Fun in the Sun: A Primer on People of the Sun (Patreon)

As the next Great Game Hunter episodes after the Lion Knight ones have completed are going to be on the Sunstalker and then the People of the Sun campaign, I have spent some time working through the material again with a very fine toothcomb - and as a support to that episode when it comes out we're going to take a dive into People of the Sun and explore what is probably the least played campaign in the game (ignoring variants like Bloom). 

This piece will run through a relatively spoiler-light experience initially, touching on how things are changed by looking at the obvious alterations you make to the experience from the beginning.

OK so all of that done, lets get into what's different between your Lantern and Sun experience!

Innovations

People of the Sun alters the Innovation tree in a fundamental manner, the Inner Lantern aspect, which in Lantern represents the pervasive and subtle impact that the Watcher has on the survivors - is removed. Your survivors will not worship the Lantern Horde in this setting. Instead we have a religion built around the worship of the sleeping sun and the sun pool. 

This means that Inner Lantern is gone and Surge is going to be a less present. Likewise all Inner Lantern consequences are not going to be around either, because the replacement innovation 'Hands of the Sun' has its own tree. You will never see Scarification or Shrine during this campaign, instead you have Sauna Shrine and Aquarobics - which are both honestly superior innovations.

This change also has an impact on the survival actions you'll experience. Most of your survivors are not going to be able to Surge or Encourage. Instead you'll have access to the Embolden and Overcharge mechanics.

Do NOT overlook Aquarobics.

Locations

The Lantern Horde is gone, this is because it is an effect caused by the Watcher cocoon pushing the lanterns under the surface up (to paraphrase from an interview Poots did, as always take stuff Poots says with a pinch of salt until he puts it into print) - instead you have the Sun, sleeping above the settlement as the source of innovations and crafting knowledge and the Sacred Pool where survivors will bathe for various effects including automatic intimacy and Purification.

The Sun also prevents most survivors from wearing heavy gear. It's very important to note that at the moment, the only ruling we have on what is 'worn' vs. 'carried' is that stuff with the armor keyword is worn and everything else is carried. I am hopeful that this is clarified further when we get campaigns of death - because at the moment Rolling Armor is not worn, it's carried, which means despite being heavy you can always wear Rolling Armor plates. It's an annoying inconsistency caused by the way that Rolling Armor has been designed and I'd like to get a definitive answer on this matter - I've always gotten silence from Poots when trying to get it cleaned up.

The Sacred Pool gives access to three very important actions and also once it is upgraded via timeline events it will also allow you to build new gear. You might not want spoilers, but I do recommend to everyone that you learn how the upgrading of the Pool works in advance, because you miss out on cool content if you are not prepared and that sucks.

The three actions you can undertake on the Sacred Pool are all very important and you should be looking to do them as often as possible. The Purification ceremony is very expensive, but powerful and pretty much a key part of how Sun works. Without going into heavy spoilers, you are going to want to Purify when you can afford to and generally most years 3 of your endeavors are going to be spend on Purification plus Intimacy.

I'm not going to go into details here, but do not overlook Sun Sealing!

Timeline

So the next thing to take a light look at the timeline. As you can see, the timeline has all of the nemesis encounters moved to the end of the timeline - this links to the Sun's other ability. If you lose against a Nemesis monster, it's game over because the Sun cleanses everything and kills all the survivors. 

This has a few implications, first of all, the additional expansion Nemesis monsters, which can be added in if you want, increase the chances of suffering an early game over. You cannot afford to lose to the Tree, Slenderman, Manhunter or Lion Knight. Not even once.

That's a high stakes game to play, but it can make things really exciting for those of you who enjoy that. Alternatively you can choose to play with the Slenderman just replacing the King's Man fights at the end of the campaign, but I wouldn't do that for your first run through - I'd only add a few Quarry monsters at most (and we'll talk about each one below because Sun is very greedy on how much it needs the core monsters).

