Flower Power: People of the Bloom and Why You Should Play it Next (Patreon)

When it comes to variants for campaigns, typically they are not spoken about much outside of People of the Skull. So going ahead for the next few weeks we are going to look at each of them, starting with the most interesting and new player friendly of them with People of the Bloom.

Variants are not full campaigns in their own right, they are 'modifiers' that you can choose to apply at the start of the campaign and they have lasting effects. In the case of People of the Bloom, what has happened is the people of the settlement have set up near the Abyssal Woods Forest Gate and worship the Flower Knight as a consequence. This has some fun connotations when combined with Stars and Sun, but there is nothing here that requires the same level of ridiculous mental gymnastics as it does if you wanted to hunt the Dragon King in Stars or Sunstalkers in Sun.

For the most part in this article though, we are going to consider what happens when survivors set up at a Lantern Hoard near the Forest Gate. Making it People of the Lantern Bloom (rather than People of the Star Bloom or People of the Sun Bloom).

The modifiers to the campaign are as follows:

• Survivors cannot hunt the Flower Knight
• Survivors cannot gain the Flower Addiction disorder
• In Lantern Years 5, 10, 15, 20 the settlement gets -1 population and gains the Sleeping Virus Flower rare gear
• During the development step of the settlement phase the Sense Memory story event may be triggered
• The Flower Knight Helm & Replica Flower Sword may be crafted
• Survivors may go on a Forest Run - 1 Endeavor, exchange any number of monster resources for the same number of random Flower resources.
• Survivors are born with +1 permanent luck, +1 green affinity and -1 red affinities.

This was all expressed in a nice settlement location created by Rabid Black Dog, and here is an image of that. The resolution is not the best for professional made prints, but it works well if printed at home.

I do mean to go back and redo that card, because it's decent, but the layout could be a lot better. There's a lot of stuff on there that should instead be just on the timeline and/or a reference card.

Now that is a lot, and I mean a LOT to take in, so we'll break it down a bit at a time and look at some of the ramifications to these changes.

Survivors

Survivors in this variant are altered in some very fundamental ways that have significant effects across the campaign, overall these are positive ones but it is still very interesting. Here's the handy little reference card I put together a while ago.

Now as you will note above, these benefits apply to survivors born during the campaign, not the initital survivors. So your starting pool of survivors cannot take advantage of these changes as they have not been changed by proximity to the Flower Knight and the forest. Survivors who develop in this settlement however are very different from the rest. And that means you have a pool of up to 14 non-affected survivors who can gain Flower Addiction and have standard affinities (plus any extra survivors who join the settlement via hunt events/settlement events etc are 'normies also'), but gradually Flower Children will come along and they are very interesting to use.

The +1 Luck is very clear and obvious, it's a strong stat to have and it becomes stronger when combined with Lucky Charms, Deadly etc etc. But the really interesting part are the affinity changes. While +1 Green Affinity is rather straightforward to plan for, -2 red affinities has a whole bunch of wrinkles to it that are interesting and unique. For example, if a Bloom Child wants to use this:

They cannot just connect the up red and it's done. No, in fact to activate this they need a total of three red affinities, two to get the number of red affinities back up to 0 and a connected down red to complete the axe. That's rather unique and unusual, it has huge ramifications for a whole bunch of gear that relies on red puzzle pieces to activate abilities.

The Green Affinity's main impact is on Monster Grease, it allows the survivor to activate it with just two additional affinities instead of the usual three. That's another large power boost, but fortunately it is somewhat countered by the Green Charm being the weakest of the three Charm options. (Isn't it frustrating this game has so many charms?)

There is also some fun interactions with Cycloid Scale Armor, if you have 5 complete affinities with Prismatic you end up with 5 Blue, 6 Green and 3 Red affinities rather than the usual 5/5/5 split.

Yeah, I like this change a lot, while Bloom's options (Luck + Green) skew towards the most powerful strategies, it is still unique and fresh, while also being accessible for newbies.

