What's in Affinity? (Patreon)

This is article was a patron request which took a while to get sorted due to the amount of digging through various pieces of gear that is required. However, if you want to create custom gear this is a very important piece to have read, there is already too much custom content out there that breaks the rules of affinities (I am not going to call out specific examples, that would be rude, I am just wanting to stress that it could be a lot better from the community, myself included).

Affinity in Monster is used according to one of the less common of its definitions. Typically affinity is applied to interests; either in a subject matter, a community or an individual. Or it is to do with a likeness between the two subjects (which is somewhat correct if you were applying it to Monster). However the main way it is applied is more the scientific version (because Adam loves his pseudo science).

"...the degree to which a substance tends to combine with another."

So in thematic terms, the first thing you want to make sure your affinities have is common links of similarity, by that I mean we should try to understand what affinities typically turn up where and what themes they are linked to.

Well the themes of the three affinities are well defined, because of their connections to the Organ Grinder gear, Charms, Spidicules rings and the saviors. So that is a good starting point, giving us a focus for discussion, analysis and if there are exceptions to this.

Green is the colour of defense, healing and protection. It is more typically linked to defensive gear and abilities. Its main traits tend to be evasion, armor, survival and avoidance of various negative effects. The most green armor sets in the game are Leather Armor and Silk Armor and the strongest linked fighting art is the Acanthus Doctor. Items that protect and save tend to be linked more to green than other colors. It is also the main colour of nature and is heavily involved in (almost) everything to do with the Flower Knight (who is a blue/green monster).  Also green is the colour most linked to resources.

Blue is the colour of control, chance and luck. It is more the colour of the mind and spiritual than the physical. Its main trait tends to be luck, but if you are looking for an affinity colour most likely to be present on something that controls the monster in some fashion. It will be blue. Even luck builds into this concept, as a critical wound 'controls' 

Red is the colour of power, strength and speed. It is the "opposite" of Green in that it is the offensively orientated affinity, but it is also the opposite of blue in that it is highly physical in its nature however its position as the colour of Perfect hits, the counterpart to Critical wounds shows that this 'being opposite' is not the same as opposing, they're more two sides of the same coin.  You can see this theme of physicality expressed right from the start with the simple fact that every single Bone Smith gear you can craft early on is a red affinity - these items are crafted from the bones of monsters, .  

When you start mixing these, this is where you get a blending of the concepts. I don't often refer to it, but the Black Lion "Shadow" Armor has blue and red affinities because it is a thematically a combination of the mysterious and spiritual and the pure physical. It's not got any green affinities in it because it is not intended to be a defensive set. This is how I designed the sets themes and picked the affinity colors. 

Another example of how I paid homage to this blending is the Phase Axe:

It has the traditional red and blue affinities that link to its power (axes are also more traditionally Red weapons) and critical wound association. But it also has a green affinity because it has a way of gaining armor. In addition, the two affinities linked to the armor gaining ability are the green and blue ones. The Red is not involved at all, which is another way of unconsciously expressing the themes of the weapon to the player.  You don't realize it, but having these two affinities makes the weapon thematically less focused around raw power and more around its defensive and controlling aspects (Axes have a secondary 'theme' in blue because of their specialisation and mastery).

In order to bring this home further, we shall now take a look at the signature items for each colour and discuss why they exist and what they express about each colour. Here they all are:

The Lucky Charm, MTN and Monster Grease are the definitive articles for each colour identity because of how early they turn up in the game, and in addition to providing such a strong theme for each colour, they also set up what the most important affinity directions are for each colour. Because having these easy to access, cheap, high power pieces of gear dominate what matters for each build. 

But you can also see that the three rings are cleverly designed to complement these items in their affinity layout. Each one of the rings points in a direction to make sure that it connects with all the affinities of the OG (Organ Grinder) gear. While I do have a lot of balance worries where these three rings are concerned - I absolutely cannot criticize the theme and layout of each one, they are all perfect in this matter.

We can also see from this spread that blue is a deeper colour than green and red, I suspect that part of this is the unconscious influence of Magic: The Gathering (the three colour themes in Monster link strongly to the matching color themes in M:TG), but it is also because the theme of 'control' is such a broad range of power - it encompasses Hit Locations, AI Cards, the Trap and much more. 

So how does all of this apply into gear in the game? Well I think a great example of the way the affinity themes are applied is baked right into shields. While Shields are the de facto defensive weapon one would think of when considering what would be a 'green' themed weapon. We have three great examples that showcase intelligent thematic application of affinities.

The level of elegance and brilliance in expressing themes here is just, well it's amazing. I cannot praise this highly enough.  

So each shield is at its baseline, somewhat similar to the others. They are low accuracy, low strength weapons with Block 1 attached to them. But they diverge when you get to the thematic expression of how they work. The Leather Shield is the green shield and as a consequence it gains an additional 1 armor to all locations (5 armor points total), but it also has very poor offensive capabilities.  

