Requesting Backup: AI Control (Patreon)

1. Introduction & Debuffs 

2. Contents

3. Hit Location Control 

4. AI Control 

5. Buffs

6. Defense & Healing

7. Activators

8. Movement & Positioning

9. Utility Offense

10. Survival Gains

11. Resource Gathering

12. Tactics

13. Miscellaneous

Overview

AI Control is an aspect of the game where you manipulate the monster's behavior in order to avoid, mitigate or negate the more dangerous aspects of its AI. At its most basic level this is performed through positioning, for example if you position only your toughest survivor (tank) in front of a White Lion while everyone else is out of the monster's facing and/or in the blind spot then the White Lion is likely to

AI control expands on this, but where it has been positioned in the game is very blurred. Rawhide Armor holds the single strongest item (in what I consider is a huge design boo-boo), while Clubs and Whips hold a lot of the rest.

I want to touch on why I think the Rawhide Headband was a design error because I am still hopeful that it gets rectified in Campaigns of Death/Gambler's Chest. Having such a powerful and (almost) unique ability sat on the lowest tech tier of armor means that in order to continue to use this piece of gear players are forced to maintain a survivor wearing it for the entire campaign. While one would think that this self-balances because Rawhide Armor is paper thin vs the higher level monsters, the truth of the matter is the Headband mitigates so much damage through its ability that it is worth a huge amount of extra armor.

If Adam offered me one change to the core game and one change only, I would ask him to remove all abilities from the Rawhide Headband and add in a AI Control support item to the Organ Grinder along with a more powerful, upgraded version in the Barber Surgeon. I really do believe that we would see more variation in our late game hunting parties if the AI Control could be uncoupled from Rawhide Armor's abilities.

Fecal Salve - Organ Grinder (Core)

Crafting Cost: 1x Organ

Additional Categories: Survival Gains

Affinities: Left blue on a 1x Organ early game item is a huge boon because of the synergistic connection it has with the lucky charm and rawhide armor. Only right blue is stronger and that is because it is relatively rare.

Abilities & Keywords: balm is an odd keyword, we don't have much in the way of interactions with this yet. Stinky has some situations where it is relevant (DBK for example).

Additionally, you gain extra survival when departing early on, as young settlements tend to have few "+X survival" on departing innovations and they should be holding off on making them for a few years this small bonus tends to let you max out your survival every hunt.

Main Ability:  This is where the real meat of the Poopy make-up comes to light. The first, obvious application is to use it to remove the Priority Target token if you get it. That has some edge case applications here and there and it can save a survivor from a sticky situation. 

The real power here is in the 'you are not a threat until you attack' there is a huge amount of monster AI cards that target threats ahead of normal survivors, if you are not attacking in a regular pattern, or you want to attack and then hang back to do other things, smearing poop all over your face does the job.

The most effective and potent use of this is on a pure support survivor, I tend to run a single survivor with an odd weapon type that I'm training up (sometimes F&T, sometimes Spear), they will score one wound and then activate the Fecal Salve and not attack again for the rest of the showdown. They are then freed up to move around in a pure support role, using the Cat Eye Circlet, Rawhide Headband, Bandages and similar activated items (also they do all the gathering). Because they do not attack much, I do not need to reapply the Fecal Salve and this has a huge boost in effectiveness for their role.

In addition, having just three viable targets allows for far greater control over the monster's targeting, you don't have to think about where you are putting your support survivor, it is very rare that a monster goes for 'non-threat' or 'furthest survivor in range'.

Finally, if you're still not sure how good this is, here's an example, the Butcher (almost) never attacks non-threats, especially if they stay out of range.

Rating: S+ its combinations with the Lucky Charm, low cost and power on a support survivor. Offensive survivors that want something similar should consider Cycloid Scale armor/boots and the Bloom Sphere (below).

Bloom Sphere - Plumery (Phoenix)

Crafting Cost: 1x small hand parasites, 3x bone

Additional Categories: N/A

Affinities: Left Green and Right Blue on a gear that requires the #2, #5 or #8 position on the gear grid is a tall ask at times. It may require some gymnastics to fit this gear card in and ensure it's active because it does nothing useful when it's not.

