Halloween Ringtail Vixen Review (Patreon)

After last year's rather good Halloween White Speaker and the decent, if not amazing Oktoberfest Aya, both of whom bolstered the roster of Pattern gear established by the 10th Year Anniversary Survivors, I was looking forward to this year's Halloween offering quite a bit, hopeful we'd get some decent content - perhaps even the Halloween monster that was mechanically teased in the White Speaker's dagger.

That, alas, was not to happen this year. Instead we got another addition to the Ringtail Vixen line. While I adore the Death High Ringtail and think that the White Box Ringtail Vixen content is one of the best promotional items released; I am not very interested or enamored with the Ringtails as a whole. They've been teased for so long, and this process of getting Wave 3 + 4 out has dragged things out so much, that it's hard to maintain my attention on them. I'm not really one for Kitsunes or Furries in general (more power to you if you are). So the Ringtail Vixen's models have never been something I've bothered with (outside of the clearly human Death High one).

Still, new content is new content and this release follows the template of Oktoberfest/Easter Aya, Valentines Day Twilight Knight and the Halloween/Christmas Stans, as in we are getting a large scale display miniature and a smaller 35mm "playable" one (which typically isn't playable due to the anachronistic or fourth wall breaking nature of these models). These things are physically designed for hobbyists, however they are also created with an intentional hook to pull completionists and fanatics in in the form of game content.

So, given that the models are stunning (even if it is a subject I am not that interested in), the relevant part here for most people is the game content. What is it and is it any good?

Patterns, Patterns, Patterns

(Image from discord)

There are two new pieces of pattern gear which come with this expansion. The Brazen Bat and the Vixen Tail. To remind you of the pattern rules; they are limited in crafting numbers by the number in the yellow box (1 each here), they are added to the Pattern Deck if the relevant trigger keywords are met (insight and insight, ringtail vixen) which brings us to our first issue. Half of this content cannot be used unless you own the Ringtail Vixen white box AND the bookmark is present in the current campaign (50% chance after the first campaign it is in). That kind of sucks, but it's not a deal breaker for reasons below.

We'll walk through each piece of gear individually now:

The Brazen Bat

Trigger: Drawn on Insight

Cost: 2x bone, 1x Dried Acanthus, 1x Scrap

Requirements: Rhythm Chaser, Scrap Smelting

This bat is a mid game weapon with a very reasonable set of costs and requirements. The (2/5+/6) statline means it can compete with the best that the Weapon Crafter has to offer and the additional <R> cancelation ability is a huge bonus.

The downside here is you only get that extra cancellation bonus if you do not wear head armor. That's not a deal breaker because the bat's baseline stats are strong enough to justify using it without the bonus. 

You can activate this bonus if you use the Bat in combination with Vagabond Armor, Mixed sets that use Crowns/Masks for head protection instead of actual armor or Rolling Armor. But the great part about this one is you don't need to activate it to use it. This bat is good enough to wield even in a full armor set and that Red affinity means that it will fit with Lantern Armor just fine.

Finally it has a little bonus when fighting 🎃 monsters. We don't have any 🎃 monsters yet, one would assume they will eventually turn up, but right now it doesn't do anything. It's just some flavor and future proofing.

So this one is a great, if slightly too powerful, piece of gear for the cost. It's something gun that you're going to want to use and it's not as problematic or overpowered as the Scoopy Club promo (Valentines day) is. 

8/10

Vixen Tail

Trigger: Drawn on Insight if Ringtail Vixen event is in campaign

Cost: 1x scrap, 1x leather

Requirements: Infant Adrift, Crab Spider, Monster Grease.

Ooof. Just a massive Ooof on this one. This pattern gear competes with the Teleric Eye Tac for one of the worst pattern gear cards in the game, and when you factor in the cost of it the item is just absolutely terrible.

The major issue here is that this item has one single, marginal use, that triggers at most once per showdown if you are insane. It is a highly situational trigger so most of the time this gear is going to sit in your grid and do nothing except provide a single down green affinity (a very low value affinity). Also Ambushes typically are not a major deal, they hurt, but most of the time you should be able to handle them.

Overall, all of that wouldn't automatically be a deal breaker, sometimes . But the costs of this one are so high for what you get. Hide is the most valuable of all the four resource types (Hide > Bones > Organs > Scrap) because a typical gear grid has 5-6 hide based items in it, but only 1-2 of the others (that changes a bit when you start making Iron gear, but you'd never use this item in the mid or late game, or early game for that matter).

However, this item costs not just hide. It costs leather, which is hide + a part of an endeavor. It is an absolutely massive cost considering what you get. Leather = Leather Armor, Leather Shields, Sickles, Pickaxes and is used in late game armor sets. Leather isn't something you spend on what is basically a down green affinity most of the time. You want Green Affinities? Get them elsewhere.

If this piece of gear did something else, like maybe 1 armor point to the waist location (as an accessory) or had more affinities, or didn't cost any hide to make, then we'd be talking about something you might make early on. But as it stands the only real positive thing to say about this is, at least you're not destroying a Cat Eye Circlet to make this thing. Trash, absolute trash gear (still not as bad as the self archiving bombs though).

Leave this one for someone who desperately needs to cosplay as a fox or has a fox as their fursona. Everyone else, just avoid this waste of space and materials.

1/10

Summary:

Skip this one unless you are a completionist or hobbyist. $50 is a lot to pay for 4 pieces of card, 2 of which are worth less than the cardboard they are printed on. Stick with the Halloween White Speaker instead, that is a genuinely excellent piece of content.

Final Score: 5/10 - mostly for the miniatures.