The Feather Shield may look 'green' on a casual first glance, but in fact it is providing protection for brain damage, which is the dominion of the mind and that is why it is a blue affinity weapon. The rainbow activation requirement for the ability is a tribute to the Phoenix's rainbow theme, so it doesn't run counter to what the weapon's core design is.

Finally we have the Knuckle Shield, the only true offensive shield in the game (and a front runner for one of the most busted early game weapons if you just Block 1 with it all the time without risking attacks). We can see that it is designed for attacking with and as a consequence it has that happy little red affinity to signal its shift into the offensive portion of the games weapon spectrum.

Now, of course, these things are mostly just guidelines, the APG design team can, and do ignore these quite often, depending on how and what they feel like doing. A classic example is the Zanbato, which is stylistically a blue/red weapon (deadly is blue, devastating is red). Here I suspect that the green up affinity is part of 'forcing' the design of the Zanbato/Leather Tank which is an aim that the team seems to have. They like to push certain weapon/armor layouts to help newer players find their way through the game and feel clever when they figure them out.

Here it is (with a fecal salve in the "flex spot") and you can see just how clearly pushed this layout is. This is one of the things you have to consider when designing an armor set, are you intentionally (or not) creating a pushed layout where players feel obligated to construct them because of how elegant and powerful they are? 

I'll move into a couple more examples, a great one I think is how tied together footwear, red affinities and movement bonuses are. (Leather Boots are an exception to this, but you'll notice that the movement ability is not focused in use as in an offensive manner because it happens at the end of your act.

Isn't that so freaking cool to see? All of this footwear is (at least partially) red in design.

And this isn't the only place you can find these patterns. Without images (for the sake of space) I'll rattle off a few others.

• Gloom Cream - de-ages your body and mind, so it is blue and red in colours.
• Monster meat - provides +strength and survival so it is green/red.
• Gloom Hammer - requires one be insane, controls the monster and has massive power + is a hammer, so it's a red/blue weapon.
• Reverberating Lantern - its special event "heals" either survival or insanity. So it is a blue/green piece of gear.
• Grinning Visage - an offensive shield that when you wound with it lets you spend survival to gain armor points. So it is green/red.
•  Sleeping Virus Flower - not only does this one give you luck, but it allows for the "transfer" of a survivor's consciousness to another survivor - an explicitly spiritual/mind based event. So it is a heavily blue item.
• Cat Eye Circlet - You control the Hit locations so it's a blue item (same with Rawhide Headband vs. AI)
• Fetosaurus - This shield not only provides defense in Block 2 and armor, but it also lowers the monster's * which ties into its Blue/Green affinities.
• Ink Sword - This sword is one of the most deadly weapons in the game, and it is blue.

Note: If you're not sure why the Hidden Crimson Gem has all red affinities when rerolls would appear to be a more 'blue' thing, it's in part because rerolls have no true defined colour at this point. But mostly it's because it's a reference to King Crimson (as I've mentioned before), that Stand's design is very red in its tones. Also, as mentioned before, there are always exceptions!

Positioning and orientation

Finally, before we finish we're going to run into a basic look at the power of the affinities. Now as mentioned above with the rings, the highest strength for each of the affinities is directly tied to this trio of static buff items.  The bonuses they give are very significant for various kinds of survivors and as such any time you create or select a gear card, you are considering how they fit into these three.

This means that the following affinities are the most valuable for all builds.

• Left side red
• Left or right side blue
• Right side green

But in addition because of the additional requirements on the MNT and Monster Grease the following layouts are also very powerful, even more so than the single affinity options above.

• Left Side Red + Up, Right or Down Red.
• Right Side Green + Up, Left or Down Green.

This is why part of the reason why the Bone Club is so significant and Leather Boots are so strong. They push one hard towards completing the additional bonuses for these two affinities.

Also, as the campaign progresses and armor sets change, the importance of different affinities shifts about as well. This is very clearly demonstrated by the Lantern Greaves.

So again we can see that this is a predominantly red piece of footwear that gains movement. We can also see how for this particular armor set (the body drops your movement by 2) not only is the Monster Tooth Necklace particularly strong, but also a left facing red affinity is hugely valuable (and those are quite a pita to get on a decent piece of gear that fits in slot #9).

Want more?

So, that's the basic primer for affinities done, I can go into a detailed analysis of all the affinities, their locations, what's most common and I've not even gotten into the colours of each weapon category (yeah they have colours also). So, if you ladies and gentlemen have enough demand for it in the comments below, so if this is a subject you want to see a proper deep dive on, please let me know! But for now you should have some extra tools and understanding, especially into what makes for a good piece of custom content - it'll be easier to spot designs where things have just been 'slapped into existence' rather than the underlying themes as set by Adam have been considered.