The Dark Crystal: A Look at the Best Ability in the Game (Patreon)

One of the single strongest, most interesting, and balanced changes which was inserted into 1.5 was the update to the ability Crystal Skin. In 1.31 it worked as follows:

Crystal Skin: An ability. You cannot place armor in your gear grid. When you depart, gain 2 armor points to all hit locations. Suffer -1 to the result of all severe injury rolls.

It was updated in 1.5 to the following:

So, in addition to the amount of armor you gain on each location being improved by 1, the severe injury roll was made twice as deadly, you can ignore cursed and most importantly of all, Crystal Skin was turned into a dominant trait that is always passed down to children.

This is a pretty huge, sweeping, and excellent set of changes that have turned Crystal Skin from being 'that thing which happened to one survivor one time' and instead made it into a viable strategy that you can build around in your settlement. One with high risks, but also high rewards.

So, lets talk about it.

Gaining Crystal Skin

Crystal Skin is gained from the Mineral Gathering event during the Underground Lake portion of the extra post-Overwhelming Darkness content. This means you need not just a pickaxe, but you also need a viable spot to place the event. There are two monsters that give you this slot with minimal fuss and surprise, surprise, they are the two most commonly farmed monsters in the game. The L2 Screaming Antelope and the L1 Flower Knight. I'm sure you are all so surprised at this point. There are still other options, but they're all level 2 "node 3" monsters - more difficult, but there are benefits - especially where the Dragon King is concerned.

Getting to the Crystal Lake requires not just getting an 8+ on the Mineral Gathering table, one will also need to score an 8+ in the Worm Tunnels and then a 1-2 in the Crystal Lake beyond it. You can influence this with the addition of a Sickle (which changes the Worm Tunnels to a 6+), but you need to make sure that you do not have a Whip equipped, because that will stop you getting the 1-2 result. 

That is in essence what it requires to get this one started. Head out with Overwhelming Darkness level Mineral Gathering, taking at least one pick axe and a sickle along in order to ensure that you can try and get into the Worm Tunnels/Crystal Lake and using Otherworldly Luck (as always) if you have access to it. The DBK's Digging Claws can also help because they offer a reroll.

Crystal Skin's Strengths & Weaknesses

We'll do this with the old 'Con/Pro list' to start with, and then deep dive into the nitty gritty right after that.

Cons

• -2 to Severe Injury Rolls
• Cannot wear anything with the armor keyword
• Your children will always have Crystal Skin. 
• Only gains 3 armor to all locations

Pros

• 3 armor on all locations without any armor.
• Only denied armor, other options are available.
• Frees up 5, yes 5! Spaces on the gear grid.
• Can always pass on Crystal Skin, ensuring that there will be an heir to your build.
• Ignore Cursed.

So, the main downsides we need to explore are the inability to wear armor, and therefore lose out on both any armor based abilities and armor set bonuses, plus that "fragile" situation with severe injuries.

There is also one somewhat 'hidden' downside which we explored in the gaining section. You can only get Crystal Skin after Overwhelming Darkness via Mineral Gathering, which means you will rarely see this ability in a young settlement, most of the time Crystal Skin isn't going to be an option before the first 5-6 lantern years, and that means it's present for more of the "mid game" monster types. Monsters where 3 armor points are not really going to be enough to keep you away from taking severe injuries.

We are very fortunate though, there are plenty of options to help increase armor points and reduce/avoid severe injuries. Because we have freed up 5 slots in the gear grid, we can afford to devote between 1-4 of these on other items that will help avoid our crystal survivors from shattering (or perhaps go with none at all). We'll explore all the options in the final segment, but the broad categories are:

• Fighting Arts
• Shields
• Accessories
• Potions & Acanthus

Strategies for using Crystal Skin

There are two playstyles in particular that fit well with being a walking pink hemorrhoid, these are support and archer. Both styles seek to stay as far away from the monster as possible, barely need any armor and love to have a huge pile of items in order to increase versatility. Now the issue with taking this route is that Rawhide Armor actually does matter a fair bit for supports (or Screaming Armor) - so you are sacrificing extra survival. But you can make up for that with items that replenish survival, so it is not a deal breaker.

With all this flexibility comes a great deal of power and you are free to pretty much do what ever you want, all you need is one slot for a weapon and that's it. However, we will look at each category mentioned above before suggesting a few useful items.

Fighting Arts

The best Fighting arts are Tough and Unbreakable, both of which will help reduce the odds of dying on severe injuries; however it is worth noting that neither of them are great protection without support from from healing items because they simply reduce the odds of specific injuries/death happening. Now, the honest bottom line is, you do not want to be in the situation where you are rolling for that in the first place, however, given that fighting arts do not take up gear slots they are a solid addition.

As another note, Leprosy (Hunt Event: Quarantine Camp) is great ability to have stacked onto Crystal Skin, but it does make any severe injuries very lethal.

