Constructing a Hunt Party: Early Game (Patreon)

Building on the last set of principles and ideas in the previous article we are now going to take a look at the most often discussed, but also most important portion of the game. The early game; specifically the hunt party design.

In the early game, the actions you take have the greatest impact on the rest of your campaign up until you either reach terminal nemesis monsters (Win or Game Over) or sometimes when you go after very specific key resource targets like the L3 expansion monsters (especially in Green Armor campaigns).  The early part of the game sets the stones in motion, and with the correct work the avalanche will land on the monsters, but with the wrong moves it will land on your settlement.

Here I'm going to walk you through the first hunt party equipment goals, that is the load outs you should be considering to try and assemble early on, this will ensure that you have a good platform from which to branch out and try other things.  No matter how you feel about 'the meta'; the tried and tested solutions for the early game are there. You have some variation in your options, but for the most part KD:M's early game is currently solved and the only changes are in what weapons you decide to pursue, how many pieces of efficient armor you're going to build and whether you decide to start innovating in LY2, LY3 or LY4. 

We'll look at the principles behind this just before we lay out the four builds.

Every hunt party has three successful elements to it; Offense, Defense and Control:

Offense is (usually) provided by weapons, it has multiple different avenues available, ranging from straight strength through luck all the way to ignoring the HL deck via the Counterweighted Axe. Defense is a combination of armor points, evasion, survival gains and sometimes ways of just ignoring injuries. While control includes methods of handling the monster's AI, it's HL deck and also mitigating/handling the hunt phase.

Armor

If you've spotted the elephant in the room while I ran through all of these elements, then well done. For anyone who hasn't figured it out; our dear friend Rawhide Armor covers:

• Armor points
• Evasion
• Survival Gains
• Control of the monster AI*
• Mitigation during the hunt phase via Survival

So yeah, it's the wide range of uses that rawhide has in combination with the (currently) unique way that it can control monster AI (that's why it's marked above) and the really low cost  - it's 5 hide for a full set, and when compared to 8 for Gorment, 9 for Screaming Armor, 10(?!) for White lion and a frankly INSANE 17 for Silk armor armor - well none of those armor sets (apart from Screaming) come close to being nearly twice as effective as rawhide is.

So that's where every early game hunt party's journey begins. Rawhide, specifically how many sets? Well the vague answer is at least 2, but you can easily go up to 4 of them and it will only be beneficial - but you have to make that decision about going to 3+ after you've made the first two sets. Two sets of Rawhide Armor are sufficient to handle most of the Node 1 monsters we have right now, so if you are willing to risk two survivors out with nothing but cloth covering their unmentionables then you can stop at 2 and move on to getting your mid game armor sets immediately.

That's where the Armor equation for the early game lays. Get 2 Rawhide Armor sets, one for a main tank, one for an "off tank" (Offensive tank, someone who mainly deals damage, but will soak hits when the main tank can't do it) and then you can use safer weapons such as Reach/Blind Spot/Range X tool sets for your remaining two survivors.

You will almost always combo Rawhide Armor with Monster Grease because stacking evasion is strong.

 Weapons

There is quite a bit more flexibility when you come to early game weapons and they are very expansion dependent. You want to get away from the Bone Smith weapons as soon as possible because apart from the Bone Darts they all fail to scale past the L1 Node one monsters. Also the monster based weapons (Spidicules, White Lion, Gorm) are all such a significant step up in power without a large increase in costs, so not using the bone stuff or even crafting it is worth trying to achieve. 

However, that written, the LY1 White Lion (or Gorm) is one of the most dangerous and challenging steps up in difficulty, you go from Patrick the Prologue Lion, a creature you can beat to death with Fist & Tooth if you want right up to a Toughness 8 monster - which is problematic for Founding Stones alone to deal with.

So, due to this, rather than have a definitive list of early game weapons, it tends to be, choose from the following based on your own preferences (and what you draw from the monster's body).

Bone Smith

• Bone Darts
• Bone Sword
• Bone Club

The Bone Axe is something I'd consider only if I have a lack of bone & hide, but a glut of organs. Otherwise Bone Sword + Monster Grease will take you further.

Catarium

• Lion Beast Katar
• King's Spear
• Catgut Bow & Claw Head Arrow

Gormery

• Knuckle Shield
• Rib Blade
• Riot Mace 
• Greater Gaxe
• Acid-Tooth Dagger x2

Silk Mill

• Amber Poleaxe
• Hooded Scrap Katar x2
• Silk Whip
• Amber Edge

Now the most powerful of these are the Knuckle Shield, Rib Blade and Greater Gaxe - the Knuckle Shield because of how incredible Block 1 is vs early game monsters (and the King's Man), and the Rib Blade/Greater Gaxe because of how strong they are at attacking the monster both via strength and luck (also the Riot Mace is king, but that's not an easy get). Then there is the Catgut Bow, which is so good that these days you can use it for the rest of the campaign as long as you get the right arrows for it (Giggles) and the Bone Club, which is so powerful you can use it with Lantern Armor!

