As Lethal as it Needs to be - Katars (Patreon)

Published:

2019-07-19 10:00:00

Imported:

2023-10

Content

Katars have been a part of the weapon meta since almost the very moment that the first player opened the Catarium and spent a Lion Claw + Hide to unlock that pointy stabbing triangle. This is not because of the weapon type in specific, but because of the power of deadly, the Katar and the Grand weapon types are the two earliest weapons to have the Deadly ability and this has enshrined their place in the meta.

Interestingly, Katar is a weapon type that is used by DPS survivors early on, but shines strongest when in the hands of a tank survivor who has mastered Katar. It's a highly defensive weapon class as exemplified by its specialization and mastery.

Cancelling reactions on the first selected hit location is a huge boost in defensive power when attacking and the Perfect hit ability on the mastery allows you to become more and more evasive - especially when combined with Timeless Eye (which is often used on tanks because of how it works with Katar and Clubs in particular). In theory what this design is supposed to do is to encourage you to use Katars paired for high speed, in practice what it's done is made the Calcified Digging Claws in the hands of a Weapon Master the ultimate way to stomp the Lion God.

There are absolutely no complaints about the design of Katar Specialisation & Mastery, they're incredible but what about the design philisophy of the Katars themselves? What can we see from them when we average everything out? Here's a net graph of Katars (excluding the Lion Knight Katars that break the mold heavily and we will not be discussing them here anyway).

As you can see from this, Katars have a consistent low speed (1.67), accuracy around 5+, strength around 5+ (typically it's 4, but the Calcified Digging Claw pulls the average up a lot) a low number of affinities (less than 1) and generally 2 abilities, one of which is always Paired. The entire class is designed to work around being used in pairs, but the way that the Paired rule works means that players avoid this.

Katars as a whole are a pretty cracked design, the issue with them is there's a huge amount of options that are essentially variations on the same weapon and almost no progression. As you see when we work our way through them all, you essentially have 5 Katars that are all relatively the same power level and one Katar that provides both the progression options. It's a bit of a pickle and you could look at it and say 'This means Katars are meant to be an early game weapon.' but if that's the case, then there's a large issue with how Green Armor works because it needs Katar mastery as part of its construction.

We're going to look at every single Katar in the game here, because there's not that many and it also demonstrates how much sideways design there is in the class. Sideways design gives options, it's great if you have a large amount of the same thing, tweaking it a bit each time varies the experience. However, as we'll see, there's something that holds back even that sideways design. The depth of design in Katars is sadly very small, as written above you essentially have 1 tier of Katar unless you play with the DBK, and then you have 2 tiers, the second tier is upgradable to create a faux third tier - and that's it.

Paired

Before we start, every single Katar on this list has paired, and with the exception of the Lion Knight Katars (not covered here) and possibly the Digging claws, I consider this ability to be a negative one. Sadly the core design of Kingdom Death means that using Paired holds more disadvantages than advantages. Yes you get to double your speed, but high speed attacks are a high skill floor way of playing, that is you have to apply a LOT of knowledge and experience in order to be able to mitigate the downsides.

Even when you're very experienced at the high speed playstyle, Paired does not work that well because it costs you one of your nine precious slots and you end up with a blank piece of gear that reads +X Speed plus lose all positive abilities on this gear card. So it ends up being a really bad weapon that's just +X Speed and a stats stick.

Honestly I hope that Paired gets reworked in Campaigns of Death, dual wielding should not be restricted to Blood Paint and meme-lords.

Lion Beast Katar - Catarium (Core: White Lion)

Power Level: Early

Speed: 2, average for Katars.

Accuracy: 7+, which is poor for Katars, generally they are quite accurate weapons.

Strength: 3, the lowest that Katars get.

