Ordered Disorder: Handling Disorders in the World of Monster (Patreon)

Disorders are something that hits every hunter at one time or another; they're practically impossible to avoid for everyone and as it's a topic I've not dove into before I figure "Spooktober" is the best time to look at the darker side of mental health for the people of your settlements.

We're going to look at how you manage and control disorders first of all, before checking out some of the more beneficial/harmful ones and investigating how to take advantage or mitigate them as much as possible.

Dealing with Disorders:

So before we look at removing disorders, we're going to briefly consider methods of gaining them. There are certain disorders that facilitate builds in this game and when you have the right gear cards you may be seeking to build them; this includes disorders such as Immortal, Arithmophilia or Ghostly Beauty.

Your main tools for gaining disorders in a semi-controlled fashion are the Screaming Antelope and The Forest Wants What it Wants (Spidicules/Flower Knight). As you're going to see throughout this article, the Screaming Antelope is the premiere disorder based monster, not only for generating them, but also for assisting in removing them.

This is because the Screaming Antelope trap Wailing Slide gives you a reliable way of getting disorders onto survivors by having them get run over with the slide.  That way you can gain 3 disorders per trap if you want it. 

Forest Wants What it Wants gives you the ability to gain 4 disorders per hunt and it's one of the primary ways you hunt down Ghostly Beauty when farming the Flower Knight during Green Armor runs.  

There are other ways of gaining disorders, including Murder (which you can often increase the chances of getting by hunting the DK). Now Murder sounds like a bad deal, but careful use of Saviors (age Blue ones quickly while crit farming or Green ones against nemesis monsters) will give you survivors that can be murdered without harming your hunters. Marrow Hunger survivors are also very useful as murder targets (thank you Giant's Blood strain Fighting Art). Looking around at hunt events and settlement innovations will give you a lot of ideas for this.

The Screaming Antelope is also the only way you can officially gain the Barber Surgeon location (you can use my SIP for an unofficial way to get it), which is the prime Disorder control location in the game. It contains the Trepanning endeavor (used in unlocking Infinite Lives Strain FA - which can give you a way of 'locking in useful disorders') and the Almanac gear, which is another way of stopping a survivor gaining any disorders once you are happy with the ones they have. 

The Almanac is also often combined with Accept Darkness to lock a survivor at 2 disorders and insure that brain trauma will never kill them. It's expensive to get, but it's very powerful with certain survivor types who have a spare slot. The almanac is the main reason I bother getting Pictographs.

So, with that looked at, lets get onto the disorders. As mentioned I'll just be looking at a few specific ones that can either be used for positive benefits or those which have ways of mitigating their issues (outside of removing them by disorder cycling/trepanning).

I'm sure you're familiar with this one by now. Interestingly this disorder was designed with the Dragon King expansion in mind because it covers Scythes. Here in the real world, Aichmophobia is a serious condition to suffer from as it can be absolutely crippling to the point that you are unable to function in society. However survivors experience a milder version that stops them using "sharp" weapons. 

This one is no issue if you are on a 'blunt' weapon type and weirdly this also includes bows (arrows are not pointy?) So often you should simply switch weapon types, which will allow you to continue hunting with a new weapon.  Also, the only strong weapon types listed here are Axe, Spear, Scythe and Katar - so you have lots of other options. So the main hedge here is to ensure that your settlement doesn't invest in an axe/spear/sword/katar only hunt party.

If you have a well trained up survivor who sadly inherits this then you're in a bit of a bind. The main aim here is to remove this disorder, but outside of that you should use Nightmare Training to complete their training and get the mastery.

So this one absolutely sucks unless you can roll a 4 or a 5. But if you do there are some amazing things you can do with this. When you have a Steel Shield Arithmophilia can allow you to ignore it's only downside and be a very effective fighter.

If you roll low, then you're in trouble, there are some ways of moving that don't involve your actual movement number (such as leather boots) so you can mitigate it to a certain amount, however getting saddled with 1 or 2 movement is a nightmare for anyone apart from ranged attackers (or some supports).

If Hunt Event 10 wasn't a thing, then this disorder would be annoying, but reasonable. Because the Harvester can't be avoided, this disorder is basically retirement from hunts. However you can keep using the survivor in nemesis fights if they are good enough. So it is not always a disaster!

This one is a 'must keep' in People of the Stars, and my advice is to 'bench' the first survivor to get this until you have managed to breed this disorder dragon trait onto one of their children. It's a pain to lose access to it because you decided to send out your only Destined survivor and they got killed before they could face The Tyrant. Sure you lose all your insanity and survival, but if they are benched in LY1 (when you get it) they didn't have much of either anyway.

When the Flower Knight is not available this card represents either 'add the Flower Knight in' or 'this survivor is gone till they can be trepanned'. Some people just discard this and draw a new one, but I am of the opinion that if you are doing that then you should not include Otherworldly Luck (or the other FK based items) - if you want the power of Otherworldly Luck then this is the price you pay.

Step one for gaining the True Blade SFA (which is required for crafting Griswaldo), this is another disorder that I 'bench' in order to protect the survivor until it's time to hunt an L3. Then I send this survivor out with the aim of gaining Fencing, which will complete the chain and result in True Blade (as mentioned in the SFA article).

This one is very powerful when placed on an Immortal survivor, because they cannot spend survival when insane (so the Survival spending doesn't harm them as much) and the Insanity gains makes you very potent and durable. It's also great with gear that spends Insanity for protection, such as the Phoenix Placart, and keeping Sentient gear active.

This one used to be nothing other than a detriment, but since the creation of the Backstabber Strain Fighting Art it has become a premium way of using that fighting art. The issue is the loss of a resource each showdown, but the courage gain is nice, especially because it is a known trigger. This allows you to prepare in advance for 'See the Truth' by carrying dried acanthus to avoid the 'blind'.

We're going to round out this first half with the old classic 'Immortal' this Disorder is one of the cornerstones of the 'face tank' method of tanking. Where you build a survivor with a huge amount of insanity and they take most of the monster's hits without dodging (because you can't). A party built around a survivor like this tends to have ways of generating insanity for the Immortal.  

The downside of a survivor like this is the inability to spend survival, this can kill you during certain hunt events and it also stops you surging/dashing/dodging etc etc. However when partnered with the Red Fist SFA you have a way of spending Strength Tokens to generate survival. Now you just need a way of creating lots of Strength Tokens!

And that's it for the first half of this, the second half will come along next week. I wanted to break this into two parts (because it's a lot of text) but also to give you guys a chance to mention any disorders you want me to write about! 

So let me know in the comments, what disorders do you want to read about? Which ones do you enjoy? What great tales of success/tragedy are centered around disorders?