Il Vento D'oro: Fighting the Gold Smoke Knight (Patreon)

This is a request from patron "C D"; everyone, please do feel free to place other requests when you have them. There are still many areas of the game I have not touched on, I just need reminding of that.

The Gold Smoke Knight experience was something that was zipped onto the ending of People of the Lantern in the 1.31 to 1.5 update that occurred after the second kickstarter. This is the last time that major content was added to the game and it's been... a while since then.

Compared to most other monsters in the game (outside of some truly optional ones) fighting gold is an intimidating one for most players. It's quite ironic in fact that the core campaign, the one that most people play first, has the hardest final nemesis. That is like having to face Kars before you face Esidisi and it's kind of ridiculous when you think about it. So it's absolutely fine to look at this monster and think 'how on earth do we beat it?' Given that you have sweated hours of your lives getting to this fight, to lose at this point is anticlimactic to say the least. So in order to help ensure that the requiem that plays is a victorious one, rather than a failure, let us take a look at the Gold Smoke Knight (GSK) in detail.

Needless to write, spoilers abound.

The Gold Experience

So the GSK is a monster designed around a very narrow focus for victory. This beast was created by Zachary Barash (other known credits include: Dragon King, Manhunter, Dung Beetle Knight* & Lion God), and it is tightly bound to the entire post Watcher part of the campaign due to its narrow focus for victory.  In other words, the Watcher related stuff is your main route to beating the GSK. Watcher based tech has a lot of strengths vs. the GSK, that's why it turned up in the first place. 

Now I will not be going through oxidation here, we have an article on that already (link), but you should become familiar with that process and also work hard on the new "innovation" system printed on the Exhausted Lantern Horde: Lantern Research - Pulse Discoveries. 

Of particular note is the 3rd research level, which gives you +1d10 strength, but every single level on this is designed to help you in your fight against the GSK via manipulation of the new 'death dice' that exciting orange dice  in your box. The one everyone wanted to roll, but didn't know why.

The short version of each level is using the death dice as follows:

1. +1 attack roll when attacking 

2. +1d10 movement to a move action this round (remember this one for next week)

3. +1d10 strength to a wound attempt (this is your bread and butter)

4. Cannot be knocked down while you have the Death Dice

5. At any time during the showdown, get one huge burst of power before dying at the end of the round. (Not that useful, but can clinch the win in this final fight).

As written above, you want to get to level 3 for sure, but level 4 is a very strong passive ability that is worth the cost. 

Now, with that all in mind. Let us now look at the GSK in detail, we will inspect his attack vectors, his defenses and skim through both his active behavior (AI) and reactive ones. Then next time we'll look at some of the tools you can use to invade his world and destroy him before he flattens your survivors into the ground with that road roller hammer of his.

Baseline Power

The GSK has 9 basic, 7 advanced and 2 legendary AI cards and no life system, so he suffers AI loss via wounds the way that any normal monster does. Which means during his 19 wounds (18 cards + final blow) you will gradually prune his behavior down and can remove the more dangerous cards if you have the opportunity. This means he is already a step behind the legendary monsters, who have a very small, powerful suite of standard AI cards to use and they never lose them before they bite the dust.

He has a solid 8 movement and a staggering 27 toughness, which is a total that few other monsters in the game can reach, something that is fitting for his status as the final boss in the campaign. That can be an intimidating value, but there are several methods that allow us to get around this. High Strength + Sharp + Death Dice, Luck and Automatic Wounds. We'll discuss each of those next time. But let us just say here, it's not as bad as it looks, there are a LOT of ways of reaching/beating this number. Don't forget the L3 Hand has 30 toughness, and you can beat him down if you build for it.

The GSK also has five traits. The one which has the largest impact is the combination of Mauler + Blacken (Both of which could have been just one card, but the art on Mauler is cool). Blacken causes the GSK to deliver a massive amount of damage at the end of its turn without a flow step, damage that can only be negated through block/deflect because it is delivered as hits. Deflect is the main tool you use here because you can 'set and forget'. 

