Expansion Combinations and Synergy - Part 5: Campaigns (Patreon)

Onto the campaign specific combinations I'm going to tackle People of the Sun and People of the Stars first because they have campaigns with very specific goals/objectives that can stop you reaching the end of the campaign.  In contrast People of the Lantern's goal is essentially; survive to the end and beat the final nemesis.

People of the Sun

Sun has two failure states built into it; lose to the final nemesis or lose to any nemesis monster along the way.  Additionally it has a limitation on the gear you can use.  You cannot wear any heavy gear.  Now 'wearing' vs. 'carrying' is something that KD:Monster has failed to be clear at distinguishing in the rules.  However it seems that the only items classed as being 'worn' are those with the keyword 'armor' and everything else is carried. (I have not considered the following Fighting art, so bare in mind the fact that you can actually wear Heavy Armor by getting this SFA through the Sun Sealing that requires the Sauna).

This means that for me, heavy weapons and Rolling Armor are allowable in this campaign.  My assessments on what is good are based on this assumption.  (I did directly ask the team to clarify the carried/worn terminology during the 1.5 typo/rules clarification portion, but nothing happened.)

As such the best expansions for use in this campaign are:

Dragon King

It has the toughest non-heavy iron based armor and despite being not that great it is still better than the Phoenix choices. Additionally it provides some neat weapons and it's very, very good when used by Warriors of the Sun.

Dung Beetle Knight

Not only is the rolling armor amazing, but the Dung Beetle Knight is good even if you do not plan to make that armor set because of the Digging Claws, Trash Crown, Beetle Bomb, Calcified Zanbato and Calcified Juggernaut Blade.  

Spidicules

Yup, a rare recommendation from me here, despite the armor set being flammable and Spidicules being an annoying pain in the ass to deal with; I can recommend Spidicules in People of the Sun because of the rings and the Silk Body Suit.  It also provides a lot of early game content you can work on when you are bored with the low level White Lion/Antelope/Phoenixes but you still need to bridge the game before tackling the L3s.

Gorm

You can't wear the armor, but the weapons and the support items (potions, lantern) in the Gorm expansion add a lot of variety to the game. So you could consider the Gorm to be something you hunt for specific weapons and support items while developing your rawhide and leather armor sets.

Lion God

People of the Sun is one of the campaigns where the survivor power level gets high enough that they can tackle the Lion God with (relative) ease.  Additionally the various Mehndi from the Lion God's Sinkhole are just amazing on Warriors of the Sun.

With such a high emphasis on the core game quarries in this campaign, I would only recommend adding two monsters at most.  You absolutely need to try and schedule in beating 2x L3 White Lion, 1x L3 Screaming Antelope and 1x L3 Phoenix. So there's not a lot of time for the other monsters.  The late game content in PotSun is pretty well covered, it's the early game that could do with support. 

A few other notes here:

1. Slenderman 

If you are completely fed up with the King's Man, the Slenderman replaces him in the Boss rush section.  However, the Slenderman does turn up in LY6 as well, so you have a chance of losing the campaign right there if you are not prepared.  You might want to just straight rule that the Slenderman replaces the King's Man at the end of the campaign and doesn't turn up before hand.  It certainly mixes up the flavor of the experience.

2. Flower Knight

The Flower Knight doesn't really add anything extra to People of the Sun, you already have a wonderful and unique campaign specific bow in the Sunring Bow.  However if you enjoy Acanthus Doctors and don't mind that it makes the game a lot easier. You can add this one in.

3. Lonely Tree

You're not forced to start the showdown with the Lonely Tree even if you find the fruit. So you can keep this one in and have it as a way of gaining strange resources (the terrain version of the tree does make the fight harder) and if you feel powerful you can take the Tree on.

4. Manhunter/Lion Knight

Not recommended, however, if you are very confident and experienced. You can take these two additional nemesis monsters as a challenge mode.  The only one of the armor sets you can wear from the Lion Knight is the Dancer Armor; you'll need Hellfire to get access to the Warlord/Brawler armor.

