Early Game Goals (Patreon)

Published:

2018-12-17 12:01:29

Imported:

2023-10

Content

Another Patron request, this time for an outline of roughly what you're aiming to achieve in the early game. This should help by highlighting the objectives and goals required to build a solid foundation for your settlement. Now I am going to write this with People of the Lantern specifically in mind, things do change with People of the Stars, People of the Sun and Green Armor. Instead this is more of a guide for 'I've played a few times and died to the Butcher/King's Man/Phoenix enough, what should I be doing to get a solid footing?'

This is a public article, because I think this information should be spread for everyone.

Swamp or Concrete?

The building blocks of a settlement all revolve around the cycle of survivors, principles and gear. It is very, very important to note that Innovations are NOT part of the foundation of a settlement, they are part of its development. I've written about this in length before, and there are articles on it, but basically.

Do NOT innovate in the first two to three years.

All the fancy innovations in the world are not going to help you get your settlement into a stable position; your population, your principles and the tools your hunters have (aka gear) are what matters for stability. Spending 4 resources (1 endeavor, 1 hide, 1 bone and 1 organ) on an innovation is a lot less value than what you could get from them (1 Population/Location, 1 Rawhide Piece, 1 Bone Weapon and 1 Organ Grinder gear).

Innovations stagnate and stunt your early development, until you are very experienced, you should not be doing it until you have at least 1 full set of rawhide and bandages online.

Principles

Some principles are better than others for newer players. The choices you should make in order to have an easier time learning are:

Life: Protect the Young
Death: Graves
Conviction: Accept Darkness

You can get away with Survival of the Fittest in your newer runs for sure, but you should be spending the lifetime rerolls on gaining more population if you do this. The three principles I have mentioned above all protect survivors from dying. (Yes experienced players, SotF is superior, but for newer players who might be struggling because they run out of survivors, Protect the Young + Graves all but guarantees that you will reach the first big boss).

So you should be trying to get your population to 15 so you can trigger Accept Darkness and then almost completely "ignore" the risks of Brain Trauma. Having one less way to die on a showdown is huge. Graves should always be picked over Cannibalism, it's not even close between those two. Collective Toil is for advanced strategies and if you want to know which Society I choose (though if you get to the society event, your settlement should be in good shape with deep population) - I always pick Romantic.

Population Management

You should be aiming for a population of around 20+, so whenever you are below that number you should be seeking to utilise Augury/Graves/Lifetime Rerolls and other such things in order to keep your population at a reasonable level.

The main population loss points are a Total Party Kill (TPK) on a hunt, Armored Strangers and nemesis encounters (especially the King's Man). So you should be looking to build up your population to survive these. There are a lot of strategies to deal with Armored Strangers and the King's Man, here is not the place to discuss them, but I can say that I absolutely just let the King's Man kill 4 survivors each time and then use the endeavors to repopulate.

Also, whenever you roll on a random table during a timeline event, I highly recommend that you use a designated 'Janitor' this is a survivor who has never been hunting, or is badly injured. Basically, if it would be bad for the survivor to die from the roll, don't let someone important roll it.

Nemesis and New Monsters

While you are learning, do NOT send experienced survivors in to face nemesis monsters or new ones. It is better to take your gear and put it on a bunch of fresh newbies (plebs). You can then learn with no real risks, if the survivors die in a nemesis fight - well the rewards for nemesis fights are less than the gain of 8 endeavors via Graves (turn them into population).

Just don't do it. If you have problems with your group of friends being attached to 'my character' then at the start of the campaign give them multiple survivors who are 'their characters/party/family' and tell them that they have to pick one survivor to hunt with and a different one for nemesis fights. It'll help them get used to the generational style of the game as well.

Gear Goals

OK, so what gear are you after? Well I am going to put down each early game location and list the gear which is good to help you through the early game in approximately the order you should make it. If a location isn't here, it's because it's not typically early game.

Bone Smith

Bone Darts
Bone Darts
Bone Sword
Bone Club if you get a lot of bones (it's really, really good, I've written about how good it is in the past).