Of particular note is anyone within 3 spaces of the GSK (orthogonal counting) will be hit 3 times for 5 damage, others within a 4 square zone (diagonals count here) will take just 1 hit of 5 damage. However, everyone in the zones will be knocked back 6 squares regardless. This is mostly a problem, but for some survivors who can ignore (Death Dice L4) or have certain weapons, loadouts, this can be neutralised or even turned into an advantage.

Frustration gives certain AI cards an additional, dangerous attack, if you have completely ignored/neutralized/avoided the damage portion of the AI card. It will perform this additional, hard hitting, high speed attack. 7 of its AI cards do this, often you will have to take a hit from them on purpose to avoid the 5 speed additional "surge" that comes otherwise.

Finally, if somehow you have managed to bring a Thundermaul to this fight, you'll get access to the Secondary Forge survivor status. We'll discuss that in more detail next week. But to TL;DR it. It's a nice ability, with some upside and downside. And if you do bring the Thundermaul, make sure the survivor has another weapon so you don't have to use it too often. Or you bring some protection against the TM's downside.

Active Behavior (AI)

The GSK's instinct is kind of brutal; it inflicts bash, bleed 1 and knockback 8 towards the monster onto all survivors, however with Lantern Research L4, you will always have one survivor protected from the knockdown (bash) for sure (you may also have others) and the 'pull' can also be beneficial. Bleed is never great, but by this portion of the campaign you must by now be familiar with bleed management. It's basic action is one of the weakest attacks in its repertoire it's a "meager" (4/2+/4) (Speed/Accuracy/Damage) attack, that targets random threat/closest survivor (all in range). 

As for its deck, the vast majority of the GSK's active actions are attacks of various types and they come in three flavors. 

• High Speed (with very variable accuracy/damage) 
• (3-4/2+/4-5)
• (2/2+/7-10)

The frustration trigger is spread across all of these categories with little pattern to it.

• The primary (first line) targeting for these hit based attacks is as follows
• 3x Final Lantern
• 3x Closest Threat
• 2x Random Threat
• 4x Farthest Threat
• 1x Closest Survivor

Secondary targets are

• 7x Random Survivor
• 2x Closest Survivor
• 2x Furthest Survivor
• 2x No secondary target

GSK almost always targets things in range, if nothing is in range, it will Instinct. There is one attack where it will go after the Final Lantern holder regardless of their range. It also uses field of view on its primary targeting except for where the Final Lantern holder is concerned. 

One of the most useful things to know about this is how it behaves with the Final Lantern holder (because it is deathly afraid of what that thing can eventually do to survivor technology). There are two ways you can try to exploit this. The first is to keep the Final Lantern in the hands of the Primary tank, so it is more likely to target them (but you have to be very careful with the Savage Grab AI card then). The second is to keep the Final Lantern on a long range/high movement value character, who can then dash to kite the GSK when it goes after them. I prefer the second method.

The attacks themselves are very brutal and you are forced to rely on a combination of evasion and hit cancelling (Dodge, Block, Deflect, Ripple Pattern, Plackart) to reduce most of the incoming damage because the actual damage numbers are too high to soak.

In respect to the other "non-attacking" AI cards, there are 5 of them. First of all, there are no moods. So forget about mood control here, this Nemesis monster is immune to it. They also include the two Legendary cards, both of which are framed as attacks, but are mechanically distinct. Now as we have just 5 cards here, I'll walk through each one in a little detail.

Cinder Sundering

A massive AOE that covers almost the entire field. Now, if you are within the 2 spaces of the GSK and not wearing metal, you're fine. If you are outside of that area, you take 3 damage to all locations (6 if you are wearing metal). Fortunately this AOE has a flow step, so as long as you are within 7 spaces of the GSK, you should be able to dash into (relative) safety. But remember you will then have to take the Blacken hit.