Additionally it creates what's known as the 'boss rush' experience, where you have to prepare for and then run a gauntlet of do or die fights against L2 and L3 nemesis monsters. That's a very interesting spin on the usual mechanic - it actually creates an immense pressure situation, but because most people are 'do it at the last minute' types - they don't feel the pressure and assume that the campaign is easy because there are no 'Butcher early on' style incidents.  Now it's fair to say that Sun is overall easier than Lantern, but it's not because of the change in where the nemesis fights are - while you get more hunts before you hit the first nemesis, those nemesis monsters are stronger than the first Butcher. 

But the power in Sun comes from the upgrade to Survival of the Fittest, the changes to intimacy and your special survivors.

Intimacy, Birth and Warriors

The Intimacy table in Sun is very, very different from the one in Lantern. It's designed with the use of two dice from the beginning (which Lantern could have been with a bit more effort), as a consequence it has a lot more options, including a 1% chance of really bad things and the same chance of amazing stuff.  In 1.31 one of the largest challenges in Sun was not losing your population - generally without Matchmakers and Love Juice you're only performing Intimacy once per lantern year and this tended to be quite lethal because of the original version of SotF trending populations to zero over time. With the lifetime reroll change, Sun settlements became a lot more powerful because one of the main stumbling blocks to gaining traction was mitigated a lot.

Sun is also has the most balanced birthing table for the genders, as I wrote about in the past Sun allows for an almost 50/50 split in your genders, while Stars and Lantern benefit the most from a 75/25 split where you have 3-4 females for every male.  The campaign doesn't remove the hunting issues for males - but that's around a 1% impact (without running computer simulations to work out exactly how problematic the anti-male slant is).  

There is also the Purification system in Sun, which I recommend pushing for as early as possible, this system is the backbone of your story progression and the more purified survivors you have, the more you benefit. You should purify the genders in equal numbers and I have actually at times every year purified from LY1 with some success - this is a little tricky for the more casual player though because you end up with just 1 endeavor per year unless you are a little creative with how you churn your survivors very early on. 

All of this feeds into an event where you'll get access to the Warriors of the Sun, I'm not going to spoiler things here, but I will recommend that you pay attention to your purifications and protect the rare campaign specific fighting arts when you get them (at least until you understand how they interact with things).

We'll spoiler all of the intricacies of the Warriors of the Sun when I follow this up with the deep dive into the pool.

Quarries and Gear

You need to be aware from the very start that People of the Sun is more dependent on the core three quarry monsters than any of the other two campaigns. In fact, it's as integral to the experience as the core three (Lions and Antelopes and Chickens, oh my!) is to the Lion Knight and the Slenderman. All of the unique gear in People of the Sun is linked intrinsically to those three. 

You'll need to gather the following resources to build the items (in brackets are the normal items these are used for).

Golden Whiskers (Whisker Harp)

• 2x Pustles
• Bladder (Blood Paint)
• Phoenix Crest (Crest Crown)
• Legendary Horns (Spear of Longinus)
• Shimmering Halo (Hours Ring)
• 2x Elder Cat Teeth (Cat Fang Knife)

This means, if you want to build the unique gear (and you should at least be building the bow, the crown and the mace) you need to hunt the following Level 3s

• 2 x White Lion
• 1 x Antelope
• 1 x Phoenix

And doing that means you're not going to get access to the Crest Crown or Spear of Longinus. So plan accordingly.

How does that impact on quarries? 

Well, it's actually a big impact. You're still left with the need to hunt White Lions and Antelopes for a lot of the early game - even adding in the other two early game options (Spidicules, Gorm) doesn't lessen this because of how vital the Cat's Eye Circlet and Screaming Armor/Blood Paint can be.  So generally of the 20 hunts you have in this campaign, if you want to experience the unique content that these amazing items give you, you're going to end up hunting the Cat, Deer and Chicken about 10 times. 

