Every Rose has its Thorn: The Comprehensive Review of the Flower Knight Expansion (Patreon)

Who? Who?
The Flower Knight is a lantern year 5 quarry that lives in the Abyssal Woods, where it spends its time in solitude tending to a bizarre garden. She is an "Elemental Knight" like the Gold Smoke Knight and therefore she is one of the more beneficial creatures in the Kingdom Death ecosystem. Her role is that of gardener and protector rather than predator and killer. 

Unfortunately for the Flower Knights, being good for the environment, a protector of the realm and causing no trouble because you prefer to stay inside a fairy ring which is hidden deep inside a forest is not sufficient to protect you from the savages that live around lantern hordes. They want to cut you up into little pieces and make your precious flowers into bows, foils, satchels and arrows.

What?
What do you get in this small box expansion then? Well this one has a little less content than most of the other expansions out there. You get the usual stuff; 

• The Flower Knight model – which is a 2x2 “small” size monster
• Rulebook
• Gear cards
• Rare gear cards
• AI, Hit Location, Resource, Hunt and Innovation cards. 
• A replacement card for the ‘Overwhelming Darkness’ space on the hunt board, turning the event into ‘The Forest Wants what it Wants’ instead, 
• Two new pieces of terrain one of which (the Fairy Ring) is only used when you fight the Flower Knight itself. 
• New Disorders, Fighting Arts and something called Tactics cards
• Some pieces of equipment for modifying survivor models.

You will notice when you open this box that it has less physical content than the Gorm, a lot less. That's actually an accurate reflection of how this expansion contains less content than other small box quarries.

The expansion is apparently themed around addiction and impermanence, but you can also feel the ‘midsummer night’s dream’ meta-theme of the Abyssal Woods in general permeating everything. I would not be surprised to find the Flower Knight amongst the ranks of the Sidhe or Seelie Folk.

How?
How is this expansion? Well… that’s a hard one, because on one hand this expansion does feel very good, and is of massive benefit to any settlement that has access to it. But on the other hand, over time I have come to the opinion that this expansion came out of the oven half formed and it really needed more time in development. I’ll run through the pros and cons to highlight why:

First, the fertile parts of the expansion:

Vespertine Bow
The Vespertine Bow is one of the most powerful pieces of gear in the game, ranged attacks are always stronger than melee ones in Kingdom Death and the Vespertine Bow represents the peak of that design. It has more range, accuracy and strength than almost every single other bow in the game – in truth the only bow that comes close is the Ink Blood Bow from the Sunstalker (see my review here) but that bow requires killing a level 3 Sunstalker, the Vespertine Bow comes from a level 1 Flower Knight. In fact with careful preparation work you can usually craft 2 Vespertine Bows in a single year (I’ve managed 3 in lantern year during one play through, that was interesting). This only triggers the “penalty” event once!

Once you have a Vespertine Bow you will struggle to give it up, especially when you discover what it can do to the Dung Beetle Knight’s attempts to Slam Dunk you and how phenomenal it is in the hands of a Bow Master. Vespertine Bows are a very difficult addiction to shake, so much so that people mistakenly think they are the strongest bow in the game, they're not - but they are the most overpowered and broken for their cost.

Acanthus Doctor
You can gain Acanthus Doctor during the penalty event for constructing the Vespertine Bow. If you roll high enough and have Sculpture as an innovation the survivor you selected for this roll gains the Acanthus Doctor Secret Fighting Art.

This is one of the strongest fighting arts in the game bar none, it’s an absolute beauty – in exchange for not wearing armor you get the ability to carry three satchels at once and you also gain +1 armor to all locations and a +1 Strength Token per green affinity you have. Considering how good a lot of the green affinity gear is you can build some utterly ridiculous builds with this, especially by stacking evasion.

There is a build out there in the wild known as ‘The Doctor’ and while it requires beating a level 3 Manhunter to complete, it is utterly nuts, masses of strength, armor and evasion all rolled together to create the ultimate tank – someone who is essentially dressed in light clothing, covered in satchels and wielding a pick axe.

 True Blade 

Unlocking this Secret Fighting art is far, far too chance dependant. Which is a nightmare because you need True Blade to construct Griswaldo from the Green Armor expansion and meeting the pre-requisites to get this fighting art is almost completely out of your hands. All you can do really do is endlessly run at the Forest Gate and grab as many disorders as possible. This one isn’t a deal breaker, but it is again an example of the unintentional main theme of this expansion -- ‘missed opportunities’. 

However, True Blade outside of the unfortunate Green Armor design is an incredible secret fighting art, it feels powerful but it has drawbacks that actually matter. When correctly used it's the most powerful offensive fighting art in the game, but it has a meaningful set of downsides that balance this.