Ashen Blow 

This is "just" an additional Blacken Trigger. But that does mean zero flow steps, so I hope you set up deflect in advance if you are nearby.

Crashing Blow

Another additional Blacken Trigger, however this one has the GSK jump next to a random survivor and then provide a flow step. So Dash out of this one.

Shattering Blitz

• Not a lot can be done about this one unless you can dash cancel. It's an absolute beating which inflicts a load of broken bones, which means a lot of stat drops. There's not much you can do to mitigate this stuff either, you're not rolling so Tough doesn't apply. In all you have a 90% chance of gaining each of the following:
• -1 permanent accuracy, -1 permanent strength, 1 bleed
• -1 permanent speed, 1 bleed
• -1 permanent movement, 1 bleed token (adjacent survivors suffer 1 brain damage)
• -1 permanent movement, no more dodge, 1 bleed

So most of the time, this attack is going to drop all of those on your survivor. Which means if they have even a single bleed token already, they're dead. And even if they survive, they're likely ruined to the point that they will be unable to avoid future damage. This is the attack that Lantern Research level 5 is here for.

Diaphoresis

This condition is sweating to an unusual level with no observable cause, often as a symptom of a disease or drug side effect. It targets either the monster controller or the Death Die bearer. In this case, we are seeing the effects of the disease eating at the land manifesting itself on the GSK. These clouds of milky red, caustic gas, pouring out of it are its way of sweating. This is an "attack" that cannot be dash cancelled or dodged and at best it destroys all armor at two locations. If you have no armor at a location rolled (or you roll the same location twice) then you die, horribly. To put it simply, the best way to handle this one is to not draw it, that requires either chance, or AI control + "pruning" (where you set up an AI card on top of the deck with the aim of removing it via a wound. This card is like the Lion God's Earthquake in many ways, the best way to beat it is to not let it get played. Otherwise you're going to get burnt up like you're facing Magician's Red.

Reactive Behaviour (Hit Locations)

The reactive behaviours of the GSK are a focused and tight set of reactions to being hit. It has a total of 19 cards broken down into the following different types:

• 1 Trap
• 1 Impervious
• 2 Parry
• 1 Super-dense
• 4 First Strike
• 10 Generic

In addition it has the following extra behaviors (reactions, critical wounds etc)

• 9 Critical Wounds
• 4 "Surge Punishments"
• 4 Reflex reactions
• 3 Wound reactions
• 4 Failure reactions (2 of which are extra punishing because they are Parries)
• 1 Reduced toughness 

Trap Card 

We'll start with a look at the trap, which is an interesting one despite its relatively simple text. 'All' this card does is knockback 5 all survivors towards the GSK and then attack all adjacent survivors with a (5/2+5) attack. There are a few notable things about this, for a start, if you are 7 spaces away from the GSK, you will not end up in range. But most importantly at all. This card does not doom anyone, not even the attacker. And one of the things you should never forget is that: 

a) This means you can dodge

b) You have a survival opportunity window because the trap has ended the survivor's attack before it resolves. This is a ridiculously messy thing mechanically, but in essence, every adjacent survivor could Dash away from the trap because of how the steps work:

1. Attack GSK & Draw Hit Locations

2. Reveal the Trap card

3. Survivor's Attack ends as per the rules (see Traps in Showdown Phase)

4. Because a survivor's action has ended (attacking survivor's attack has been ended by the trap) there is a survival opportunity (see Survival: During the Survivor's Turn). 

5. Dash out of reach! (Or surge to activate a shield if you prefer)

This mess happens every single time the trap card doesn't have doomed on it, so watch out for those opportunities.

