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Requesting Backup: Promotional Items! (Patreon)

Published:

2020-02-04 09:00:00

Imported:

2024-02

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Content

Overview

Last stop, this town! We're at the end of the gear journey with a look at armor, weapons and everything else almost completed. So this is going to be closed out with an examination of all the weird and wacky (and broken) things that come in the promotional stuff.

I'm considering EVERYTHING that didn't come in the core game or an official expansion to be promotional, which as I understand it is also APG LLC's position on the matter as well. These things can be odd, broken or plain stupid and that's fine here because they are not part of the real experience. If you don't like them, leave them out of the campaign, there's no real reason to 'nerf' or 'fix' items like this because they are completely optional in the first place.

Dormant Twilight Cloak - Allison White Box/Hooded Stranger

Crafting Cost: Received with Blue Lantern (see Hit Location Control) during the Hooded Stranger event.

Additional Categories: Defense.

Affinities: One lonely up blue, which you will rarely make use of in the early parts of the campaign where this accessory is at its strongest.

Abilities & Keywords: heavy is a bummer, other is a wash and the order keyword is just interesting flavor at this point. It's also Unique (like the Twilight Sword), Irreplaceable (Like the sword) and thankfully an Accessory so it does not break armor sets!

Main Ability: The primary use for this item is explicitly to help mitigate some of the issues surrounding the Twilight Sword (TS). If the survivor who gains the sword is inexperienced and lacking in insanity then they can struggle with the Sentient part of the TS, which makes the experience of leveling proficiency in the sword an absolutely awkward and exasperating experience at times (especially when combined with the starting TS stats and cumbersome). Once the survivor has gained some levels and time (so the hunt party has access to Insanity gain mechanics like the Screaming Helm) then the cloak 'turns off' via the Understanding mechanic. I think this aspect of it is exemplary and it is a great item to look at for inspiration if you want to create your own gear that helps early game without being as ubiquitous and 'all campaign' as other "early game" items often end up being.

A side effect of this is that the cloak also helps with handling things like the Butcher's Cleaver and similar items that can be helpful in the early game as long as you can get around Sentient.

Rating: While I am giving this one a B+ Tier score, I want to be clear, this is because it is situational in its uses, not because it is weak. When you have the situation where it is strong, It is exceptional at what it does. So, I consider the Allison White Box to be almost essential for People of the Lantern because of how it smooths out the experience for the Twilight Sword bearer (now you only have to metagame who gets the sword).

It is very specific in when it is good and that is an exceptional part of its design, because constant 'no brainer' additions are problematic for the game.

Twilight Thong - Pin Up Twilight Order Knight

Crafting Cost: N/A

Additional Categories: Defense

Affinities: N/A

Abilities & Keywords: All of these keywords and abilities build together to make this an alternative for Rawhide Pants. It has one less armor overall when put into the full set, but gives you alternative defenses in exchange.

Main Ability: Obvious cringe aside in the description of these mechanics, what we have here is an interesting alternative to the Rawhide Pants, but the truth of the matter is they are significantly stronger. From the mid through to the late game, the Rawhide set is the exclusive realm of support and archer style survivors because they want the combination of survival gains, survival refunds and AI control. Armor is not a consideration for them, as they are rarely targeted, but AoE Intimidates are. This means they would use the Twilight Thong without hesitation.

Rating: This one is very powerful, far more so than one would realise just on a cursory glance. As a such any designs to introduce it to the campaign should take that into consideration, moving its crafting to the later part of the timeline by tying it to some high tier innovation or requiring sacrifice of some high power item that is hard to replace (we're talking about Cat Eye Circlet tier here).

I think therefore my recommendations for the way to introduce this item are as follows:

1. For players looking to make the game a bit easier - Add this into the Tattered Parcel package on the Hooded Stranger event.