If the Acanthus Doctor SFA was designed with a similar drawback to True Blade's dependance on two really obnoxious disorders then it would not make an appearance on the Cons list. But... There is literally no downside to Acanthus Doctors so...

Flower Knight Model
The Flower Knight is one of the most beautiful sculpts in the entire game, it is an ornate and attractive creation that displays elegance and power alongside the protective nature of the Knight. She feels like a gentle fae creature, so much so that I have read that some players feel bad about hunting it and so you should. In fact this seems to be a theme across all of the Knights, they behave in more useful or noble ways than most of the other monsters out there. The Dung Beetle Knight performs a vital refuse cleaning duty by cleaning up faeces that would otherwise result in disease. The Lion Knight is an asshat who is obsessed with understanding survivors. The Black Knight is just a sad little pupper waiting for its dead master to return (Stumpy) and the Flower Knight is no different from the rest. You might feel bad when you are chopping the Flower Knight up, and so you should.

The only issue I have with the model is the unique sculpt base was not transferred from the resin edition to the plastic one. This is a bit of a shame as it is a beautiful piece of work.

Flower Knight Showdown
This showdown is good, in fact it is fantastic from a thematic standpoint. It takes place in and around the Flower Knight’s fairy ring and it tends to be a tug of war between the survivors and the Flower Knight. The survivors trying to pull the Flower Knight out of the ring where it is weakest while the Flower Knight attempts to pull as many survivors as possible in, gaining power by doing so. The whole thing plays out a bit like an elegant dance.

The Flower Knight’s AI/HL design is built around critical hits and gaining/removing of luck tokens. The Flower Knight has low toughness, but a lot of Parry locations – which are only wounded on critical hits. There is a chance during this encounter that you will eventually learn how to deal with Parries, gaining the Fencing Secret Fighting Art – which is something that becomes very useful not just against future Flower Knights, but powerful against other Knights and monsters in general.

As you increase the monster level it becomes more dangerous, and of particular note is the level three Flower Knight who not only looks to lure you into the ring, but also kick you into the forest where you will be instantly devoured – don’t go in there without dash and take care with your positioning. It’s worth beating the level 3 Flower Knight however, you get access to a Sleeping Virus Flower and potentially a new Secret Fighting Art.

However, this one only just makes it onto the pro list because the encounter is designed around something players want to do anyway, which is score as many critical hits as possible, this does mean that the Flower Knight tends to pump out a lot of resources. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is really up to you, but some of those resources can be turned into more survivors, you want to remember that if your population looks like it might crash.

As an aside, I look forward to the eventual release of a monster that punishes people for scoring critical hits. That one is going to be a beauty.

The Forest Wants What it Wants
Let’s face it, Overwhelming Darkness as a mechanic is pretty bad. The idea itself is fine, hunting higher level monsters has extra risk, but in practice it’s ‘roll a dice on a table, things happen, rocks might fall on your head and kill you’ which always has been the weakest part of Kingdom Death: Monster’s design. The Forest Gate is a far superior example of how it could and should be done. There is still a ‘roll on a table’ mechanic, but by taking penalties the survivors can improve their chances on the table and mitigate or even remove the chance of failure. There are a lot of decisions to be made here at this point depending on what you have, what you are hunting and what your gear is you might take a wide range.

I’d like to note, this event is a lot easier to deal with if you have 5 or 6 players. Share the pain.

Disorders
The new disorders released in this expansion are great, Flower Addiction is just annoying enough to be an issue, but not so bad that it will cripple you. I like disorders like this that force you to make a decision rather than just completely destroy your survivor until you can get rid of them.

Ghostly Beauty is another great design, it doubles all insanity gain, but also doubles your use of survival. This can have some huge upsides with the right combinations, but it comes at one heck of a price. However, my favorite disorder is the immensely amusing Narcissism, which states “There is nothing in the world more beautiful than yourself. You may not wear armor at the head location.” this is quite dangerous, but remember that you can still wear head accessories that provide armor points (and the Vagabond armor is also a thing!) It always causes a chuckle at our table when a survivor tosses their helmet into a hole and proclaims that they are “have too beautiful a face to cover”.

Tactics Cards
Tactics are a new addition to the game which come with each Knight expansion. You get a badge that provides a minor bonus (a really powerful bonus in the case of the Flower Knight badge) and it allows you to draw a tactics card as well. These tactics cards are really potent, and also provide additional combat decisions as they often do not work without correct positioning. Great stuff.

Vespertine Cello
This one is a pretty simple little piece of gear, it’s the fourth musical instrument in the game and it provides a buff to anyone carrying a musical instrument. You too can head out as a band and play music while you hunt. Just watch out for the harvester, it does not like any kind of music at all. If you are concerned about the Harvester, you can save instruments for Nemesis encounters only.