Affinities: None

Ability: Deadly is really good, in fact this is one of the three cheapest places to get your hands on Deadly, the others are the Rib Blade (Grand - Gorm) and the Greater Gaxe (Axe - Gorm). Deadly early on is phenomenal, but also this weapon has considerable strength for such an early game weapon, if it had better accuracy you'd see it rocked for a lot longer than one would expect.

Summary: One of the meta defining weapons in the game, the LBK contains a massive amount of power locked into a very cheap weapon. I don't think there's much more to say, except they make the next weapon on the list into (sadly) an almost non-option.

Hooded Scrap Katar

Power Level: Early Game

Speed: Average (2)

Accuracy: 7+ which is slightly below average, but standard for a starting Katar

Strength: 4, higher than the LBK, which makes it interesting, but ultimately if you have the choice of either this or the LBK, you'll take the LBK.

Affinities: One blue left, this is useful for the Lucky Charm, but it's unlikely you'll use it with that jewelry because of its design.

Ability: So this is an ability that actively encourages the use of paired. I'm not a fan of auto-wound abilities for the most part, because they are often very poorly balanced because of how easy they are to achieve. This one is a hard one to get, and it has risks even if you succeed. I think it's an excellent example of how paired should be handled. You get access to a top tier wounding ability, but you have to not only be at 4 speed, but you also have to hit with all 4 of those dice and take the consquences, be they good or bad.

Summary: If the LBK wasn't a thing, if critical wound farming wasn't so important, then the HSK would be a very popular starting weapon. It's not that expensive, with a cost of 1x small appendage and 1x scrap - scrap in particular early on is of limited use until you get heat and you can make Monster Tooth necklaces.

Beast Knuckle

Power Level: Early - intended to be mid

Speed: 2 Speed is average, and it's a little stronger than normal here.

Accuracy: 6+ is solid, but nothing to write home about.

Strength: 4 strength isn't really enough for this weapon's design, but it is fair based on how hard the screaming antelope is.

Affinities: None

Ability: This is another ability that encourages you to run the weapon paired. I feel that the Beast Knuckle (apart from clearly being a fist and tooth weapon in look, I mean it's teeth on a fist, come on) is almost there with this ability, it's a very snowball style thing that actually helps other survivors if they are willing to surge near the end of your attack. But you need to get rolling in order to start reducing the monster's toughness and the weapon's base strength just isn't quite there for that. If this had been a 5 or 6 strength weapon it would have been an acceptable level of progression (even if it had to be locked behind the L2 antelope to keep it balanced). Either way, this is a good design, it's just not quite executed correctly.

Summary: Another weapon that feels like a sideways move from the LBK and for many strategies is actually worse. This weapon could have been a very popular and powerful one and I hope to see the ability it has returned to a new weapon, it's really cool and evocative design, the stats of the weapon just don't quite back it up.

Talon Knife

Power Level: Early - intended to be mid to late.

Speed: 2 Speed, pretty much average.

Accuracy: 6+ is decent, but considering the weapon's design it should have been a 5+ or got accuracy bonuses when paired.

Strength: 4, about average.

Affinities: The affinities on this weapon are the number one most interesting part of its design. This currently is the only place where you can cheaply get a left blue, up blue pairing and it's essential if you want to completely activate the Dragon Armor (spoilers, you don't care about activating the waist much).

Ability: The ability on this weapon is interesting, but also a bit of a head scratcher. This weapon actively rewards you for rolling as few dice as possible, which runs counter to the whole design of Paired, however I consider Savage to be little more than a neutral keyword because while it does help kill the monster faster, Deadly strategies aim to take it slow and shave all those resource pieces off the monster as much as possible. Savage is one of my least favourite abilities as it's just a bad version of Devastating.

Summary: Honestly this weapon needed more time in the oven. If it gave Deadly 2 + Savage then it would have been really interesting. If it was 6 strength it would have provided progression for Katar users and also be interesting. As it stands, this weapon is actually not stronger than the LBK or the HSK and that means its not worth the time. If you want crit farming stick with the LBK, if you want cool high speed damage dealing, go with the HSK. If you want a late game weapon, get the Digging claw.

