As my favourite weapon that just doesn't get the love they deserve, Whips are one of three criminally under designed weapons in the game along with Scythes and Daggers. While Daggers got a much needed boost with the release of the White Gigalion, for some reason we still cannot craft a Lion Tail or Sunstalker tendril into a Whip (Custom expansion on this coming next month). This means that Whips suffer from a lack of breadth, depth and progression because there are 4 whips and 1 upgraded whip.

In essence, every single Whip user you play in a campaign is going to use the same whips each time, only changing it up if they have access to the Spidicules expansion. I do think it's straight up a criminal shame that the White Gigalion didn't give us a Lion Tail + Hooked Claw Giga-Whip and I'll be addressing that next month directly.

Also Whips inexplicably do not have Reach 2 as a standard ability, given what Whips are - this is a bizarre choice and one that harms the design of Whips overall.

Now lets look at the Specialization and Mastery, because they're an odd pairing.

The specialization is nothing short of phenomenal, there's nothing else in the game quite like it and this cements one of the themes that the Whip has - AI Control. Make no bones about it, this ability is really powerful, you get to prune the AI deck of troublesome AI cards that it's drawn, there's nothing else that does this and the longer the fight goes on the weaker the monster's offense will become as a consequence.

The Mastery on the other hand, well... Ya' basic! This is nothing more than propping up the weaknesses of the weapon class as a whole (as we'll see going ahead Strength is the main problem with this weapon type. Honestly it's uninspired, underpowered and just not interesting. Maybe it'll get a revision in Campaigns of Death (HAH!)

Outside of that, the identity of Whips is not great. It has solid Mood/AI control abilities coupled with above average speed, average accuracy and low strength. This is not a very good combination for any weapon, in fact it's kind of similar to the issues that plague Daggers.

Let's take a look at this small roster shall we?

Rawhide Whip - Skinnery

Power Level: Low (Early Game)

Speed: 3 Speed isn't a large problem when you have 7+ accuracy, as mentioned here and there I find high speed low(ish) accuracy weapons to be quite acceptable in design as long as they have a decent chance of wounding.

Accuracy: I might have just said 7+ accuracy is okay with 3 speed, but it's not in the case of this weapon. This is because the Rawhide Whip is a Tech Tier 1.5 weapon - it's in the Tier 1 location, but it requires Ammonia to make. So it should be better.

Strength: Now we get to why I'm pretty thumbs down on this weapon. As mentioned above, this is not a starting game weapon, you need ammonia and that's something that rarely turns up before you've managed to build Gorm/Spidicules/White Lion weapons. So having such an awful strength level isn't really justified. But you can see why it has been so heavily nerfed when you look at the ability.

Affinities: N/A

Ability: OK so Provoke is ABSOLUTELY INSANE as an ability. It's one of the strongest pieces of AI control in the entire game right now. Certain monsters just fall apart when they're forced to attack a Whip tank over and over and I suspect this is why the Rawhide Whip has just 1 strength. However, there is a late game option that uses this gear.

Summary: A terrible statline on an awkward to make weapon that has one of the most overpowered abilities in the game. In the hands of a high strength survivor, this weapon can carry you through huge parts of the game, but it is almost useless in the hands of anyone else.

Silk Whip - Silk Mill

Power Level: Early to Mid Game

Speed: 2 Speed is standard, however this weapon could have benefited from 3 speed easily.

Accuracy: One cannot complain about a 6+

Strength: 3 strength is a little light here because this weapon isn't easy to craft, it requires 1x large appendage from the Spidicules (plus 1x bone) and that's not a given when you hunt the Spidicules. So considering all the difficulties (hard showdown for a LY2 monster, awkward resource deck, requires monster specific gear) this weapon could have been strength 4 and been fair.

Affinities: Decent affinities, they connect with the Leather Shield and the Lucky Charm with ease, so there isn't much to complain about here at all. I like this positioning of down green + right blue a lot.

Ability: Another ridiculously strong ability, this one can decimate monsters that put out a lot of moods (hello Gigalion, Butcher and co) because it is in essence another 'auto-wound' ability as long as you Perfect hit the monster when they have a wound. This whip is one of my favourite picks on a Cycloid Scale or Dragon Armor survivor and it's a reason why I recommend the Spicidules/Sunstalker/Dragon King campaign combo.

Summary: Very powerful early game weapon that's overlooked mostly because it sits with a (justifiably) unpopular expansion. When Spidicules and its gear gets some CoD balance revisions and/or Abyssal Woods gets released and Spidicules has to be hunted for progression then we're likely to see a surge in popularity with this weapon amongst the KDM Hipster crowd. You can get there first by using it with Cycloid Scale Armor!

Hunter Whip - Leather Worker

Power Level: Early to Mid Game

Speed: As always, anything between 1-3 speed is very acceptable for a weapon, though with the stat line this gear has, 2 speed might have been more preferable. 3 speed tends to exaggerate the statistical weaknesses of a weapon. However, this is somewhat countered with the presence of a useful Perfect hit ability.

Accuracy: Nothing to write home about here, this is a pretty standard accuracy for a weapon like this. But I think it's worth mentioning that 7+ accuracy would have actually been an improvement on the design because it would cut down the percentage of hit that are not Perfect hits.

