Requesting Backup: Miscellaneous (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

Miscellaneous is always, without fail, one of the worst categories to have to put on a list. Sometimes though, one has no choice at all and this is one of those cases. Monster has a whole bunch of items that refuse to fit directly into a single category, they have mechanics that either defy the categories listed above, or would have to be shoehorned awkwardly into one and then could not have the justice (or scorn) they deserve. 

This section is for all of these items, the weird, the wonderful, the wacky and the downright poorly executed. Each and every one of these tries to do something different and unusual, some succeed, some fail, but all should be applauded for their inventiveness.

Rainbow Wing Belt - Wet Resin Crafter/Dung Beetle Knight

Crafting Cost: 1x scarab wing, 1x organ, 1x hide

Additional Categories: N/A

Affinities: Affinities on this item are not the best to be honest. It has steep activation requirements and the directions that each affinity points are awkward. It can often feel very difficult to get this one slotted in and active.

Abilities & Keywords: Usual warning when facing the Sunstalker, this item can be burnt to the archive pile.

Main Ability:  The reason for using this item as a standalone creation rather than part of rolling armor is this main ability and its potency when combined with Early Iron. Once per attack each of your 1s rolled can be rerolled. This means that every attack dice has a 1% chance of resulting in a 1 and causing your entire attack to miss. (10% of 10%) instead of a 10% chance per dice. The way this affects Early iron is massive as the table below demonstrates.

And if you want that in an nice visual form, here is the line graph showing the odds of missing as you increase the number of dice.

Axis are Y = Probability of Early Iron triggering, X = Number of Dice rolled. Red is just Early Iron, Yellow is with the Rainbow Belt active.

It is also very good on survivors who have a 2+ chance of hitting, because it changes their % chances of missing (per dice) to 1% and 3+ accuracy survivors also benefit.

Rating: A- Tier, very strong on the right kind of survivors when used without Rolling Armor. Oxidization means that this is not as important in People of the Lantern, but Stars/Sun and other such campaigns with Early Iron use should remember that this is an option. Especially if you defy the odds and get an early Lantern Sword from the Gaping Maw.

Hidden Crimson Jewel - Dung Beetle Knight/Spelunking of Death

Crafting Cost: Successfuly explore the Dung Beetle Knight's tunnels fully during the aftermath. Completing all the trials.

Additional Categories: N/A

Affinities: All the reds! Which is great if you plan to run a Red Charm 50% wound build. Solid otherwise. One cannot ever complain about these 4x Affinity items.

Abilities & Keywords: Unique and Irreplaceable keep the power on this item somewhat in check. It is also an other item, so not for saviors and the usual jewelry concerns apply. Don't let a White Lion steal this one from you.

Main Ability:  Rerolls in this game are great, it is a big part of the reason why players prefer Survival of the Fittest over Protect the Young (the stat gains help also). This one though is 3 rerolls per lantern year! Considering how difficult this item is to get, that's fair enough in my opinion, but it is absolutely ridiculous in strength. Able to protect your survivors and aid the settlement all in one boot. Campaigns with this jewel (which is a reference to King Crimson from Jojo's Bizzare Adventure: Golden Wind) - I wonder when we get our Funny Valentine/Dirty Deeds Done Cheap reference?

As an aside, Golden Wind has THE BEST music in the entire series, I don't watch much anime, but when I do it's either by One or Hirohiko Araki.

I'm just going to share my favourite tunes right here.

1. Uragirimono no Requiem aka "GangStar"

2. Torture Song 

3. Giorno's Theme (especially the orchestrated parts) 

4. Fighting Gold 

If you're wondering what the relevance here is, there is more Jojo references in Kingdom Death than you'd realise, Adam is a massive Weeb after all.

Rating: This one gets the only unstoppable Gold Requiem  GR tier. It's that good (and I do love memes). Enjoy it while you have access to such power.

Sleeping Virus Flower - Flower Knight

Crafting Cost: Flower Knight Introduction Story Event and Defeat a L3 Flower Knight

Additional Categories: Buffs (Luck)

Affinities: All the blues! Which is pretty darn useful for builds that want to spam attacks with luck and the Blue Charm as protection. All Blue is the strongest set of affinities you could ask for.

Abilities & Keywords: Flammable is something you do want to pay attention to, this item is not one you want to have burn up while travelling or when fighting a Sunstalker that Solar Flares. It's also cursed, so you can't swap it around unless you have crystal skin, but to be honest that's not a big issue in the case of this item. This item is also used to craft Fetorsaurus, which is an immensely valuable shield.

