A retrospective on 1.5 and a Look to the future (Patreon)

With Gencon around the corner, Adam has emerged from his dusty workshop to once again build up hype and engage with the community, we've had a bunch of answered questions from him a few days ago, which by now I'm sure you're all familiar with and I'm not going to go into a breakdown of those at this time unless you guys want that. But you can read through the comments here.

Instead, I wanted, ahead of Adam's gencon update, which one would assume is going to contain more details about Advanced KDM (which we can discuss in another post if people want to, I know some of you have already discussed things a bit with me on the discord) to look at the current state of the game, talk about the best things that changed in 1.5, the things that didn't and some of the changes that as a player or a critic 

Now before we begin, I want to be absolutely clear about something, I have two different hats when it comes to KDM and as a consequence two different sets of opinions, as a player I hold my personal opinions and as a critic I hold a different set of opinions that are based entirely.

My personal (and primary) position on balancing in this game is very simple, Adam knows what is best for his vision and I support the direction he is taking his game, I'll always play the game as officially as possible and I only create homebrew to supply alternatives, whatifs and for fun. To me, Adam's version is the best possible version and the one I enjoy the most.

If anyone ever asks you what Fen thinks is best for the game, the response is "Fen has complete trust in Adam's ability to form and balance the game to the best possible vision." I am as a player 100% in agreement with Adam's choices, balance and methods; they are deep, complex and create fascinating puzzles.

However, people get mixed up between my position and the critical stance I take when analyzing and reviewing things. When I am in my critic/analysis place, I am looking at the optimal routes of playing the game, while personally I'm off swanning around with Daggers, Whips and Swords - they are far from optimal and as a critic/strategist I would be wrong to lead people towards using them as their primary choices.

So what's coming here is a combination of what I like and dislike as a player (personal) and as a critic (impersonal), it's not my definitive position on things as the actual one is more complex and nuanced. 

We're going to compliment sandwich this one, starting out with a personal wishlist of what I hope to see between Campaigns of Death and any enhancements to the base game (non-Advanced KDM); following that with a list of areas that critically feel could be reviewed for Campaigns of Death and then ending with a list of all the really top, best things I enjoy about the game and especially its evolution into 1.5.

The Wishes

• Dragon Armor needs a slight boost in power, fixing the affinity issue on the belt would be nice, but giving some extra ability to the gloves would also be welcome.

• Dragon weapons are likewise in need of a little love, they're all very much behind the Zanbato in power at the moment, and they shouldn't be. 

• Death High models are the most detailed and gorgeous creations to come out of Kingdom Death period. The photoresin method allows for so much more dynamism, detail and character than anything that has come before. I hope that we get to see optional Photoresin versions of the core game monsters along with versions of the higher level/legendary monsters and resculpted larger versions of the original survivors to bring them in line with the newer stuff (the role survivors for example). 

• Spidicules love. More than anything else, that expansion is so close to greatness.  

• The Counterweighted-Axe to get a revision so it's in line with the Acid-Tooth Dagger. The Bone Witch/Timeless Eye/CW-Axe builds are getting out of hand!

• Wave 4 stuff being released sooner, honestly I signed up for those new monsters, not AKDM, and having AKDM/Campaigns of Death hold everything I am most excited about back is a bit of a downer. I want to paint some new monsters and more than anything those are what I want to see shipped out next, not the Gamblers Chest and Campaigns of Death, but the stuff in Wave 4. 

The Misses

• The Lion Knight's showdown experience and AI programming is more than a little wonky, there are some great parts to it, but the Fool card in particular needs to be rehauled.

• The Phoenix's weapons, Hollow Sword and Sonic Tomahawk need some work to make them worthy of the difficulty of that monster. 

• Likewise Phoenix Armor needs 2-3 more affinities on it to bring it more into balance with other armor in the same period of crafting. If we can fix that, it'll be really great.

• As a player I'm really not enjoying the +2 xp on the higher level monsters, it's discouraging with how it has anti-synergy with weapon proficiency gains and it ends up with you grinding L1 monsters for longer than usual. It's great once you've got your weapon masters up and you're boosting their children however. So I'm not sure what the solution is here, I've learned to live with it and adapted, but it doesn't feel good.

• Flower Knight needs some number tweaks and deepening of the gear options. It's a beautiful model and it deserves better.

• Weapon Crafter gear in particular could do with a rebalance, a lot of it isn't an improvement (or even a sideways alternative) over the Gorm/White Lion/Spidicules options, which is a same.

• The Gold Smoke Knight's inclusion into the Lantern Storyline just isn't gelling right, I'd love to see that worked on and it made to feel more weighty from a lore perspective. It's a super cool fight, a great model, but he just doesn't feel like part of the world.

• Oxidization of gear is a massive resource sink at the moment, it's so large that you don't have time to get to oxidizing the more funky and cool things such as the helm, sword and daggers, you end up having to rush after Shields, a Ring Whip and a Lantern Glaive.  The part of the game you're in does provide enough resources to do it with, but often the payoff outside of the three mentioned above, just isn't enough (and the Lantern Glaive only really makes it in because of how good its baseline version is).

• There are multiple silly exploits possible that really do force you to 'not use them' in order to keep the game from becoming stale. Massive population spiking (we're talking hitting quadruple digits or higher), unlimited Insanity, killing monsters in a single hit without any chance of counter attacks, dealing wounds to monsters without drawing AI in general (CW-Axe, Red Ring) and so on. I'd like to see them closed off as most of them just need one element fixed.

The Blessed

• The swift change to the villain role card once the way that Doomed was changed in 1.5 was amazing. Stuff like that, swift, quick fixes released online via the official source are just so good.

•  Confirmed - More expansion integrations is something I've always wanted, we've already had this confirmed and I couldn't be happier about it.

• Confirmed - Silk Armor needs some love. Apparently it's getting an extensive rehaul. Which is great because it's gorgeous, 

• Everything about the Sunstalker expansion. It's perfection.

• Adam's talked about capstoning KD:Monster with a Lantern Festival kickstarter. Do that with the Ringtail Swamp and that's all I need from Monster, you can then hand off the project to someone else and move onto Kingdom Death Quest!

• More calcification! Which has been confirmed.   

• People of the Stars - that campaign is nearly perfect.

• The Gorm, it's maybe a bit too good, but it does so much work in making weapons in the game more interesting.

• The updated plastic role models. I have the original resin versions of the role models and I hated painting them so much I gave up halfway through. The new models however are stunning.

So, what are your wishes for Campaigns of Death and base game Gambler's chest (non-AKDM)? What things did you like best about the current batch or the changes to 1.31 and what things do you hope get addressed in the CoD/GC wave of releases? What are you hoping to see at Gencon?