The sculpt for this cello is beautiful and it makes for a gorgeous looking sculpt. I wish I had spare models so I could build a complete band myself. Failing that, a set of narrative sculpts for the 4 musicians, depicted before the fateful hunt where they were swallowed up by the Harvester, would be cool.

Flower Resources
Flower Resources are a new kind of resource, they function in a similar fashion to any other kind of resource, except they almost always have some alternative use and they are ‘perishable’ that is they cannot be placed into the settlement storage. Instead they must be used immediately or placed into satchels in order to be kept safe. This is a fun mechanic that is not really open to abuse. In addition some of the Flower Resources can be turned into population, which you will want to bear in mind if you are playing a Survival of the Fittest campaign. Hunting the Flower Knight lets you replace lost people, even if they have weird looking faces.

Sleeping Virus Flower
This one is probably my favorite piece of gear in the game, you get given one as part of the initial timeline event for the Flower Knight and it adds another piece to the experience. This is an exceptional piece of kit being worthy of its cursed nature. Not only does it give you a rare +1 luck, but it also has 4 blue half affinities and a superb timeline event that allows you to somewhat cheat death for a survivor.
You can even get additional copies of this Flower once you are able to consistently handle the level 3 Flower Knight (which is no slouch by the way)! This gear is thematic, powerful and well balanced.

The barren parts of the expansion:
This issues are not so hot and as time passes and you get familiar with the Flower Knight expansion they can become more and more of a noticeable thorn.

Vespertine Bow
Oh yes, this one is both a pro and a con. The Vespertine Bow is an amazing piece of kit, but it is also almost completely unbalanced and broken. The fact that you can get access to this gear in lantern year 5 is really out of whack (you can potentially even build three of them in a single year which is ridiculous – one day try playing with 3 – 4 Vespertine bows and see just how much the monster design in the game struggles to cope).

The cost of getting this piece of gear is just too low, it’s made of easy to farm resources and losing four population is not something that is hard to deal with, in fact you can mitigate this by hunting more Flower Knights and using the Flower resource that gives you replacement population to provide the victims to sacrifice to the Necrotic Mistletoe event. Time and time again, when I encounter stories about how the super hard top end monsters have been beaten there is a high chance that the Vespertine bow is involved somewhere. It’s just too accurate, too deadly, has too much range and is too powerful. This is a real issue, because most of the rest of the gear you get from the Flower Knight is either limited in scope (Cello, Satchel, Arrow) or terrible (Foil).

Acanthus Doctor
The Acanthus Doctor is one of the most broken Secret Fighting Arts in the game. With the right gear you end up having one of the most powerful tanks possible. Again the reason this lands here in the negatives is because it happens too often and it is too easy to trigger early on – you rush to get Sculpture and then farm the Flower Knight multiple times, turning flowers into people until you succeed at getting your doctor(s).

You might not feel this is a con, but I feel I need to list it here, because no matter how much I adore the Acanthus Doctor, I have to acknowledge that it is obscene.

Vespertine Foil
The Vespertine Foil is a nice idea, I guess, but ultimately it’s become something that no-one wants to use. This is a frankly terrible weapon that is impossible to make use of – even in People of the Bloom it costs too much to maintain. Not only is it fragile, not only is it strength 1 (sigh), but you have to spend a flower resource every year to keep this thing intact otherwise it is gone, not placed into storage until you can feed it a flower, no it’s gone. That means hunting the Flower Knight every other year and storing flowers (which cannot be kept in the settlement storage because of perishable) in a satchel to keep it going.

I don’t understand why this ‘spend a flower’ drawback is attached to the Foil, it’s one of the most crippling drawbacks in the entire game and you’d expect the Foil to be amazing as a consequence. Instead it’s worse than a Scrap Sword. This is one of those missed opportunities that this expansion is rife with.

Lack of Useful Gear
There is precious little variation in the gear you can craft here and while this is not a huge issue, it is worth knowing that you will rapidly run out of reasons to hunt the Flower Knight apart from farming to get fighting arts and resources to use in a generic fashion.

Parry & Fencing 

Parry is a mechanic present across all the knight expansions, it is a location that is only hurt on critical hits. The Flower Knight is exclusively designed around this mechanic, it has a very low toughness and while fighting it tends to play around with the survivor’s luck levels by increasing or decreasing them.   

Eventually, through a story event you will achieve a ‘breakthrough’ and gain access to Fencing. This is one of the greatest secret fighting arts in the game, not only does it allow you to ignore the parry ability, but it also gives you a 50% chance to cancel one attack every time you are attacked. That’s huge! I’d call this overpowered, except it’s a fair amount of work to set it up and because it is a Secret Fighting Art it cannot be passed onto the next generation.