2. For players looking to make this a difficult prospect, but available in the early game- make the crafting cost 2x hide, 1x eye of cat

3. For players looking to shift this to the late game - tie its construction to the Records innovation and have it craftable out when that happens (and use above costs to craft it). Records links loosely to the Twilight Order/Watcher dynamic and it isn't very strong (anymore).

Ideas circling around those suggestions should work decently, depending on what your group is looking for. I tend to leave this item out entirely.

Vault Key Earrings - 10th Anniversary Survivors

Crafting Cost: Endeavor, 1x bone, 1x cyclops fly, 1x broken lantern. Requires: Survivor with Fear of the Dark, Heat and Fur Armor.

Additional Categories: N/A

Affinities: Right Green is the best green!

Abilities & Keywords: Usual warning about Fragile and Jewelry (lions) keywords meaning this can self archive.

Main Ability: Very simple, almost deceptively so. You get to ignore one of your disorders while this is in your grid. The most obvious use is to cancel out Fear of the Dark. But this also allows a Narcissist True Blade Sword Master to wear head gear (and therefore full armor), someone with Intimacy issues a chance to breed and pass on their weapon mastery (hang on dear, I can't get it up without my Viagra earrings) or a survivor crippled by Aichmophobia to get over it by having their ears pieced with a sharp bone needle and these earrings installed.

It's just a fantastic smoothing item that deals with a host of otherwise crippling problems that previously required either Disorder spamming or the Barber Surgeon to fix (these are both Screaming Antelope based strategies).

Rating: I praised this item in my review of the 10th Anniversary Survivors set (here) and after additional time I can report that I still believe this is the best designed piece in the entire mini-expansion. This pattern gear requires a survivor who has been crippled from hunting in the first place, and then it allows that survivor to get back out there and hunt again. After it has done that job it allows for other survivors to ignore irritating or crippling disorders and act normally. Plus it has an optimal affinity positioning which means that it can contribute to additional evasion via Monster Grease. No hesitation in giving this an A- with the additional note that more items should be like this one.

Bloodskin - White Speaker White Box/White Speaker Event

Crafting Cost: 1x population, 1x organ, 3x resources. Limit once per campaign (don't ask me if that includes new timelines, the language of KDM has never been very technical or precise).

Additional Categories: N/A

Affinities: Up and down green has a solid fit into Leather Armor/Shield builds as it fits between the skirt and shield. There are also many other places this one can fit in. This is not the most powerful affinity combination for green, but it is strong.

Abilities & Keywords: Consumable is a generally positive keyword (unless its eaten by the antelope) and the other keyword is something that we're used to by now. So nothing super special here.

Main Ability: This is a personal alternative to bandages, providing a passive method of removing bleeding tokens every turn. But the cost to this is the risk of having to depart with 2 bleeding tokens already, this increases the odds of you dying on the hunt where you can't remove those tokens. However, if you have Unconscious Fighter, then this is less of a risk.

Rating: B+ easily, bandages are superior in most cases, but if your survivor bleeds themselves often because of Story of the Young Hero or maybe even the Muramasa then this continuous self "heal" is great. It is also very helpful against monsters who deal a lot of bleed damage directly, such as the Slenderman or Dung Beetle Knight.

The Archive Lanterns - Vibrant, Dying, Prismatic, Black Friday

(BF Lantern is +1 Evasion , may archive once per campaign to ambush the monster).

Crafting Cost: N/A

Additional Categories: Lantern, Buff, Various

Affinities: N/A

Abilities & Keywords: all of these are lantern and other, which mainly has relevance in People of the Lantern.

Main Ability: Every lantern holds a stat gain and a "sacrifice" ability, where you archive the lantern for a one off buff. The strongest lanterns are the +evasion and +movement ones, in particular the Prismatic Lantern is absolutely incredible at enabling certain builds with its sacrifice ability. These lanterns are unusual because they are almost all overpowered early on, but without affinities they become (mostly) irrelevant in the late game (apart from Evasion, which only starts to become irrelevant when you get the monster down to hitting on 8+ or worse).