Strength: The main issue with the Hunter Whip is the same one that most Weapon Crafter weapons have. It is short 1-2 points of strength because of the design decision to make the Early game monsters have 3+ strength on their weapons. By the time you can make the Hunter Whip you're typically looking at moving onto Toughness 9-10 monsters and 3 strength baseline just isn't good enough at that point.

Affinities: While two blue affinities is fine, and the right blue does mean you can consider a Luck based build to get around the limitations of the low strength. In order to get the weapon's ability online you need both attached. Let's be straight up honest here, you NEED that ability on if you're going to use the Hunter Whip, there's little justification to use it otherwise.

So this makes the weapon a bit demanding to sort out, sadly it's best deployed on a Cycloid Scale Armor survivor - but that's basically the same for almost every single whip here. However it does work with Dragon Armor somewhat and Leather armor. So there are options.

Ability: This ability is the number one reason for using this weapon, nowhere near as powerful as the Silk Whip version which allows you to archive moods directly instead of having to deal with the HL deck, but if you do not have Spidicules available - this is your only option and it at least deals with moods without risking the Harvester the way that the Whisker Harp does.

Summary: The Hunter Whip is 2 strength points short of being a meta weapon, if you have a survivor with the right stats in strength or luck you can certainly make good use of this. But it is hard to justify using it over superior options in the same tier if you are looking to be optimal.

Ring Whip

Power Level: Late Game (Low)

Speed: 2 Speed is something of a boon here because of the awful Early Iron drawback. 3 Speed would have been a death knell, but 2 is managable as it's only ~1 in 5 hits that will entirely miss.

Accuracy: 5+ Accuracy is pretty great for any weapon and it's something I like to see on

Strength: In essence this weapon has a very variable amount of strength as it has nothing other than survivor stats and Sharp to score with. That means your mean wounding roll is going to be 11 + survivor strength. That's just not good enough for the late game - so you're going to be looking at boosting it further with monster charge armor sets.

Affinities: One can't complain about a left blue affinity as it does have uses. But it's nothing to get excited about on a non-deadly weapon.

Ability: As mentioned above, this weapon has Early Iron lumbering it with a 19% chance of all hits missing every attack, plus all it's strength comes from 'Sharp' which means it has zero synergy with Cycloid Scale armor.

However, it does have Reach 2, which as mentioned in the opening is something that ALL whips just should have as a standard part of their design, and that means it's viable on Phoenix and Dragon armor survivors because of how their charge abilities combo strongly with reach. This can help compensate for the weapon's weak stats.

Summary: Overall this weapon is a sad end game option. In the hands of a Whip Master who is using Dragon Armor with a Rainbow Wing Belt (Dung Beetle Knight) that allows her to reroll her first 1 on each dice (reducing the chances of a full miss to 1.9%) then it can really shine, but for everyone else this is just something you make on the way to crafting the Oxidized version.

Oxidized Ring Whip - People of the Lantern Only

Power Level: End Game

Speed: Average/good speed. Could have managed more.

Accuracy: This weapon would certainly have appreciated additional accuracy, but you cannot complain about 5+ and in general terms Oxidizing weapons doesn't always improve their accuracy, so it's fine - especially when you consider that Early Iron is no longer a factor.

Strength: While it's not a huge jump, +3 strength over the normal Ring Whip does matter a great deal as it pushes the weapon to naked 14 mean wounding roll and a naked maximum of 23.

Affinities: That blue left has now become essential to the weapon's design, that means it's not as good as it was before when it was just a bonus. But armor sets like Dragon and Screaming can connect up just fine with this. It has serious demands on its red affinity requirements though without providing any support itself. This limits the armor sets its viable on a lot. Personally I prefer Dragon Armor over all else as that has 2 and a half reds, plus space to activate the Ring Whip and a Monster Tooth Necklace. It works out as a very powerful offensive semi-tank build then.

Ability: This ability is both a blessing and a curse, because of how powerful Provoke is, you can handle monsters with easy if your survivor has a shield and good evasion, but the BRRR affinity requirements of this ability keep it in check somewhat. You can easily activate it with Cycloid and get a shield and evasion gear in, but then you're wasting the Sharp and blind spot bonuses. You can put it on Dragon Armor, but then you have limited evasion (basically Monster Grease's +1) and you can't really fit this on Phoenix where it would work best because Phoenix has garbage affinities.

So as strong on paper as this ability is, and it's absolutely dominating when used by a tactically savvy individual (i.e. Dancer Armor + Whip kiting) it can be really hard to actually do this in practice because of that affinity requirement.

Summary: Powerful, exciting, hard to use correctly. This weapon is close to perfection, the only real shame is how it's tied to Lantern campaigns only. Regardless I hope this represents the template for future Whips.

Conclusion:

Whips demonstrate a lot of potential in the future, however what we need to see is a change in the base statline philosophy. Making Reach a standard part of the weapon would be a good beginning, but also they need an offensive boost - either pushing them into Deadly, adding more strength or changing the mastery to have more panache. As it stands right now, they can be very impressive with the right survivor, but the right survivor tends to either be one stat in Cycloid Scale/Phoenix/Dragon armor or one with Ageless and a load of personal strength. It's not good to have to rely on one single survivor for this kind of thing, so it's probable that you'll mostly see Whip survivors only in Stars where the Storm constellation can allow them to complete mastery within 3-4 hunts and have a good shelf life after that without the need for ageless.

Area that has a lot of potential for growth with new expansions though!