The whole dynamic is exciting and feels good but the Flower Knight gives out Fencing like candy, you can often get it onto 3-4 survivors per showdown if you work at it correctly.

Cocoon AI Card

A fresh addition to this review (which has had a lot of revisions and items moved from pro to con); the cocoon AI card takes all of the problems in the Flower Knight showdown (ease of gaining resources, handing out Fencing and so on) and magnifies them. 

Cards that heal the monster seem like a way of making a fight tougher, but what they actually do is amplify the situation, so if the survivors are struggling, they'll struggle more, but if they are farming, they will farm even more.

Bad design.

Location on the Hunt Board

Specifically the L1. It sits 2 spaces after overwhelming darkness, this means that the Flower Knight is the single easiest monster to hunt for gathering Iron, because that spot 1 space post Overwhelming Darkness/Forest Wants What it Wants, is the sweetest spot to keep the Mineral Gathering Card. Normally you have to fight an L2 Screaming Antelope (which moves around and can lose you the event) or an L2 Big monster like the DK.

The only monster in the game that produces more iron than the L1 Flower Knight is the L2 DK, and that one is actually a decent challenge to fight/hunt.

People of the Bloom
More than anything this is the biggest disappointment for me, this campaign is little more than a reskin & rebalance of People of the Lantern, you get access to some benefits in exchange for losing the ability to hunt the Flower Knight (you can still craft it’s gear) and having your natural affinities messed about with.

In itself this would not be that much of an issue except for a few problems. 1) You can never complete Green Armor in this setting because you cannot make Griswaldo without True Blade. 2) You can easily make multiple copies of Fetasaurus because the game throws Sleeping Virus Flowers at you like bouquets thrown at bridesmaids in a wedding (Stacking Fetasaurus in a hunting party is nuts) and 3) the campaign specific gear is flawed which I will expand on as a separate point below.

However, it does seem possible that you could play People of the Bloom crossed with People of the Sun or People of the Stars without too much work on the house ruling. So that is something to consider.

Flower Knight Replica Gear (Helmet + Sword)
I am so incredibly disappointed with these two campaign specific items, the sculpts on the helm and sword are nothing short of beautiful. You will want to use these items when you play People of the Bloom. But both of them have serious design flaws that suggest they were not tested enough. The Helmet does not have any set synergies, and while there are some people who play with mixed sets, ultimately this is not something you want to do if you can avoid it.

Why the Helm does not have the Outfit ability and then a few choice keywords like ‘Iron’ to allow it to be used in place of standard helmets I do not know. I have struggled to figure out exactly how to make good use of the Helm for a long time and I’ve only really been happy with it when combined with Rolling Armor, which looks stupid when modelled.

The Sword does not have this ‘does not play well with others’ issue, but it does have the stupidest affinity activation ability I have seen so far, it might not seem too bad, but remember that Bloomers start with -1 Red Affinities. The only time I have ever seen one of these swords activated is when wielded by a Prismatic survivor (Cyclopian armor). It is however decent when not activated so this is not a deal breaker, I just find it perplexing.

I’m of the opinion that these two items were originally going to be a part of the gear you can craft when you beat the Flower Knight normally and then they were at the last minute moved into the People of the Bloom Campaign.

I don’t know, it just feels rushed and ill advised. However it is fun to go on Forest Runs in order to get replacement population rather than breed them.

Why?
Why get this expansion? Well the main reason to get it is the Vespertine Bow, if you enjoy archery, or you feel that the game is proving to be a little overly difficult the Vespertine Bow will give you a large boost in power, the extreme range it can accurately attack at in its ‘sniper mode’ means you can keep your archer far away from danger and in some cases.

Overall this is a fun expansion, but in all honesty it is not the best, there are places where it feels unfinished and unrefined. As such I feel it is fair to write that the balance in the expansion is way out of whack, and the quality oscillates wildly from one item to the next. 

When this expansion is good, it is very, very good; but when it is bad it is horrid. 

Then again, every rose does indeed have it’s thorn.

Where?
Where am I keeping it? Well… That Knight’s in the middle, that knight’s in the spot light, losing its flower religion. This one gets top billing, placed right at eye line so people can make noises like ‘Oooh’, ‘Aaahh’ and ‘Hoot hoot’ while they look right at its pretty little face.

Score?
I give it Three Verspertine Bows out of one Flower Knight. Or if you need that score in Fahrenheit in order to understand what I mean; it is equivalent to Six Flower Resources and an Acanthus Doctor out of Ten. Highly recommended for people who are finding the game a little too hard, or just enjoy being overpowered archers. 

6/10 for newbies 3/10 overall. 

Personally I only use it if I am playing a difficult set of expansions (Spidicules + DK) or Green Armor.