Behind that you have weapons that are well stated and very much 'choose your own flavor', personally I rate the King's Spear/Amber Poleaxe as being basically the same weapon (Poleaxe is slightly better) and because I want Spear Mastery asap, I always take one of these.

The Lion Beast Katar (LBK) is a perennial favorite because of its low cost and access to Deadly, which means it's great for luck farming, but the Hooded Scrap Katar (HSK) is a viable alternative - especially for people who want paired weapons. Acid-Tooth Daggers have been praised so many times by myself now I don't think I need to explain why they're good, but they're one of the few decent paired weapons out there (alongside the HSK and Tempered Daggers).

Support & Control

Finally we have the support gear options. Control is mostly being provided by the Rawhide Headband, but HL control comes from either the Gorm or White Lion in the forms of the Wisdom Potion (WP) and Cat Eye Circlet (CEC or KEKW for those of you who know the Twitch lingo). The WP works best with slower speed weapons and is easier to make, while the CEC is harder to make, but works better with a lower number of higher speed attacks. 

The rest of the line up is filled out with items that improve the particular stats your survivor cares about (luck, evasion, strength), or highly defensive ones that can also provide strong affinities like the Fecal Salve. We'll highlight them as we look at the party construction.

Speaking of which:

The Early Game Hunt Party - Core Game

OK so, this is just one example. There's a lot of flexibility and options where you can switch stuff up, so we'll just walk through each of them and discuss.

Offensive Tank - Fist & Tooth / Lion Beast Katar

The Off Tank is pretty much set in stone in the core game only, you want all of those slots filled in order to get the Lucky Charm active. It gets more powerful if you have access to the Gorm because you can swap out the LBK for the Rib Blade or Riot mace, and/or the Fecal Salve with the Wisdom Potion. It is worth noting that the preferred weapon proficiency for the Off Tank is Fist & Tooth. This is because the Lucky Charm helps both F&T and the weapon. You wound the monster once with F&T and then swap to whatever weapon is being carried for the rest of the showdown.

Support - King's Spear

I want a spear in my party somewhere, so it's either going to be a Spear or Catgut Bow on the support most of the time. Typically they will sit tight with a Fecal Salve active which reduces the amount of times the monster attacks. 

The personal reason for choosing spear over Catgut on the support is space constraints. the Catgut bow eats up 3 slots (bow, arrow, back up darts), and the fact that the bow is better for continuous attacking.

You'll notice a Rawhide Whip in the gear grid, this is a hunt protection tool. If you have picked Protect the Young I recommend putting a second whip on someone else.

Main Tank - Bone Club

Very similar to the Off Tank, I prefer the Bone Club because despite its large investment cost of three bones early on, you can use it with Screaming Armor, Dragon Armor, Phoenix Armor and Lantern Armor. Meaning it's a viable weapon all game.

However, Club is not a great weapon type to train up early on, so typically here I will rotate around low level survivors, stopping when they hit 2 hunt XP and then switching to the next one rather than start training up Club.

The other weapon options are Rib Blade (plus Lucky Charm), King's Spear and the most powerful option of all, the Knuckle Shield. Or you can decide to make your main tank train Fist & Tooth and give them an Amber Edge scimitar for the rest of their attacks.

DPS - Catgut Bow

The survivor with the most choices, the bow is the strongest core build because bows keep you safe when you don't have much armor.  However you can pick any of the weapon options above instead, double Acid-Tooth Daggers, Greater Gaxe, HSKs, Silk Whip etc etc. 

This is the survivor who would get the third set of rawhide armor, especially if they are using melee weapons, with the intention of handing that set onto the support once the settlement innovates inner lantern.

Where to next?

We'll look at the 'mid game' (which has become the mid/early game now strategies have been streamlined) next time, but the main objectives for this hunt party are to build more armor, usually a monster specific set (often Screaming for the Spear user) and a Leather Armor set, while also focusing on upgrading their weapons. However, as you'll see next time, there's a progression issue when you start working on upgrading - where the next tier of weapons are not sufficiently powerful to justify the switch. In Kingdom Death monsters typically increase in toughness at least 2 points when they level up. Weapon progression often fails to keep up with this, therefore the mid game meta weapons are a few rare exceptions, even when you're just transitioning to the early/mid (pre-Node 3).