Gloom Evolves into Wildplume: The Rest of the Slenderman's (Patreon)

Since I'm looking to put together a visual guide on the Slenderman in the near future we're going to take the opportunity today to just round out the look at the Slendy's gear with a quick-ish take on the rest of the items available in the expansion. 

Slenderman has one of the most interesting suite of items in the entire game, there (almost) isn't a single item that is bad per say, some of them are a little situational, but there isn't a strictly bad item in this expansion - which is part of the reason why it is such a good expansion. It has the right level of carrot for the stick that the showdown represents. Sure there are a few things that are over tuned in their power level, but what is KD:Monster if not a game where overpowered survivors wear overpowered item and then go slam dunk monsters into an early grave?

Dark Water Vial

Costs: 1x organ, 1x dark water

This is the absolute closest that any gear in the Slenderman suite comes to being bad, and in truth most times this item is bad. You just should not craft it because of dark water being a valuable resource for other items that have more general uses.

If you do end up with a spare dark water after making everything else, this item can and does save lives at times, you can activate it during a survival window surge when you know you are going to gain a fatal number of bleed tokens. You can also use it on a Muramasa survivor, once per showdown they can pop this when they're close to death from bleed, another survivor can encourage them back up and then they can go absolutely ham with the weeblade without worrying about getting any bleed tokens (nothing you can do about super dense locations though). That's a pretty neat and fun way to use this item and it's why I don't consider it completely bad.

You probably should not be crafting this one though.

Raptor-Worm Collar

Cost: 1x organ, 1x scrap, 1x dark water

Never forget that you can effectively encourage at any time, there's no survival window for it, and this means that there are some silly things you can do with the Raptor-Worm Collar (as an aside, raptors are pretty interesting nematodes). As an example, you can combine it with things that give bonuses when you encourage, such as Leader + Drums. This combo results in you being able to give +1 speed to everyone at the cost of 2 brain damage to each of them. It's a rather neat trick, especially for settlements that are very good at having large amounts of insanity - while Speed is not the best, when you can gain it for "just" the cost of brain damage (no need for activation, no 

The other main use for this (in addition to its affinities) is as a tool vs the L3 Slenderman (and Screaming Antelope) both of these monsters cause unavoidable death if you have gain too much insanity, but the collar can help keep these gains down. That makes it an invaluable tool to craft at least one of, especially if you plan to really go for the win against the hardest Slendy.

Gloom Cream

Cost: 1x love juice, 1x hide, 2x dark water

This is one of those rare, exciting and completely unique items. There's no particular build that you specifically use this one with, because you're not going to be using it every single hunt, instead this item exists to allow you to extend the life of any hunter and keep them around longer. It also allows you to dodge murder with the most valuable hunters.

The understanding loss is a bit of a blow, understanding has the best final abilities in the game (ageless, leyline walker) but it is not a major issue, especially if you use this on a survivor who has already maxed out the boxes. 

Because this item doesn't let you redo milestones for age/understanding (they have to specifically say that in the card/rules text) there's no reason to use this on an Ageless survivor (they already should be xp dodging to avoid Murder), but for leyline walkers in particular this item is amazing. You want one and you wheel it out when it's time for a survivor to crem up. 

The good stuff, the french stuff.

Gloom Bracelets

Costs: 1x bone, 1x lion tale, 1x scrap, 1x dark water

Last, but certainly not least we have the Gloom Bracelets, these items have always been the most potentially interesting, but it was not until the release of Echoes of Death III that the most fun option became available. The strain fighting art Armored Fist.

Requires Fist & Tooth Proficiency.

Your Fist & Tooth attacks gain strength equal to the current armor value of your arms hit location.

With the combination of decent armor and the Gloom Bracelets you can push Fist & Tooth attacks up to near the top of the chart for strength (especially if you get to stack Acid Palms, Monster Claw Style, Jaw modifications or the Husk of Destiny into the mix). It's a really neat option for offensive attacks and you basically slot the Gloom Bracelets in instead of a weapon.

You can also push this further, by protecting the arm locations with a full set of Silk Armor (I know, inconceivable, an actual, legitimate use for full Silk Armor!) This allows you to move attacks that would hit the arms onto other locations while also getting to boost the survivor's strength a bit more with the Silk waist and body armor specific abilities.

You too can be a silk drenched kung fu monk warrior woman* who fights by hitting opponents with bracelets. Pow. Beautiful.

The alternative version of this is to combine Silk Armor with the Gloom Bracelets and use it defensively, Silk Armor will let you push damage onto the arm locations whenever you get hit and also allow you to avoid the arms taking severe injuries and archiving the bracelets. It's one of many, many reasons why I recommend Spidicules in combination with the Slenderman despite the official Spidicules rules removing the Screaming Antelope and therefore the Gloom Katana Sheath from the build pool.

It's genuinely fun to have a reason to build Silk Armor beyond stuffing it into mixed sets, and this combination synergy with the Armored Fist, Silk Armor and Gloom Bracelets is what does it. I am hopeful that the Campaigns of Death update to Silk Armor doesn't break/remove this sweet synergy, because the set bonus for Silk Armor isn't the problem with it. But we'll see in time I guess.

*Never forget that women should ALWAYS be the ones who train up fist & tooth, there are female specific F&T bonuses. While female hunters are almost universally better than male ones (Harvestman is the exception), you can manage with male hunters - but you should never have male fist & tooth survivors unless you don't own the Spidicules expansion.