Rating: Most of these are S Tier items under the right circumstances (Vibrant is a B or C tier) because of the stat bonuses they give out. As mentioned above these become less important later on in the campaign due to their lack of affinities, but as People of the Lantern requires a lantern

I would recommend if you want to incorporate these into your campaign, have them be craftable when the post Watcher location turns up and use the same crafting cost as the survivor's lantern. But limit each lantern to being crafted once per timeline, this will stop them being sacrifice spammed.

Belt of Gender Swap - Pin ups of Death/Strange Spot

Crafting Cost: N/A

Additional Categories: N/A

Affinities: Two great affinities, right green and down green. These are the premium positions for green affinities and in combination with Monster Grease + Leather Shield you have 2 out of 3 green affinities sorted.

Abilities & Keywords: Like many things in this list, it is both jewelry and other. It is also cursed, meaning that unless you have crystal skin you're stuck with it (if you do have crystal skin then some weird things are going to happen!)

Main Ability: Apart from being a key part of what turns a survivor into a Silence, this item is very straightforward in its design (but probably complicated for the settlement to deal with). It flips your gender from male to female or female to male. Classic trope.

This isn't just a 'for fun' result though, a settlement who has almost run out of males can end up with a bolstered population where one of their lady hunters gets flipped around when she returns and that can be something that saves settlements from doom. Likewise the reverse can happen and a settlement cursed with too many males (like China) can end up losing one of its remaining females if they went out on a hunt.

Ultimately this one creates fun, unique story telling situations which enhance and richen the experience of playing the game.

Rating: B+, it's not an amazing powerhouse item, but it tells a great story, can have massive impact under the right circumstances and the affinities go a long way towards making it useful in the gear grid.

My male Silence, check out his belt!

Afterdeath Brew: Octoberfest Aya (Pattern) & Lonely Tree

Crafting Cost: 1x blistering plasma fruit, 1x love juice, 1x scrap. Requires: Heat and Pottery.

Additional Categories: N/A

Affinities: Good right green affinity.

Abilities & Keywords: As mentioned elsewhere consumable is a neutral keyword, soluble is a negative and other is a mostly irrelevant negative.

Main Ability: Bit of a weird item, for a "normal" survivor this represents a way of killing themselves in a failed fight via bleeding and returning from death 20% of the time. It also provides a passive way of returning any survivor who dies from bleeding 20% of the time - and that is its main application.

However, in combination with the Red Ring and the Unconscious Fighter Fighting Art this provides a simple way to dump 2 bleeding tokens onto the monster on your turn and then you can hide out for a bit and clear the bleeding with either bandages or the aforementioned bloodskin.

Rating: This is the kind of item that I'm not so keen on, it either does a really silly edge case thing, or it helps the most broken way of killing monsters in the game find another route to work (previously you needed Story of the Young Hero, which can be hard to get). I'm giving it a D- because outside of abuse scenarios this item is exceedingly edge case.

Newborn - Fade White Box Hunt Event

Crafting Cost: She's already been crafted for you, bless.

Additional Categories: Resource Gain, cuteness

Affinities: N/A

Abilities & Keywords: heavy and fragile, of course she is. Don't drop the baby!

Main Ability: Apart from being so precious that she is irreplaceable, Fade's child who has been protected by the rite that Fade created (it summons the Harvester, who might have killed the three witches - we'll see if that's the case, but Adam likes that kind of blunt, obvious writing for his endings) is a potential new survivor. There's nothing special about her (or him) once you have them stowed away safely, but before then she gives slow to your weapons and takes up a gear slot.

Rating: A+, there are precious few ways to gain extra population in situations where you are no longer able to do intimacy, this is one such method and it can be an absolute savior for a struggling settlement. There is no such thing as too much population, no matter what the King's Man propaganda might try and tell you.

And we're done with this series, that's the end of the support items until new stuff arrives. Monday will have a few reviews which I have been meaning to get sorted out and is also available for patron article requests! Please make them here in the comments!