. But it's highest level of synergy is with the Manhunter expansion. Because of the Manhunter's tendency to deliver damage via reactions and deal direct severe injuries - the Pulse Lantern and Armor spikes are very useful for fighting against it.  Indomitable went a way towards nerfing the Pulse Lantern, but clever surging mitigates a lot of Indomitable's effects anyway so that's not a huge issue.

I also love the acid-tooth daggers, and find that when they are combined with Cycloid Armor from the Sunstalker expansion they become highly effective late game weapons.

The Wisdom Potion also allows you to rely less on the Cat's Eye Circlet, so you can play an alternate campaign style with the Gorm and Spidicules as your two primary quarries.

Good With: White Lion, Antelope, Sunstalker, Manhunter, Flower Knight, Lion God, Lonely Tree, Manhunter

Bad With: Phoenix

Spidicules

The mean spider-ball's highest areas of synergy are with the aforementioned Gorm for a campaign with light White Lion hunting and with the cooking/Vermin monsters (White Lion, Antelope, Phoenix, DBK and Sunstalker).  Outside of cooking, Spidicules has anti-synergy with the White Lion due to duplication of gear (similar Katars, similar Spears etc), and I wish that Spidicules had included more items that were equivalent to White Lion stuff. We could have then had a viable alternative for the White Lion.  

Spidicules also has very high synergy with the Slenderman expansion. The rings from the Spidicules work well in very powerful slenderman builds revolving around the Gloom Hammer and Clarity of Darkness.  The Gloom Hammer is notable because it is the only way available right now to manipulate the Monster controller ordering and the Spidicules rings trigger when you are the monster controller.  So having a Gloom Hammer wielding survivor to the right of someone with a Spidicules ring can result in triggering their ring every single turn.

Good with: Antelope, Slenderman, Sunstalker, Flower Knight

Bad with: White Lion

Flower Knight

Outside of Green Armor, the Flower Knight is mostly an anti-synergy expansion. It destroys bow progression in the game by breaking the power curve with the Vespertine Bow and while it could have created synergy with the Gorm via the Vespertine Cello, it fails to do so because of the Harvester hunt event.  The other gear is either very generic (Flower Knight Badge) or specialist/useless (Satchel/Vespertine Foil).

Most of the workable synergy in the expansion comes from the Secret Fighting Arts.  As is well publicised, the Acanthus Doctor works well with +Evasion stuff that provides green affinities, the Manhunter Tool Belt and rolling armor (DBK).  While, true Blade is very potent with high level swords (Gorm's Black Sword in particular).

Outside of that the Flower Knight's main role is making a campaign easier by providing tonnes of resources, easy population gains and making individual survivors harder to kill via Fencing. So it'll fit in anywhere, as long as you don't mind the way that it removes bow progression.

Good With: Gorm, Sunstalker, Dragon King, White Lion, Phoenix (basically anything that provides arrows. It also has minor synergy with Flower Knight because of the FK's ability to replace population.

Bad With: Nothing really, but it does make the Sunstalker Bows less appealing

White Lion

The White Lion is pretty much an early game monster with very little to provide in the mid to late game (once you have it's support items).  The White Lion armor set is one of the least synergistic in the game due to poor affinity placement and weak late game power.  However, it can work well with certain choice items, such as the Sunshark Bow (Sunstalker) or the Acid-Tooth Daggers (Gorm). Additionally the Ancient Lion Claws,  Golden Plate and Lion God statue from the Lion God expansion are direct upgrades for the White Lion set, adding strength and armor to the set.

For those of you who are curious, here is a picture of the full White Lion + Lion God gear build. 

It's... still got problems.

Also do people want a Lion God guide?

As mentioned in the Spidicules entry, there is some unfortunate semi-duplication of gear that makes it a bit redundant to hunt both in the same campaign. 

Good With: Antelope, Sunstalker, Gorm, Flower Knight, Lion God

Bad With: Spidicules

Screaming Antelope

The Danger Deer has such a high level of synergy that it's pretty hard to list everything. The armor set has a clear link with Spears, but it's also really good with just about everything that wants lots of affinities.  On top of that you have Blood Paint, that makes all one handed weapons so much better and the entire barber surgeon location requires the Antelope in order to be able to build it.

If there is any monster could be considered key to the game and currently irreplaceable. It's the Antelope.

Good with: Everything

Bad with: Nothing

Next time we'll look at the higher level monsters, then the nemesis monsters and finally we'll roll everything together with some sample monster combinations for campaigns.