Main Ability:  Warm Virus gives the survivor who holds this a chance at a partial resurrection when they die. The dead survivor (known as The Guest) gets to overwrite the survivor who has eaten the flower (known as The Host) by replacing their Fighting Arts, Disorders, Positive Attributes and Weapon Proficiency with The Guests. The Host also loses all abilities they may have had.  (It is not clear if Secret Fighting Arts are transferred in this process, consensus is conflicted as well and it's probably something for each group to decide as a whole until we get clarification).

As an aside, I am very hopeful that the "Throne of Debris and Trash" becomes relevant in campaigns with The King as a quarry. 

Rating: S+ and easily one of the (many) reasons why newer and less experienced players love this item. It is a massive boost in critical wounding power, plus a safety buffer for your favourite survivor and as you get one early you can make use of it or turn it into the best shield in the game very quickly!

Also, this is another reference to Jojo, this time referencing Joseph Jostar's Hermit Purple stand and events during the climax of the third series.

Dragon Vestments - People of the Stars/The Tyrant Only

Crafting Cost: Gifted at various moments during People of the Stars.

Additional Categories: Defense

Affinities: N/A

Abilities & Keywords: Silk is a positive for campaigns that happen to use Stars + Spidicules as it has interactions with the rare Silk Surgeon. 

Main Ability:  This one is one of the reasons why 'expansion bloat' is not an issue in People of the Stars. You have the ability to tutor up any Dragon Trait fighting art you desire whenever you would gain a random one. If you have no specific Fighting Art in mind, Unbreakable is the default choice because it keeps your survivors alive longer. 

Rating: S Tier. Anything that allows for removal/reduction of randomness from the game is a huge benefit for any settlement and this is one of the core tools for successful Stars campaign.

Sun Vestments - People of the Stars

Crafting Cost: 6x hide, 2x pustles, 1x golden whiskers and a level 2 Sacred Pool.

Additional Categories: N/A

Affinities: The design of this item is to fit next to the Sunring Bow, which it overtly improves in every fashion. The best version of this item would have had a left facing Red Affinity, but the right facing one is fine.

Abilities & Keywords: Silk is again a positive interaction with the Spidicules expansion, Flammable most of the time should not be an issue until near the end of your run.

Main Ability:  In addition to ignoring Cumbersome, which in Sun is (mostly) an issue on bows such as the Campaign Specific Sunring Bow or the Bone Club, and these are the main two targets for this item. However, if you happen to get your hands on this in conjunction with the Twilight Sword it is also beneficial.

Rating: A+ Tier, rising to S Tier if you create a lot of builds that rotate around Perfect hits. The crafting cost on this is a little high, but worth it.

Hideous Disguise - Lion Knight (Victory)

Crafting Cost: Defeat the Lion Knight and roll well enough on the table.

Additional Categories: Buffs

Affinities: N/A

Abilities & Keywords: Cursed is a bummer as this item is just a bad Monster Tooth Necklace when you are outside of showdowns. However, it does have accessory, so it does not break the ability to build armor sets. Bone is of minor note as well because this means that the cursed disguise doesn't ruin Bone Earring builds and other keeps this one off saviors, so they can't be inflicted with this item.

Main Ability: The ability to choose a role card at the start of the showdown is somewhat minor. Because of the 'Change Places' nature of the Lion Knight's trap card, you'll only "enjoy" that benefit for a limited amount of time during the showdown. 

So the Main Ability in my opinion is the ability to gain Ageless Apprentice, which currently remains the only way you can create/have an "Ageless" savior (Ageless Apprentice doesn't use ageless as a mechanic, but it does the same thing in a slightly different manner - cheesy). It is also the only way you can rotate the gear in your grid and create some really powerful, unique builds that were not possible otherwise. Rotating things like the Green Ring is amazing.

Rating: B-, unless you have Crystal Skin and can remove the mask, you are always stuck with this one in your grid and it is quite a dud. There has been suggestions that you will be able to calcify it in Campaigns of Death, but as it is cursed it will be interesting to see exactly what steps APG take to let this process happen.

Gloom Cream - Dark Water Research/Slenderman

Crafting Cost: 1x love juice, 1x hide, 2x dark water

Additional Categories: N/A

Affinities: An exciting bunch of unusual affinities, but because of the demands placed on the grid by this item, you have to place it in slot 2, 5 or 8 (with 5 being the most optimal because you also need 2 blues in your grid).

Abilities & Keywords: It's got so many keywords! gloomy and balm do not do much at the moment. So the considerations are the usual suspects: consumable (antelope warning), stinky (dung beetle knight warning) and other stops it being on saviors which is a good move and very important. 