5. Green Armor

Sadly you cannot wear the boots in People of the Sun without Hellfire. So you'd add this one in just to build a few specific parts such as the Shield (needs DBK + FK) and the Helmet (DBK only required).

Expansion Recommendations:

1 of Gorm or Spidicules

1 of Lion God + DBK or Lion God + DK or DBK + DK

I am going to write a People of the Sun specific guide in the future as I think it's a very interesting campaign and one of the ones worth playing with just a few expansions.

People of the Stars

Stars has its own campaign specific goal, which is in essence do what the Tyrant wants.  Which is get people with constellations (I will refer to the people trying to get constellations and those with them as constellations here).  If you don't manage this then you are not going to be allowed into the final confrontation.  

Apart from that, the campaign is pretty receptive to most expansions.  However there are some that you should be careful with when adding and I am going to put them here first:

1. Slenderman

Slenderman replaces all unspecified encounters with a Slenderman instead.  The issue here is that this removes The Hand from your optional nemesis encounters and he is an excellent way of gaining +accuracy (one of the constellation requirements).  So if you do add him in, be aware that it's going to make things a little harder.

However, Gloom Cream can do wonders by extending the lifespan of your constellations and it allows you to trigger White Secret over and over again to get ageless onto the survivors who matter.

2. Lion Knight/Spidicules

People of the Stars is very much about the individuals (one of the reasons it's so beloved) and the aftermath of these two showdown fights results in the loss of a survivor, so if you include these you will need to take into account that loss and someone will need to 'play the lamb' each time (or everyone does).  

The Silk Whip from Spidicules is another great way to manage The Tyrant's moods and provides an alternative to the Whisker Harp.

3. Lonely Tree

A similar issue to point 2 above, you should be very careful about who you have eat the Lonely Fruit and who eats the Drifting Dreamer Fruit. As these can both cause the loss of a constellation (death and becoming a savior)

There is also one core monster who is terrible for People of the Stars and that is the Phoenix, you should only tackle this monster if you are prepared for it with very high insanity and/or preferably ageless. Having the lifespan of your constellations and constellations shortened (or getting them erased from existence) is really awful and there are very few ways to fix that.

Outside of the above the following expansions have positive synergies with People of the Stars:

4. Gorm 

This expansion provides additional early game content, which is super useful and it also yields heavy weapons which have relevance during the fight against The Tyrant.  However you do need to get yourself a Whisker Harp or another way of dealing with Moods before LY4, so it's a bit of a balancing act.

5. Sunstalker

Cycloid Armor is incredible on survivors with Iridescent Hide and the Sunstalker makes a great replacement late game hunt for the Phoenix as they are similar in power level.  I don't really have much more to say except that I think the Sunstalker is pretty much a must have in People of the Stars.

6. Flower Knight 

On the whole I don't much care for the Flower Knight these days  However; the Sleeping Virus Flower/Warm Virus event give you a way of rescuing a constellation that has started to go wrong.  You can transfer across the constellation's name, FAs, disorders, positive attributes and weapon proficiency levels and stack them onto a survivor who might already have traits of their own.  While you cannot pass on Oracle's Eye or Iridescent Hide, if the "host"already had them ticked, they will keep them on the star bingo.  

Basically you can use the Sleeping Virus Flower and structured killing to 'frankenstein' together a constellation survivor.  It's also one way of protecting against Murder because you do not have saviors you can use as a 'murder buffer' here.

In respect of the other expansions; they are all fine to add in if you want.  There are no real major synergies or anti-synergies.  I like the Lion God and DBK in the campaign in particular.  But I do not always add both of them because there is only so much room in a campaign.  Green Armor is very "doable" in this campaign, but it does make the entire experience harder because you have two sets of goals and they don't align.

People of the Lantern

This is the generic, middle of the road campaign and as a consequence every expansion in the first twelve was designed with the aim of making them work in this particular campaign.  So with respect to People of the Lantern, you can pretty much put in what you want.  I'll put some campaign combination recommendations in Part 6 (the Finale!)