Abilities & Keywords: stinky (like a lot of AI control) and other so it can't be used by saviors. These are both pretty much irrelevant keywords that provide flavor.

Main Ability:  This one is a passive ability that forces the monster to pick another target half the time that it targets you. This means if it chooses you, but one of the other survivors meets any of the targeting conditions, it chooses them instead. 

It's solid because it is a passive, but because it is a 50% chance to activate you cannot build a consistent strategy around it. Sometimes, when you need this to work the most, it will fail. Now this isn't a deal breaker, but it does mean that the Fecal Salve is a more reliable and consistent (and cheaper) option for most. That limits how highly this can be rated, because there is a superior alternative elsewhere.

Rating: While this one is strictly worse than the Fecal Salve for most survivors, the Bloom Sphere holds some benefit for DPS style survivors who are attacking every turn. A pure, non-combatant Support Style Survivor will certainly prefer the Fecal Salve and DPS survivors with Cycloid Scale armor already have the Poop boots built in. So this one is for non-range, non-reach DPS survivors who may be in the face of the monster a lot of the time.

So it gets a B+, would be higher if the Fecal Salve wasn't cheaper, turns up earlier, works in a more reliable fashion and had extra benefits.

Pulse Lantern - Gormery (Gorm)

Crafting Cost: 1x Milky Eye, 1x Active Thyroid

Additional Categories: Lantern

Affinities: Up Red is nothing to write home about, but it often comes in handy when combined with the Gorment Armor set. 

Abilities & Keywords: In addition to being a lantern, which is useful in the Post-Watcher period of the core campaign, this one is fragile (strictly a downside). There is nothing you can do about this, sometimes events will destroy this lantern.

Main Ability:  70% of the time you get to knock down the monster, which will cancel its AI card if it was in the middle of performing it (Surge) and also mean that all survivors hit on a 3+ and any reactions that might happen when attacking are cancelled.  

The -1 accuracy to all survivors is a downside not to be ignored, but not if you are able to deal enough damage to the monster to slay it. Even if you do not kill the monster outright, often you should have dealt enough damage to be able to finish it off quickly.

There are also multiple strategies that allow you to remove tokens, convert them into positive ones and similar, so this negative can be negated or even taken advantage of with the right builds.

Rating: S+ There is little else in the game that can do what this does, the Musk Bomb has a similar ability, but it is less effective and has many other flaws.

Blue Ring - Silk Mill & Legless Ball (Spidicules)

Crafting Cost: 3x Eyeballs, 2x Stomach (Legless Ball required).

We should not beat around the bush on this. That is a steep crafting cost, not only do you have to successfully remove all the legs from a Spidicules and then beat it, but you also need to collect 5 resources which are all 1x in the deck. This means at absolute best case, this requires hunting and killing 3 Spidicules (and that usually means 4 Spidicules because of Taken). All of the rings have these massive costs linked to them, it makes getting the rings a real challenge, because Spidicules is not a very 'crit farmable' monster. 

Additional Categories: Armor/Defense

Affinities: Lots of blue affinities that all have to be connected in order to get this item to work. You can do it with basic gear from the core game thanks to the Lucky Charm, Leather Armor, Rawhide Armor, Fecal Salve etc etc. But it is awkward that this item needs to sit in either slot #2 or #5, either way this is a centerpiece of your build if you're making it.

Abilities & Keywords: This is an accessory, so it's more arm protection without clashing with armor sets. In fact, it is kind of crazy that these items provide protection at all. They're 'magic rings' without being magic (no other keyword).

Amber is the only real downside here (outside of foolish play resulting in a White Lion stealing it). Tiny Arachnophobia will deny you the ability to equip this gear (by the way, does anyone else find the wording on Tiny Arachnophobia very irritating? It uses 'carry' rather than activate or depart the way that others do. Considering we have no good definition of what is 'carried' vs. 'worn' still, this is a small peeve. But I do expect better from a line that classes itself as boutique). 

Main Ability:  A passive Rawhide Headband whenever you are targeted as the monster controller is nothing to sneeze at. That is a massive amount of damage mitigation available there and it also has combinations with the Gloom Hammer (Slenderman) and Whip Specialization that are worth exploring. This one is the least obvious of the three spider rings, but it is no slouch, especially on a tank with a Gloom Hammer DPS sitting next to you.