So that leaves you in quite the dilemma when it comes to the expansion quarries, you absolutely can add them into Sun, and I recommend you do, but you have to be aware of the issues that each one brings, the limitation of time you have and the sacrifices you may have to make.  So I'll give you a brief overview of each one now:

Gorm

The best parts of the Gorm has always been the weapons and the potions, the fact that the armor is heavy is not so much of an issue when honestly it's just not that great. Even if you do go the Hellfire route, you're still not going to want to use Gorment Armor because it's not got enough affinities to justify using it. But you might use the Gorment Mask in a mixed set, so it's not all bad.  

Gaining Hovel isn't so bad in this campaign because of the Twins bonus for hovel (it's REALLY GOOD), but Gorm Climate makes saving for the Pool upgrades and building the special gear a pain in the ass. This can be mitigated by pushing towards Song of the Brave as early as possible, and that's a good option because of how powerful the Music/Drums line is (drums remains second best choice after Symmposium).

• + Great Weapon Choices that fill out the early game choices
• + Wisdom Potion is an alternative for the Cat's Eye Circlet that doesn't require as much RNG
• + Early Hovel is not as much of a downside here, it has amazing synergy with Sauna + Intimacy
• - Gorment Armor is not good in Sun at all
• - Gorm Climate

The Wisdom Potion is the largest positive here, and it's a massive argument for playing with the Gorm. So I rate this one 7/10 for Sun.

Spidicules

Oh boy, this one is super a mixed bag, with most of it trending towards negative. Spidicules gives a lot of weapon options that are alternatives for the White Lion ones, but it's designed officially to replace the Screaming Antelope. Which breaks access to a lot of the Sun specific gear. So that's not really an option. 

If you add Spidicules in without doing that replacement, you get a nice easy trigger of the death principle in lantern year 2 by sacrificing one of your males (if you want to) and as always you can game Young Rivals to do nothing at all by ensuring that you only have 0-1 males with hunt XP in your settlement. Also Young Rivals can be manipulated to give you a decent offensive early game survivor, but he will suck at tanking.

Taken on the other hand is a completely different matter, it's an absolute pain in the ass because it forces you to hunt Spidicules at least twice otherwise it might abduct more survivors from your settlement. You can manage this, but it is an absolute annoyance.

Likewise the building requirements for the three rings, as great as they are, demand a lot of Spidicules hunts. Typically you can be hunting Spidicules across the various levels anything up to ten times in order to manage to make the rings, and which ring you get along the way is completely out of your hands and down to RNG.

• + Silk Armor is light
• + Rings are amazing on Warriors of the Sun, especially Green and Blue
• + Silk Surgeon is incredible for Sun (and just good in general)
• + You can get lots of population from the nest, which helps so much
• + Young Rivals can give you an early Graves principle
• - Taken is an absolute nightmare
• - Knocking the legs of the Spidicules is an absolute slog when you don't have much Surge
• - Very intensive monster, requires a lot of hunting it selfishly
• - Silk Armor is flamable and not great
• - Hard to get a Silk Surgeon
• - Replaces Antelope in official rules

Overall it's hard to recommend Spidicules in Sun for a newer player, you can do it if you want a 'hard mode' variant, or you don't care about getting the Sunring Bow or Apostle Crown because you've used them enough already in previous runs. 3/10

Flower Knight

Let's be brief on this one. Just don't use the Flower Knight in Sun unless you want to meme with a lot of bows. Sun is straightforward enough without you having to take the easiest quarry in the game and hunt it. Use the Sunring Bow, not the Vespertine one.  In fact I'm not even going to pro/con this one, leave it out and if you want to experience its content, just do People of the Bloom with People of the Sun together.

2/10

Sunstalker 

Don't. Just don't. Without going into all of the reasons why, this one is a bad choice both lorewise and gamewise mechanically.  Sunstalker armor takes away from what makes Warriors of the Sun so fun and unique.

0/10

Dung Beetle Knight

The DBK's Rolling armor sits in an odd, grey place. The current way that the rules of the game are laid out has Rolling Armor as not being 'armor' which means that it isn't "worn" (only Armor and maybe Jewelry keyword gear is confirmed as being worn at the moment'.