Forest Run & Sense Memory

On the surface these two options exist to provide ways of crafting the Flower Knight gear, and yes, that is very powerful because the Vespertine Bow is a thing that hasn't been nerfed (yet). Still, there are other opportunities available here, this is one of the few places where you can make regular use of the Vespertine Foil and Vespertine Arrow. Both of which are highly prohibitive items in normal campaigns because of how they work:

Forest Run is simply a variant of the (very powerful) Harvest Ritual from the Stone Circle location. As some point in the future I am going to walk through the various locations and discuss why this particular ability is super important to settlement health, but for now, just know that Forest Run is an alternative that is both stronger and weaker.

Now the main use of Forest Run is to generate resources to use in Sense Memory, but it also has a second less commonly used ability and that is generating population through the Warbling Bloom.

You'll notice that these survivors are born, which means they get all the benefits of being a Bloom person (including ignoring getting Flower Addiction). So as long as you don't mind them having a bunch of troll faces, you can always get more survivors through this method.

Sense Memory also has a bunch of other uses outside of just crafting gear, here is the "location" I made a while ago for use in this campaign.

In addition to being able to craft, you can also get Otherworldly Luck on tap once you have pottery and some spare resources, this is another part of why I consider Bloom to be a better campaign for newer players (and those who are struggling with being wiped out early on).

Gear

Here we'll talk about the campaign specific gear, plus a few of the Flower Knight gear cards that work a bit better in Bloom than they would otherwise. I'm not going to discuss it here, but yes, the Vespertine Bow is still very strong, and boring.

Vespertine Arrow

In normal campaigns, if you hit then the arrow is gone and if you miss it is hard to remake because of the perishable trait it is impossible to remake them. But in Bloom you can always get the arrows remade through triggering Sense Memory. This means that you can 'store' monster resources that you do not need as arrows and then attempt to convert them into new monster resources through critical wounds. Because the Bloom people have +1 luck, this causes a total luck bonus of +5 (or +6 with the Lucky Charm), that's a huge boost to critical wound chances. Combine it with Hit Location scouting and you should be able to convert a lot of monster resources from one to the other.

Vespertine Foil

In a normal campaign you have to fight the Flower Knight at least every other year in order to maintain this weapon. Here you can Forest Run every single year and stash one in a Satchel which allows you to maintain the weapon. In combination with the Lucky Charm, Bloom's +1 Luck and the weapon's Deadly 2 it will typically pay for itself and its upkeep many times over. It is however, not the easiest thing to manage and it does require a satchel to keep going because of the timing of when you have to spend the resource. But it is a unique playstyle and a net positive if controlled correctly.

Flower Knight Helm

This one actually has a phenomenal ability, but it is not as attractive as it could have been because of its lack of keywords and Outfit. It seems likely that Campaigns of Death will revisit this item, and I hope that the actions taken is to add bone, metal, leather and Outfit to the item. The -1 speed is a very interesting option for tanks who are willing to run mixed sets, but the truth of the matter is, for tanks the armor set bonus really matters, a lot.

Replica Flower Sword

This is the single most interesting and exciting reason to play this campaign, this weapon (which actually requires 3x Green Affinity and 3x Red Affinity to activate) is one of the most perfectly designed Grand Weapons in the game. It is one handed, powerful, scales into the late game and has very interesting drawbacks. You have to work hard to get this one activated (Building 3x Red affinities and 2x Green affinities on a single grid is often a challenge) and it is not something a tank type character can use. But it works with Blood Paint, it has a very high level of damage and it is powerful without being stupidly strong. 

Sleeping Virus Flower

Turning up at 5 times during the campaign, this item costs 1 population each time it occurs, but it gives you more luck and a way of protecting a key survivor (somewhat), when they die  they will get to 'overwrite' another survivor and continue on their journey. This means that Weapon Proficiencies are somewhat easier to complete, because you have a buffer against random chance. 

So, People of the Bloom gives you new, unique gear, an interesting switch to how affinities work and something for both newer players and experienced ones looking to have a new outlook on gear grids/loadouts. It is currently the best way to interact with the Flower Knight's gear (due to the utterly flawed nature of the FK Showdown fight) and the only real downside is the lack of a method to get access to True Blade when you cannot hunt the Flower Knight. It is something everyone should try 2-3 times.