Rating: A+ because while this one is very strong, it doesn't have as much power as its brethren and also the crafting cost is very steep (justifiably so).

Whisker Harp - Catarium (Core - White Lion)

Crafting Cost: 1x Golden Whiskers, 1x Bone

Additional Categories: Instrument

Affinities: Left blue is always a solid one to have, especially if you don't need it to activate the gear providing it.

Abilities & Keywords: while instrument is now a positive because of the Infernal Rhythm fighting art, noisy is always a downside until we get some acceptable replacement for the Harvester. You might decide that it's worth the risk, I don't (1% per basic hunt event is too high). However for fighting Nemesis monsters, this thing is top tier.

The arrival survival gain is a solid bonus, as always hunts tend to wear down on survival (in exchange for avoiding dangerous results) so having a little boost when you get to the monster is welcome.

Main Ability:  Strum is a very unique ability in the game, most mood control is stuck onto Whips, which tend to require Perfect hits in order to remove said moods and also inflict wounds when they do so (which is a neutral result). The Whisker Harp gives you a non-attacking way of doing this 50% of the time and is very potent when dealing with highly mobile multi-mood monsters such as Spidicules or The Tyrant. 

This is also the earliest way you can get your hands on mood control before reaching the Butcher. Being able to remove the Butcher's moods can neuter some of its most effective abilities, most notable of these is the Lantern Frenzy - which can devastate a survivor if it is on the wrong target. 

Rating: D tier vs. quarries, S tier vs. Nemesis monsters.

Musk Bomb - Barber Surgeon (Core - Screaming Antelope)

Crafting Cost: 7 resources (Pottery Required)

Additional Categories: N/A

Affinities: N/A

Abilities & Keywords: It's got stinky, thrown and fragile. Thrown is a nothing keyword, stinky can be gotten from any number of cheaper and more powerful items and fragile is just a straight up negative. There's nothing worth a dime here in this area.

Main Ability:  In principle this is a very cool idea, it is a single shot passive AI cancellation card that can be used when the monster draws a dangerous AI card. That should be a really powerful item because it's giving your hunt team a turn without the monster doing very much. Just look at the Pulse Lantern above for how much I rate that ability.

However, here it is a 7 resource, single use item that provides no affinities, is archived right after you use it and has a 20% chance of doing nothing at all. Considering it is just a single AI card which is cancelled, there is just no reason to use this item, you could spend those 7 resources and that precious gear slot on many, many other things that can keep you alive, like say a Pulse Lantern or even some Stone Noses or a Fecal Salve.

The problem simply boils down to this, the fact that the item archives itself instead of being once per showdown, means that under no circumstances would this be a desirable thing to use. In addition it's locked off in the Barber Surgeon - which is a monster specific location that requires a specific innovation and showdown to unlock. It should be impressive, but it isn't.

Rating: The poster child for how not to design an item. The Musk Bomb is the classic "great idea, lousy execution" item that you can hold up not just as 'how not to do it' but also as 'Adam doubles down on his bad ideas'. I brought this item up when the transition to 1.5 was being made directly with the design team, listing all of the areas in which the card fails and asking that they look into making it worthwhile. Of course this was ignored, which means this card wastes that lovely art, squanders a great concept and takes up space in your box.

So I score it as "💩" - Not even usable in edge cases, if you lost the gear cards for this one you wouldn't even notice. My recommendations to improve this item are:

• Change use to 'Once Per Showdown' instead of archiving.
• Provide minor 'On arrival' bonus such as 'On arrival gain +1 Survival'
• Add 2-3 affinities to give it other uses besides just sitting there until it shuffles away from your grid.

Stick with the Pulse Lantern otherwise. 

Summary

AI Control in various forms is still a young category with a lot of potential for growth in future expansions. We have seen some hints of it coming in the Frogdog demo with the Frogdoggles and that means there should be more variations in our future.

AI Control's diffuse nature; with it encompassing moods, positioning, AI deck manipulation, attack cancellation, AI "type" control (clubs) and control of targeting means that it has a very fuzzy definition. But every single thing that you can do with these items to limit or direct the monster in ways that you want is a massive benefit.

It's just a shame that the Rawhide Headband overshadows them all.