Digging Claw

Power Level: Mid Game

Speed: 1, which makes it the slowest Katar in the game and ideal for Tanks with access to Katar Specialisation.

Accuracy: 4+ is very high for any weapon and again makes this a desirable tank weapon. But it's also just desirable in general.

Strength: 5 strength, finally we get some progression in Katar power!

Affinities: That right green affinity is rare on Katars and actually relevant for tank usage because of how it combines with that old staple Monster Grease. It's also strong with the Rolling Armor, which is one of the most common tank loadouts used.

Ability: This beauty is a pick axe, with a reroll during mineral gathering. Most typically you're going to use this reroll to avoid breaking your digging claws, but it can also help get you to the really interesting stuff in the charts - Crystaline Skin in particular is a phenomenal combo with Rolling Armor and Digging Claws.

Also, because of the low speed on this gear, Paired isn't as much of an issue as it normally is. With Weapon Specialisation you move from 1 reaction protected hit to 1 protected, 1 normal. The rest of the Katars are 1 protected, 1 normal to 1 protected 3 normal. It's a lot less risky to use

Summary: I recommend just slamming this one into the black harvest as soon as possible. But it's also a great pick axe/backup weapon for any other survivor as long as you have at least one actual pick axe in the hunt party to trigger Mineral Gathering. I also think this gear is amazing when used with Screaming Armor, especially when you hunt the Dragon King who makes big piles of Iron for you to smash up.

Calcified Digging Claw

Power Level: Late Game

Speed: 1, see Digging Claw discussion above.

Accuracy: 4+ Amazing

Strength: 5 + 1d10, which means its on par with the Oxidised weapons. This is one of the strongest weapons in the game.

Affinities: Same as the Digging Claw.

Ability: See Digging Claw, but it also now has Sharp, which increases its strength by 1d10 (average 5.5 increase).

Summary: Everything I've written about the Digging Claw applies here, except that with the addition of sharp after it's been calcified this weapon is in the top 6 strongest craftable weapons we have available right now. It's my number one choice of weapon for Katar Evasion tanks and it's the pinnacle of the Katar tree right now.

Conclusion:

Before we plunge in; here's the relative strengths of each Katar laid out next to each other in handy bar chart form. Lion Knight Katar's have been included, but again I'm not discussing them here for a wide range of reasons.

Blue is the weapon's base strength, Green is the average expected wounding roll. The thresholds here are the various White Lions.

You can see from this just how flat the progression is in this weapon class. You barely improve the weapon's core stats when you move from one weapon to the next and in fact the optimal route is LBK -> Build and immediately calcify Digging claw without using it -> Calcified Digging Claw. On one hand that's efficient, you only need to craft two weapons and pay for the calcification process, on the other hand it's a stifling path and not as much fun as one with more options.

In truth, if you want to progress with the Katar and you don't have access to the DBK, you need to build up your strength rather than change weapon. The Lion God expansion attempted to support this with its three rare items:

This lot is designed to be used alongside the White Lion armor set to turn it into a late game set. Unfortuantely it's really hard to get and not powerful enough considering the difficulty. That Lion God Statue needs an L3 Lion God kill and that's a 1% player base challenge. 🐱‍👓

And that's a big part of where Katars ended up struggling, they are intended to be used with the White Lion set, but that set is a highly DPS orientated set and the play style that you would employ with it just doesn't click with the design of Katars. (It's fun with the Beast Claw Katar as a meme build though).

I wish it was otherwise, but the honest truth of the matter here is you build the Lion Beast Katar, you use it to Deadly Farm, you then get strength from other sources like the Monster-Tooth Necklace or Innovations/Age and you stick with that gear until you can get the Digging Claw. We'll have to see if the future helps unstick this situation with the next generation of monsters.

Katars! Many options, most of which are just inferior to the first one you get.