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Hunting for Success: Hunt Events #91 to 100 (Patreon)

Published:

2021-02-09 12:00:00

Imported:

2024-02

Tags:

Hunt Event

Content

We are approaching the end of our long journey through the hunt phase, soon we'll reach the end and get to tackle the 'quarry' that is a full breakdown of the Hunt Phase's various hidden 'rules' and understand how best to optimise hunting through the Plain of Stone Faces. But before we can get there, we need to see success, failure, tributes to the game that inspired this one and one last, final appearance from the all-round 'best dude' the Cyclops Knight.

It's pretty amazing how thematically rich the final 10 hunt events are, there's no real reason to have such a lot of very potent and heady events stacked together here at the end of the table because it is a 'flat percentage' chart, event #100 is statistically no different from event #10, but thematically one feels important while the other feels like a dud.

Dust off your rawhide boots once more, lets go back to where it all began.

91. The Beginning

With a fun little reference back to the very first events of the campaign, this hunt event isn't one you want to think about too hard because the scene of the settlement's first hunt tends to be one of the most unremarkable and flat pieces of the world you could possibly imagine. Due to its complete lack of terrain landmarks and the way that every body from the prologue is taken to the newly formed settlement - there shouldn't be anything here whatsoever to help the hunters realise where they are. But this is a story, and one has to suspend disbelief sometimes in order to help enjoy it.

When you do, you get a fun little event with some excellent bonuses linked to two strong innovations. This is just something you want to get as often as possible.

92. Failed Start

This event is the mirror to 91. and is a neat little bit of lampshade hanging designed to acknowledge and brush over the continuously cyclical nature of every campaign's start (at least until we get the GC and CoD).

However, despite finding a place of failure, the event itself is a very decent one, exchanging 1 brain event damage for +1 founding stone (if you want it) and potentially +1d10 insanity. Like The Beginning above, this is just a good little event that wins both thematically and mechanically.

I am surprised that the survivors are not allowed to gain more cloth when here, but I suspect that level of future proofing just wasn't thought of at the time and now it's just been decided to keep cloth a rare commodity.

93. Lost Survivor

Ooof. This one is an argument for never innovating Pictograms ever, having a 30% change of causing a survivor to exile themselves right after the event ends is a rough one to have to deal with.

The 4-6 Result is also overall a negative trade, there are a few specific builds that can take very good advantage of +1 permanent speed (Counterweighted Axe, Acid-Tooth Daggers for example), but for most survivors that extra speed in exchange for Anxiety and Traumatized is not ideal. However, it is worth noting that against many monsters this makes for a relatively decent DPS build. Traumatized is a way of keeping your survivor safe from targeting because outside of a few notable exceptions (White Lions, King's Man for example) most monster AI prefers to hit standing survivors over ones that are flat on their back (or it is at least neutral). In addition, being knocked down during your own turn after your act finishes gives you immunity to a monster knocking you down during their turn and making you skip your next go.

The 7+ result is pretty great, it's +1 courage and two of the stronger fighting arts in the game, ones that synergise with each other and with Pictograph's 'run away' ability. Overall this one is the biggest thematic win and it is just a shame that the worst result on this chart has such a big negative on a high % proc chance

94. Sickening Mess

While it isn't explicitly stated, this sickening mess could be caused by the presence of a Gorm. The Gorm (which appears elsewhere in this hunt chart) is the most likely culprit due to the toxic nature of the waste.

The event itself is an interesting one that holds a mix of positive and negative outcomes. Insane survivors are punished straight out with a -1 strength token, which is fine because of the massive benefits being insane provides in the first place. Sane survivors get to at worst gain +1 courage for a -1 strength token, but a lot of the time they get to draw additional random basic resources - sometimes you have to take a bit of damage for this, but 1 event damage is absolutely worth a basic resource.

Which means, unless you are insane, you should always investigate this event, and it only gets better and better the more understanding you have.

95. Grim and Frostbitten

Punishment for Leyline Walkers, Rolling Armor, People of the Skull and early game survivors. This one is at its worst when you encounter it early on, because losing 1 survival when your survival limit is 3 or 4 is a huge chunk of change.

Later on this event becomes almost meaningless, because most survivors will be covered, and if they are not, you should have deep enough survival pools to allow you to absorb losing 2-3 survival without much difficulty.