Shields

The simplest way to boost your armor points while also adding more protection, each different shield you add into the grid helps push your durability up so you can soak more hits before reaching the severe injury situation. That's very helpful - now the threshold for armor points varies from one monster to the next (and their levels) so there is no one specific catch all answer to this puzzle. 

The best shields are Leather, Blast and Beacon - and you can run all three in your gear grid for +4 armor to all locations, putting you at a respectable 7 armor points everywhere for just 3 slots.

Another route here is with evasion, this is especially effective if the survivor in question is also a Leyline Walker.

Taking this route means you will want to get monster grease or the shadow saliva shawl and stack whatever other evasion you can find/earn on top of that. You will lose out on our next category though...

Accessories

Accessories give you armor points without being armor, the most typical location these cover is the head, with some options that cover arms and body. The very best options out there however are from Spidicules and the L3 Gorm:

Of these rings, the Green one is the best option because it basically protects you any time your survivor is attacks while being the monster controller and the amount of armor it gives you is massive. However, the Blue Ring is a lot of hard to measure damage mitigation and it often is a better option - it just doesn't feel as powerful to operate and it doesn't combo with the Gorm's Regeneration suit.

This is nothing to sniff at for a Crystal Skin survivor, it gives you healing for any non-lethal injuries, a load of green affinities and it even connects with any of the Green Ring affinities in whatever position you desire. If you use it, a Green Ring, Monster Grease and a Leather Shield you have an incredible package of defense and evasion in 4 slots (and you don't even need to run the Monster Grease if you have a more aggressive option in mind).

Also, never forget the Gloom Mehndi, which is so closely linked to Crystal Skin it's almost impossible to untwine them.

Rolling Armor

Special mention to Rolling Armor, which works with Crystal Skin because it's not keyword armor. This armor set and its calcified version is fantastic if you want to play a closer range, more aggressively orientated survivor.

Potions & Acanthus

Gorm Potions and Dried Acanthus let you cheat death or avoid injuries in various manners and they are both relatively cheap to produce. Dried Acanthus lets you decide when to activate it, so you can save it for the worst severe injury results while the Life Potion from the Gorm lets you ignore the first death you would suffer each showdown. These are great when combined with Tough and can really help you beat the odds.

You can also run the 'anti death' package elements if you prefer, by packing either the Hunter's Heart, Hours Ring or the Green Charm. I don't normally advocate these items, because dying isn't really the best way to handle these things, but the old Pink Haemarroid are so fragile that it just happens.

This is how Manhunters come back from being killed, so why shouldn't you also benefit?

(Side Note: I've had some fun before where a survivor fighting the phoenix was both brought back from death by the defeat condition and also recreated by the Hunter's Heart. Figure out what happens without an FAQ for THAT one.)

Archer

So the Archer is going to want a bow, a quiver (preferably the Shielded Quiver from the Dragon King) and a selection of the best possible arrows. If you have the Gigalion, you can use whatever bow you like because the Dense Bone Arrows turn even the Catgut Bow into an end game weapon. Without the Gigalion the Sunshark Arrows work in a similar fashion, but they have a limited ammo count, so they're actually not broken.

The best remaining arrows to carry around are the Hollowpoint Arrow (which slows the monster), the Claw Head Arrow (to improve everyone's accuracy) and a Vespertine Arrow for shooting key resource gain locations. The Gloom Arrow is also a fun option because of how well it can set up other DPS survivors.

In respect of the Bow when you are not using Dense Bone Arrows: the Arc Bow is the best long range option, but second best is the Ink Blood Bow and in third place is the Vespertine Bow.

Other useful items would be a Fecal Salve or Bloom Sphere to reduce the amount of times the monster directly targets you and whatever protection from the above options and perhaps the Beetle Bomb to throw early on before beating a retreat.

Support

Ah support, my favourite class. Punch the monster once for Fist & Tooth Training, then smear yourself in a fecal salve and go hide behind terrain, helping by controlling the monster's hit locations. 

Now Crystal Skin survivors lack the Rawhide Headband, which is quite a hit in potency, but they can run the Blue Ring instead and that can really help control a monster - the combo with the Gloom Hammer (more on this next week) in particular is amazing. 

Most of your grid is going to contain the best support items you can imagine, here's a selection of them:

• Cat's Eye Circlet/Trash Crown/Necromancer's Eye
• Bug Trap
• First Aid Kit
• Scavenger Kit
• Sickle/Pick axe
• Musical Instruments + Grim Muffler (I love Cello + Muffler and then Gorns on everyone else)
• Raptor-Worm Collar
• Slender Ovule
• Satchel
• Blue Ring, Fecal Salve or Bloom Sphere (one of these is a must have imo)
• Bird Bread

It's also possible to run Crystal Skin survivors as melee based damage dealing survivors; but, due to the strength of Cycloid Scale, Dragon, Warlord and Dancer Armor (Plus Phoenix Armor, sort of) it is generally better to run armor sets there.