Requesting Backup: Activators (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
• 14. Promotional

Overview

Activators are one of the rarest, most desirable and hardest to build around of all the gear types in the game. This is because they have one of the strongest effects in the game, you are typically hard locked to 1 movement and 1 activation per survivor without spending survival for any applicable survival actions. Gaining an extra movement or activation adds 25% to that pool, which is a huge leverage when you compare it to the way that the monsters work (typically reactions plus 1 AI card a turn, maybe 2 for some monsters ). 

"Activators" includes all items that provide additional 'things' to do, such as movement, activations and other stuff which is provided via triggers. Nebulous concept, but it'll make more sense as we move through the various pieces of gear.

You will also see this mechanic on some weapons/armor, such as the Knuckle Shield, Griswaldo and Dancer armor. So the reason why this category isn't as expansive as others is because it's spread around all categories, not just items.

Lets get to the highlights!

Phoenix Mask  - Core/Mask Maker/Mask Salesman 

Crafting Cost: 1x endeavor, 1x small feather, 6x bone, 4x organ

Additional Categories: Defense

Affinities: N/A

Abilities & Keywords: Usual mask keywords and abilities, the unique stops you stacking multiples of these powerful items., irreplaceable is mostly just a 'cost check' to force you to recraft the item on a loss and accessory makes sure that you don't have to break up armor sets to use this. There is also a "hidden" ability on this mask, which allows you to go hunt the L4 Legendary Phoenix when you are ready to do so, that gives you access to one of the most powerful Secret Fighting Arts in the game.

Main Ability:  With 4 Red affinities in your grid (no small feat as anyone who's tried to activate the Red Charm can attest), you gain the ability to dodge 1 additional time a round. That's the ability to activate the Dodge survival action a second time, you still have to spend the survival on it. This is not that strong an ability when you realise that Hyper-Sensitivity also gives you this with the downside that you have to dodge at least once when hit if possible.

Rating: I want the Phoenix Mask to be cool, but it's just not really that great. Use it to go hunt the Golden-Eyed God and then leave it in storage. C-

 Antelope Mask - Core/Mask Maker/Mask Salesman

Crafting Cost:   1x endeavor, 1x pelt, 6x bone, 4x organ 

Additional Categories: Defense

Affinities: N/A

Abilities & Keywords: Same mask stuff going on as the Phoenix Mask above, except this one allows you to go hunt the Mad Steed and get an Adventure Sword in exchange for an arm. It's not as great a reward, but the fight is a lot of fun.

Main Ability:  In contrast to the Phoenix Mask, the antelope mask doesn't give you an 'extra Dash' it straight up gives you an extra movement (Knight) as long as you are insane. That's a huge spike in power, it lets you move in, attack and retreat to a better position for kiting, or even use a cumbersome weapon and move in the same go. Positioning KDM is king, movement is how you achieve that. Additionally the affinity requirements are a lot easier to complete, more armor sets are friendly towards a 2 Blue, 2 Red than a 4x red.

Rating: I'm not even going to hesitate here, extra movement is always godly in KDM and this gives you an entire extra set of movement. S tier

Rawhide Drum - Core/Skinnery

Crafting Cost: 1x hide, 1x bone, Drums innovation

Additional Categories: Defense

Affinities: Left Green isn't very premium for item #8 or #9 because of how it conflicts with the Monster Grease slot. Also dedicate supports rarely care about green affinities so you won't see this one often.

Abilities & Keywords: Usual concerns about noisy, which really limit where you can risk using this. And also the combinations with Rhythm Chaser and Infernal Rhythm are very positive when you're not concerned about the Harvester.

Main Ability:  This one turns your encourage into a global encourage, which can be a huge benefit for certain strategies like the Punji Sticks strategy which involves colliding 2 survivors with the monster every turn so they can harm it with the Amber Poleaxe. Most of the time however it is going to just be a 'nice' bonus rather than a really good one. So it is solid that it also gives everyone a point of insanity at the start of the showdown, this can be great protection from intimidate/brain damage when facing the lower level monsters. I wish that it gained +★ (Monster Level) on arrive instead so it could scale a bit further into the game. 

Rating: In a world where the Harvester does not exist, I can see this one scoring an A for a support, climbing to an S- when you also have the Infernal Rhythm Strain Fighting Art. But to be realistic, you're only really going to use this in nemesis fights, specifically ones where knockdown is a major issue (King's Man for example) and is it worth crafting this for just those fights? D

Raptor-Worm Collar - Slenderman

Crafting Cost: 1x organ, 1x scrap, 1x dark water

Additional Categories: N/A

Affinities: I am very used to items like this having no affinities at all, so getting two of them, one in an optimal position (red left) and one in a solid position (green down) is very welcome indeed. Many builds can fit this item in and get an additional passive benefit from the affinities.

Abilities & Keywords: Jewelry is the keyword of note as gloomy does not do much.