It's a fast, hard hitting attack, but ultimately unless you intend to tank the hits, this trap just reads "As long as you have Dash, your survivors get -1 survival." I'm still not sure if this is intentional, I believe that the aim for the lack of doomed was to allow survivors to activate shields with surges, and how a trap card works (and why doomed is a thing in the first place) was overlooked. But it's hard to be sure without asking Zach directly.

First Strikes

All of these exist simply to punish players for surge attacking. If you're not sure what HL you'll hit, and these 4 are not in the discard pile already, just don't surge to attack. You generally should be using surges to activate shields anyway so this shouldn't be an issue.

Parry

Unless you have the Fencing SFA (Flower Knight showdown), these two hit locations read may only wound on a Critical Wound. Which means that for the average survivor, you have a 10% chance of scoring a wound. Fortunately the failure punishments on both cards are not too high (Fuming Bevor is the worst of the two, but that's because you've hit the monster near its exposed 'mane'). Also, as an aside, the GSK model does not have a bevor sculpted on it.

They are also both interesting curios because they have critical wound locations that let you spend survival for permanent stat bonuses. These would be marginal benefits in the current campaign (one of them does deal +1 wounds, but it's 8 survival to activate!), but they may become more relevant when we get the Ivory Dragon expansion further down the line...

Critical Wounds

In addition to the two parry locations above, we have another 7 critical wound locations to consider. This means that out of the 17 hit locations you can wound, 8 of them total have critical wound text. So 47% you can actually wound the GSK, critical wounds are on the table. (One critical wound location is actually impervious, so it's excluded from this % same as the trap. But it does have a knockdown on the crit, which gives a chance to get in there before impervious kicks in).

As we all know by now, crits matter because they allow you to bypass the normal wound & reflex reactions. Plus (normally) they provide additional benefits. Still, In this case, that's not always true. Most of the critical wounds are at best minor benefits (in addition to the wound) and a few of them are punishments or outright worse than the actual wound total. I find that to mostly be a fair trade off, you get to bypass the 27 toughness with crits anyway so... pay the price!

Reactions

Most of the reactions are relatively fair, a few of them deal damage back, but they are quite tame compared to most of what can happen. However there are 4 shove and ram reactions that should be paid close attention to. 

Each of these is on a non-crittable location and they are 2x failure, 1x reflex, 1x wound.  They cause the GSK to shove a bunch of survivors who are adjacent to it in some spaces and trample others directly in front. It is absolutely worth taking a look at one of these four cards at some point so you can visualize the monster's threat zone during this action. You do not want to be trampled because of how hard this hits. You also do not want to be near where the GSK ends its reaction, because 50% of the time it will then perform Blacken and deal hits.

So the big deal with hitting the GSK is that you want to be scoring wounds wherever possible and then accepting the consequences of those hits. Having to deal with failures, and getting punished for those, is quite problematic.

Now with this analysis complete, you should have a better idea of how the GSK behaves. On the whole it attacks a threat (but you can't be sure which one) or the Final Lantern holder and it deals a lot of hits during its Blacken action. Re-actively, the main thing it has going for it is the Surge punishment, the Parry locations and that high toughness. Its trap is a nuisance at best, but terrifying when your survival reserves are depleted.

Overall, it's a focused monster, with specific strengths and weaknesses and a very direct method of killing survivors. So you can, and will beat it.

Next time we will look at some of the most helpful gear for this fight (with a focus on core game stuff for those of you without expansions), but until then, if you have any tips or tricks about positioning, strategy and similar (not gear loadouts, that's next time and we'll delete those comments if they land here) please comment below!

*The main design credit of the DBK is Adam's but Zachary B is the one who refined and fixed its behavior to the one we know and love. Before he got involved, the monster tended to avoid the ball after throwing it once and had a few other quirks. He fixed the issues and also sliced the Relentless mechanic off the DBK so it could be transplanted onto the Lion God (hence my crediting his involvement in that monster even though he's not the main designer). Zach B is my all time top KD:Monster designer and probably always will be, Anna is #2.