Main Ability:  This one is so fresh, unique and exciting. There is little else in the game that lets you reduce your hunt xp and extend the lifespan of your best survivors in such a reliable fashion. The downside to this is the reduction in understanding, which means that 1 understanding survivors cannot use it (and others can only use it a limited amount of times) and also keeps you away from maxing out understanding if you have not already done it. Also if events reduce your understanding to zero for some reason while you have this equipped you die as well.

But all of that is worth the risk because extending the lifespan of your beastly non-ageless survivors is hard to do and it can make the difference between winning or losing; gaining a weapon mastery or not. So this item is a must craft one for players who like to rely on a few key survivors rather than playing the rotating style that I employ.

Rating: S tier, no hesitation. Nothing else does what this balm does as effectively or interestingly. Amazing, like so much of the Slenderman's expansion is.

Hours Ring - Plumery/Phoenix

Crafting Cost: 1x shimmering halo, 5x organ (that's right, this one is made from a Phoenix Sphincter!

Additional Categories: N/A

Affinities: N/A

Abilities & Keywords: Other, so it cannot be placed onto Saviors (not that it would be very useful on them to be honest. Unique so there can only be one at a time, but there are some issues with this.

Main Ability: The original Hours Ring was an elegant piece that emulated the fact that you were slightly outside of time by not allowing you to gain tokens in any manner. No bleeding, priority, stat gain tokens, stat loss tokens, stinky tokens etc. It also allowed retired survivors to hunt, but at the cost of being Selfish (a special rule that stopped it from being used with any other 'other' gear). It created new builds and helped deal with the problems of unexpected retirement. In fact it was one of the primary reasons why players hunted the Phoenix because it was unique and fun.

APG felt the need to make a change to this item because it was limiting design space, any mechanics they decided to set around tokens, the Hours Ring allowed players to opt one of their survivors out of the arrangement by having it. Because there is some internal need to cram the Phoenix into as many campaigns as possible (I suspect it's an Adam favourite and he has a soft spot for it), the design team felt there was a need to change this item. Which is fine, if you have something that's being problematic for your future designs, fix it. 

However, the implementation of the 1.5 Hours Ring is not the way to go about it, in principle, if Kingdom Death was a video game, this item would work pretty smoothly. But it is not, it is a game filled with book keeping and permanent changes, some of which can happen during hunts/showdowns in multiples and keeping track of all of that is a nuisance. If you don't keep duplicate records of your survivors just before departing every year when you hunt with this, errors can and may happen.

That's without considering all the rules issues that surround this one, the text is vague and problematic. In fact it was so bad that after a lot of lobbying from players via Twitter, it eventually got a hotfix when it was demonstrated that you could eternally fight the Gold Smoke Knight over and over until you won the campaign, simply by waiting to craft the ring until just before you departed.

It is cleaner now, and the intent is clear. But this is one of those items that demonstrates just because you have a good idea that is cool and thematic that would be great in a video game, doesn't mean it works when translated to board games. 

Rating: I have to give this one a big fat F, it does have some uses, but it is not elegant or even unique (Story in the Snow does this already and this kind of ability is better suited for a promo card).

Additional, for those of you who do not have, or have never seen the original Hours Ring, I have included it as an attachment. You can do with that image what you will. ;)  Original Hours Ring was an A+ or an S- item, I just loved the Last Man Standing/Hours Ring/Muramasa combo so much.

Brain Mint - Barber Surgeon/Screaming Antelope

Crafting Cost: 1x screaming brain

Additional Categories: N/A

Affinities: These two affinities are quite useful and I have found myself using the Brain Mint as a 'filler' support item to help complete affinity requirements more often than you'd think. 

Abilities & Keywords: Consumable, so watch out for Screaming Antelopes trying to eat the brains of their brethren. It's so minty that they can't resist.

Main Ability:  This item removes bleed tokens, priority tokens, negative stat tokens, stinky tokens and anything else. It is worth remembering that tokens such as Lunacy (Butcher) and Age (Phoenix) are also 'your' tokens, so this will remove them.

In short, this is a once per showdown 'clear your bleeding' or 'remove age' or similar mechanic that you can have in your back pocket as long as you are still able to consume.  However, it will remove positive tokens as well, which is not something that should be overlooked, sometimes your minty freshness hurts as much as it helps.

Rating: Situational so it gets a B+, it would have scored more if it gained survival on arrival/departure the way that other similar food items tend to do.

Next time we'll take a look at the unusual & cool promos (including pattern gear like the Vault Key) and then we're getting a contents page and done!