So technically you 'carry' the DBK parts, which means you can wear them in Sun without the need for Hellfire. When you look at the design of the Rolling armor, with those large areas of exposed skin, it makes thematic sense that it can be worn without being too hot. But it's a fuzzy thing at best and you might decide that you don't want to follow that ruling (hopefully Campaigns of Death gives us a definitive answer).

The DBK is one heck of a tough fight in Sun because of the way it's designed. The need to manage the Ball is traditionally handled through surges, otherwise you can end up with 1 survivor doing nothing but blocking, a second one doing support, a third one doing the ball and only the last one able to attack. Also it's carapace design in the hit location deck is an anti-devastating mechanic and that's what the People of the Sun are built around.

This can make the fights utter slogs, even worse than the L2+ Spidicules can be.

• + Great Gear
• + Calcification process is amazing, and even better now that the Ancient Eggpoots card has been released
• + Challenging Fight
• + It's damn cool
• - Fight is designed around having Surge
• - Fuzzy rules regarding rolling armor

Overall I consider this one to be a decent choice, but it's third place in the mid to late game quarry categories.

Lion God 

People of the Sun is one of the prime places for hunting the Lion God, you end up with these massively powerful Warriors, so why not go stomping the penis kitty into the dirt?  The Lion God is a tough fight, but because it's not balanced around anti-devastate + need surge mechanics it's actually a better fit for Sun. 

That written, there is not a lot of content in the Lion God, it has a bunch of unique pieces of gear and a lot of Iron. So you'll end up hunting it a maximum of 3-4 times. So this one isn't a main quarry candidate, but it is a nice capstone for pushing yourself and working hard.

• Also the gear has a lot of synergy with the campaign specific stuff. It's relic provides a lot of red affinities for the Hellfire build and the various Mhendis are incredible with Warriors of the Sun.
• + Doesn't need a lot of fights
• + Gear has good campaign specific synergy
• + Challenging, but not as much of a slog as the DBK can be
• - Not a lot of content
• - Sometimes it can BS you out of nowhere and create an unfun experience

I think if you own this expansion, you should always put it into Sun, but you might not end up hunting it at all because you don't have the time. 6/10

Dragon King

Last of all we get to Kingdom Death's best boy, the Dragon King. This expansion has two optimal ways to use it, the first is in Lantern in combination with the Sunstalker - those two quarries complement each other so well that it's practically criminal to not use them together. So many synergies and fun things to discover.  However the other optimal way is to include it in Sun.  It's so good in Sun that I consider the Dragon King to be a 'must have' these days. 

The armor is the toughest "light" armor in the entire game, which means that it's the best armor for Sun (which is part of the reason why I rate it as an S-Tier armor) and the weapons, which normally struggle, become far more powerful when they are mixed in with Warriors of the Sun.  The synergies are so good for this expansion that even Adam chose to showcase the addition of the Nuclear Katana (Nukatana) as part of his 'look how Campaigns of Death makes Sun change' pitch.  

I am not going to Pro/Con this one because I think the score speaks for itself. 

10/10.

Summary

I actually think that People of the Sun is a better 'learn to play' experience than People of the Lantern or Stars because of the changes it has. Without the nemesis monsters turning up early on the players can learn about the settlement -> quarry -> gear -> survivors loop and experiment with gear.  As long as you direct them towards the Hellfire/Sauna Secret Fighting Art they can even use the heavy gear that they would be otherwise 'locked out' of. Also some players absolutely love the combination of being an absolute badass and being on a clock that Hellfire gives. I know I find it to be an exceptionally engaging mechanic and one that dissuades the more extreme crit farming methods.

People of the Sun is a great example of why Adam (and Anna) is an excellent designer, he has unique thoughts and can put together a large reworking of his framework with some exceptionally strong themes. There are some things I think you can rightfully level criticism at Adam for, but People of the Sun is not one of them.

At some point in the future we'll deep dive into things, but for now, this plus my older ratings (based on less experience) I hope you've learned enough without too many spoilers!