Main Ability:  Some monsters come with self mitigation tools built into their craftable gear, the Digging Claws for the Dung Beetle Knight, or the Darkness based gear from the Sunstalker. The Raptor-Worm Collar is one of these and you can be forgiven for initially ignoring this piece of gear as being 'bad encourage', but there are a lot of situations where the downside can be mitigated or even removed. For example using this on a survivor during the Screaming Antelope or (especially) the Slenderman fights can save survivors from the automatic death triggers that those two showdowns have.

Also you can almost completely cancel the downside of this item if you are using it on an 2 Disorder Almanac survivor with Accept Darkness and it combos with the Rawhide Drums above to allow you to affect everyone equally.

Rating: A disgusting idea of an item, but situationally this one is exceptional in the right circumstances and is relatively cheap to make. It is a key element of how to handle the Slenderman's AI/mechanics in general. B tier, but it creeps up higher in combo with the Rawhide drum for players who have a non-awful version of the Harvester event in their world (and that is fast becoming more and more of you as I'm learning).

Blood Paint - Screaming Antelope/Spidicules/Stone Circle

Crafting Cost: 1x bladder

Additional Categories: N/A

Affinities: N/A

Abilities & Keywords: Soluble is one of the minor self destructive keywords in the game, so you have to watch out for that, especially against the Sunstalker.

Main Ability:  In essence this is what Paired wishes it was, it doubles your activations of one handed weapons, meaning that with Surge you can activate 4 weapons a turn. It is also very key to note/understand that Blood Paint can activate more than just the attack profile on a weapon, they can activate anything on a weapon that has that activate symbol (lightning bold). This includes Block X on shields/swords, Deflect X and anything else that might turn up (source is Kingdom Death's official twitter here).

In addition, if you place the Blood Paint in the bottom left corner of the gear grid (slot #7 as it is also known), you get the ability to activate Fist & Tooth plus the weapon on Blood Paint's right (Slot #8).

This is because the Gear Grid looks like this:

As you can see, the official gear grid has Fist & Tooth located in the bottom left corner next to Slot #7 (Something many custom gear grids omit sadly). You can see however in this tweet conversation with Kingdom Death's official twitter, it's approved as being officially in the slot next to #7. We can call it Slot 6b or the F&T Slot.

This + Lucky Charm and Rawhide is one of the most efficient ways to do it.

If you have custom grids I recommend using my Fist & Tooth replacement cards if you set up this build. They are in the attachment (with bleed). That folder includes all of the variant F&T combos you can get. (You'll notice Females are better at F&T than males as well when you review the options).

Rating: Absolutely one of the best items in the game, sure it has limitations in that it takes up 3 slots on your grid and only works with one handed weapons. But it is as powerful as it comes and has allowed for the creation of an entire survivor class, the hybrid tank/DPS known as the Bruiser. 

Note: If you are wondering why I have listed Spidicules at the top, there is a circumstance where you can gain a bladder if you have a legless ball. Always spend it on Blood Paint if that happens.

Warning this final entry contains heavy spoilers for People of the Lantern's mechanics and Plot Elements.

Final Lantern - People of the Lantern Only

Crafting Cost: Triggered by story event (kill the Watcher).

Additional Catergories: Lantern (yes it has this keyword, it was omitted with a classic Pootsian-slip).

Affinities: Not a bad pair of affinities here, useful. Though it is surprising that there isn't a Red affinity on the Lantern as well, as Watchers are closely linked to Saviors and that would help sell the theme further. There may be a reason for this, or it might just be whatever.

Either way, you're now running about with a Watcher's core/heart and the Gold Smoke Knight is very concerned about what your settlement will do with that plus the Watcher's corpse. So he's coming to clean up your mess and purify the land.

Abilities & Keywords: To continue the theme links between Watchers and Saviors, we see that Saviors cannot carry the Final Lantern because of its other keyword, there is no mechanical balance reason why this cannot be the case. So this must be a thematic one, it has interesting implications on the entire Watcher/Savior/Gold Smoke Knight/Dreamer ecosystem, but we are still missing a lot of the pieces.

Vital is a really odd keyword, it says (paraphrasing) 'you must depart with this in one of your survivor's gear grids and if they die someone else has to drop something to take it'. Which is fine, but if you completely lose the lantern, Vital has no further effect.

Main Ability: The 'Flip if insane' thing has no mechanical use at this point, we'll see if the upcoming Ivory Dragon expansion does anything further with this, though I'm not sure if it can without a reprint of the card because art has no mechanical effect in this game. The lantern would need updated keywords. Right now it's just a cool thematic thing you do (if you can be bothered).

The main stuff that this lantern does is its interactions with the late game innovation replacement. The Horripiliation status is as follows:

As you can see, without the Final Lantern you don't have access to all these neat additional things you can do. And the late game of People of the Lantern is linked hard to this. All that nauseating anxiety from the lantern is good for keeping you alive.

Rating: It's kind of hard to rate this, because it's absolutely essential to the way that the Lantern campaign works, both thematically and mechanically. So I am going to skip the usual rating system and rank this one as Vital. Try not to lose it double-oh-seven.