Expansion Combinations and Synergy - Part 2 Quarries II (Patreon)

Flower Knight:

Sooooo, the Flower Knight is a bit of an awkward expansion to consider synergies on.  It's essentially a Vespertine Bow expansion with a few other bits and pieces that are alternately quite powerful or very useless.

The issue with the Vespertine Bow is it destroys bow progression in the game. There is little reason to create the other bows because the Vespertine is powerful enough that it makes the Arc Bow look underwhelming and the Ink Blood Bow too much work.  So the Vespertine holds anti-synergy with the other mid to late game bow monsters.

However, the Vespertine obviously has synergy with stuff that supports ranged attacks. Quivers, Arrows and as I wrote in a previous article, the Gorment suit.

The rest of the stuff is pretty low on synergy, there are some resources which are good to take out with the Satchel, but most of the time they're used in the Acanthus Doctor builds.

Speaking of which, as per my Acanthus Doctor article, FK works well with DBK.

Good with: Sunstalker, DBK, Gorm, Dragon King, Phoenix, Manhunter

Bad with: Sunstalker, Phoenix

Phoenix:

Prize for the least synergist monster in the game goes to the Phoenix by a long margin. The main issue(s) are that honestly most of the Phoenix gear is... bad.  The armor set has a few good elements to it (+evasion, ignore hits) but it's very anti-synergistic due to the really poor affinities.

There are some specific builds where the Phoenix stuff can be used, and the three Lion Knight hybrid sets are (of course) very closely tied to the core game monsters (as is the Slenderman), but overall the Phoenix sort of.. well it's a failure in design.

I am at the point that I consider the Phoenix to be an entirely optional hunt, one that's not worth the risk/reward ratio and as a consequence I tend to save hunting Phoenixes for New Game+ and an L3 to make the Crest Crown.

Outside of that, there are some fun Screaming Armor/Phoenix based Weapon Crafter combos that work well (Spears and the Screaming Rainbow) but to be honest, it's just not worth the hassle.  Which sucks cause the Phoenix should be an iconic monster, but I am not impressed with it. (Side note: The Phoenix gear has been the focus of so many community edition discussions, there are very few pieces we haven't looked at for improvements).

Good with: Antelope (core game only), Sunstalker (ish), Lion Knight, Slenderman, Spidicules

Bad with: Most things.. sigh

Dragon King:

The DK is an odd one, in many aspects its gear suffers from the same weakened power level that the Phoenix gear has. Many of the weapons are low in strength and lack punch, especially when you consider that they should be between the Weapon Crafter and Blacksmith in power, but often end up behind the Weapon Crafter Gear.

The Shielded Quiver is great for archers and the armor set is actually pretty damn good. But in order to get the showcase items (Nuclear) online you end up having to sacrifice so much of your grid to pure DK items.  So it's hard to really find that many other monsters the DK stuff combines with.  Both Cycloid and Screaming Armor sit well together with the nuclear weapons, but on the whole the DK expansion is one that sort of lacks good synergies.

Good with: Sunstalker, Screaming Antelope

Bad with: None, it's just sort of, slightly below average

Dung Beetle Knight:

The Dung Beetle Knight is just one of the king expansions, there's many reasons why it's touted along with the Gorm and Sunstalker as being one of the three best expansions in the game.  

You've already seen this expansion being mentioned over and over and there are good reasons for that. Rolling Armor has masses of synergies because it doesn't take up slots in your armor you can add whatever pieces you want to it in order to do cool things.  Cycloid Sleeves and Jacket, Phoenix Placart, Rawhide Headband, Lantern Gauntlets etc etc.  It's literally build your own armor set!

On top of that, calcification improves the Zanbato, the Trash Crown dumpsters the King's Man, Digging Claws are amazing and there are of course the extra tactics cards, the badge and so on.  

I can't sing enough praises for this expansion.

Good with: EVERYTHING!

Bad with: THIS SHOULD JUST BE THE 4TH CORE MONSTER

Sunstalker:

Well, to be honest, there's another monster that should have been shipped with the core game, and that's the Sunstalker.  Alongside the DBK this is the most synergistic expansion there is, as the Sunstalker features dozens and dozens of different combinations.  There are a number of excellent weapons, for example a late game axe for use with the Warlord Armor and my two favourite bows in the game.  

But the jewel of the set is the Cycloid Scale Armor.  This set can take a lot of time to construct because of how resource intensive it is,  however once you have it you are able to make use of a whole bunch of really borderline weapons amazing because they gain Sharp.  There's a host of unusual and interesting weapons that just lack the strength to be usable and Cycloid Scale Armor can give those weapons that extra oomph to allow you to get the job done.

Good with: Everything.

Bad with: Salt.

Lion God:

This monster is essentially expands on the White Lion armor set with a few extra pieces that sort of work and patch some of the issues in the WL Armor. 

Overall the Lion God is a gear light expansion, so there's not that much in the way of synergies. It's worth thinking of this as a prestige monster, something to hit to gain Iron and cool stuff that might be useful.

The Lion God is a bit weak to Katars, so the DBK and Lion Knight Katars are pretty good.

Good with: White Lion, DBK, Lion Knight

Bad with: Nothing

So, there we are, some more words which round out the Quarries.  For the sake of completeness I'm going to do a short piece on each of the 'non-campaign specific' Nemesis monsters (Butcher, Hand, King's Man, Manhunter, Slenderman, Tree and Lion Knight) and then end with some of my favourite campaign combinations.

Good hunting!