96. Cloaked Stranger

There's a lot of fun to be had trying to figure out who the cloaked stranger is. There is basically two options, either this is a bunch of different cloaked strangers the way that the settlement event is set up, or it's just The Tyrant / People of the Stars over and over. 9+ is absolutely 100% the Tyrant for sure, but the others share some traits with this powerful Entity but not entirely. I do hope that we get more hints as to who each of these results links to, but they might just be 'cool events' that are never expanded on.

Outside of that, this is mechanically just another 'random stuff happens, roll high' table which slants towards the permanently negative.

97. Living Stone

"Giant Livingstone I presume?"

A very exciting event that mostly skews towards the positive, this event usually means you get to skip the rest of the hunt, sometimes with a bonus. However that 1 result is a terrifying issue unless you've stacked Otherworldly Luck onto all your hunters.

Remember that you are not forced to take the Founding Stone if you don't have space for it and try to keep all special hunt events you have set up stuck as near to the beginning as you can manage (or as near to Overwhelming Darkness as possible if you want those bonuses).

98. Bloody Eyes

"I've got bloody eyes, I feel the magic between you and I"

A straightforward investigation, you want to do this one for the 4-6 result, which is somewhat worth the risk of the 1-3. Naturally, you want to insulate against this with bonuses to the table if possible, but even if you can't you should have bandages in the hunt party which will allow you to undo the worst of the 1-3 result.

There is a rather scary situation if you are using the bloodskin from the White Speaker event because that item puts you at 2 bleeding on departure:

So this event then sticks you at 5 bleeding tokens. So watch out for that and other situations that could cause a survivor to bleed out.

99. Portcullis

The other half of the Dying Prospector key event, this is the one that gives you access to a perfect crucible and will let you craft the campaign distorting Perfect Slayer. Suffice to say, if you get that weapon, you shouldn't lose another showdown fight in the entire campaign because it is that busted. That 1 result sure does suck though.

The main portion of interest in this event outside of the gear is the reference this event represents. It's a direct call to the other half of the Warhammer Quest event where you would get locked into a dungeon because of a portcullis that could only be opened by a key you got from the dying dwarf prospector. When this event happened, your only options were to flee into the darkness and risk a table killing you, press on to find the key or find the exit to the dungeon (killing the "boss" encounter at the end).

It's actually one of the tamer, more dull events in the WHQ game so it's surprising that it's been chosen to be the reference. A reference with a reference to another franchise inside it no less.

100. The Finale

This event is very interesting because it represents one of the major points of retcon in the Kingdom Death universe. In 1.31 and earlier (pre-1.5) the character at the center of this event was the (at the time) dude bro friend the Gold Smoke Knight, who would either give you a steel shield & sword or a copy of his own Thundermaul. It wasn't a great weapon, but hey he was trying his best and it wasn't your fault you couldn't use it because you are smol.

However, with 1.5 the GSK was moved from supporting character to the position of secondary antagonist and the Cyclops Knight was placed in this event instead, thematically changing the GSK from forging its own hammer to now be wielding one crafted by the Cyclops Knight and also moving the GSK from a positive element in the world to a strictly negative one (from the survivors perspective). However, this kind of retconning is to be expected when the world is being made up as its creator goes along - just look at things like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure for parallels.

Mechanically this event (which can be "tutored" by Barbaric societies) is a bunch of bonuses with a bit of damage along the way. However, the gear you get at the end tends to be mostly negative and/or tricky to use. The Steel Sword is outright an amazing weapon that fits into any hunt party, the Steel Shield is a very strong weapon with serious downsides that require work/specific building to navigate.

The Thundermaul is a fun weapon that's pretty good, but tends to maim/kill its wielder and as such it requires a lot of dedicated support in order to get it through the entire campaign and enjoy the fun of a weapon master club user battling the Gold Smoke Knight. If you're not able to do that, you'll have to go find some Crystal Skin in order to get rid of its curse. I can see the thematic and flavor ideas behind the design of the Thundermaul, but its execution is... not great. We'll explore how to best maximise it in the future.

And that's it, next time we get to this series we'll be putting a bow on everything with a full breakdown of all the various rules and a supporting visual guide*, so I'll see y'all then!