Constructing a Hunt Party: Moving to the Mid Game (Patreon)

For the early game, please head to this link here. It also covers the core principles/foundations and I will try to not repeat the information here too much. 

Once you have your foundation gear sorted (example pictured above), you will have typically 4 weapons, two armor sets and a smattering of support gear. You will also have started work on 2-3 of the most important fighting arts, which are:

• Spear
• Shield
• Fist & Tooth

You may also have begun to tick up some of the other good offensive fighting arts, perhaps focusing on 4 to max out as soon as possible, or playing more the way I do - with a rotating spread of survivors working on different things. There are benefits to both play styles and after a lot of games I've concluded that neither one is better than the other, there is just less risk in the play style I prefer.

And your gear load out will include two sets of Rawhide as its foundation, plus two survivors still toughing it out in their pants.

The Next Episode - Leather & Screaming

As we have discussed in great detail just about everywhere that someone talks about armor, you need something to let you bridge the power gap between the level 1 node 1 and 2 monsters and the level 2 node 1/level 1 node 3 in two main categories. Offense and Defense.

Support doesn't care about the level of monsters, support gear scales independently of level and has the ability to scale up to at least level 5 legendary monsters; support gear is just that good. Weapons on the other hand, they need to either be packing sufficient strength to break the higher toughness the monsters feature as they level up in power, or enough luck to ignore that a reasonable amount of the time.

Likewise armor needs to get tougher with more armor points, but one of the large issues here is the way that monster offense scales up; they don't just hit harder, but they try and hit more often. So much so that the armor in the game just cannot keep up. Which means that armor going forward needs to be supported by Evasion and Block, especially for tanks and other frontline classes who need to take a hit. When a monster can obliterate all of the armor on a location with a single hit, armor alone just doesn't cut it. Not even one bit.

So, going ahead the consideration of 'armor' is now encompassing armor, evasion and block. Good defensive sets help on all of those aspects either directly or in support of other pieces. Most typically the Leather Shield and Monster Grease.

Our location objectives at this point are to get the Leather Worker (plus Ammonia) and the Weapon Crafter open. The Leather Worker contains the first defensive shield in the Leather Round Shield, while the Weapon Crafter holds two of the strongest weapons in the game - the Zanbato and the dreaded Counterweighted Axe. Both of these weapons are honestly too good to exist in their current form, and they cause many other weapons to be ignored as a consequence.

Leather Armor is purpose built for these two weapons, with the affinities located on it slipping together perfectly with the weapons and providing us with two exceptional tank builds. One of these is your next armor set objective. We'll look at the CWAxe version, because I prefer to put the Zanbato on a DPS, but in the images at the top of this post, you can find a Zanbato variant quite easily.

As always, I try my best to make these builds 7 or 8 slots, so there is flexibility for support
items such as the Rawhide Whip, Fecal Salve, Monster Tooth Necklace or Stone Noses. 

This build is a combination of raw power and durability. It's very much the 'bog standard' mid game build you'll see and it's great with any tank. The only fighting art that is really desirable is Timeless Eye, which doubles the threat range on the CWAxe ability.

That ability is part of what makes this such a solid tank build. 10% of your attacks will not provoke a reaction or trap from the monster, which gives you additional "hidden" protections - the monster shreds you less often than it does when you use other weapons. While the CWAxe can be pushed to utterly disgusting, broken, levels. Here it is being used 'as intended' as a weapon with a lot of safety built in.

Also this armor set is completely generic, all you need is ammonia + hide and ammonia is quite often given out for free by the White Lion or Gorm. So this is one cheap armor set to construct.

That leaves one other armor set to consider building, now as discussed many times; White Lion armor is not good enough for the cost, Gorment Armor is an expansion monster and also has a lot of issues and Silk Armor is a 17 resource beast that can only be constructed in the later portions of the game because you HAVE to kill a L3 Spidicules to finish its construction. So that leaves us with exactly three options, a second suit of leather, a third suit of rawhide or everyone's favorite over-pushed addition to 1.5, Screaming Armor. 

Screaming Armor is one of only two armor sets that are 'support viable' that is good for a support survivor (Rawhide is the other). In Screaming Armor's case it is because of the head, arms and body abilities - all of which can be used to help protect vs. Brain Damage, increase the survival of the user so they can surge more and 'Slam' the monster to debuff its toughness. I've not written about the use of Screaming Armor as a support armor set, and given that we've still not seen the contents of the card pack, I think it's about time that I should do. Expect that next week.

Here we are going to employ Screaming Armor as a secondary Tank (also known as an Offensive Tank or Off-Tank), in essence they will support the main tank with their durability, power and synergies, while dishing out damage. 

I have employed the King Spear here because it is the stereotypical weapon people think of when considering Screaming Armor. But you can ignore that spear bonus on the armor set and use whatever weapon you prefer in this build, the armor set isn't "spears only" it's great with just about every single weapon in the game.

Because I'm looking to dual class this gear load out to cover both tanking and usual Screaming Armor nonsense, I have had to fill the grid entirely in order to activate the monster grease. In 1.31 Screaming Armor had a down green affinity on the head instead of that blue one and this build didn't need something like Bandages to activate that additional +1 evasion on the grease, but it was changed and that's one of the few nerfs that this armor set took.

With these two armor sets sorted, the rawhide armor can be retired from frontline duties and moved across to the dedicated damage dealers. In the case of the core game, my preferred builds are:

The Zanbato DPS survivor is the continuation of the Lion Beast Katar survivor's journey, they will train Fist & Tooth, but use a weapon for most of their attacks, and the Archer is a classic DPS/Support hybrid archer. This build doesn't really change in the core game until you start tackling the Phoenix.

Expansions

What about expansions Fen? What changes when you use them?

Well, thank you for asking. Most of the changes happen around the weapons, you can substitute the Rib Blade (Gorm) in for the Zanbato because it reduces pressure on the gear grid with its excellent blue affinity, and that means the F&T/Grand DPS has an extra slot for something else if they want.

You can also use the Greater Gaxe (Gorm), Acid-Tooth Daggers (Gorm), Scimitar, Amber Poleaxe, Hooded Scrap Katars (all Spidicules) as alternative offensive options. And you may have been using the Knuckle Shield to work on Shield Mastery already - the Round Leather Shield doesn't really replace the Knuckle Shield, they have different functions.

However, the main change happens when you have access to the Flower Knight, your Archer gains a massive shot in the arm because you can go farm the heck out of the knight-owl forest spirit and build a Vespertine Bow. This bow is only the 4th best bow in the game (out of a total of 5), but it is far, FAR too strong for the portion of the game where you get it (Lantern Year 5). The Archer Build doesn't need to change too much to accommodate it either. 

You can also potentially get an Acanthus Doctor in the deal. An absolute bargain!

So once you have set up with a party around this level in power, you should be before LY10 (or earlier) and next comes the hardest part of the game, the absolute drought in progression which exists from now until the end of the settlement... Yeah, we will look at the Core Game "Late Game" Progression next time, but to be honest, there are not a lot of options left.

Step one is to invest in pickaxes, that's what you'll want to do now, pickaxes, lots and lots of pickaxes. Because we want a lot of Iron when we come back to this series, a lot.