Endeavouring for Success: Part 2 - Core Locations (Patreon)

In the first part of this endeavor deep dive (which is going to take a while to get through, so buckle in for many articles), we're off to the races with a look at the core location endeavor reactions. These are (mostly) not campaign or monster specific actions and they are intended to be present in all campaigns (the card pack is going to give us some changes to the Stone Circle, moving it to being monster specific and the Barber Surgeon taking over - but that is for future discussion).

So let us take a look at the core locations (not campaign specific) in this article.

Innovation (Resident Settlement Monster)

Cost: 1x endeavor, 1x hide, 1x organ, 1x bone 

Type: Permanent, Random (semi)

Effect(s): Gain an innovation.

Core to the experience of the game and the primary source of your settlement's technological development, the offering/use of resources and effort results in gaining of knowledge from the resident monster (Watcher, Tyrant, Sun). This is because lore-wise the monsters bestow their knowledge onto the ignorant savages, speeding up their technological growth, either intentionally for food (Watcher), to help them become strong enough to transform into living stars (Tyrant) or indirectly as a part of protecting its brood (Sun).

This system is something I've talked about in the past, and it is both an incredibly frustrating  & rewarding one. You will find more about this under the Innovations tag. However, the full breakdown of the innovations system will come later.

Suffice to say this is a very strong, powerful endeavor, but not one you need to do every year. And you should ALWAYS skip it in the first couple of years because gear is more important. (You can make up for those skips by saving to innovate during nemesis years later on).

Rating: 4/5

Augury (Organ Grinder) 

Cost: 1x Endeavor

Type: Random, Permanent, Temporary

Effect(s): -1 Resource, +1 Understanding (30%) or Roll on Intimacy Table (aka +/- Population) (30%) or +1 Survival (40%)

As the most important endeavor in the entire game, Augury is one of the few ways you can trigger Intimacy. It is found on the Organ Grinder and at its base line it is;

Spend an Endeavour for:

• 30% -1 Resource +1 Understanding
• 40% +1 Survival
• 30% Intimacy

As a result, it is the first gate in gaining population and a large portion of why population control can be so frustrating. It can be further influenced by having a 3+ Understanding survivor undertake the Endeavor, which gives +1 to the roll and modifies the odds of the Resource/Understanding and Intimacy results as follows:

• 20% -1 Resource, +1 Understanding
• 40% +1 Survival
• 40% Intimacy

But that's only a 33.33% Increase in the odds of getting Intimacy to occur, so that is why other methods of generating Population, such as the Hunt Phase, Love Juice and Matchmaker are so valuable. So look out for ways to increase survivor courage to 3 during the Settlement Phase, because Matchmakers are an incredible support to this action.

If it wasn't so essential to the lifeblood of a settlement, the random nature of this endeavor would make it something to be avoided. But that is not the case, even settlements of the Sun which have an automatic Intimacy for Endeavor every year, still have to rely on Augury for the grunt work. This is the devil you know.

Rating: 3/5 but essential.

Leather-Making (Leather Worker)

Cost: 1x endeavor (requires hide)

Type: Permanent

Effect(s): Transform any amount of hide into Leather (which is a better hide).

A gold standard endeavor, once you have ammonia you can spend a spare endeavor in a year to turn all the hide you want into leather. There's no reason to not convert every single basic hide into leather when you do this, the more leather you change in a single endeavor the more efficient you were with the action. As leather is used in a huge amount of mid and late game gear cards, this is something that's worth stockpiling whenever you have a spare amount.

Monster hide is something you have to be a bit more cautious with, work out if it's going to potentially be used in something, if it is, don't convert it unless you need the leather right there and then.

Rating: 5/5

Special Innovate Scrap Smelting: Weapon Crafter

Cost: 1x endeavor, 2x scrap, 5x bone, 5x organ

Type: Permanent

Effect(s): Gain the scrap smelting innovation.

Anything that gains you additional innovations without having to use the innovation deck is something that has to be taken very seriously. It helps that the Scrap Smelting innovation is also a key late game innovation, because of how it allows you to gain the Blacksmith location and also refine scrap into Iron.

These endeavors are often overlooked by the newer player because of the extreme cost, but it is always important to get these, and also note that scrap/bones/organs are less valuable than hide (so you should have enough of this kicking around spare). 

Don't get Scrap Smelting via normal innovation, always try to get it here.

Rating: 4/5

Scrap Scavenge (Weapon Crafter)

Cost: 1x endeavor

Type: Permanent, Temporary, Random

Effect(s): Spend survival or die (50%), gain 1x broken lantern (40%), +1 courage (10%)

Before we get into how valuable the scrap is, it must be stressed that this is one of a few settlement phase methods of gaining +1 courage and triggering  Insight into Tinker.  However, the table is absolutely terrible, with it causing -1 survival half the time (never use this with 0 survival). 

Most of the time this is something you just do with spare survivors, I am not an advocate of using this for a primary way of generating scrap, but  it can be a place to get Matchmakers the way that Augury can generate tinkers. Otherworldly Luck is also a huge benefit for this table because of how it slides the %s around.

Rating: 3/5

Trepanning (Barber Surgeon)

Cost: 1x endeavor

Type: Permanent, Random

Effect(s): Cause Intracranial hemorrhage (20%), Cure 1 disorder (40%), Cure Intracranial hemorrhage (30%), Gain 1x random disorder and 1x random fighting art (10%). 

(Also the method you generate trigger gaining the Infinite Lives strain fighting art)

This one is going to become far more common once the card pack lands, because the Barber Surgeon becomes a direct endeavor from the Organ Grinder (more on that when it lands). 

The main function of the Barber Surgeon is to remove disorders, but it also has an odd line in messing about with getting/removing this head injury.

As you can see, if Trepanning gives you a hemorrhage, it can also take it away from you a bit later on. So strap in for the long haul.

As mentioned above, Trepanning the same person over and over a total of five times will unlock the Infinite Lives strain (Echoes of Death I). It's a REALLY powerful fighting art and going ahead just above everyone will be able to unlock it for their FA deck.

I'm very happy this one is being moved to the second location tier (Leather/Scrap) instead of being stuck up in Blacksmith tier (tier 3). It never deserved to be end game.

Rating: 5/5

And that's the lot for the core game locations, next time we'll look at monster specific ones, which tend to have a bit more strategy than the core game ones. The core stuff is intended to be very generic and basic, giving you a backbone for your settlement, rather than fancy abilities that can be exploited for an edge.

We'll look at the Screaming Antelope, Flower Knight and Gorm next time. The Flower Knight in particular is very interesting, especially because you can get close to permanent access to them by playing People of the Bloom.