Organ Grinder

Monster Grease
Fecal Salve
Lucky Charm
Monster Grease #2
Monster Grease #3
Lucky Charm #2
4 x Stone Noses (if you have spare endeavors and have not yet accepted darkness)

Skinnery

Full Rawhide Armor
Bandages
Full Rawhide Armor #2
Full Rawhide Armor #3

Catarium

Cat's Eye Circlet
Lion Beast Katar
Catgut Bow
King's Spear
Whisker Harp <- nemesis fights only, not on hunts!
Claw Head Arrow

Gormery

Riot Mace (Hard to get)
Rib Blade
Knuckle Shield
Greater Gaxe
Pulse Lantern
Gorn

Gormchymist

Wisdom Potion

Stone Circle

Screaming Armor

Weapon Crafter

Zanbato

Leather Worker - Requires Ammonia innovation

Leather Shield
Full Leather Armor

Silk Mill

Amber Poleaxe (Instead of King's Spear)
Silk Whip
Amber Scimitar

Loadout wise try to get all the Rawhide on one survivor initially, they can get tossed around by the monster. In fact your main priority most of the time should be completing armor for each survivor and getting a weapon that wounds a decent amount of the time for everyone who's going to be attacking.

Early Innovations

In order these are the most important innovations. If you want to know more about it, I have other articles on this, but essentially Symposium helps improve all your future innovations, the music line (Drums) is the most powerful in the game (get Rhythm Chaser and Sync Strike!) and Ammonia is essential for Leather Shields.

1. Symposium

2. Drums

3. Ammonia - leather shields and some protection from Plague.

Paint and Inner Lantern are strictly optional in the early game (yes, that's true, I've won a campaign without either of them) - you don't need them as much as the three above and Hovel has more downsides than up, the only real things of interest in the Hovel line are Family and Clan of Death.

Eventually you will want Inner Lantern/Paint because you're not crazy like me, but they should be priorities number 4 and 5.

If you have the Gorm in, you mostly want to get the Gorm potions upgraded by using the special innovate action that requires Gorm brains.

Twilight Sword

This is a pain in the ass, it triggers on the gain of your 5th innovation, and remember that Language counts. So you only have to gain four more new innovations before it hits. What I do is make sure that the party going out the year I am planning to gain my 5th innovation contains all newbies, because I do not want the Twilight Sword on someone who's training an important mastery.

Weapon Proficiency

You will want someone to train Fist and Tooth as soon as possible and someone else to train Shield. These two survivors are your most important ones, so make sure they do not have the highest level of hunt XP so they can avoid being Murdered.

Spear is also amazing, especially for newer playeres. The other good weapon types are:

Bow
Grand
Club
Katar (if you have the Dung Beetle Knight available)
Axe

Of the others, Dagger, Sword and Whip are for advanced players and Katana can't be gained without killing an L3 Sunstalker, so not an early game option.

Survivor Roles

Finally, look to specialise your survivors. a party with a dedicated 'tank' who uses armor, evasion and a shield to take most of the hits and a dedicated 'support' who uses things like the Cat's Eye Circlet, Rawhide headband and Bandages to help the others while firing the occasional shot with a bow will often have more success than four guys who swing wildly at the monster like a mob of lunatics. You can get to the point where everyone just beats on the monster, but it's not a newbie strategy, even though it feels like the easiest one to pull off. Trust me, four survivors all attacking has a low skill floor, but a very, very high skill ceiling.

So specialise, if you are the owner of the game, take the role of the tank or the support. You can actually free up a lot of your thinking when you do this. The support player is the one who provides all the strategies for the turn, because they find out the information, while the Tank dictates where the fight is going to take place and helps control the monster.

I've written a series of articles on each role in the game, with builds and ideas and similar, so there is a lot more information on this.

You'll find some example builds in most sections, or at least the principles to help you build.

I am sorry I can't be more specific than this, but Kingdom Death: Monster is a semi-randomised rogue-lite experience, you can't be sure what resources you are going to get from the monsters, you can't be sure what innovations you're going to get, or what results are going to happen on the table. It's an organic experience.

Finally, do not be afraid to abandon a settlement and start again if everything has gone completely wrong, yes there is fun in overcoming adversity and triumphing against all odds, but if your players are not enjoying themselves because Plague, the Harvester and Murder are beating their asses over and over - there is no shame in starting again (and perhaps removing certain cards from the settlement deck until you're more experienced).